“I wasn’t diagnosed until very late in life, until my mid-twenties. But looking back, I can see episodes earlier than that, back into childhood, that were definitely manic episodes.

“I think they [my parents] were worried, but I think that they probably felt like: I have this medicine, everything is going to be fine now, because I didn’t talk about it much. I never talked about feelings much with my family. I don’t think we were that kind of family. With me not really bringing it up, and them knowing I had this medicine, it was kind of, “Everything should be okay, so we’re not going to talk about it.” Not about this kind of thing. I kept this inside, and to myself for so, so, so long.

“I think it’s important to get my story out there, because there’s a lot of misunderstanding around things like Bipolar disorder. There are assumptions, and there are stigmas, and things like that. And everybody with it is different, and it affects people differently, but this is just . . . this is just me. I was pretty intelligent, so I think that they thought, with all these things that they saw, that I was okay. The only thing that they thought was a problem was my schoolwork, because I was intelligent but I was a terrible, terrible student. They saw that in my grades, but I think that they just assumed that I was lazy, which was fine, because that’s what it looked like, outwardly.

“It looked like I was just being lazy and not doing my homework. They didn’t know that I couldn’t hear a thing in school, because I had everything inside my head; and they didn’t know that I wasn’t doing the homework because I wasn’t in my room doing the homework, I was in my room crying. They didn’t know that. I heard a lot of “not living up to his potential” [talk] when I was growing up. That’s all I heard. It’s true, but on the other hand, I kinda couldn’t help it. I had this thing taking over, and I didn’t know what it was. I lived at home with my parents and my two sisters. My older sister, and my younger sister. There was a lot going on around me, but not really a lot that involved me. My younger sister was much younger. I mean, she was a baby. My older sister was very ill for most of her life. There was a lot . . . a lot of other things happening that required attention. Twelve, early teens, that period, and I certainly don’t blame anyone for not paying attention to me. My sisters both had needs greater than mine, but I think I was kind of left to fend for myself, and I didn’t handle it very well.

“My older sister was a year-and-a-half older than me. She was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at twelve-years-old. She had a lot of complications from it, a lot of extra care involved. I think we got along fairly well. Looking back, I think that there were times where I didn’t treat her so well. Analyzing it now as an adult, it was probably out of jealousy, from the attention. At the time I didn’t feel jealous of her. She needed care. She was very sick. Her kidneys ended up failing. She died in her sleep, though. It was pretty unexpected. When I was around my parents, I think that I hid all of this very well. Again, I didn’t identify as being mentally ill, but I think when I would come out of an episode, I knew that walking around with bleeding arms was not normal. I could see that, but I think with my family . . . I think I hid things very well. I was sort of the clown of the family. I was the joker, and things like that. I think that’s the side that they saw.

“Bipolar Disorder is an imbalance in the brain that causes mood spikes and mood declines, often rapidly, but not always. It was formerly called Manic-Depressive Disorder. That’s the two basic sides to it. Mania and depression. So, your lows are going to be a depression, your highs are referred to as mania. I’m one of the rarities, on the mania side. I think what most people’s understanding of mania is, is a very elevated, very elated mood. It can lead to periods of very high productivity, extreme happiness, extreme elation, that kind of thing. That’s happened to me before, but mostly it’s different for me, and I’m not the only one. This does happen to other people, but for me, mania has been bouts of anger—which is not uncommon—and also a lot of impulsion. Acting on impulse. Impulsive spending. Things like that. I’ve rarely gotten the happiness side of it. In one day, you could have ten mood changes, and it’s just like a light switch. You’re up. You’re down. You’re up. You’re down. Mainly for myself it’s longer episodes, where a manic episode can last weeks, it can last months. And the same with depression. You can’t predict it. You don’t know.

