An All Expense Paid Stay II

After twenty years of suffering with "something" - I didn't know what - I was finally on my way to getting help having gotten admitted to a psychiatric facility. Unlike some people who find themselves in such a facility, I was not frightened or upset to be there. Quite the opposite, I was enormously relieved and not a little excited.

Enormous relief because it was becoming clear to the 'healthy' side of my mind that I was becoming a danger to myself and perhaps others. The combination of suicidal thoughts and high levels of stress that I could not manage was putting me very dangerously close to the edge. The thoughts and urges were with me almost constantly instead of occasionally. As well, I was getting advice and pressure from all sides about events in my life, from work, from almost everyone in my life at that point. I felt quite literally like I was going mad and was at the point of doing something drastic. When I went through and finished the procedures at the psyche ward - checking in, giving up 'dangerous' items, getting a room, putting on the hospital garb, getting introduced to my 'team', and so on - I felt safely away from everyone and everything. I felt safe - safe from myself as well. I could literally feel the weight ease off my shoulders. So much pressure and stress was gone.

I felt a little excited because finally I was going to find out more about what I'd been suffering from, finally I was going to talk to someone, finally I was going to get help, finally I was going to put my life on a better path. I'd lived with the signs and symptoms of Bipolar Disorder for so long it'd become almost second nature. Hell, it had, really. I'd handled it somehow for the most part but the previous three and a half years had taken a large toll. I'd lost so much and damaged so much and it was all weighing on me like never before. I felt like I could not handle another loss, another set back, another failure. The mania had become not a "friend" - a provider of energy and creative thoughts - it had turned on me with paranoid thoughts, extreme irritability, anger and rage. The least thing would set me off like a roman candle. I was becoming scary and miserable to be around. I couldn't, in all truth, even be around myself. I couldn't live with myself. I was hating myself. After a twenty year journey to reach that point, I was excited therefore about finally learning why my mind was breaking down.

The time drew near that I'd meet my psychiatrist. I couldn't stop pacing. I was becoming extremely nervous. How does one sum up twenty some years? Where do I start? What do I say? And - worst of all - what happens if he says it's 'nothing', it's 'normal', it's just something I have to learn to deal with? This was my biggest fear. I felt so strongly that I couldn't handle who I'd become. That feeling was a major driver of my suicidal plans after all. It would have been a huge let down to be told that my condition was 'normal'.

I went to my room  to try to prepare what to say, what to tell him or her but my mind was buzzing around and I could hold little in my mind at one time. Finally, a young-ish man with boyish good looks knocked on my door and introduced himself. I followed him down to a private room and sat down. His demeanor put me at ease and I felt relaxed. He asked me some questions and I began to talk ... and talk ... and talk. It all rushed out in a torrent - scraps of memories, questions, impressions, more memories, relating the recent and the more distant pass. He was trying to keep up, to direct me but I couldn't be stopped. A twenty year damn had burst.

Cooking the Raw

Thoughts in the Raw are writings that will pop up here randomly and just be an attempt to give some insight into certain states as purely, or as "raw", as possible. The states are what I personally experience though I think anyone suffering from similar disorders will find them not unfamiliar. Thoughts in the Raw though can leave people - those reading - with perhaps an incomplete understanding of what the thoughts mean or what the outcome was. So following a Thoughts in the Raw entry will come a Cooking the Raw entry to add some perspective.

For whatever reasons, be it Bipolar Disorder or something else, I am plagued by either suicidal ideation (fantasy like thoughts), urges, or the need to make suicidal plans. These had become quite severe prior to finally seeking hospitalization and professional help a little more than two months ago (early July). Medications are supposed to help but I've found that the thoughts or ideation can continue to barge into my mind unannounced. The first time startled me some because I thought the medications would have stopped them and that 'everything would be better' (you know, like when your mom would put a band-aid on a childhood owie). This happened once, twice, then three times, catching me off guard each time. So finally I decided to take a different tack and allow the thoughts to fully enter my consciousness and grow. I felt that by doing this I'd gain deeper understanding and grow stronger against them. "Know thy enemy" and all that. Doing this - recognizing the thoughts and allowing them to fully form and hear their call - is what lead to the post Thoughts in the Raw.

So if it gave one concern, I apologize. Though I still fear the thoughts, fear that Polar Bear, I feel I understand it better and am perhaps stronger against it. Writing "in the raw" I believe gives people greater insight into the mind of someone suffering such thoughts and perhaps can help build awareness. Hiding or chasing things away, I believe, is not always useful. Let it in, understand, dance with it and grow stronger. The spread that understanding and strength.

Thanks again to any and all who are following.

BGE

Thoughts in the Raw

Feeling restless. Feeling bored. Can't sleep. Feeling alone. Too alone with my own thoughts.  

My thoughts.  

Inevitable. It feels inevitable. It's a force, a force that's pushing against me, something I can't hold back forever. How long can I push back? How long can I build the wall that holds it back? I feel it wearing me down. The overwhelming feeling of inevitability of it. I feel like the little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dike except I sometimes feel there are too many holes. I can't plug them all. I can't hold it all back.

  

Every night I ingest pills to help hold it back. Is it enough? I get tired of the routine, resent the routine, I resent the necessity.  Why is it necessary? It often feels like they change me but not the power, change me for the worse.

My thoughts.  

