Shouts From Down Under

Unsociable grumpy writers?

After Elle - on hiatus 's honest blog I decided to confess a deep truth about myself. Something very personal that after 46 odd years I've only just realised and fully resigned myself to it. I'm hoping I might be able to help other people by talking about this taboo subject.

I'm Bipolar.

There. The news is out. Not a big deal you say? I'm not the first one to exibit signs of this state of mind?

No. You are right if you thought or said that. But hellooo. It's mental illness. Or at least a mental condition that requires treatment.
You realise the reality of it when you receive a letter with appointments for a psychiatrist...and a psychologist on letter heads from the Mental Health Department.

I'm included in the group of MENTAL PEOPLE. And I don't mean the authors on writing dot com !

So what's it all mean? Why is this such a big deal then and why am I carrying on like a headless chook?

Like I said, maybe it might help some people who don't know they might have this condition, to realise, to admit to it, to seek treatment and most of all, to realise they are not alone.

I've known basically from birth, that there was something not quite right with me.
I have always had fears. Unreasonable fears and something that people would tease me, or bully me, saying I was "a bit slow". They were right.
The more stressful and vital the time, the more I'd find it difficult to THINK!! If I had time, I'd do fine. In fact, I'd do better than 99.9% of other people. I was very intelligent. I'm not just saying that ok? But you know after 46 years if you are a complete idiot or not. In one thing I have been a complete and utter idiot.

And that, my friends, is by not realising earlier, and seeking treatment! I'm still going through the chaos of finding the right treatment. Different medications take time to work and then might not be suitable.

I have held jobs over the years, but I always knew that the day would come, sooner or later, when I'd be sideshifted, or moved on. Sometimes circumstances, the economy or whatever would do it for me.
But that only covered up the problem. I became an expert at covering up. Covering up the fact that most of the time I was fighting off ridiculous anxiety or terror.

Social fear is the worst. Having to walk into a crib room full of blokes is the hardest thing. They don't realise.
They just think, oh that stupid twat again. Get on with talking and laughing and ignore the idiot.

I'm not having a sobstory here ok? I'm not out to garner sympathy. Not at all.

It's partly my fault for not seeing it sooner.

One day in the library here I came across a book called Managing Bipolar. It changed my life.
After 10 minutes of reading, I clearly saw my brother in those pages. He's an extreme case and still hasn't effectively found the right treatment, or as far as I know, fully admitted to it.
But I saw too, that to a lesser degree, I was in the same boat.

Instead of a burden and a shock, these facts came as a huge relief. I cannot tell you how good it felt to have the burden of my "stupidity", mood swings every week, and all the other stuff that comes with it, family destabilisation etc, to have that lifted off my shoulders!

My wife argued against it, saying there was no such problem, and to harden up. She wasn't being nasty, but more just motivating me out of the doldrums.

But these moods and the condition isn't so easily shrugged off. Believe me, I know first hand. I have known for a few years now that when I feel very down, so down and paranoid that I think the entire world is against me, and that there are spies under the bed, hackers spying on my internet messages, all those ridiculous things, when I felt like this, I knew not to worry about it.
Don't stress, because a few days and I'd feel fantastic. I'd feel like I could conquer the world. I could do anything. And I WOULD do some really good things.

If you have read my item, The Garden of Pripyat, I wrote that in a few minutes. Yes it did need some fiddling, but write a poem like that in a few minutes? Me? An idiot who was "slow?"
I'll write more on this next blog.

Sparky