“Medications can regulate it, I think, and slow it down; if you’re a rapid cycler, it can slow you down. But they regulate, they don’t cure, unfortunately. I think a lot of people, they hear depression and they just think, “Oh, you’re sad.” But being sad is a very small percentage of depression. The worst part of depression is that you feel nothing. Alone in my room, I usually had music on, but not always, and I’d sit alone and feel complete emptiness inside. I was a self harmer back then, also, which came from the pain of this, and I think self harm was a pain that I could control. I think that’s why I did it. I would use broken glass. If I would find a piece of broken glass on the street, I’d pick it up and I would take it home with me and I’d keep it. That’s what I would use. I would take apart my razor I’d use to shave. I would take those apart, and I would use those sometimes also. I just thought I was weird. I think everyone around me did, too. I didn’t know about Bipolar Disorder.

“I didn’t study psychology in sixth grade, or anything like that, so I just figured that’s who I am. I’m very strange and I do these very odd things, but I just assumed that’s who I was. I didn’t think of it as a psychology . . . I don’t think kids really think of things a lot that way, when they’re that young. When you’re twelve. When you’re thirteen. You don’t think, “Hey, I’m going to look in a psychiatry book and see what’s wrong with me.” Hearing these things from other people—hearing that you’re boring, you’re weird, you’re mean—and not being able to give an explanation, it’s hurtful because that affects your self-esteem. I still have horrible self-esteem now, because of things I heard from other people my whole life . . . reacting to me, reacting to things I couldn’t explain. I knew that there was a good person inside me, and I knew that these people who were rejecting me were people that I probably had a lot in common with, and could’ve built relationships with—could’ve built friendships with—but when what they’re seeing is the worst of me, and I couldn’t control when the worst of me was going to show, there wasn’t much I could do. I couldn’t say to somebody, “I know I’m not very fun to be around, but I promise you I’m a good person.”

“I knew that some of this behavior was not normal. None of the other kids at school had cut-up arms. So I hid it. I knew it needed to be hidden. I didn’t have many friends, but the ones that I did, I wouldn’t talk about it. They spent their evenings doing their homework, or watching television, or spending time with friends. I didn’t do any of that. Sometimes I would make up stories. “Oh, what did you do last night?” I’d say, “Oh, I watched a couple movies on TV.” And, no. The truth was I sat in my room and cried, or I sat in my room and stared at the wall for six hours. It was later, in high school, where I would start to have signs of mania, which in my case would be outbursts of anger . . . In high school I would have these bouts of anger and I would throw furniture or I would punch walls. I didn’t feel like I had any control over it. I feel like it just happened. But during the episode there’s not really room in my head for analysis, it’s just the actions taking over, and the conscious is sort of blank.

“It’s not until afterward that I can take a step back. “That was the wrong thing to do. I should not have done that.” I wouldn’t ask myself why I did it in the first place. There was regret, but there wasn’t . . . there was no analysis. At one point, my parents did have me go to a psychiatrist at the very end of high school. I went because of this anger. I went to him for one session, right before I left for college. We sat for about a half hour saying absolutely nothing. He diagnosed me as depressed, and he gave me antidepressants. Something happened—which is not uncommon if you give only antidepressants to a Bipolar person—and that is that one day I decided to take about half the bottle all at once. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t call it a suicide attempt. It was a compulsion, and a frustration where I wasn’t feeling like this medicine was doing a thing for me. Maybe I’m not taking enough. I remember I did it, and then I went to get breakfast in the cafeteria and I ended up passing out on the floor.

“They told me I couldn’t lay down there. So, I managed to make it to a table where I sat for quite a while dry heaving. And after about an hour of the worst sickness feeling I ever had, just like that, the feeling passed. And I was fine. I went back to my dorm and I threw out the rest of the pills. I said, “Okay. I’m done with those.” When you’re twenty-two and twenty-three years old, that age, I think you have your friends, but your friends at that point they want to have fun. You know, life is good, we’re all single. There’s this kind of lifestyle for that age group that’s dominant, but I didn’t really feel like all that. I was in no mood for fun. And people saw that, and so people just figured I was kind of a drag, or I would act out. Again, I was the weird one. So, I lost a lot of friends during those years. That was difficult, because those are the years that
. . . those are your formative years, I think. It wasn’t until my mid-late twenties when I was properly diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder.

