House of Cards

My eyes are open and the alarm is blaring. I’m staring at the ceiling in the darkness. Breathing. Just breathing. I’m staring. My alarm…snooze. Nine more minutes and I’ll get up, I promise myself this every morning. Nine more minutes. I swear I’ll get up this time.

Everyone hits snooze, right? Generally, they fall back to sleep. Were they awake half the night making lists in their heads? Endless lists of things they worry about… things they need to buy at the store…or things they want to do to their house? I was. I was laying there thinking of everything in the world but sleep because that’s what I do. Sometimes I can read, work on crossword puzzles, or tell myself stories to put myself asleep. So, when I hit snooze, I’m awake, but I just don’t want to get out of bed. It’s not because I’m lazy. I mentally can’t get out of bed. I’m trapped in my head, unable to move. Every morning I have to untrap myself. I have to convince myself that getting out of bed is the right thing to do. It’s a vicious cycle.

I’m ill. I have a mental illness that I try to overcome every day of my life.

That’s not a normal thing to say, is it? What is normal? I can think of various instances from my childhood that point to the fact that I was not normal and that things were not okay. For example, I became so angry over something trivial that I ripped the bedpost off my bed and threw it across the room. Does that seem normal?

My generation grew up with the stigma that everything deemed “different” was bad, especially if you grew up in a small, conservative town in the south. Growing up, I quickly learned that to be a fully functional member of society, I had to hide the parts of myself that were considered “not okay.” In other words, “fake it until you make it.” So, that’s what I did. I became a master of my reality, and my only outlet growing up was through my writing. Throughout my adolescence, I went out of my way to not be noticed and to appear “normal.”

As I grew older, it was harder to fake. In my third year of college, circa 2004, I began to slowly give in to mania and depression. I stayed up all night, I stopped going to class, and I began sleeping all day until I had to get up to go to work. About halfway through my first semester, I was failing most of my classes except my creative writing class. It was the only one I enjoyed attending. The next semester wasn’t any better. I was on academic probation, and I still had a hard time making myself attend most of my classes other than my poetry writing elective. By that time, my mania/depression had turned into self-destructive behaviors. I quit my job to focus on college, but in reality, I was having a hard time making myself go to work and school. I figured that if I eliminated work, I would attend school. I was wrong. That summer, I was told I had to take a semester off from college due to my academic performance. At that point, I gave in and started seeing an on-campus psychiatrist.

After a few sessions, he diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder is “a mental disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks,” according to the National Institute of Mental Health. This diagnosis did not come as a shock to me. In fact, it made sense. I knew there was something wrong. I had always known, that people with mental illnesses were considered “crazy.” Was I crazy?

“You are not crazy,” my mother told me after my diagnosis. “I work with people who have Bipolar Disorder. You can’t possibly have Bipolar Disorder.” My mom was a social worker for the criminally insane at the local state hospital. She, along with a lot of people I knew, equated mental illness with crime because the only confessed people with bipolar disorder she knew were her clients at the hospital, and most of them had committed violent crimes. I was not violent. I was not a criminal. How could I be mentally ill? This is one of the stigmas that followed people with mental illness seventeen years ago. After my mother’s reaction and subsequent denial, why would I want to confess to having such a monstrous disorder? 

So, I suffered in silence like so many others. I overcame my baser instincts. Medication helped, but it only takes a person so far when it comes to Bipolar Disorder. Living life is a constant struggle. Sudden changes can often break my day. My first reaction to something negative is always to throw something, break something, or scream, but I stop myself and channel that energy in a more positive way. Over the years, my disorder became easier to control with practice and patience. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have bad days or that a single push will not tumble my carefully constructed house of cards. If that happens, I rebuild. It may be hard, but I do it.

On our podcast this week, we talk about living with mental illness. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five Americans live with mental illness. If more people talked about their condition, they would not have to suffer in silence like I did most of my life. Carrie Fisher once said, “Bipolar Disorder can be a great teacher. It’s a challenge, but it can set you up to be able to do almost anything else in your life.” I accept the challenge. My condition is not a disability. I live with it and overcome it every day of my life, just like so many others.

I want to hear from our readers. Do you or a loved one suffer from mental illness? Let’s continue the conversation in our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.