"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." *

About seven years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I don't remember exactly when, but sometime before Thanksgiving of 2005. I remember because I was in the hospital, again, on Thanksgiving of that year eating beef and noodles for dinner. I have spent an Easter in the hospital for depression, and Thanksgiving as an inpatient for bipolar. They are odd holidays to be hospitalized for feeling so down you want to die: a holiday of hope and new beginnings, and a holiday of reflection and gratitude.

Just over six years ago, I moved home to Texas from Indiana. I couldn't hold a full-time job there, my husband was leaving me to come to Texas for marital counseling, and being up there alone to figure things out didn't seem to make sense. My parents said, "Come home." And I did.

Five years ago, I started a part-time job at Cracker Barrel. It's part-time not just because they don't really offer full time positions much, but also because some weeks working too much can trigger bipolar symptoms and some months I need time off to deal with med changes or other issues from the bipolar. Still, I've worked there for five full years and have received my first pin -- given at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years. Much as I like my coworkers and like my job, though, I don't want to get my 10-year pin.

Three and a half years ago, a friend challenged me with the question: "What are your passions? Do you have still have any anymore? What is it you really want to do with your life?"

My most fulfilling and rewarding job, of all that I have had over the past 17 years, has been writing. I loved being a newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. It was a small town paper, published three days a week, but I loved almost all of it. I got burned out because I was manic and didn't know it (pre-diagnosis), was having severe marital and family problems, and quit to do something I thought would make more money but couldn't do well as it turned out. I've always been a writer of some kind, though. I loved English and essays and research papers in school. I loved some of the freelance articles I did on the side at the paper. I am prolific in emails, online support boards, in blogs, and in Facebook. I spend so much of my time communicating with others via the written word.

To be questioned about my passion reminded me of all of that. Writing is my passion. It is the thing I find most challenging, most interesting, most rewarding even now.

So three years ago, I went back to school. I enrolled in the online program at Southern New Hampshire University. I started out as an English Language and Literature major, then switched to a Creative Writing with a Non-Fiction Specialty major. I have enough hours that I will have my minor still in English.

What will I do with a degree? I will write. I will write for myself. I will write to be published. I will continue with what I've been doing on the side. I may go back to working for a newspaper. Some say that newspapers are dying, which is true. But news is not. And someone has to write what you read about online or hear about on television. Maybe I will write for a magazine. Those are as much online as in print now, too, but people are still reading them. And I will write to continue to educate people about bipolar and other mental health issues.

Seven years ago, I thought I was worthless and beyond redemption as far as any meaningful contribution to society was concerned. Six yeas ago, I was in a safe place and working on recovering from all that my mind and emotions had put me through in the ten years previous. Five years ago, I was finally able to re-enter the workforce and start contributing to my family. Three years ago, I started planning a future.

Now, with only four and a half classes left to take for my Bachelor's, I'm setting my sights on a Master's degree...also in Creative Writing. Never before have I even considered such a thing and now it sounds not only possible, but plausible. I have talked with my advisor, met the new Master's advisor via phone, and have all the information I need to start planning for 2014 and beyond.

Will I get a job at a paper? Will I work for one of my favorite magazines? Will I be a freelancer and get my work published all over the place in different venues? Will I end up teaching other writers as they start their own education and careers?

That part remains to be seen. But I'm pretty much determined that I will be off disability, out of Cracker Barrel (though it has been very good to me and for me), and working in my degree field before 2016.

* Nelson Mandela

"Life is a train of moods..." *

I only remember that he said he had a diagnosis finally. This was odd because I thought we knew the diagnosis. After all, this was my fourth time in the hospital in about one year’s time – always with severe depression that didn’t seem to respond to treatment, always with violent images in my head of hurting myself, always with freakish visions of devilish faces leering at me.

