The pieces come back together...

This morning I returned from a weekend where eighteen family members (three adopted family members) came to one house to celebrate being together. We ate and ate, practiced some old family traditions (Scol!) and slept anywhere we could that wasn't too damp or lumpy (though this usually changes by morning). It was a beautifully sunny weekend and I felt so much love between all of us as we sat around the fire, enjoyed homemade pies or feasted on paella.

When I got home this afternoon I realized it was once again time to work on the book (which now has a publisher!!) so I left my bag by the door and got to work. I find it important to note that I travel around the country speaking publicly about my story. I share it all the time to audiences of 700+, but I haven't read it in a while. In a little over a year and a half in fact. And I will tell you what, it is hard.  Really really hard. And painful.

It is hard to remember, no, let me rephrase, it is hard to read your exact thoughts when you are dealing with the pain of suicidal ideation or the pain of losing friends because of your depression. It is one thing to work through it everyday, which I have gotten much better at doing, but another thing to return to your exact transcripts from the moment of pain.

I remember when we first started playing with thoughts about the book,  people would ask us why we would want to revisit so much pain. And I always knew why, I want to teach the people who don't understand and let the ones who do understand know that they are not alone. I knew it would be hard. But I suppose, after a year and a half of not reading it I forgot.

I suppose the thing I am here to say is, I am glad that I spent the weekend with my family. I'm glad that they could remind me of the happiness and joy in my life even when I'm forced to remember the pain. I'm glad to know that when I was in the most painful spots, those points in the book that made me start crying even  reading them today,  those moments when I never thought anything would ever get better, when I never thought I could enjoy another family event, I'm glad to remember and know that I can be happy. It is possible.

In years past I never thought I would be able to be happy again (happy happy, not manic). And I guess having been relatively stable for so long I must have eased into happiness, because today, having juxtaposed Kirkwood-stravaganza with the really difficult passages from the book I realize that I have the ability to be happy. It's not broken. And I think maybe that is what I'm here to tell you all. Eventually happiness comes back. When you get to the deepest most painful place, the place where people are telling you things will get better and you just want to spit in their face because you know it's a lie, listen.

It takes a long time for all the pieces to settle when your life has been a tornado, but eventually, just as everyone told me it would, it did all come back together. I am happy. I am whole.

Staying Steady (again)

If you have been flowing my blog throughout the last year please forgive me for recycling this post, but I thought it was perfect for my "Treatment Month" posts. Here is my treatment plan, and my ways of staying stable:

Whenever I speak to a large group of people about being bipolar, they always want to know about my coping strategies. They want to know what I do when my life is going a little too fast, or when I am moving too slow to get help. They want to know, how I get through each day, month, year and remain safe, stable, and happy. I feel that though my strategies are based on my individual personality, most of them are rather universal. So, here is a list of the things that help me get through life relatively smoothly, for now anyways...

A Support Network

I can't move forward without some form of support network. (Actually, I could if I had to, but they sure make life a hell of a lot easier.) My family has fought long and hard to help me get the treatment, doctors, medication, and education I need both to help me cope with my first onset of bipolar, and my life today. They were always there to stand with me, even when I may not have wanted them there. On that note, my doctors, counselors, and psychiatrists have also all been amazing sources of stability. They are my solid ground when my life begins to sway, shake, or completely break to pieces. My boyfriend has also been an amazingly huge influence on my life. He has been through my rougher times and was the one to help me move from an extremely harmful lifestyle to one where I feel comfortable not drinking, doing drugs, or constantly partying. I also have amazing friends that sat with me in the worst of days. Wonderful ex-boyfriends, old roommates/best-friends and adopted sisters always make life much easier to swallow.

Lifestyle

For me this was one of the hardest choices. If you ask most 18-21 year olds what they do on the weekends, especially those in a college or dorm setting, they will tell you that they drink. They go to parties. They go to bars. And I was just your average 18-21 year old, minus the fact that I was bipolar. I was a little more than affected by the late nights, the excessive drinking, and the drugs. I was stuck in a cycle where all of my friends drank, and all of my coping mechanisms involved putting my mind in an altered state. In the first years of my diagnosis I didn't want to think about how awful I felt. I wanted to be "normal." I wanted a quick distraction. I wanted to be everything I envisioned a "bipolar" person being: a mess. It took a lot of work, a lot of self talks, good friends, and eventually some pretty scary moods swings to get me to move into the healthy lifestyle I live now. It would also have never happened without fate leading me to good friends who lived healthy lifestyles. Good friends who had been through pain, substance abuse, and eventually the decision to get straight. Good friends who inspired me to change my ways. It is also amazing that one of these good friends has become an amazing boyfriend and best friend.

Today my lifestyle has included sleeping well, eating well, meditating, flossing, running, yoga, reading, music, volunteering, and lots and lots of writing. I try to allow myself time to do the things that I know make me happy. These also happen to be the things that make my previous life of parties and anger seem like such a waste of time and energy.

