Am I Still Ill?

Sunday decided to put Zoe through the wringer. The morning was a tale of confusion and the mantra was ‘I don’t know anything anymore’. I don’t know if I am the most hideous bullying monster around. After all a close and trusted friend has implied as much. So has, at times, my partner.

For all I knew, they could have been 100% right about me. I’m human at the end of the day. When two really close people persist in a demonising attitude towards you, try telling me a part of you won’t start to believe it?

Add in the general tendencies of our society to demonise the ‘mentally ill’. I’ve had approx twenty years of that.

One more time gentle folks. If you see someone ‘spazzing out’ (nice expression, think I picked it up from Eminem) you can be sure it comes from a place of pain. If they are not physically violent it behoves us all to approach them with an open mind and heart. Let compassion be our watchword. There but for the grace of God go you and I.

Yesterday afternoon was a tale of trying to socialise with other people at a picnic and finding it well-nigh impossible. I was overwrought, strung out, skinless and in indescribable emotional pain.

I felt a little better after saying goodbye, but still incredibly vulnerable.

I came home, read a few pages of a book on trauma called ‘Waking the Tiger’. When I read this book I can’t really relate to a lot of it, which makes me feel I cannot be traumatised. I don’t find the analogy to wild animals helpful.

However I know that I am. In the last six months I have had to question two of the closest relationships in my life. One has had to be jettisoned and the other still hangs in the balance. I have developed trust issues. If best friend A said she loved me but then acted as if she hated me, what is to stop R from going the same way?

I have also experienced organisational bullying and psychiatric abuse (being carted off and incarcerated when I didn’t need to be).

I have been in crisis for weeks but this isn’t reducible to the classic ‘bipolar’ pattern of highs and lows. It’s way more complex. Yesterday I exhibited symptoms of PTSD with feelings of rising panic, confusion, terror, dread and agitation.

Unable to be alone with it and knowing I might well be unable to get any rest I headed down to Emergency Reception at St Ann’s. For once this turned out to be a good idea. I had a longish wait but was busy texting back and forth with R, and also managed to read my current ‘madness narrative’ ‘Girl, Interrupted’.

While I admire the author’s intellectual brilliance and lucid, satirical writing style, I did not warm to her as a person. Her presence for two years on a psych ward for young women seemed that of a tourist and she admitted at the end (where she resumes a normal life etc etc) that she still can’t stand ‘loonies’.

But you know what? She was being honest, and I respect that.

I had a chat with a lovely nurse, one of the old guard who has been there for many years, and who patients generally like and respect. Not because he’s the sharpest tool in the box. That’s not what it’s about. Because he is human, he sees our humanity, and he cares about us.

I was able to bypass seeing the doc (which would be a pointless exercise) and another old guard nurse from the wards came and put one precious pill into my hand, 5mg of Valium. But with the added bonus of having a chat with a caring professional who knows me, it was worth the three hour round trip.

I returned home much relieved with my pill – the temporary passport to safety – tucked carefully inside my purse.

Today I will be trying to contact my social worker. I need a stash of these little magic pills. I am very careful to use them only when I really need to. There is no point continuing to take them in an ongoing way in any case. They lose their effectiveness, and you become addicted.

I woke up with the depression gone, and much calmer. Stress like yesterday’s should be avoided by anyone with a bipolar diagnosis, but sadly, shit happens in life. If you’re not the Dalai Lama or Gandhi you will be affected by it. I can ‘look after myself’ until the cows come home but I am also human and I need other people to show me love and care too.

Lots love folks. Zoe xxx