Everything that I’d read about bipolar disorder indicated to me that mania was a huge part of the illness, and that people with mania were out having a hell of a lot more fun than I ever did. They blew scads of money, made crazy decisions, did outrageous things. Sure, I’d given a thousand dollars to a man I’d met once so he could move to Indiana to marry me. Sure, he was an ex-con with some serious issues. (I was convinced he had or would overcome them.) Sure, I had weeks where I averaged only 3-4 hours of sleep a day. Sure I left a good career and went in to a completely foreign job for no good reason. But I wasn’t promiscuous, doing drugs, drinking, or anything glamorous. Where did the shrink get the idea I was bipolar?

When Dr. Ishak told me the diagnosis, I went cold. Angry cold. Terrified cold. I shut down. I asked to be excused. I went to my hospital room sobbing. I wanted to scream. I was angry but didn’t know who with. I asked the nurses for a Sharpie. Surprisingly, they gave me one. Maybe they figured the damage I could do with a Sharpie would be minimal.

I took the Sharpie back to my room and did two things. I made a sign that said, “No Visitors. No phone calls. NOBODY.” I taped it to my door and shut it firmly. I didn’t want anyone in my circle of family and friends to learn the horrible truth. I needed time to process alone. Then I drew a railroad track on my depression-grey men’s t-shirt I’d brought to sleep in. I drew a giant train barreling down the track – straight out of my chest and going away from myself. I wrote “Bipolar Express” on it. If I could have drawn a reasonable Tom Hanks conductor, I would have.

I put the shirt on, then sat down to cry – uninterrupted except for one tech checking on me occasionally. I cried as if my life were ending. Because it was. What if being bipolar meant that I was crazy? What about all the hilarious times I had when I was with my friends? What if all those creative stories and poems and columns I’d written when I couldn’t sleep were just some manic mumblings and weren’t all that great anyway? What if we treated the bipolar and I couldn’t write anymore? Couldn’t have fun anymore? What if no one liked the sane me that I would likely be medicated in to?

Killing the depression was one thing. I longed for that. But bipolar meant that something else was wrong…that even the good times might just be chemicals misfiring and get medicated away.

Truth be told, that happened.

I’ve been on medication that took away all my motivation. Left me lifeless and emotionless. Zapped my creativity. Not depressed, but not happy, either. I have been written up at work because “you don’t seem to care about anything.” I had to request a med change then because it was true. I didn't laugh as much. It was years before I could write again.

It took patience and support from my family, multiple discussions with a long line of psychiatrists and counselors, and lots of study and research on my part about the disorder to get where I am today. I left the ex-con. I moved home. Mostly stable now, I am in school and employed part-time. I’m not bringing home the big bucks and not able to risk my stability with the kind of high pressure jobs I had in the past; but I laugh, I have friends, and I have the kind of fun sane people have.
I’m writing again, too.

It’s good having the Bipolar Express on the right track.


* Ralph Waldo Emerson

"...A flibbertigibbet, a will-o'-the-wisp, a clown." *

In "The Sound of Music", the nuns have a difficult time describing the young novitiate Maria. She wants to be a nun, she wants to be good, she wants to do well, but...well...she's young, inexperienced, unconventional, and she (can you believe it?) sings in the abbey!

In trying to find one word to describe this confusing, yet charming, being, the nuns come up with "flibbertigibbet", "will-o'-the-wisp", and "clown".

So what were the nuns actually saying about Maria? According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flibbertigibbet), they thought she was a "silly, flighty person." Ouch. Silly and flighty. Easily distracted. Jumping from thought to thought, and none of those very profound.

What about "will-o'-the-wisp"? Back to the dictionary, which says this: "a delusive or elusive goal". Let's just skip the fact that Maria is a person, and not a goal, why is she delusive and/or elusive? Is it because the nuns aren't able to think the way she thinks, see the way she sees, sense the way she senses, feel the way she feels? That's only delusive (delusional?) from their point of view. I'm sure she makes perfect sense inside herself. At least most of the time.

And finally there is that word "clown". Here things really go downhill for Maria. Merriam-Webster has all of this to say about that:

  

          1: farmer, countryman

          2: a rude ill-bred person : boor

          3 a: a fool, jester, or comedian in an entertainment (as a play); specifically:  a     

             grotesquely dressed comedy performer in a circus b: a person who habitually

             jokes and plays the buffoon

Since the majority of the nuns seemed little amused by Maria's apparent antics, it appears to me they thought of her as rude and ill-bred in manners and decorum. Maybe some just thought she was altogether foolish. She didn't mean to be out of place, yet she was.

