Indecision

  

Life presents us all with choices. We have to start deciding things from the moment we're born until the moment we die. One thing that we all struggle with is the choice of what to do with our lives-where our careers will take us. 

Often, people with bipolar disorder have a severe impediment in choosing a career. Manic phases create delusions of grandeur, such as doctorates and outlandish goals, and depressive phases crush those dreams. When the next manic phase hits, the same thing happens, but often with a different career choice or delusion. Losing interest and motivation makes keeping a job often very difficult, and, in some cases, impossible. That may not seem like it makes sense to a lot of people-the phrase "Suck it up" comes to mind-but it's not a simple loss of motivation on a temporary basis. 

We all have that-it's called Monday-but this is a little different. It's a lot more severe. It's more like an inability to stand up and force yourself to continue. Think about pushing against a cardboard box. Easy enough, right? Well, turn that into a brick wall and things change, don't they? That's an accurate description for this. It's not being lazy, it's not a choice. I think this is one of the most common misconceptions people have. Sure, there's lots of lazy people out there, and it can be difficult to tell the difference, but it's important to know that there is one.

The Loss of a Legend

Today, I learned that we lost legendary comedian and actor, Robin Williams, to apparent suicide. Robin struggled with bipolar disorder for the majority of his life. I'm active on Facebook and have seen some rather ignorant posts about how "He took the easy way out" or "He lead a charmed life, why would he do this?" These comments hit hard, and hit way too close to home.

Recently, I was voluntarily hospitalized for suicidal ideations. Why would I want to hurt or kill myself? I have a great family, I have a great life, why end it? Well, here's the facts that don't make sense to most people. I didn't want to. I don't want to. I never really did. So how did I end up coming moments away from ending my life if I didn't want to? The mind of someone with bipolar disorder is a strange thing. Sometimes, we act through a seemingly outside force. It's as though I'm standing on a nice, pretty cliff, looking at the scenery. Someone comes up and says jump. Well, I don't want to, I say, so I don't. This mysterious stranger starts to push, starts to shove. Sometimes, people fall. They don't fall because they're weak-no, they're often much stronger people than most anyone else. Saying they took the "easy way out" is an absolute ignorant and idiotic insult to throw at them. They fall because that mysterious stranger was stronger than they were. By saying they took the easy way out, those comments belittle the strength and resolve those people showed in the most personal battle of all, one that nobody else can see. It's not that they want to, it's that they're being compelled to and pushed over the edge by that mysterious stranger. The next time you hear of someone committing suicide out of the blue, remember Genie being freed from the lamp. After a nearly lifelong battle with bipolar disorder, Robin Williams is now free from his lamp, free of that mysterious stranger. Thank you, Robin, for your contributions to the film and mental illness world, showing that someone with mental illness can achieve greatness.

If you could, please visit www.nami.org and donate $5 in his honor. It would mean a lot to a lot of people. Thank you.

Image credit to: http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32000000/Robin-Williams-robin-williams-32089651-1996-3000.jpg

Warp speed

During high phases, I have had some issues with my mind racing. I don't mean in the same way as the "A million thoughts" post. I mean in ways I've never experienced. It races so hard that I have zero control over what it os I say. It's like my mind is on so many channels that it feels like static. Basically, it's too much information to pick out any one thought or idea. Or anything, really. In fact, it causes me to literally think myself into a migraine. During these points, I can't form a clear train of thought, similar to a child's first few paragraphs in school. I start talking about a photograph I want to talk about, and in two sentences, I've landed on NASA-not a part of the intended conversation.

The worst part of this is that I've even said some things that have hurt people, not intentionally, that I regret. While I admit they are not my fault, I recognize that I did say them and that I need to take responsibility for my actions and words. It's not fun to have no control over what you do, but the worst part is by far seeing how those unintentional actions effect others.

Different

Today, we're doing something a little more upbeat. It's been said and documented that people with bipolar disorder tend to be, on average, more creative and perhaps more artistic. This could explain the number of bipolar actors in Hollywood-Jim Carrey and Robin Williams, for example. I feel like it helps extract the creative side in me, perhaps helps to let me see things differently on a regular basis. It has given me a lot of inspiration for photos, such as the still life seen in "I'm Free," along with countless other less dark shots clogging up my hard drive.

This shot intrigued me because the light falls on just that one little sprout, and not just any sprout-this sprout is a little different. Sometimes, the spotlight falls on someone that isn't the stereotypical prom king or queen. To quote Sesame Street, "Sometimes, it's the differences that make the difference."