Skills Training

Now, this is something I think about a lot,  but it has also been a big conflict within me. When I began skills training with a counselor  in high school she used to tell me things like, "look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am beautiful..." and I used to leave and swear that I would never go back to an appointment with her again. But I did, and every time she used to say some other cheesy skill I should use to make myself feel better. The next counselor I went to used to tell me to look in "my boxes." And I would again leave feeling angry and skeptical and decide I never wanted to see her again. It took me years to get to the point where I found a counselor I trusted enough to tell them that I hated those homework assignment kinds of exercises. I told her that I didn't want to be counseled by Oprah. I didn't want to be told to be kind to myself, unless it was hidden in something else she was saying. It was through my true honesty about my treatment that I began to actually use some of the advice I received from my counselors. Today I have developed a group of core skills that help me get through the rough patches in life. It was only through the skill of my counselors and the trust I eventually developed that I began to find life skills that worked for me, (that weren't cheesy or what I thought of as stupid.)

Counseling

This has been a huge art of my treatment, and now that I am stable, one of the most important. Because I talked about it in the previous section I simply want to say that I think everyone should see a counselor. It is so important to have someone who is not only trained to listen and respond appropriately, but who is not emotionally involved in your thoughts, feelings, or problems. I love my counselor very much because she has taught me how to begin to help myself, be nice to myself, and how to move forward after experiencing so much pain.

Medication

This was a hard one for me. I am not always a fan of medication. It has not always had the best effect on me and at two different moments it literally almost killed me. Now, I am a girl that likes my body to be healthy and natural, I don't want a bunch of chemicals deciding what mood I am in, but after two hospitalizations I have come to terms with the fact that medication isn't always bad. Today I am on Lamictal, Trileptal, and Lithium. It has taken me about 13 medications to get to three that work for me, and I have now been on these for about three years. I am on medication now because I know that I am not ready to be off of it. Even though I have changed my lifestyle and have become much healthier I am still not an expert on my body or my illness. I am still not aware of the natural ways to get out of a paralyzing depression or an extreme case of mania. And until I know that I am ready and able to use my new skills to get me to a safe place I will stay on medication. It is a slow process and I have only been diagnosed for five years. One thing I do know however, is that I will not be on medication forever. I will get to the point where I am aware and educated enough in my body and mind that I will feel comfortable being off medication. Someday I may want to travel to a third world country to save children, or someday I may want to have children of my own. If these things happen, I want to be free of medication. I do want to find a natural way to deal with my minds many states, but for now, I will continue my self-education from the safe place of medication.

These are just a few of the things I think about everyday when it comes to my health in my body and mind. I hope this is insightful, if not helpful, and please realize that each person's treatment plan and coping skills are different based on their own needs and understandings of the world.

(The picture in blue was taken by Ms. Morgan Minear at the MOMA while we were watching a video installation)

Linea's Treatment Story

The first thing I like to say when I hear people struggling with a new diagnosis of anything is: "thank god you can now start figuring out a treatment to help you feel better/to help your life get put back together/to help you stop hurting so much". In my previous post I ended saying, "why do we love the diagnosis..." because we can finally start getting treatment. I have been reading a lot of bipolar memoirs lately (Kay Redfield Jamison' An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Lizzie Simon's Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D, and Marya Hornbacher's Madness: A Bipolar Life.) In each of these, and from many individuals I have spoken to personally, I hear the pain that accompanies the diagnosis. The questions of "Does this define me?" "Will this be forever?" "Where is the separation between my personality and the illness?" "Am I going to have to be on meds for the rest of my life?" These were the questions I had. These were the worries I had, but at the same time I felt the relief of "at least now we know what we're working with..."

So, let's now imagine the you have a diagnosis. You know that you are bipolar (or fill in the blank). You know that prozac/other medications do not work for you because they make you manic/etc. And now its time to figure out what does work. In order to give you an idea of the process from diagnosis to treatment I thought I would give you a little glimpse at my slow path towards treatment:

When I was first diagnosed I was in a hospital having willfully checked myself in after a near suicide attempt. I was at the point where I was having psychotic suicidal ruminations that lead me to have a one on one aid that watched my every move. In the hospital I was told that I was bipolar II. This seemed very strange to me having only repeatedly experienced extreme depths of depression. I thought, where are the manias, or hyper-manias? I knew however that there was something more, something deeper than just being sad. It was a constant sadness to my core, and I knew it was something that needed fixing, that needed soothing, before I did something drastic. So I drank, a lot, and I started cutting, and I smoked pot, and tried drugs I wouldn't have done had I not been trying my hardest to fight off the seductions of suicide. At the time, I assumed these were my treatments prior to the hospital. These proved inefficient when I found myself blindly checking myself in with those magic words, "I don't feel safe".

In the hospital I was very unresponsive to all types of treatment. I fell into such a dangerous place that extreme measures had to be taken. I could not be left alone for one second because they knew I was watching, searching, for anything I could get my hands on to end the pain. This is when they offered me two options. They said, "we can send you to the state institution where you can wait until you find the right drug, which may take several months, or you can try electro-convulsive therapy". Now at this point I was beyond any other options, and taking the extreme route seemed like the best idea. I told myself "well, ECT will either kill me or fix me" so I begged my parents for the treatment (they of course did not know this thought process at the time) but eventually, full of uncertainty and fear, agreed. I am not going to go into details at the moment about all my experiences with ECT right now. It is a very controversial thing and I want to make sure that I do it justice and help people truly understand more about it, so I am just going to tell you two things: it is much more humane now, (no more One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and, it saved my life. After the first treatment the "thoughts", that urge to hunt down anything I could to kill myself with, were gone. Gone. I was still very veryvery depressed, but I eventually got to the point where I lost the constant eyes watching me and even got to shave my legs (a very big deal at the time).

