A Stranger’s Act of Kindness Towards Me and My Bipolar That Surprised Me

I hit rock bottom in life a little over 10 years ago. I lost everything that was important to me, from my child, to my car, to my house...to my dignity.

This is when I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and ended up spending 6 weeks in a short term psych ward. The average stay there was 5-7 days, I blew that average right out of the water.

I made a lot of poor choices before that hospital stay, which ultimately cost me custody of my child, and for a time it lost me my family and friends.

When I was staying at this hospital, I had no friends or family to come visit me, everyone had written me off. I had no one to call during open phone time. I had no one to bring me money to get a soda, or something besides the semi-edible hospital food.

That kind of isolation will wear on a person, until they begin to truly believe that they are nothing more than a mouth breather taking up space. This being a very difficult point in my life, I actually contemplated ways to end my life while in the hospital. I hated myself, and felt like no one should waste their time on me.

And since I had that attitude, several of the nurses and techs treated me as such. There was one who didn't though. He treated me as if I were a person. As if I mattered. He was always subtle in his approach to letting me know I had value, but it was always there. It was the little things like getting me a soda every week or so, or buying me french fries from the cafe downstairs because he knew I wasn't getting that stuff any other way. He would let me choose the radio station and encourage me to rock out.

These don't sound like huge things, but they were life altering for me. I was able to slowly come back from the brink of the dark abyss because of his actions. I started writing while in the hospital, to get the words that were poisoning my soul out. I started trying to live again, even though every day was like having a glass shard in my heart.

I learned a valuable lesson from this man's treatment of me. I learned that you never know how much of a difference you can make in a person's life by being kind, so be kind, always. He'll never know that he helped save my life, just by treating me as a person. Now I try to pay that forward whenever I can. Random acts of kindness are my favorite things to do. If you're ever in a position to either be kind, or say something hurtful, always try and choose the higher road. You never know when you'll be saving a person's life by doing so. 

DAY 10: A song that touches my soul

I'm still avoiding writing about my last two schemas. I wonder if there's a subconscious reason for that or not. Hmm. Maybe I'll delve deeper into that in a later post. Music has been on my mind a lot today, so I'm going with this post instead of my usual schema post. I hope you get some illumination out of this :)

I'm in a lot of bipolar support groups, and one of the common themes surrounding nearly everyone is the love of music. Music seems to bring a voice to our innermost feelings in the way mere words never could. I know there are songs that I cling to when I'm in the pits of despair, and there are songs that describe my mania with perfect ease, which I couldn't do even if you gave me a thousand sheets of paper to write on. I want to share a favorite song with you today and would love to hear back from you what yours is as well. What do you listen to when you're down? When you're up?

This song by Johnny Cash speaks volumes to me. I know he is talking about how drug addiction has ruined his life, but it ties in so well to how I've ruined my life thanks to mental illness. The lyrics are powerful and hit me hard every time I hear this song....I'm going to break this song down line by line and see if I can show you the raw emotion that I feel from this song. I hope my ramblings on this matter don't bore you too much.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

I've done this before, too many times to count. I used to be a cutter because I'd feel so numb. I'd cut just to feel alive again. Now I turn to other methods to not feel because I'm scared of my emotions and I just want to shut down. I've never done hard drugs but I relate oh too well to wanting to kill the pain away but still remembering everything anyway.

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

The chorus is especially haunting for me because I don't know what I've become or how I got here, and I've lost so many people along the way. I think of those closest to me, and they could have everything I have, which is still nothing. I'm so scared of finding new friends and meeting new people because everyone I've known I've let down and I've hurt so many people. I've burned so many bridges I'm surprised I don't live on an island with no way off.

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

I suffer in silence these pains that I bear. I'm a manipulative liar without even meaning to be, everything I do or say is twisted around by others, or misinterpreted in ways I never expected, and it hurts to be viewed as such.  And it seems there's nothing I can do about it. If I try to defend myself, it gets thrown in my face that I'm bipolar, therefore, I'm not to be trusted...A popular saying amongst us beepers is that 'I'm full of broken thoughts that I can not repair", I'm prone to saying it myself because I feel so broken and lost so frequently. These thoughts I have, they can't be repaired, I can't fix anything there. I'm still here, lost, broken, alone, and you are not the person I thought you were.

