Content warning: Bipolar disorder, running away, suicide, and related topics. Please set boundaries for yourself if this is not something you want to read. Skip this post. Only read snippets. Take care of you. You deserve it.
It’s December 28th, and I finally feel a glimmer of Christmas spirit. Of the ho-ho-hope for joy, love, and connection that I always crave even more this time of year. Despite the sickness that the universe gifted my lungs, I enjoyed watching holiday movies today and giggling about gifts. The last eight days had me grasping for literally anything positive, anything I couldn’t or didn’t nearly destroy, anything peaceful.
In the weeks prior, I spent more than a month battling with insurance to cover an atypical antipsychotic that my psychiatric provider prescribed. We’d known for a while prior that I would need to try one again, as I hadn’t for at least a year. In October, I spent a few days at the Grippy Socks Hotel for the first time ever. The days prior to my mandatory admittance were hell. Many before then and since have been, too.
My bipolar disorder has hinged on everything for a solid six months — I don’t mean that facetiously. The small words and the big thoughts and everything in between have sent me spiraling up, down, and sideways. When the first prescription received the final appeal denial, my provider submitted an order for the insurance company’s drug of choice. They said, “She can’t take Vraylar. She can take Paliperidone.” So she prescribed that. Because yes, a stuffy grump in a suit who doesn’t know me gets to decide what medical treatments I can have.
They denied that prescription, too. No, it doesn’t make sense.
A couple more weeks passed before they sent the, “okay, okay she can try it,” approval to my pharmacist and provider. I laughed a little with my care team and others who knew the situation then. I thought, “Finally, I can start to work toward stability again.” I picked it up the next day since the pharmacy had to order it. I took it 24 hours later, at 11pm on Friday, December 15. Then I remained asleep for at least 21.5 hours after, only waking to stumble to the bathroom or text someone to take my service dog in training on a walk. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t think clearly, or at all really. I couldn’t be me. And I thought, “well this would definitely ensure that my mood is stabilized. How can it be unstable if I’m asleep?” I went back to bed.
And I didn’t take it again.
Instead, I took roughly three days to feel like my brain and body could tolerate being upright and functional. It was the 18th when I told a friend that I felt okay again, in terms of the med being out of my system. It was the 19th that we visited a friend in a nearby town. I talked about feeling manic during the drive. I joked about it with my friend upon arrival, another bipolar pal who would understand.
It was the 20th that Pam completely took over. Pam is the name I’ve given to my out-of-control mind, the part that attempts to derail my life. The part of me that certainly has succeeded before. Pam almost did it again that night.
Completely emotionally dysregulated and nonsensical, I leashed my service dog in training, bundled up in my coat (yet no hat or gloves), and threw my daily-use blue bag over my shoulders. I walked out of my home, and I didn’t look back.
I know that I ended up on a swinging park bench roughly a mile away. I don’t remember much of the walk. I don’t remember if I felt faint from my POTS at all, or if Pam did her absolute best to shutdown me feeling the symptoms that plague my daily life — tachycardia, chest pain, dizziness, the whole POTS gamut. I don’t remember how long it took to walk that mile. The furthest I’d walked in the year prior, at any point, was half of a mile. That took nearly 18 minutes, and it was flat terrain. This to-the-park climb included ups and downs that I avoid because I can’t tolerate them physically. Pam convinced me otherwise.
From the bench, I wanted to throw rocks and sticks at the young child and adult in the park. They were gleefully chasing each other and tossing a ball back and forth. The adult would cheer when the child went down the slide alone. I hated it; I hated them. I stared and stared until they left.
I held my pup in my lap, squeezing her tightly, hoping that she still loved me and wanted to help. Hoping that she could get me through. Then it hit me — I left too hastily and forgot her medication. I had to go back.
The desire to do so was lacking. I had decided that we would sleep on the swinging bench that night, in the frigid temperature and windy air. I had decided that we wouldn’t go back.
Yet I had to, for her.
When we arrived, I stomped around and sequestered everything I deemed important and mine into one room. The noises of myself? I didn’t notice. The noises of the fridge running, the guinea pigs wheeking, and the subtle steps of upstairs neighbors made me want to cause pain to it all. I felt the violent rage increasing.
I went to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. Almost instantly, I heard my mind say, “Chop off your hair.” I whipped around and thought, “That isn’t me. This isn’t me.”
And that was the first moment of that evening that I realized I was spiraling, that Pam had taken over.
The remainder of the evening involved reading Reddit posts about other adults who have destroyed their relationships, homes, and lives because they couldn’t manage their bipolar disorder well enough. Note to reader: I had never been on Reddit in my life; it was a dark place.
While reading, I watched an entire documentary of a woman describing how her bipolar mother had committed suicide. The woman and her immediate family recounted the marks that the mother made on them as a bipolar woman. And I sobbed.
I made phone calls every 10 or 15 minutes for at least 2 hours, leaving incoherent voicemails about how I didn’t want to ruin anything, how I wanted to make it all better, how I was sorry. I offered to bake banana bread, to cook a full meal, to clean anything, to do anything. I wanted to be useful. I sobbed during it all.
And, as my therapist said multiple times when I recounted those four hours to him, “That is bipolar disorder.”
I know.
Do all of you?
In the days following, I realized that I was terrified of a couple things happening. I feared spending Christmas in a psychiatric ward as I had in October. When asked why, I told my therapist that I hadn’t yet watched Elf, a movie I’ve never skipped during the holiday season for more than a decade. An incredible person that many of us will always grieve had always projected it in his classroom around the holidays, and I love remembering that. I told my therapist that I wanted to give my homemade gifts to the people I had made them for, to see their reactions. I told my therapist that I didn’t know what Christmas in the hospital would be like, and I was not ready to find out.
Secondly, I feared attending Christmas celebrations. I didn’t want to fight the pull of Pam in front of others who have only seen me at baseline or nearby it. I didn’t want to runaway from the place my little family would stay, in a town I barely know. I didn’t want to snap. I didn’t want to be the one shouting “All aboard the bipolar express!” in the middle of Christmas dinner.
For the record, none of that happened. My therapist and I made a plan for how I would handle every emotion we could anticipate. I packed scented playdough and my chill pill stress ball to ground myself. I walked my puppy, through a silly amount of rain (any rain on Christmas day is silly). I took the parts of myself that I like, and I listened to Pam just enough to tell her, “I know that’s how it feels, but I’m not doing that.”
I showed up, bipolar and all, as I always have and always will. It’s my hope that in doing so, folks see bipolar people like me as people. We are your neighbors, siblings, partners, and colleagues. We are here. And, yes…
we are who we have.