After the hospital I went back to my normal college kid life, still feeling slightly blue, but on the whole much better. It was at this point that I was prescribed my 5th or 6th pill, that miracle drug, Prozac. My first day with Prozac was amazing. Suddenly everything was so much better. I did a much better job at work, I got all my house work done, I went for a run...and then everything sped up. Suddenly I was spinning beyond control. No amount of running could help me. No amount of anything could help me. At first the high was addicting, I started drinking more, partying more, spending more, doing drugs I wouldn't do. I started cutting again. I was starting to have very strange, un-Linea, thoughts ("maybe I should jump off the roof" "I wonder if it would hurt if I chopped off one of my fingers...") I was not suicidal, just very very manic. The addictive beautiful high that I experienced in the beginning was gone. I was no longer super-woman, but a paranoid, anxious, agitated child. I was breaking things. I couldn't have a conversation because my thoughts were going to fast to spit out.

Knowing something was very wrong I finally called my doctor. He told me to stop taking the Prozac immediately and prescribed me some anti-anxiety pills. Still being very impulsive, and having increasingly scary thoughts I took one. Just to calm down. Just to make things stop. To keep myself from doing something stupid. Just to keep my mind from accidentally killing itself. And then I kept taking them. I think there was a point where I told myself "I need help. It's time to go to the hospital." And then I took them all. Thirty something pills. And then I walked over to school, turned in my homework, told my teachers I wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be at their classes, and nearly passed out waiting for an ex-boyfriend/best friend to get out of class and take me to the hospital. I knew who to go to. I knew who would take the best care of me. This was not a suicide attempt. I did not want to die. I just wanted the thoughts to stop. I wanted to keep myself from jumping off the roof or in front of a subway train.

After this incident my diagnosis changed. I was not bipolar II. I could not take certain pills. Out of the hospital I made a decision to take care of myself. I decided to get the treatment I needed and though I had a few bumps along the way, (trying to cope through bulimia), I eventually committed myself to finding, and following, a healthy treatment plan. This plan incorporated close work with doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. It involved trust in my doctors to find a medication that made me well enough to try other treatment options. It involved asking for help when I needed it, telling the truth about my feelings, and knowing that hospitals are not shameful, but needed at times. It eventually involved a healthy change in lifestyle--no more drugs, alcohol, no more staying up all night, exercising, eating healthy, meditating, and a regular sleep cycle. I will go into my current treatments in a future post, but I felt it necessary to discuss the difficulty finding, getting, and sticking with healthy treatment. Had I not found the treatment I  have now I would be nowhere close to where I am today. I may not even be here at all. In conclusion, the diagnosis is indescribably painful, finding treatment seems impossibly hard, but with perseverance, a little bit of luck, good resources, self advocacy, and at times, pure trust that things will work out, people can find a better life and get the help they need and hopefully end those terrible statistics involving extremely high rates of homelessness, incarceration, and suicide for those struggling with a mental health conditions. Treatment works, and I will also give you some resources to find good treatment in my next post.

Treatment

Just in case you missed it the first time...

What is going on here?!?

I think this is a question that many people with a mental illness ask themselves. Why am I feeling like this? Why am I acting like this? Why can't I make it stop?!

These were the thoughts that were rapidly firing in my head as I tried to figure out why I just couldn't be happy and go out with my friends, or why I just couldn't slow down and relax. For the longest time I hated myself for not being able to fix "it". In this society where we are told we should "just smile" or "walk in the sunshine" we assume it is our fault for not trying harder. We assume we are weak or bad for not perfectly controlling our mind and our body. We assume that there is something wrong with our personality as opposed to our chemistry. When I was first depressed to the point of suicide I got into a cycle of feeling agonizing pain of depression, exhaustion and defeat from not being able to fix it, and an extreme hatred for my lack of strength and drive to pick myself up. It wasn't until I was in the hospital on a suicide watch that I was given my first tentative diagnosis, Bipolar II.

Now, I grew up with a special ed teacher mom and a vocational rehabilitation counselor dad. I grew up being taught the importance of being sensitive to disabilities, the equality between every person no matter their difference, and the importance of providing access and help to those with specific needs that may be different from my own. I grew up obsessively reading the DSM and diagnosing my guinea pig, Herman, with Tourettes Syndrome because he had certain ticks and would squeak uncontrollably at times. (And although I knew all about Tourettes by the age of seven I knew very little about guinea pig ear mites). Anyway, when it came down to it,  I knew about disabilities. I knew all about "differences" and the normalcy of said differences. I knew all about what the word "label" meant in that community and knew that one should not use a condition to classify the whole of a person. 

