We were given a gift by a member, Julie Farmer, on the Facebook page I created, Thrive With Bipolar Disorder, that I have the pleasure, honor and permission to share with you.
Right Before Seeking Help
By Julie Farmer
The following was written while deeply depressed right before seeking help:
The depression that comes and goes is crippling. It affects every fiber of my being. Making decisions or functioning normally is impossible when this happens. A cloud of despair hovers and cloaks me in complete and utter darkness. I feel like I have no one to turn to. Fear sets in as I become keenly aware of my inability to cope effectively with even the smallest of life’s challenges. Unable to sort out what is real and what is the depression and hopelessness sets in. Feelings of being a dysfunctional person and a failure deepen and I begin to feel suicidal. I become concerned that I will not be able to pull through it this time and think that I might actually “end it” this time.
It is like those stories where someone takes the very wrong road during a blizzard and gets stuck with no provisions and no way to get out to safety. I sit in despair not knowing what to do to survive it while the voice screams in my head like the blizzard wind whips around thoughts like beads of ice crystal pelting me and I want to shut myself off to make it stop but the only way to gain silence and reprieve is… to die. It becomes harder and harder to hide it so I sit alone with my thoughts that I cannot share for fear that I will be locked up and lose any freedom I have. I feel that no one will understand or that if I tell them, they will separate themselves from me in the future and I will be left with no one.
The solitude is terrible because I am left with the inability to recognize reality. It has affected every relationship in my life and is devastating. I feel so physically weak. There are so many activities that seem so far out of reach due to the weakness. I want to be strong so that the people I love won’t be hurt. I feel sometimes they would be better off without putting up with my pathetic failures. I know I am not like everybody else. They all live in a different world than I do. Waking up to a home full of people who are willingly together is so foreign to me, so unattainable. I can only vaguely imagine it. Not my lot in life. It distances me from reality and healthy relationships. I ruin would be relationships with my distorted realities. I know I am not lovable. I am the opposite. Very forgettable. I am always the one who loves and does not get loved in return. Never missed and easily forgotten. I just don’t belong here. I burden others with my negativity. I just know it. I feel like an alien in this world. There are glimpses of love from my children and grandchildren and I would be dead right now if not for that. Otherwise, I am junk. I hate it here. I am very sad and I don’t think I have much to look forward to. Too weak and confused and fucking unwilling anymore to reach out because when I do, my hand is slapped or just plain ignored. I wish I could do something to help others or anything productive really, but I am too broken to get up myself. I think if something doesn’t happen to change my…..
It abruptly ends because the phone rang and a friend who also has bipolar recognized right away that I needed help and kept me close to her until I was no longer suicidal and had gotten help. I love her so much.
~ Author Julie Farmer
This is what I wrote regarding mania:
When the highs hit, they are severe. I can go for up to ten days with only 2 or 3 hours of sleep per night. I can lie down with the intention of getting the needed rest, but end up lying awake feeling like I took speed. It feels like an adrenaline rush. The hair on my head might even stand on end. I take something at night to help with maintaining a normal sleep pattern, but this is also unreliable. Sometimes I am up late and also up early despite the use of sleep aids. I start to crave company that I can interact with and share my thoughts especially at night. When I talk to people, they sometimes accept me as being in a “funny mood” and are entertained but my close friends who have known me for most of my life have expressed concern for my lack of good decision making and extreme impulsiveness.
Sometimes I say and do things that, in retrospect, are surprising and even appalling to me after the fact. When I’m feeling this way, I’m very likely to seek a sexual partner if I don’t have one already and in the past has led to promiscuity with many sexual partners, some of them being complete strangers. I have eloped twice when in this state. I am also more likely to be accident prone because after several days without adequate rest, my thought processes do not function properly and I have gotten lost driving around close to home and had a rollover accident with my car. I don’t realize how bad it is until afterwards when I have to deal with things I’ve done when I am not thinking straight.
I fall down stairs, cut myself accidentally while cooking, etc. doing normal everyday activities. I come up with lots of ideas, usually business ventures and things I can make or accomplish when I am like this include opening my own restaurant, personal chef business, construction business, cleaning service, etc. This usually goes extremely well until I hit the wall and depression knocks me down so low I can’t function properly and I lose jobs, relationships. I can’t keep a job for very long.
To add to these difficulties, I have been diagnosed with a chronic illness-Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. This has added to the frustration of trying to live a productive life because I have not been able to stay strong enough to meet the physical demands of a regular job due to periodic illness that causes me to become very ill and taking several weeks to fully recover when it happens. This I am sure is contributing to the worsening of feelings of despair when I am already struggling with depression.
After giving my writings to a therapist and my doctor, I was diagnosed with bp1
~ Author Julie Farmer
If you would like to contribute to the community of “Thrive With Bipolar Disorder”, please contact me, Robin Mohilner.
email: thrivewithbipolardisorder@gmail.com
office: (310) 339-4613
I am honored to share your writing, art, music and any form of creativity that I can upload that would help people thrive with bipolar disorder AND that I will be able to use to help train other mental health professionals.
You can share anonymously or with the pride of your name.
