DISCLAIMER: this blog is a method of release for me and with that release i hope to let go of some of the great shame I have held through the years as I have dealt with my mental illness, bipolar. I hope to also educate whats its like through my journey and to even help others around me learn how to help me when times are tough. Know that I am ok. Sometimes the darkness is rough but I want to share it all knowing that i have the help I need and Im finding my way through to the light again. With Love Liana
How do you know when your mental health is going down the drain? You don’t. That’s the thing. If only we knew. On my last trip home someone who lost her husband to bipolar told me its important to have a support crew who can see the signs. At the time I thought it was a good point. But I also knocked the point back, I didn’t need it. I was fine. There was the problem right there, I had already told myself I had no illness and I certainly didn’t see the signs that were slowly creeping in. I should have saw one that day in fact as I sat there quiet, with my old ugly friend anxiety. I was right in the place of blaming people around me for it. When clearly now I see that again it was me. Fuck now here I am. Ive gone well and truly down the drain. No one really really knows whats happening for me except my psychiatrist and maybe Sparkles. How sad is that. Thats the thing with bipolar although people may know you are unwell they don’t know the extent of it. Unless your the one friend who has seen the depths of despair. Theres only one who has really seen it and I figure she has seen enough for one lifetime already. For now its up to me to find my way home again.
Maybe there was a bigger reason Jenninfer, my beautiful jennifer was here this weekend. Prior to this weekend her flights were always cancelled. Im not kidding. Seriously fucked up, it’s like the world did not want her being here. But maybe it was because the world in fact knew it needed her to be here this weekend. It was saving her up for now. This weekend I was at the end of my tether. And no I could not say that to anyone. Only a doctor can handle that shit. When I say tether, I mean Im so close to knocking myself off I can taste the blood as it drips out of my veins.
When I past Sparkles during the week. One look at me and she knew. She had seen it before. No one else has seen the true darkness that takes over.
For One week I was drowning, the weed inside me growing with nothing pretty but the darkness of bipolar taking over spreading, attacking me from every which direction, sucking the life force and any previous memory of happiness along with it.
For two weeks my death was slow, it came, it teased as it subsided. But only too quickly would it come again and attack me when I wasn’t looking. Never before can I remember a time quite like this one. It became harder and harder to be present with anyone, to be present with my lover. What I needed was for everyone to just leave me be. Make me a cuppa but not expect me to be anything, to give anything or to go anywhere. This expectation is enough to throw me overboard. My own feelings for myself in the beginning ok as i sit and tell myself its ok, that I’m ok. But as the days ran into the next my feelings of shame too powerful, coming through and attacking me. Suddenly my pain becomes more unbearable.
I have ran from place to place. Do I pot? Do I cook? Do I run? Nothing, nothing nothing, I feel nothing. What do I do, the emptiness of feeling nothing for two weeks was unbearable. I look at my boyfriend and feel nothing. I look at my friends and feel nothing. Just humans, I have no attachment, no emotion to share with. No connection on memories of a past once shared. It may have been joyful but I would not know. As I walked I could see the blood of my darkness on all the walls I passed. Dripping along with my once joyful soul down the drain.
How will I survive this this time around? How did I end up back here? and if going off medication was the wrong thing for me how am I to have children? I know life has taken me down a different road than most, yet for me children or the chance to have them. Its a must or the emptiness of not having them will kill me instead.
Wildflower 