Maybe this is why it hurt so much when I was diagnosed. Maybe deep down in my heart I knew just how little the rest of the world knew about disabilities. Maybe I knew the discrimination and misunderstanding that came with a mental illness label, because I found my mind screaming "No. Not me! I am not BIPOLAR. I am not like that. I'm not CRAZY". To me, someone who found every disability as simply another thing that makes us unique and special, this diagnosis made me into something I didn't want to be. It grouped me into a category that was bad. And whether or not the people in this category were "bad" or not, societies view and opinion of them was. I was not going to be one of them. I had spent my entire life trying to be perfect, flawless, and this was the biggest flaw I could ever imagine.

 However, on the other hand,there was the small, scared, childlike voice inside of me saying, "its not my fault". Even writing this today makes me tear up when I remember just how hard I tried to make myself feel normal, be normal. I tried so hard to control my emotions, but the more I tried, and the more I failed, the more I punished myself. I had two competing voices in my head, the blamer, "it's all your fault! If you tried harder we wouldn't be where we are today!" and the blamed, "I try so hard. I'm not good enough. I deserve this pain." It was a dangerous downward spiral that became even worse when it moved from mental to physical hatred. Having a diagnosis validated those "it's not my fault" cries of the blamed. It allowed me to start being a little bit nicer to myself.

It took me a long time to be nicer to myself, and in many ways it is still a very difficult struggle. The diagnosis, for me,  was one of the most life changing parts of my illness. Though it may not have been more life changing than almost losing my life, it changed my view of myself. It forced me to come to terms with the blamer and the blamed. It helped me realize who I really am and whether or not a label (BIPOLAR) defined me. At first I felt that the words were etched into my forehead. I felt that with one word I was someone completely different. Years have taught me that my diagnosis can never define me. It may define some of the traits of my illness, but it will never define my exact reaction to those traits, or even my reaction to my reactions. Through my diagnosis I have been able to take the blame away and realize that this is simply something  unique about me. A blessing and a curse that makes my life slightly different from other peoples' lives. In finding my diagnosis I have found the most important thing of all, the map towards treatment.

Next time...why do we love the diagnosis? We love treatment. Why do we love treatment? Because it allows us to function again!

Diagnosis Video

The Diagnosis (Helpful Resources)

The momma and I have decided to make March the month where we talk about the diagnosis. So in the next month I am hoping to share my thoughts on the diagnosis (and more specifically that of bipolar disorder, since that is the one I know most intimately), my thoughts on the pain of having a new label ("bipolar"), and my thoughts on the importance of finding an eventual diagnosis so that you can get the treatment you need.

So, the first thing that I would like to do is to provide resources for information about the main diagnosable mental health conditions. I want to provide this first, rather then share my personal story, because to some, good resources may be more urgent. As I discuss my diagnosis throughout the month you can always go back to this post for further information. Because so many of these sites do such a great job at explaining and addressing these illnesses (though I hate to call them illnesses) I will simply provide links to their explanations and definitions rather than attempting to create my own. I want to provide resources so that you can learn more about these illnesses and their signs and symptoms. All of these resources should be hyperlinked, so just click on the pinky/purply text.

The best place to start when learning about mental illnesses is to check out NAMI’s (National Alliance on Mental Illness) “mental illnesses” links page. Through this page you can access information on illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and many others. Each page talks about what the illness is, how common it is, what the symptoms are, what medications and treatments are used, and more. You can also visit BringChange2Mind.org and under “Learn the Facts” view a quick list of common signs and symptoms for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Bipolar, and Schizophrenia. For more detailed information you can visit the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) Health and Outreach page .

If you are worried that you are suffering from an undiagnosed mental health condition there are several online mental health screenings. You can find some of these at the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) website. At this link you can find confidential online depression, mania, and anxiety screenings, as well as a downloadable child mania rating scale. Of course, if you are not only worried that you are suffering from a mental health condition, but are also having thoughts of suicide please visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/) or call 1-800-273-TALK.

The important next step if you think you have a mental health condition is to talk to a professional. It is extremely important to talk to a doctor before you diagnose yourself, but it is also important to go into the appointment with as much information as you can so that they can look at all the facts and get you the help you need. If you do not have your own doctor, and cannot find one in your area resources like BringChange2Mind's contact us page and the Knowledge Exchange Network (KEN)
(1-800-789-2647, 1-800-789-2647 or  1-877-495-0009, 1-877-495-0009
Live operators available 8:30 AM — 5 PM EST to refer you to public mental health clinics near you) may be able to help you.

Once you have an appointment, Healthy Minds has a page devoted to “Choosing a Psychiatrist”, answering questions like “where do I start?” and “what treatments do psychiatrists use?”.

I hope that some of these resources help make it easier to learn about a possible mental health condition and how to move closer to a diagnosis. In my next couple posts I will be discussing my personal diagnosis, and the importance of reaching a diagnosis.

My story continued...

To follow up from the last post I want to once again say that we are making February our "share your story month". Because of this it is probably appropriate that I continue to share my story in February not late January. After sharing my story last week I know many people are wondering where I am now, maybe not necessarily occupationally because you can follow that on our website, but emotionally.

So out of my commitment to be completely honest to my readers here is my story now, today, in all its emotionally exposed glory:


Yesterday I went to see my psychiatrist. I told him that I am feeling slightly moody and find myself creeping into these unintended, uncontrollable moments of frustration, hyperactivity, or utter exhaustion. We talked about the need to "tweak" my meds, and we talked about the likelihood of changing one out completely sometime in the near future.