Jump

I've touched on this topic before, but there's a lot more to it. Suicide is one of the least understood acts a person can commit. Those with no history of suicidal ideations or attempting it often can't grasp the motivations behind it.

I've heard it time and time again: suicide is "cowardly," "I don't understand-it makes no sense," or "there was no reason for him to do it." Well, to someone who has never experienced the seemingly unprovoked thoughts, not being able to make sense of it is understandable. In this photo, someone might see a gate or a good vantage point over the city (it's 7 stories up, one of the taller structures in the area), but to someone who's having suicidal thoughts, it's a place to jump off if the need arises. Contrary to belief, those thoughts just kind of appear, completely unprovoked. At times, they can be dismissed, but look at this photo a little more. Notice your eye being drawn to the gate. That's kind of what starts to happen-slowly these thoughts start to take control and can't just be brushed away. It's almost as though you've lost control of your own mind, and can even end up unexpectedly driving someone to attempt even if there are no other outward signs. The worst part: those thoughts can pop up at the most random times. Sometimes all it takes is seeing something the right way, like this gate, to conjure up thoughts about what death is like or what it would feel like gliding through the air on my way to a particularly solid landing, knowing what is going to happen.

I would like to end on this thought: even if it seems like he or she had no reason to jump, or they had everything going for them, there was a reason. There were signs. A lot of people can't talk about their problems with suicidal thoughts due to the fear of stigmatization, losing their job, or being pushed away by their families. I ask you reading this to do me a favor: if you have a friend or loved one you suspect is dealing with suicide in any way, shape, or form, reach out to them-don't push them away, and don't punish them. They may not be able to help it, and may need your help more than you even realize.

Given up

Depression has some very well known costs, such as suicidal thoughts and social withdrawal, but there's one symptom that's rarely discussed: loss of interest. Every one of these objects either is or represents something I've given up. The car represents two things: model building and racing. I've given up on photography quite a few times, but I've always come back to it. Unfortunately, music didn't meet the same fate-I don't feel inspired with an instrument in my hands anymore, and haven't for a very long time. Also, given my experiences with depression, giving up firearms (that's a BB gun) was probably a good idea.

It's a fairly predictable cycle. During hypomanic phases, I have a tendency to take on new projects, new delusions of grandeur, or find a new hobby. I would pour my heart into it at first, putting it ahead of things I really shouldn't put a hobby ahead of. But each time I'd go through a depressive phase, I would come out with less and less interest in my hobbies. Eventually, I'd feel so uninspired that they began to feel more like work and less like hobbies. When that happened, I put down the trumpet, the guitar, the dreams of being an aviator, the camera, the baseball bat, the guns and left the drag strip, and, with the exception of the camera, never picked them up again. Luckily, with medication, I don't think this will be a problem again.

On a side note, bipolar disorder itself is known to induce a creative streak in people. That's probably part of the reason I find photography (particularly film-this image was done with one of my film cameras) to be a good release, and why I was drawn to music. That's another topic for another post, I think.

Solitary nonconfinement

Often, some of the external symptoms, like endless and inappropriate talking with hypomania and excessively depressing commentary with depressive states, can push others who don't understand away. Throw that on top of the stigma that mental illness very wrongly carries, and you have a recipe for being quite alone. One look at today's photo should give a pretty clear idea of what I mean. The rocks symbolize a wall that gets built after years of losing friends and relationships and unintentionally pushing people away. For me, it became an automatic defense-be crazy and nobody will come close, so I wouldn't have to endure people walking out. Snow and ice can be the inhospitable environment created by the stigma that all of us with mental illnesses face on some level.

Stigma is one of my biggest irritants. Sure, there's little jokes here and there, and I'm not THAT thin skinned, but the fact of the matter is people just don't understand and so many just don't care to. Worse than that, there's the segment that assume that mental illness makes an individual either a bad, immoral person, or incapable of raising children. If you're reading this, do me, your friends, your neighbors, and maybe even your significant other, a favor and take a moment to try and get into the mindset of someone suffering from mental illness. The majority of people suffering from one (even depression is characterized as a mental illness) don't even realize they are. I'm lucky that I have someone who knew to send me to get help, but not everyone does.