Some of the nuns disdained Maria for her differences. Some loved her in spite of them. It wasn't until late in the story, however, that she was loved and accepted simply because she was Maria.

I know many of the words people have used to describe me in my life. "Crazy" (generally in a good way, sometimes in a bemused way). "Different" (always in with a suspicious look in my direction). "Funny" (my favorite). "Molly Motormouth" (from Mom, when I wouldn't stop talking) or "blabbermouth" (from people who weren't quite as well-meaning in wanting me to calm down and be quiet).

There were people who thought I was "hyper". There were people who just didn't want to be around me because I was "unusual", I "stood out", I didn't "fit in", and I "didn't make sense."

As far as I know, though, no one ever made up a song about me, and I am quite sure there is no musical in the making about my "crazy, different, funny" life.

This much is true, however: after having symptoms that even I did not know were symptoms for pretty much my entire life, I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2005. I had been in a pretty manic cycle for several years then hit a depression that I couldn't shake. I ended up dealing with visual hallucinations both inside and outside my head, and finally wound up hospitalized six times in 15 months while meds were tried and adjusted.

From 2000 to 2004, I was a reporter/editor/photographer/columnist for my hometown newspaper. When I was manic, I had little need for sleep (or just flat out couldn't sleep). My columns were funny. My friends and I laughed deep and long. People I worked with outside my job found me amusing (at least a few did, anyway; I know there were plenty that just wished I'd go away). When I was depressed, my columns were filled with deep thoughts and observations. My columns were written weekly, and I almost never had difficulty writing them. The ideas just flowed for me. The words appeared sometimes as if by magic. I would edit to make things make better sense, to make my column fit in the allotted space, and to tighten my writing. But it wasn't hard.

When the doctor told me my diagnosis during my fourth hospitalization, I was furious! I was scared it meant I wasn't really funny...really engaging...really liked. That maybe my creativity was just some freak combination of chemicals, lack of sleep, and yes, craziness. If we treated the bipolar, would I become boring? Would I lose my friends? Would I not be able to write anymore?

The joy of modern medicine (and the fact that it is still called "practicing medicine") means that sometimes being treated has made the answer to all those questions:"Yes." 

Quick quips and banter, long my hallmark, fell by the wayside as I negotiated the wilderness of learning what medicines worked and which ones didn't.

Some friends and acquaintances backed away because I'm not-so-quiet about my diagnosis (love me, or leave me, I say).

Worst of all, writing became difficult and burdensome, then non-existant. Finally even reading became too much.

Some meds sedated me so much that I lost all personality, all sense of caring about anything, all motivation. Others did nothing for me, and the mania and the depression broke through again, wreaking havoc. For now, I'm on a regimen of meds that means very little break-through symptoms which makes my life much more comfortable.

Most of all though, this regimen doesn't steal my creativity. The ideas may not flood my mind like they used to (and that's actually a small blessing), but the seeds are there and they grow. The words don't just appear...sometimes I have to dig through my mind, my thesaurus, whatever...just to find what I want. And that can just be regular words like "foot" or "pencil". Forget describing someone as a "flibbertigibbet" or a "will-o'-the-wisp".

One thing I have discovered, however, since the diagnosis was made, is that a diagnosis is just a diagnosis. A person is still a person. I am still me. Maria was just Maria. Ephemeral? Leaping from thought to thought? Overly happy or exuberant? Sometimes. Maybe not the best behaved? Well, there's that, too.

But like Maria, I know that some will disdain me or be suspicious of me for my bipolar. Some will accept me in spite of my bipolar. And others, those lovely others who make life worth living, will (and do) accept me just because I'm me.

May we all have a von Trapp cheering section with us...in word and in deed...as we go through our lives with our various differences.

* "Maria", from "The Sound of Music" (Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II)