Now, I have been stable for a long time, aside from a small yearly depression that comes around the anniversary of an overdose, a depression that lasted slightly longer this year, but was still completely manageable. I still consider myself stable. But I continue to have these little hiccups of symptoms. Moments where I would feel much better jumping on the bed for hours than I would trying to attempt even a partial night's sleep. Moments where I feel so exhausted after having lunch with someone that I come home and pass out in seconds. And worst of all, moments where I find myself furious over the thought of doing dishes (and I am not an angry person by any means).

I tend to freak out about such hiccups. I think, is it coming back?! Oh my god, what if I have mixed episodes again! I'll have to be locked up! All the work I'm doing will be ruined! And then I spin off into these worry tangents until I either hit a wall, cry hysterically, or slap some sense into myself and tell myself to knock it off! These are hiccups, nothing terrible is going to happen. I am not going to suddenly loose it with all the safety nets in place, and all the lessons I have learned.

And so I go through this, I have this constant conversation with myself every time a little bump comes about. But then my common sense kicks in and reminds me that:
1) every time I felt an episode coming in the past I told my doctors immediately
2) I have learned healthy, safe coping techniques if things do go wrong
3) I am aware of the most minute movements towards any episode
4) I have an amazing support network

When I go through these hiccups, these "tweaks" in my meds I am always scared to tell people. I travel the country telling people my story, telling them horrifying things but making them feel better by saying "but I'm stable now" at the end. And I am. Just maybe not perfect. And I fear telling people, "I'm great but I have been having issues with my meds", or "I'm wonderful, but have been having small worrisome mood swings lately", because I'm afraid they won't get it. I'm afraid they will still be afraid for me. So I often tell them I'm fine no matter what.

But that's not truly telling my story. That's not being authentically honest. So I have made a promise to myself, I will always tell people exactly how I really feel. And if they worry I will remind them of all the things I remind myself. I will tell them how I feel in order to show them that when you are bipolar you have small bumps sometimes, but they don't paralyze you. You have to keep going on with your life. And you can with all the safety nets in place.

So, here it is, here is me right now, at this moment:
I am Linea. I am bipolar and have been having small mood swings lately that are causing me to have to make small adjustments to my medications and it makes me anxious. However, I am completely fine. I am capable and happy doing all the work that I do because I know how to take care of myself. Things will not happen as they did in the past because I know how to handle my stress levels, how to keep myself from coping in unhealthy ways, and how to ask for help when I need it. I am stable. I have bumps. And it's okay.

My story

We (the momma and I) have decided to make February a month of sharing stories to fight stigma. So, along with our newly posted video on YouTube we are going to start sharing our stories and learnings on our blogs, starting conversations about it on our Facebook and Myspace sites, and commenting on it on our Twitter page. So, visit us, chat with us, and learn with us. And without further adieu, here is my story...

There was a moment in my life when I almost drowned.

Living in the largest dorm in the country with three best friends, experiencing my first serious college boyfriend, living the perfect life of a well-off artsy college kid, I couldn’t have dreamt of anything better. That is, until I turned my back to the ocean and was swiftly and dramatically pulled in by the undertow.

One moment I was there and one moment I wasn’t. It was as if I had suddenly had my brain replaced by someone weaker, angrier, sadder. I didn’t know where I was or what I had set out to do anymore. I couldn’t understand what went wrong. I couldn’t understand why I was suddenly seeing pools of blood every time I closed my eyes.

It was a dramatic and intense case of depression. I stopped eating. I broke up with the man who was, at that time, the love of my life. I stopped leaving my room. I stopped all contact with the world, and whether I pretended I was there or not, my eyes were empty.

This went on for several weeks. Floating around Chicago, the city that I had worked so hard to get to. To me this went on for a lifetime. I floated out to sea.

Then my boyfriend, who was now just a friend-friend, called my parents. He called, and just as swiftly as I was pulled under, I was pulled out.

Completely.

My dad arrived from Seattle no less then ten hours after he was called. My life, my room, and my thoughts were packed up and shipped out. Flown back to Seattle and, in my mind, never to return.

Nothing could have been more painful. Nothing could have been more dramatic to me at that point and place in my life. Nineteen years old and suddenly I was forced to leave my friends, my life, my freedom and everything that I had built within the last two years of hard-earned independence.

I arrived home tired, cold, and wet, water still in my lungs.

The next couple of years moved from an undertow to a tsunami. My mind moved quickly from a simple depression to a devastating suicidal obsession. Looking back I am amazed I am even here to tell my story.

In the next year and a half I spent time in hospitals for suicide prevention and for overdose recovery. I spent time in apartments, manic and drugged and depressed and dangerous. I spent so many hours feeling completely out of control of my mind and so many hours trying to fight against it with every form of self-medication and self-harm I could find that I am amazed I have the ability to form thoughts or press my fingers to these keys.