Alone, quiet, with nothing else, they are there. Sometimes I don't have the energy to push them away, can't do the exercises to move them aside. So I let them in, let them in to keep me company. They feel so normal now, not at all like before. There are no racing thoughts, no driven fear, no crazy energy whipping them through my mind like a tornado. They just come in. They come like the tide, like gentle waves lapping at the beach, each one imperceptibly higher than the last, coming little by little until at last you are covered in the rising tide and it's just there and you're floating and it's fine.  It's like the rising tide, the thoughts, are my friends now, enticing me. "Why bother?", they say, "it's inevitable at some point. You know you have to come over", all like a voice calling from the other side. So enticing.

And why should I make them go away, isn't it inevitable? And tonight they keep me company and help me pass the time.  Ideas pass through my mind, soothing, wonderful ideas. A far away valley, moon lit mountains, stars above, watch the beauty, go to sleep, return to nature. When can I put the ideas to work, I wonder.

So many souls, so many souls, too many souls, too many for this only vessel that gives us life. Would one soul, like a grain of sand from an hourglass, be missed? I can't imagine. One or two or three then life moves on for all the souls.  

Earlier a pleasant evening on a wharf. Beautiful dark clouds build in the east while in the west the setting sun finds space through still opens skies dabbling black and grey with brush strokes of salmon pink hues. Watch the free show with sun on back, relaxed, at peace. What's this? Why does the water look so inviting? It calls, it calls. The tide is high, you could ride out on the falling tide. It is like it's calling, enticing. The feeling is strong, so strong the enticement. What is it about the call of the water? The water, the calming, soothing water. Must leave, walk away. Start the car, drive away from the water, the inviting, calming, soothing water.  Leave for now.

Restless, restless, alone with my thoughts.

An All Expense Paid Stay

"Guess what, Honey, Daddy's just won an all expense paid trip to the Loony Bin!"

And so I announced to my then fifteen year old daughter that I was going to be admitted to the psyche ward at a local hospital. I merely wanted to use humour to break the news but I'm sure my face looked maniacal. I know my voice sounded so. She didn't, however, look at all surprised. Later she'd say she knew it was coming. Maniacal faces and voices were nothing new to her and she'd known I needed help.

She would walk with me down the bus stop where I'd take the bus to the hospital. She wouldn't join me on the ride, she had other plans. As we parted, she gave me a stoic look and subdued wave. Both hid inner sadness. I tried to smile back to let her know it would be alright. Her expression didn't change.


I'd been through the admission phase at a special emergency ward for psychiatric patients. Two young doctors interviewed me, one a very sympathetic woman of - I'd guess by her accent and blond hair - Scandinavian background and later a young Chinese-Canadian. Neither seemed to know much but they had to 'screen' me. They left me alone for a long period (to consult with themselves? with someone else?). Bored while waiting, I spied a large book on a table in the room. I picked it up and glanced at the cover. It was the "bible" for psychiatric diagnosis. I quickly scanned inside for the relative chapter and sub-chapters before coming to the condition I suspected - bipolar - and read as much as I could. I had to chuckle to myself how "by the book" their questioning had been. But what else could they do but go 'by the book'?  Anyone's mind is an amazingly complex and often chaotic place. Add any psychiatric disorder and you get a brew that is difficult for the most expert psychiatrists to sort out in a short interview.

They came back and I'd "passed the test". I was enormously relieved. In the previous days and weeks it'd become clear even to myself that I was in urgent need of help. If I'd been turned away, I don't know what I would have done.

People with bipolar disorder are, according the book Taming Bipolar by Psychology Today, ten to twenty times more likely to commit suicide than those that don't have the disorder. It was two episodes of intensely wanting to commit suicide that prompted me to finally admit what I previously couldn't - there was something seriously wrong and I needed immediate help. And that took me to an emergency room to seek it and from there to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.

For twenty years I'd known 'something' was wrong. Why hadn't I acted earlier? What took so long?

I am from a family that 'suffers in silence', be it physical ailments, unhappiness or what have you, we swallow it and carry on. I suspect that is not too uncommon from anyone with strong working class backgrounds; it's a tool of survival. And too, it's not a lot different than how some people 'maintain' their car; as long as it's chugging along somehow, it's all right. In other words, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

For me it took twenty years of breaking down, and four years of 'running' really rough and then intense desires and plans of suicide to finally realize that just because the 'motor was still running', something was badly wrong.

The question was then, what was wrong and how to fix it.

Meet the Polar Bears

Taming the Polar Bears is an account of my struggles with Bipolar Disorder. The title comes from the name of a book, Taming Bipolar, which when typing into another online forum I'd misread and mis-typed - in a very foggy state of mind common in some mood episodes - as "taming the polar bear". Readers picked up on that and so it became the catch phrase for my journey of understanding this disorder and the ongoing struggles of treatment and recovery.

"Polar Bears" then represent manic and depressive states along with mixed states - Depressive Bear for depressive states, Manic Bear for mania and Mixed Bear for mixed states.  To tame the Polar Bears is to tame the states and thus tame the illness.

This blog will serve primarily as a space for me to write, as it seems through writing I am best able to examine my past and present while trying to build hope for a future. It serves as well as a valuable log of my moods and where I'm at mentally, something that's very valuable in the fight against this illness. I hope as well that any readers that follow along can gain insight or perhaps, if they comment, give me insight and feedback.

If you are reading this, I thank you and welcome you to my journey.

BGE