Mental Health Awareness Month 2017

It was a good day. It was a work day but I had the day off so I decided that I would spend the day doing nothing at all or anything I wanted. The food I ordered came and it was extremely delightful. The videos on youtube were funny and they made me laugh. Then I took a nap, gleeful that I could do this when everyone I knew was busy at work.

But then night came. I have a difficult relationship with nighttime. It gives me the most tranquil peace and the darkest thoughts.

People like to say, "You deserve to be happy". But in my case, happiness always come at a price. Happiness is an appetizer for the Demons to come and feast on later when all the dopamine is spent. So now I'm left with nothing- feeling nothing but the puffiness of my eyes and a hollow memory of a good day.

Tomorrow will be another good day.

Like clockwork

It wasn't all totally nonsense though. I could still recognize fear and puzzlement, especially in the faces of the strangers that came to see me everyday in the morning after breakfast, like clockwork. They came in their lab coats and their clipboards full of notes, scribbling while observing me as surely as how one observes a monkey in a cage. Some had kind looks, some blank and some with eyes darting, unsure as to how to maintain eye contact while I peered into the depths of their souls. It was just as much of a two way street as any other regular interactions in the Outside world. Just that in this scenario neither one of us knew how to pretend to be.

The Attending had hid his ID badge behind his tie and I decided that I shan't bring that up with him for by him doing that I knew that he already knew ID badges was my crux issue. It seemed to me that we were going to play a game of chicken about my unrelenting paranoia of badge-wearing hospital employees not being who they were. But as the questions unfolded, my smugness slowly dissipated as I struggled to answer what I think they wanted me to answer, just as I have always did even on the Outside. I was getting all the answers incorrect and I see them, one by one, shaking their heads and pens writhing furiously. This must be how drowning feels like for it was all going wrong, as how everything had before that had me landing in this strange and unsettling place. It was my turn to dart my eyes around desperately, hoping for some clue in the expressions of my captor's lab-coat-entourage. I slowly realized this was another failed day because my chest tightened with a familiar hurt as my breath stuck itself in my throat, festering into a lump bigger and bigger, surely enough to suffocate me. It was pointless. My persona cracked and split even further, like a line running down a wall of old paint that was ready to flake off into dust any second.

The Attending shook his head with finality and like a virus it spread to the others in the group. Pity filled the faces of each person I looked upon, all impervious to my imploring desperation. Judgement never felt as stinging as it did on the Outside as I pleaded fruitlessly while they left, one by one out of my door.

How to destroy your life without really trying

Being a good girl and taking your medication makes you feel safe and reassured that things are going to be stable. Start getting into a daily rhythm and maintaining a regular sleeping pattern because they are what keep the swing at bay. (so the doctors say anyways)

And for a while, things actually are quiet and normal. And boring.

Then, slowly the body clock starts creaking. Able to only sleep later. And later. Oh and hanging out with friends which inevitably involve alcohol so having to skip a few dosages. Suddenly sleep becomes an elusive...female dog. Bipolar affects people differently and for me, once sleep decides to not visit me anymore, I'm pretty much screwed.

The swing comes. It goes high and it's exhilarating. Hm. Maybe it's not so bad! It's awesome! My stuff is all packed and neat! I'm buying this, eating that and going wherever that pops into my mind! This is so FUNNY! That is HILARIOUS!!!

Suddenly something small happens. And this trivial incident, that my friend could not understand why I just was not able to brush off, causes an emotional domino fallout. Despair. Hopelessness. Misery. Warning bells ring and the mad scramble to regain control starts. But when the increased dosage of prescribed sleeping pills does not work as well as it should, that's when one is royally screwed.

Monday is coming again and with that comes work. There is nothing left but the dreaded last resort - anti-psychotics. Maybe no one will notice the aftermath of a mind on the brink of destruction.

Thanks for the light

I believe there's a God. In fact, to be more specific, I believe there's One True God, a singlar power of pure goodness. However, I do not believe there's a Devil. Most people usually gasp disapprovingly at this 'selective' believing, insisting that if you believe in one manifestation, the other is a must. Like a bottle of wine and a wine opener, one cannot exist with meaning without the other. Don't get me wrong, I believe Evil exist. Evil, like Goodness, is a potential energy, a result of an act that people choose to do or an inclination of one's nature. I just don't think that there is a mystical individual who is the corporeal entity of Evil.

To me, God is a different story compared to those told by men. God is the creator, the watcher and the Judge in the court of appeals. God starts/create things and watches as it ends, as how all things must for new things to be begin. When we are at peace with it, we call it 'running its natural course'. When we are not happy about it, we call it 'bad things happening'. And sometimes, it's because the collision of humans' choices/decisions and nature's behavior just simply came to a head. It sucks but it is what it is.