It took me a long time to come to terms with what was happening. After having a “wait and see” diagnosis of bipolar disorder II at nineteen I spent many, many months fighting the label and implications before I finally received my final, “for sure” diagnosis of plain old bipolar I. My months and years of fighting only made things worse and it took me a long time before I realized that if I was good to myself and my body, my bipolar would be good to me. Who knew stimulants could make you manic or alcohol could make you devastatingly depressed!

Once I finally gave in and decided to change my life things began to turn around again. Though it took lots of self-care and finding the right doctors, counselors, and meds, my stability allowed me to live the life I had always dreamed of living. My stability was more then just taking care of myself and finding the right help however, it was also my amazing luck to have the opportunities and support network I do. It was this fact that inspired me to begin to make a difference in the mental health world.

Having spent time in the worst psych units with the saddest cases I realized that things must change. I realized that people need to talk about these things. People needed to be able to talk about their thoughts, lives, and feelings. We need to be able to share our stories.

So…here I am today, graduating, speaking at conferences, in classrooms and auditoriums, writing and collaborating with mental health and education professionals, working with amazing mental health organizations, writing a book. Through my experiences I have realized that I needed to make a difference, and through my opportunities I have hopefully begun to do so. I am so excited and pleased that I have the opportunity to make the differences that I am seeing.

Today I have found my way back to dry land where I can finally stand on firm ground, and it is here that I will help others do the same.

(This picture was taken when I was 20. I look a little different now that I finally take showers and have let my natural hair color grow back.)

love and conversation

I believe that I have already spoken about the difficulty and fear that can encompass romantic relationships when someone sees themselves as unstable, depressed, or "mentally ill", so I won't try to go too far into that direction. (If I have not gone enough into it please let me know in a comment so that I can be sure to write my next blog on the topic.) What I think is important to talk about is my current relationship and the interaction it has with my current diagnosis.

I am dating and living with an amazing boy, I mean man, who I have been with for quite a while now. I feel we have an amazingly healthy relationship and that is why I feel comfortable sharing this for the blogosphere and for readers hoping to learn or hear more about how to make a relationship work when someone is feeling unstable, etc. My boy, J, is an amazingly stabilizing force. One that I often find myself feeling I couldn't live without. And it is exactly this worry that I think it is important to be aware of. Whenever I have this specific worry I always find it is my own fear of my diagnosis, my being bipolar, that leads me to feeling I can't do without him. I find myself thinking I can't do without someone that I could see being a care taker. It is when I get to these points however, that, though I would not want to be without him, I must always remind myself that I would do fine without him. (But that is once again going back to relationships, mental health conditions, and autonomy.)

I have been thinking a lot about the equality of our relationship. Something that I feel is crucial for all my relationships, romantic or otherwise. I have been thinking a lot about how amazing he is at taking care of me. He does the dishes when I am overly busy with school/conferences/etc. He reminds me to pay the bills when I am too focused on my travels to realize the date. "Oh yeah, it is a new month, maybe I should pay rent..." He seems so often to be the stabilizing force in my own life and in our relationship.

Lately, however he has been extremely busy with his own crazy schedule and has been working hard simply to keep his own head above water. This has led me to make the decision that while he has helped me hold things together when my life lost control, I should help him when he is trying to keep his together. So last night we had a wonderful conversation. I asked him, "what can I do for you?", knowing that he is the very opposite of me in his busy and emotional states--while I can become clingy and needy, he tends to want more of his own space.

The question led us into a wonderful conversation about our own needs, once again helping me realize the importance of being two independent beings within an equal relationship. Though he may hold me up at times when I am feeling unstable and needy, I know that I can do the same for him when things change. I also know that when I am feeling too depressed to help him and he is feeling too busy to help me that we will both chip in to help each other, even if it just means leaning on one another without doing anything else. I know that I can do my best to support him in these busy times, but I also know that he would completely understand if I was to say I can't based on my own emotional struggles. The importance and strength of our relationship all lies in an honest conversation.

For now, thanks to our conversation, my path is relatively easy. When asked what I can do to help he simply said, "keep your stuff picked up, do the dishes, and rub my back". That should be easy enough to handle, and if its not, I know he'll understand simply because we were open enough to talk about it.

The picture was a gift from J for my birthday. Visit his blog here.

Again

Found a beautiful poem by Tino Villanueva in the wonderful poetry book, Living in Storms: contemporary poetry and the moods of manic-depression edited by Thom Schramm. This book was suggested to me by my amazing and lovely poetry teacher Sam Green. (Everyone should check out his poems as well). But for now, read this and feel revived:

Again

So I depend again upon myself.
I've taught this part of me
to go unruined
through all enormous lessons
on defeat.
I've taught this part of me
to thrive among despair,
to be imperative
among chaotic numbers.
Though I may fall away from time to time
like draggled weeds in winter,
breathing thick stern air
in some back shadows of the walk,
I spring again from me,
from the dead quiet of my roots--
listen to me move.

By dawn
I am presence fixed
in the eyes of men.

Focusing on the big picture...

I have an exciting "informational interview" tomorrow with someone I look up to, someone who I would happily follow in their footsteps if it was only that easy. But when I think about this interview tomorrow, or the fact that I am in the midst of trying to figure out life after college, the only thing I can think of to say is this:

"Hello, I'm Linea. I am twenty-four years old and in the middle of a transition crisis. I have been in school for six years now with almost two full majors, only one of which will be claimed at my graduation ceremony. I have no idea what to do with my life or where to go from here. Sometimes I think I would just like to disappear into my bedroom with a couple of DVDs and some candy and never leave..."