Seeing things

One of the more worrisome symptoms I've been noticing lately has been hallucinations. No, these aren't dragons coming down from the sky or flaming skulls coming out of the kitchen with sandwiches or unicorns. These are different. They're little movements I see in my peripheral vision. Imagine a mouse suddenly moves from a standstill, and you see it out of the corner of your eye. Now imagine you see this, but there's no mouse, and nothing there to cause that little flittering motion. It keeps happening a few times a minute when in one position. In today's photo, we see some lightning bolt looking things in the corners. These are issues with the film. Much like the little movements, they're not real, and weren't captured by the camera. Take a nice, long look at this photo, and imagine that those aren't really there-you're imagining them, your mind is playing tricks on you. Kinda freaky, isn't it? To say the least, this is one of the most unsettling little things I've been dealing with as of late. If those movements aren't real, what else am I imagining? I may never know.

Forgotten

This car has quite obviously suffered some damage. It's been sitting in a lot for a while, forgotten, left behind, because of that front end damage. Other than that, the car is in fairly decent shape, though the extent of the damage is unknown.

Due to the ups and downs of bipolar, I often had problems socially interacting with others. Basically, I often found myself left behind and forgotten in social activities because of it. I relate it to the car this way: Just like the car's been left to rust away because of the damage, I was left alone because of the social impediments of bipolar disorder.

The Blender

This photo has a rather dreamlike quality to it with the way the red flower blends so well into the blurred background. With bipolar disorder, at times it's quite difficult to pay proper attention to things, similar to attention deficit disorder. When attention is not applied properly, the information available doesn't make it to the first stage of memory, and therefore doesn't get stored. If something does get stored, often only tiny bits of it do, so much to the point that long expanses of time turn into one big blur, blending together without an ability to separate the events and get a proper timeline or even a complete picture of an event.

High school is a particularly good example of the blended concept. I have little memory of a lot of it, and what I do have memories of are rather difficult to place in time. The same thing happened with college. The two seem like massive blurs with little chronologically disorganized tidbits here and there. My childhood is another example, with very, very few memories that are complete and make sense. There are very few big events I have complete memories of, but the ones that do I do everything I can to hold on to. This may explain the previous post entitled "Stuck in the Past," where I discussed difficulties letting go of artifacts from my childhood.

Distracted

Initially, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and a lot of people with it will relate to this post. When I look at this photo, I see the beautiful flower, but I can't help but be distracted by the streaking caused by a bad seal in the camera's film magazine. No matter how much I want to concentrate on the flower, it's incredibly difficult not to be distracted by that bright white streak. This effect is quite similar to everyday life during hypomanic episodes. No matter how much I want to concentrate on something, just about everything else acts like those streaks. This is what caused a lot of my issues with school work/homework. It's not like I wasn't trying to sit and concentrate-believe me, I was-but as with the streaks, everything else was just overwhelming. I remember that music helped extend my attention span, but even that didn't entirely work.

Grinding gears

The brain is a very complex and fragile instrument, much like this watch. There's lots of gears and springs and little parts, and if something is slightly out of adjustment, the whole thing can come to a grinding halt. Consider bipolar disorder like grains of sand in there. Sometimes, they're contained and not doing any damage; they just kind of sit there. Other times, the grains get kicked up and lodge in the gears and bring everything to a stop. This has been the case with a lot of my hobbies and interests over the years. I used to be a trumpet player, and a fairly good one at that. During a depressive phase, I gave up on it. The same goes for drag racing, building model kits, rocketry, playing guitar, and even photography, though I've come back to that. What happens is that I get into something wholeheartedly during a hypomanic phase (one of the symptoms of hypomania is grand ideas and starting major projects), then a few phases later, a major depressive phase hits, and I lose interest in what it was I was doing. That major depressive phase is the sand in the gears. It could stop me despite how determined I was to succeed at something.

On the flip side, the hypomanic phase can also put a wrench in things. The grand idea aspect got me chasing too many new projects to finish any of them. A good example would be with painting projects around the house. The trim in my dining room still needs to be finished. I have to paint the plaster above the stove. But the dining room is painted and the hole in the wall is patched. These were projects abandoned before I could complete them to work on the multitude of other projects and ideas I came up with, all of which are in the same state.

Stuck in the past

While the blocks belong to my son, the toys are all things from my childhood. That was one of my favorite toy planes. The yoyo (in the background) was an obsession in middle school. The nightlight is from the 1980s. I'm not sure if this is a part of bipolar disorder or not, but I've had an incredibly hard time letting go of things from my childhood. It's not like most people, who hang on to a couple things-it's bad. I've hung on to absolutely everything I have from my childhood, even if it's falling apart or tattered. It's not like I'm a hoarder, but I can't get rid of any of it. I've found that since starting medications, letting go has become a lot easier, so this may actually be attributable to bipolar disorder.

