I am bipolar, but my Recovery is not.
Deep down I knew addiction was only a symptom for me, the smoke of a slowly and painfully smoldering fire; a fire that risked becoming an inferno any time I felt something more than nothing. Addiction was the cracked facade of my metaphorical estate that hid the rotting wooden beams that held the whole thing together.
When I was 16, fresh out of an inpatient stay, a kindly Jewish doctor told me I was bipolar. In his solarium, surrounded by lovingly tended houseplants, I told myself that he was wrong, and incapable of caring for anything. I spent the next 19 years of my life alternately ignoring this diagnosis, or using it as an example of how broken the medical system could be.
I ignored the patterns that were always there, the screams nestled in the recesses of my brain, screams of memories that I had buried begging to be remembered so that I could move on with my life and heal.
Night after night my racing thoughts focused on nothing, because I feared if they focused on something I might just see how broken I really am.
I think back now to the self I miss when I was using, the gregarious, loving, friendly, funny self that was finally seen. The self I am unsure was me, the drugs, or a simple bout of hypomania. I was consumed by the joy that came too fast and burnt out too quickly, and I was wasted by the depressions that could last entire seasons.
I was not sick, I was not an addict, I was just a complicated man … right?
Now I am 35 and more complicated. I am studying for my master’s in social work. I am learning how to diagnose. My eyes glaze over the material on bipolar II. This is something I know, am familiar with, and will not receive.
However, my years are catching up to me. The PTSD is becoming unbearable, and I need help because the flashbacks keep forcing me back to the cocoon of my couch. I am understanding that I can no longer live day to day without a serious professional intervention; that after countless dozens of cycles of thinking I would be better only to wind up worse have dug me into a hole.
I sign up for EMDR therapy. I go to the intake. I am diagnosed with bipolar II …
I agree.
I go to the DSM-5 TR to prove her wrong, though I know in my heart she is right. My eyes glaze over the material on bipolar II, as it is something I know, something I am familiar with, and something I have received against my will. As the symptoms entered my consciousness, the memories of them resurfaced from my childhood, my teens, my adulthood …yesterday.
The highs and lows I had explained away, the moods that could not regulate, the chaos lying under the surface that caused me to turn on the ones I loved the most and treat them like I treat myself, all came back in a wave that drowned me for days before I could accept them.
I already have chronic PTSD — not just from the trauma of mental illness itself but from the years of active addiction, surviving unsurvivable things and losing friends we thought immortal because they survived right alongside us. I am accustomed to quieting a brain I could not understand, and fear that now I have to quiet a brain that I do.
The unpredictable landscape of my life and never knowing what version of myself I would wake up to is preferable to a predictable life and a version of me crafted in the forges of antipsychotic medications. PTSD can be addressed outside this medication. I’m not sure bipolar II can.
As memories of my inconsistent life flash before my eyes without my consent and with terminal consistency, there is one memory that shows up everywhere since it has entered my life: Recovery.
It is the thing I never let go of, even when I couldn’t hold on to anything else. No matter how severe my symptoms, no matter how dark my thoughts, no matter how distracting my hypomania, I held on.
In fact, it doesn’t even feel right to type that. It would be better to say that Recovery Held On To Me.
I could not quit because recovery drilled into me holistically, emotionally, physically and spiritually, that there is hope.
I wouldn’t be able to address my diagnosis without the healing that recovery brought me. I wouldn’t be able to address my diagnosis without the people I was able to attract and retain in my life because of Recovery. Without the tools I learned to stay in Recovery.
Recovery is the ground beneath my feet. It is the cosmic force that kept me alive long enough to face the truth. It infused me with the hope I need to heal.
I have been running from the truth since I was a teenager. I have been running towards Recovery ever since I saw it open its arms and beckon.
Acceptance is never easy and rarely permanent. I grieve my brain and the future I once saw where I could live a normal life once I got this PTSD in check. The relief I have gained in having a language to understand who I am and why I am the way that I am is a bittersweet salve for the wound of being this way in the first place.
However, there are 3 immutable truths that I have learned from this very painful and ongoing experience:
My God loves me.
The people I love, love me back.
And I will always have Recovery.
The first two points are true because I learned the third.
My subconscious is on the road to healing and nothing can stop it, and I know because my mind has tried everything to stop it and that has not worked.
I will always strive toward healing.
Even when I do not want to.
Even when I am exhausted.
Even when I am afraid.
I am bipolar, but my Recovery is not.
By Contributor: Andrew Littlefield
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