And when I try to think about what to say, whether it is to the person I am interviewing tomorrow or the random stranger that asks "what are you going to do now that you're graduating from college?" I simply feel like a failure. Which is funny. On many levels.

The first reason it is funny is the fact that I believe almost every person feels this confusion when they graduate, and I'm sure that more then half of the twenty-four year olds in America probably feel like failures anyways. The other thing that is funny (and a little sad) is the fact that most people would never call me a failure. At the age of nineteen I was hospitalized and completely psychotic, but by the time I was twenty-two I had written a book and traveled to international conferences sharing my story. I just can't seem to see that myself, and therefore continue to only see myself as a failure.

I don't know what makes me feel like more of a failure, the fact that my diagnosis interrupted crucial points in my development, leading me to still remain, (and I am so ashamed to admit it) still very much financially dependent upon my parents, or the fact that my episodes interrupted my college path leading me (the extreme perfectionist) to graduate two years later then my original plan. Either way, I find that my diagnosis and the accompanying episodes have left me feeling far behind the rest of my peers.

And this is what I find important to discuss, my mental health condition has left me feeling utterly behind the rest of the pack. I feel that the herd of mid-twenty somethings have all run off ahead of me finding jobs, furthering their education with bigger and grander degrees, or building families. Not that I want to be like all of them, (especially not want to be the family builders), but I feel like I should be doing more. That is until I really stop myself, look in the mirror and realize, you are doing more. You have much to offer.

I think that it is hard for anyone who has had to follow a different path due to a health condition. It is frustrating to me that I could not simply follow the path I planned out when I was five. I may be slightly financially behind my peers, or in some ways independently behind my peers, but I have in many ways reached much further ahead. I have confronted the hard stuff in life, and there will be more, but I have faced it head on and grown wiser from it. I have gotten to a point that I feel many of my peers, or even heroes may not have reached. I have confronted myself in its darkest, scariest sense and have lived to tell the tale. I have spent the time exploring and fighting and soothing the many selves within me. It is through my battle with a mental health condition that I have in many ways reached far ahead of that self I always planned on being at my age. And it is because of this that I realize that I am worth something and am not in any way a failure.

It is only when I realize the things I have accomplished, whether they seem small or irrelevant, that I realize my life was not ruined by the fact that I have bipolar disorder. It has effected my life greatly, yes, and while it may have held me back in some ways it has pushed me forward in just as many. It is during these moments, the ones that leave me devastated and fearful for my future, that I realize that I need to step back and look at the big picture. Only through looking at this big picture can I finally realize that an unconventional path holds equally impressive results.

Grieving the diagnosis

(I have no idea who did this art, but if anyone knows please let me know so I can give them the credit they deserve for such an awesome piece of work!)

My it has been a long time since I wrote a post. With school ending, the holidays, and a trip to Chicago I've been a little distracted as of late. However, its back to work, ultimately leading me back to blogland.

As I have somewhat discussed in previous posts, the last few months have been rather difficult for me. As my psychiatrist explained, I am a rather "hard patient" because my "life isn't all that stable" at the moment. But I wonder, now that I have what I believe to be a rather stable life, how is my life not stable? Now, I understand that I am in a strange sort of limbo being a new college grad without a job, (or at least a job that makes enough money to live an "adult life"), and I know that I do a ton of traveling doing speaking engagements, (and as many people explain, jet-lag is hard if you're bipolar), but I feel that I manage my "unstable life" rather well. Or at least most of the time. Until I hit three solid months of depression, having been completely emotionally stable prior to my normal yearly late October relapse, (this yearly relapse is due to a mix between solemn and painful mental health related anniversaries and changes in weather), but this year it just kept going due to a few major added stressors (such as impending graduation and the fear of finding health insurance).

But all of this I believe has been addressed in past postings, so what I really wanted to talk about is grief. In these past four months I have been trying my damnedest to be healthy and stay well. I made sure that I was not only continuing to take my meds, but I was also maintaining healthy habits such as exercising (yoga and running), meditating, and additional stress relieving activities like my new found hobby: knitting. I have tried to be patient and kind to myself and have worked with my psychiatrist to increase and adjust medications to help me get over this bump. But as I found myself continuing to move deeper or simply stay in the "pits of despair" I found myself moving into the same mind-frame that I experienced when I was first diagnosed with bipolar. I found myself feeling, to put it simply, angsty. I found that I was reverting to the teenage-angst felt when life just doesn't seem fair. When you realize, why me? And why now? I found myself getting angry at whoever or whatever has done this to me. And though I continually feel that my bipolar is part of me, though not all of me, and that I wouldn't want to get rid of it, I simply wanted it to go away, if not for even a little while.

So I suppose my question to the world is, and specifically to anyone suffering from a chronic condition or disease (and I don't really consider bipolar a disease), do you ever get over this grief completely? Do you ever just cope and come to terms with the fact that you may continually have dips in your health, even if they continue to become increasingly easier?

