I think I have bipolar and only realised it this week, but am too scared to go the doctors to have this confirmed because I fear this may well push me over the edge.
Right now the suicide demons aren’t on top of me, but they aren’t too far off at the realisation of this new mental health condition sent to test me.
Am not sure that I can cope with this new awareness of sickness – or if I adopt a glass half full approach – “life challenge.”
It was my brother that asked me whether I thought I might have bipolar last week.
He knows about the condition because he has the manic depression diagnosis and all his adult life he’s had to live with it, and he is my unofficial twin because we are closest in age.
Me I’ve had other medical diagnosis labels throughout life that have shifted like the sands according to the tide.
Psychotic depressive, schizophrenic, personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder / unstable mood disorder.
It feels as though I am moving through some alternative monopoly board in life, and I’m trying to stay in the game, but it’s not been easy.
Got twin sisters both also diagnosed with hardcore life debilitating mental illness conditions.
One sister diagnosed schizophrenic, the other diagnosed as having the bipolar condition, both pretty much estranged from me and the family largely because of mental illness.
The schizophrenic sister, she was the last of us to crumble to the point mental health people got involved and I think she managed to hold out to her 40s before genes caught up with her.
Her twin sister wasn’t so lucky she got diagnosed and started the whole in and out of hospital thing in her late teens early twenties like our brother.
Me, I started early with the hospital stuff, but somehow was lucky not to make the hospital thing a habit in life, because the powers blessed me to manage to swerve that, for the most part.
However, this whole mental health thing has always been a thing.
Bit of a battle.
It is tough being a sibling to siblings with profound mental health conditions when one lives with a mental health condition oneself, or tries to while being a carer at the same time – and work.
Many many times over many years I have troubleshooted for my siblings with the mental health people so always there has been a window side seat view on their medical treatment plans and life.
I see their dreams and plans for life thrown off track because of biology maybe.
I watch the illness grip them from the early stages and progress and try and lead them to a place of safety to get treatment, many many times.
I hate hospitals.
I hate major tranquillisers, not been on those for decades, not since I was very young but still remember what it was like, and it was terrible, even though, maybe those times it probably helped save my life.
Liquid kosh, largactil / chlorapromzine, 450mg / 24 hours in my teens, Stelazine spanuals, stuff that fuggs up the brain, sometimes it would make me drool, at moments I remember those times it could be hard to climb stairs.
SSRIs, range of them, did those for decades sleeping pills tranquillisers at times in order to work the amount of stuff to accomplish that it was insane.
Burn out makes me leave work so I stop taking SSRIs and move to exercise as alternative.
I do sauna and swimming and gym and that seriously works / worked but I have not worked as in been employed since this burn out thing made me leave work and I would like to be able to get back to work.
I have been trying but everybody tells me to stop applying for jobs and tend to my health and I say, no this label stuff wont define me, I am more than an illness label that shifts though sands.
Normally it is the doctor that gives me a diagnosis, this time it is my brother who gives me this latest diagnosis when he asked me in the garden whether I thought I had the same illness as his – bipolar.
He asked me this question last week and I know I’m not right, not been right for a while and things are getting worse, can’t eat, can’t sleep, losing weight, can’t bathe, can’t brush my hair, can’t see my friends, just hide from life lately, for a long time and the rage is off the chain it scares me.
I scare myself because I can’t predict my behaviour around other people.
I wake up feeling rage.
Today my brain started shifting to plans which is a seriously bad sign but the whole thing this time is triggered by the real knowledge that my brother is right in his diagnosis.
It is funny he realise it before me, because I’ve seen my symptoms reflected back to me previously by my siblings when they have been manic.
Amen, right now am not psychotic but I sit there today in a field and pondered the real possibility that psychosis is coming for me if I don’t go to the doctors, but I do not wish them to confirm my fears of biology that I too have this illness.
Bipolar doesn’t seem like a good upgrade from Borderline Personality Disorder the future does not look bright.
I’ve always feared going mad like my siblings and losing touch with reality and now that is a real possibility but the option of medication, anti psychotics from how I remember them, this is why suicide starts to make sense again to me.
So it is Catch 22, if I go to the doctors they could save me, if I tell them what I think they know, but have not told me, what I already have.
Probably they didn’t tell me before because they feared how I would react to this diagnosis because of my siblings, because they have seen me step in for them before and because of how this has impacted on my health – stress, blah blah blah.
Working and trying to look out for my siblings and their mental health impacted my mental health over the years.
I am terrified of medics confirming what I already know of this diagnosis because of where my siblings are in life, I know there is no sugar coating to this.
Suicide starts to seem like a rational choice, considering prognosis.
Amen me and my siblings elected never to have kids.
Happy anniversary death day dad diagnosis arrive right on time only brother deliver it to me.
Serendipity.