“I was living with my girlfriend. I was trying to hang up a picture. I got so angry with it that I smashed it. I broke the whole thing. She—because of that, and because of some other things that she saw—contacted a relative of mine, who’s a nurse. It was this relative of mine who had me go to a psychiatrist, and talk me through the things that I needed to be telling the doctor. That’s when I got diagnosed as Bipolar, officially. Medications are tricky. It takes a lot of trial and error. It takes a lot of trying different combinations, different dosages, so it takes a really long time. It was probably another two years before I found a regimen that worked for me. That’s not uncommon. I mean, I’m good now, but I’ve been to a lot of doctors, and I’ve tried a lot of medications. Like dozens. You do have to do trial and error to find the right kind of cocktail, but different doctors have different ways of doing things. Some are more minimalists, where they don’t want you on any more than three different meds at once.

“Some are either trained differently, or don’t know what they’re doing, or whatever it is, and they’ll just pack on medications. I had this one doctor who had me on
. . . I was on like eleven medications and then she added another one. There were two medications that weren’t supposed to be mixed, and she had me on extremely high doses of [both of] them, plus ten other medications. I woke up one day and I couldn’t walk. My brain had swelled, and so I had to go to the hospital. I was out of work for like a month, and that was scary. Every doctor I’ve been to since then has been like, “You know you’re really lucky you survived that.” I’m like, “Yes, I know.”
“Above all, I feel old. This illness, I think, has a way of aging someone faster. You go through medication changes. You go through weight changes. Different amounts of physical activity. What’s happening in your head—as the mood elevates and declines, and elevates and declines, stays high for a month, stays low for a month—it is absolutely exhausting. I don’t think our bodies are meant to go through such changes. While I’m thirty-four, I don’t . . . I feel more like in my fifties. I’ve developed nerve pain and I’m just exhausted. This has worn me out. Yeah, it’s a mental illness, but it is very, very, very physical.

“Well, these days I’m really looking up and I’m really looking forward, because I feel like I’m in the most stable place that I’ve probably ever been, as far as my health. I also found a support group for people with depression and Bipolar Disorder. I’ve met some really amazing friends through that, and I have the best friends I’ve ever had in my life through there. If there’s something in your life that you feel like you can’t control, then you should reach out.

There are support groups. There are hotlines. Even just going to a support group. And even if you don’t want to talk at first, you can just listen to everybody else, and you’ll hear a lot of what you’re going through yourself. Your ability to share your story and your feelings will evolve. Your relationships will become more supportive, more intimate, and you’ll come to rely on your fellow members for support. There’s absolutely people from any walk of life you could imagine, but one of the key guidelines is that we are all equal. In that room, everybody is equal.

“Finding my support group was probably the most significant, positive change—as far as my health—that’s ever happened. It’s a big turning point, because all of a sudden I have not just one or two people I could call a friend at a time, I have twenty or thirty people at a time. Someone will say, “Hey, I haven’t heard from Chris in two days, somebody check up on him. Somebody call so-and-so. Somebody call so-and-so, and just see what’s up.” It’s this bond. Other people, they can read about us, they can learn about us; there are movies, there are documentaries, there are books . . . but unless you’re living it, you don’t completely get it. My friends completely get it.

“I try . . . it sounds so bad . . . I don’t tend to think too far ahead. I feel like any kind of long-term, or even short-term goal . . . I feel like I’m resistant to make those kinds of goals simply because I’m so unpredictable, which is a terrible way to live, but it sort of works for me. Goals and dreams are important, and everyone has a goal or a dream: I’m going to buy a house next year. I’m going to go to Europe in six months, and this and that. And all that’s great, but for me I’m too unpredictable. There’ve been so many times that I set myself up for disappointment, and I set others up for me to disappoint them that I feel like living day-to-day, and keeping my daily routine to a point where I’m stable, and I’m healthy, and I’m waking up the next day . . . that’s the best that I can do for myself. I’m happy to do that because everyday is a challenge, so if I’m making it through, then I’m doing good.” •