However, I believe that whenever God intervenes, God only does so as the Judge in the court of appeals. In other words, when The Singlar Power of Pure Goodness intervenes, only good things happen and miracles are the result.

I know God exist because when things get bad, somehow something will happen, out of the blue and of a impossible mathematical possibility, that will shine a tiny light into the darkness. And that small ray of light sometimes is just enough for one to see the path, albiet full of rocks and hurts one's feet, but at least one notices the cliff one is about to walk over.

So whenever The Singlar Power of Pure Goodness intervenes, I give thanks for two things - thanks for reminding me that you are here and thanks for the light.

Magic mania

Imagine being on high alert all the time and the mind is racing, creating backstories and conjuring reasonings/explainations for everything. The kids from school going home at 8pm. The noisy group of gossipmongers. The too cool for school crowd hanging out till late in town. Notice everything and pretty soon it's information overload. Breathing gets rapid, need to close the eyes and plug in a foreign language song to de-stimulate and decompress all the speeding thoughts and rising emotions. But oh the creativity that comes with the magic! The beautiful high, the fast response of the mind during conversations and the hidden delight of seeing the matrix behind the dull surroundings. Who would want to take the stupid pills (not that the anti-psychotic pills are stupid, but that they make one stupid) when the mania takes over?

Psych Ward 101

I don't really remember much actually. All I do retain are bits and pieces of what happened the way I perceived it while it happened. So basically things were just outright confusing and scary from the get go.

I woke up in a unfamiliar room, with no clue how I got there, feeling all drugged up and paranoid. Where the fuck was I? How did I get here? Where is here? What's going on? Plus all the other residue paranoid thoughts that I already had running in the background of my mind before the hospitalization, I was a total train wreak that was all but just one station away from screaming bloody murder.

There's a door. I got up. Opened it, stuck my head out and took a peek. There's a hallway. I gingerly stepped out, taking in my environment. There's a paper pasted on the door directly in front of my room. It has "AWOL risk" on it. I turned left and walked down the hallway. There's a payphone on my right. Then comes a room with people and tables and chairs in it. I stand at the doorway, unsure what to do. This is where I stop remembering things in linear fashion. I remember being very frighten and moments from freaking out but willing myself to keep calm. Someone asked if I was "my name" and I nodded. Food appeared. I asked for a pencil. The nurses were old and wrinkled and kinda mean. They upset me. I took the food back to the room. There were other doors similar to mine which means there were other rooms. And from what I now can see from my admission documents, I then got myself busy scribbling all sorts of names, words, things down on those papers. A nurse came into the room, scolded me for bringing food in and took it away. I didn't touch it yet and I was hungry. I remembered her for that.

Time passed. Bits and pieces again. The room had a funeral feel to it. The bed was not a fancy hospital bed. It sinks when you lie on it and under the sheets the actual mattress was rubbery and felt melty. Above the bed was a big white box. (which was just a light box) Somehow my brain then decided that I was sent here to die. The white box melts whoever lies on the bed into the coffin-like solid but with drawers wooden frame. I had to sleep (sedatives). But I had to stay awake because I didn't want to die. Then I couldn't take it and slept on the desk. Mind you, I just had a lumbar puncture which means someone stuck a HUGE needle into my spine to collect liquid so my back was beyond sore. That means sleeping on a desk half my length was not going to be comfortable, I would be in more pain, more sleep deprived and remain just as paranoid.

They moved me out of the substance abuse unit to the ICU after just a few days probably after all my tests came back normal but I didn't really come out of the psychosis till like three quarters of my stay. Probably because I spent the early parts of it not understanding what was really going on and secretly thinking I can outsmart outplay outlast my captors by pretending to be getting better.

Time passed. Bits and pieces. Friends came and went, fellow crazy people made me even more confused or added on to my delusions, family flew into town, some staff made things worse, some staff made things clearer and I had another psychotic breakdown and two intramuscular injections of anti-psychotics. When you have to be dragged to seclusion, held down and injected, it's not a good thing but at least now I have a name to it.

Psych Ward 101, thy name is Bipolar I most recent episode manic with psychotic features.

The thing about madness

The thing about madness is that we live in a different reality from the rest of the people. We perceive things differently which leads us to react differently and naturally coming off as 'crazy'. If we can have a handle on it just enough to get by as normal for a little while more, the better. Or else things get real bad and that's when the anti-psychotic pills come into the picture.

Yet it's hard to stick to the pills because they make me so painfully aware that I'm stuck in a creative rut, colors get muted and words paint a duller picture.

So it's a choice and a sacrifice either way. I hope for the sake of my life my chemically off balanced brain makes the right one when the time comes.

Hiatus

This is a story that I'll keep short, but it will be lengthen in days to come. Something significant happened that caused this long break in between posts and really, I kinda had it coming.

I went...mad.