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

I tear up here because if only I could do things differently, if I could just change the past, I would not have done the things I did, I would find a way to make things right. I would find a way, just like the lyrics say, I wouldn't make you hurt, I wouldn't make me hurt, I wouldn't let you down, I wouldn't lost that job, or say those things, or take those pills. I'd make it right, I'd make it right. My family wouldn't suffer, or have ever suffered because of me, I'd still have the friends I had, I wouldn't be so damn afraid of myself all the time. I would find a way.

Maybe this was a pointless post, how can I expect to touch someone with an emotion that I feel? How can I make you see that this is me, trapped in music's form? It's impossible. I almost want to delete this post and not share it because I don't think anyone will understand, but that's not my way. I want my innermost thoughts laid bare one day when I write my book, I should not be ashamed to share my innermost thoughts here either. So read away, and laugh if you want, or not. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Do you have music that moves you, that describes parts of you perfectly? I want to know what they are!

Day One: Why Do I Blog About This Stuff?

So why am I so passionate about bipolar disorder and decreasing stigma? Why am I so active in NAMI and the AFSP? Why do I continuously blog and spread the word about this disorder and it's far reaching consequences? The short answer is simple 'Because I can.", but the long answer is so much more than that.

As you know, I'm participating in the Ultimate Blog Challenge, and I've got 31 blogs that I need to come up with. I've written the beginning of my story before, and introduced myself, but I'm going to do it again here.

For those of you who don't know, I'm Tricia and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder about 8 years ago. Being bipolar cost me so many things, my job, my house, my kid, my family, that I hit rock bottom in 2005. I spent 6 weeks in a psychiatric ward trying to find some meaning in life and manage to carry on. I did find that meaning, kind of, by the time they released me, and I went to live with my parents.

This was the darkest time of my life, and I've blacked out so much about it. But as they say, the night is always darkest before the dawn, and my dawn came. It came in the form of New Year's Eve that year. I sat reflecting on my year and decided that it had been the worst possible year ever, and that no matter what, I was going to make 2006 a much better year. And something magickal happened. When I woke up on New Year"s Day, the dark hole I'd had in my heart had closed some, and I could see a light at the end of the deep tunnel I was in. The next day I went and got a job working at a nearby call center. I contacted my daughter's dad and informed him that I was going to start seeing my child again, whether he approved or not. I called my attorney to start seeing what my options were in dealing with the court system.

I made the decision to live again. It wasn't easy, and there were so many setbacks, but I eventually pulled through. I've had other setbacks since 2006, I've been hospitalized 5 times since then, but I've always pulled myself up by my bootstraps and gotten back on the horse called Life. It helps that I met my husband in 2007 and he's been the biggest and best support a woman could ask for. People with bipolar disorder do better when they have a stab;e family life and a good support system. I may not have many friends or feel that many people genuinely care about me, but I know my husband does, and it makes a huge difference in how well I do day-to-day.

So back to my original questions. I'm passionate about this topic because the best way for people to get help is to talk about what's going on in their lives to their doctor and seek treatment. Even in this day and age, many are afraid to seek treatment because of the stigma surrounding mental illness. I blog and share my story to hopefully show people that we're not all violent sociopaths who are shooting out schools or theatres. Most of us live normal, quiet everyday lives and go about our day as best we can. I'm involved with NAMI and the AFSP to give hope to those who are still in their darkest moments and need to see that the lights will come eventually.

I want to be a beacon of hope to all who struggle with mental illness, and if I can show people that I'm not ashamed of who I am, then they shouldn't be either. We've just got to keep talking about mental illness. We've got to talk about suicide prevention. We've got to make it a topic that people don't cringe away from and that people sweep under the rug because it's too taboo. Once talking about mental illness is normalized, then maybe people will be more willing to seek treatment. Maybe more people will be willing to share their story like I'm doing. Maybe there will be more people like me, who with the right meds and a good therapist, live a semi-normal life.

I've never been the type of person to just sit on the sidelines and passively watch things go by. If I've been passionate about something, you are going to find me in the thick of things, trying to make changes and do what I can to help. And that's really what this blog is about. It's trying to help people. It's also trying to help me, I use this blog as a therapeutic outlet just as much as I use it to educate people. I hope my blog is doing both things equally well.

What are you passionate about? Are there any organizations or causes that you're involved in because of events in your life? Please share your story in the comments below.