I know that for me they have become easier, this is by far better than my initial diagnosis, but it is still terribly frustrating sometimes to know that I may have this occur again and again. All I know is that I will get through this and it will continue to get better, but somedays, on my most 13-year old angst ridden days, I can only continue to say, this sucks.

why so hard?

So, I had this paper that I was supposed to write. It was a simple paper, four to six pages synthesizing my biggest ideas throughout college and talking about my favorite classes. I was supposed to simply write about the ideas that snowballed in my mind. The ideas that connected with thoughts in other classes and the way they changed the way I understood the world. Normally, this assignment would thrill me. I love thinking about thinking. I love when my ideas connect and snowball ultimately making my world shatter through the realization that everything I thought I knew was actually wrong, or at least completely different than I ever thought. But this time, given that I have a lot of other stressors on my plate, things like a looming college graduation, a non-existent post-grad job, and the fact that the paper came at the anniversary of a very painful past experience, (a near death by overdose), it was nearly impossible to finish. It has actually taken me about a month over the due date to complete. And last night, finally, I turned it in.

So, why was it so hard, I ask myself. Aside from the obvious previously mentioned items, I realized that it forced me to look at a part of my life in a different angle. I found it strange that I can write a memoir about my experiences with bipolar, and travel the country sharing my story, but I couldn't seem to write a simple paper about my college career. The thing that I realized though, is that I have not had your average college career. Throughout my time in college I have been diagnosed with bipolar, been hospitalized two times, came extremely close to losing my life several times, and been through innumerable amount of ups and downs, round abouts, and zigzags through the world of mental illness, self-medication, and that continuous search for stability. It was through all of this that I had one goal: to just finish school. So it was through all of this that my biggest ideas formed. Through all of these things I was attempting to write papers, read, grasp big ideas. In the end my experience with bipolar and my experience as an undergrad became completely intertwined.

In realizing all of this I finally just realized that there was still healing to do. I still had to come to terms with a lot of trauma and pain that I thought I had already coped with. It is through these tasks, seemingly menial papers, that we originally assume to be easy that each of us must realize that there is always another level. There is always a deeper level to which we can explore ourselves and our lives. Always more to the story that we originally thought. Though the paper was extremely difficult and painful I came to realize that I needed to go to that painful level to truly come to terms with my college experiences. I needed sludge through the painful moments in my life one more time so that next time it might be a little easier. Sometimes we find ourselves asking, why is this so hard?! It's because we need to confront it, to push ourselves to the next level, and to realize that everything isn't as it seems.

My Bipolar Checklist

This is something I wrote a long time ago after my first panic attack in months. Thought it might be something useful to share...

Okay Linea. Here we are. Here we are again. You on the bathroom floor. Your boyfriend tired and worried. Your mind numb. Now, given that this hasn’t happened in months and months we must figure out where this came from. It’s time to use the skills that you have gained in this "vast journey" of yours.

     First. Your “Am I Depressed” checklist:

     Within the last week have you been staring a lot? Been unable to read/clean/get important things done? Have you been drinking alone? Do you spend hours sitting at the computer doing nothing? Have you been unable to cry? Do you have a need to harm yourself?

     No.

     Second, “Am I manic?”

Within the last few days have you been pacing, shaking, or cleaning excessively? Do you have a lot of repetitious thoughts, words, or phrases? Have you started the mantra of “I need, I need, I need…”? Has there been excessive spending, partying, anything?

No.

Third, in general, have you:

     Had an upset stomach?

     Been throwing up?

     Been cutting?

     Been eating excessively?

     Been drinking excessively?

No. No. No. No. No. 
Everything checks out fine. 

This is not a bipolar episode. I often find myself checking these lists daily. If it is none of the above then I know that I am simply having the same normal feelings of pain that every other person on earth experiences. If it is none of the above then I simply need to see where the pain is coming from and then just breathe it out. Just sit with it knowing that I have been through worse. I can get through this.

Everything is Everything

I just read an article by John Frow called "A pebble, a camera, a man" on "Thing Theory" where he talks about the concept that "things, too, embody human will". He speaks about the fact that the speed bump is not merely a thing in the road, but something that gives an "instruction, on behalf of the police or some traffic control authority, to slow down on this stretch of the road". He explains that to call the speed bump "non-human" is to "ignore all the ways in which human will is translated into things and in which things in turn work as delegates which relay back to us these configurations of human will". In reading this it reminded me of my favorite phrase: "everything is everything".

When I begin talking about my belief that "everything is everything", (that everything either already is or eventually becomes connected in some way, that life always seems to find a way to circle back around, that everything has an intense interdependence upon everything else, and that every piece of this world is equally important and present within every other piece,) I am always told that I must be getting manic. I always have to laugh because though I may be going a little too far thinking that the number eleven is extremely telling in my life (because I seem to see an increase and reoccurrence before a major event), or in thinking that "rabbits are my power animal", I am certainly not the only one who sees the patterns in the world. I have even been told that people who are bipolar, or "mentally ill", see patterns more often. This may be true, and though this may make me see things a little more connected then they might actually be sometimes, I can't help but know in my soul that it's true: Everything is Everything...

"But we consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table of evolution as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives." -Hesse-