Reaching Out

One of the things that was hardest for me was reaching out for help. It took me over a decade to admit to anyone that I had attempted suicide. After I finally came to grips with my history with suicide, I realized it was time to reach out for help. The anthers of this flower took time to reach out from inside the petals, just like I took time to reach out for help. It was a difficult process, and wasn't easy for me to admit "oh, hey, maybe there's something wrong," but now having done it, life is finally on the up.

Making the admission that there is something wrong is one of the most difficult things a person can do, and while I believe in the help I've received, I don't think anyone can force someone to accept a diagnosis or help in general before they are ready. If you're reading this, have a diagnosis, and are having a problem accepting it, don't feel alone. There's many, many others out there like you, and lots of people understand exactly what you're dealing with.

Randomness

Randomness has always been a huge part of my life. I feel like this may be attributed to hypomania, if anything. I've always been incredibly random. For example, I could be talking about catalytic converters, and suddenly I need to talk about sofa cushions. And then to poodles. And then to the guitar that guy on TV has. Then we're off to how the color silver looks quite classy on an E46 BMW but falls flat on a Jaguar.

It has its pros and cons, of course. Pros would include being quite easily entertained and being able to converse about nearly anything. The biggest con would probably be staying on topic when necessary. Other people also think that I never shut up, which, admittedly, I don't. My randomness fills any gaps in conversations. Quiet is something that's hard to find with me, but then again, it just reflects what happens in my mind.

The Man Behind the Mask

One of the less desirable aspects of bipolar disorder is this sense of not knowing oneself. Due to the nature of the ups and downs, iterations of myself are plentiful. It can come across as disingenuous to others, and is quite frustrating being able to see that and not having control over it. The hardest part of all of this is knowing that I don't quite know who I am. I don't know what my dreams are, I don't understand my goals, I can't get a grasp on what it is I am because all of that is constantly changing. It's particularly difficult to find a direction, since I may choose something, but after years of hard work to get there, I'm a completely different person with completely different interests.

As of this moment, the medication is helping massively with the lows. The depressive symptoms are gone, destined to become a memory, which is a great start. Unfortunately, the hypomania is still quite present. It will take some time for me to be truly stable, and who I really am is still yet to be discovered. Hopefully it will happen soon, and this is a good start, but there's a ways to go.

Between the storms

One analogy I would like to connect with bipolar 2 is to weather a storm. With hypomania, it's a storm of thoughts and ideas and grand schemes. In the depressive phases, it's just dark and gloomy. But, as in this photo, there are breaks in the storm. There's moments in between the hypomania and the depression that allow clear, rational thinking, make day to day functioning fairly straightforward, and make life seem practically normal. I loved these moments. These were the moments when I could feel emotions that coincide with the dynamic environments of life as opposed to an all encompassing mood that casts a shadow over everything.

Once treated, life can be like one big "between the storm" with no new storm on the horizon. It can be done, and it's a massive relief. The knowledge that the next big storm was around the corner always cast a massive shadow over just about anything, and lifting that shadow is absolutely liberating.

The Fog

Often, I've found myself almost devoid of emotion. It's almost as though a fog has rolled in. Like the photo, there are feelings, but like the trees, they're muted to varying degrees. This doesn't seem so bad on its face, as it does soften the sting of more difficult moments, but where this goes wrong is in muting what should be happier times. Times that should be filled with happiness just... aren't. Fake smiles abound to create the impression nothing is wrong (which I didn't even know something was). Social awkwardness takes over. This was particularly difficult in my teen years, when things like popularity and image were important. It's also a royal pain in things like job interviews, when saying the right thing is a pretty big deal in making the right first impression.

Just around the corner

Bipolar disorder is a journey. It's a journey through ups, through downs, through long straight paths, and through switchbacks. Something different is often just around the corner. That may be hypomania, that may be crippling depression, or that may be a numbness and inability to feel. But keep in mind, that may also be hope. Keep on down the path-you may find the stability I have. You may not be able to see what's coming around the corner, but don't give up. It may be the answer you've been looking for. I turned the corner, and I can say thanks to my medications, I'm free.

Something in the way

There's something that isn't seen in this photo. Behind all that greenery is fantastic view of the Fox River. A lot of people with bipolar disorder have a problem seeing and achieving their goals due to the lack of focus or motivation. Just imagine sitting on that bench, seeing reality in front of you, knowing that behind it there's something much more majestic that you can't see, can't experience. For me, that was stability. I long theorized that something was wrong, and that there was a way to treat it, but I had no idea how to begin, how to get through that brush to see the river.