![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mental illness awareness day
I see that February first is supposed to be a day to talk about mental illness, so I figured I'd talk about mine. Bipolar II, lifelong.
It's one of the less dramatic mental illnesses, I suppose. I don't hear voices, or lose track of reality, or black out, or make incredibly dumb spontaneous choices, or backstab people who thought they were friends. On a day-to-day basis, I seem like a pretty normal guy, and, on a day-to-day basis, I am.
But I'm a couple weeks out from being forty-four, and I've never held down a full-time job for more than a couple months, because I can't. I've never finished college, because I can't. Bipolar II has seriously curtailed my life.
I think most people who knew me in high school can attest that I'm not unusually stupid or unusually incompetent. I was seriously socially awkward and weird in high school and college, but in ways that most people found amusing and not particularly offensive, mostly. I mean, I can definitely think of specific times where I acted problematically, but not significantly more than any other socially inept nerd. I think I appeared to be headed for a completely normal life, with a decently-paying job of some sort, a family, normal stuff.
But there were definitely things which had Gone Seriously Wrong at points in my life -- a year when I was unable to enter a school building, for instance. I got a lot of support from my family, partially because my mother had gone through something similar, so my immediate and extended family shrugged it off as a thing which happens -- sometimes a kid just freaks out and can't go to school, and so has to go to the library and teach themselves for a year. And I pretty much did, and I pretty much did okay doing so -- but, looking back, that wasn't a great sign.
There were months I couldn't accomplish anything, ever since I was a teenager.
In high school, my grades were weird. I've said that you could recreate my high school transcript by taking a six-sided die, and writing A, B, C, D, F, Incomplete on the sides, and just rolling it. Ignoring subject, or difficulty. Or how I'd done the previous term. At graduation, there were actually several of us who were either going to not graduate or graduate as part of the National Honors Society, and it wasn't clear which one. But most of the other people in that category had been having weird things going on in their lives at the time, and I had been coming out of a completely normal home life with no disruptions. The only thing that was wrong with me was me.
I got to college on the strength of that I do well on standardized tests, rather than my transcript. Brandeis overlooked my terrible high school grades, and let me in, and I'm happy for that. I didn't get that much out of the classes, since I rarely went, but the people I met are still important to me today. Including my wife, who is the only reason I'm not a homeless bum.
I would always do well for a month or so, then get hit by a depressive episode. During a depressive episode, I can't function. I can't explain it, and I always thought it was a moral failing, and it FEELS like a moral failing. But, if it's a moral failing, why does it hit in a cyclical pattern? If I'm lazy, why does it come and go? And why is it somewhat treatable by medication?
I am deeply grateful for a question Rich Pacheko asked me at one point when we were in our late twenties or early thirties: why am I not successful at anything? Because I SHOULD be. I am reasonably smart, reasonably personable. I learn things reasonably well. Indeed, I may be above average in a lot of those things, but I had trouble managing to keep a job as a second-shift gas station/convenience store clerk. I'm not saying that "convenience store clerk" is necessarily an easy job, but it's definitely a job that many people are capable of doing, and that, externally, you'd think I'd be able to do. And that became a question I had to face.
And I could. For a couple months. And then the cycle hit, and I kept calling in sick because I couldn't get out of the house, sometimes, not even out of bed. The sine qua non of having a job is actually showing up for it, and I couldn't.
Because, I originally thought, I was morally deficient. But, by that time, I had been dealing with it long enough that I had to accept that this was genuinely medical.
Lis helped, a lot. I don't deserve her, but that's okay, because marriage isn't about deserving the other person -- it's about helping each other out. The bit which I don't understand is that, during those times, I WASN'T helping her out, but she was willing to put in the work to help me get to be at least a net benefit to her, so long as I was also doing whatever I could to put in the work to become a net benefit to her. Except, "whatever I could" was often not very much. Somehow, she put up with me, recognized when I was putting in the limited work I could, recognized when I wasn't, and somehow got me to where I am: a net benefit to Lis's life, even if I'm not as MUCH of a benefit as a healthy person would be.
She deserves someone healthier than I am, but she's stuck with me for over half our lives anyway, and has decided that the way that she will get the healthier-than-I-am person she deserves is to push me to be healthier.
And I am healthier. But I'm not healthy. The meds help, a lot. The therapy helps, a lot. Doing the amount of work that I can manage to do helps, a lot. But I'm still sick, and I'm still not able to do the kind of work that I could have expected to be doing in my mid-forties.
My friends are doctors, lawyers, programmers, authors, artists, chefs, mechanics, engineers, researchers, plumbers, and generally very good at their jobs. All jobs with a lot of skill, all jobs which are hard, all jobs that take a lot of work to learn how to do.
And I SHOULD have been able to do a similar amount of work to get good at SOMETHING. But I'm not good at anything. I'm okay at a ridiculous number of things -- I can cook, shoot, pick locks, do first aid, build things, repair things, play guitar, sing, teach, program computers, write, research, massage, develop molecular cocktails, brew and distill, grow food -- all sorts of things. But none of them quite well enough to make a living at it, because I can only focus on learning something for a couple months. Whatever I can learn in a couple months, I can do; after that, a downturn hits, and I'm out of it. And sometimes I can go back and pick up another couple months, but mostly I can't. So I am not even a jack of all trades -- I'm somewhere around a five of all trades. But a LOT of trades.
And that's because I have a mental illness, which has chopped my life into two or three month chunks. With incapacity between those chunks. Medication and training has helped me lengthen those chunks and reduce the length of time of that incapacity, and even be able to manage very basic tasks during the incapacitated times. And I am deeply grateful for all of that, and deeply grateful to all the people who have supported me in getting that far.
But I am mentally ill, and, unless there is a medical breakthrough, I expect to be mentally ill for my whole life. I can manage the illness, with help, but I can't cure it.
That's disappointing, and it also hurts that I'm forty-four with nothing to show for it, and that I will die without any particular legacy. I won't have a business, or a body of writing, a scientific discovery, or children. I can be useful in the world, but only in a support role. I can help other people, and that's good, and I'm grateful for the ability, and I take pride in the successes of people I've helped.
But I'm aware that I'll always be a background support character, not a protagonist. And that's a hard thing to come to terms with. But it is what it is, and what it is is the result of having been born with a deficiency called bipolar II.
It's one of the less dramatic mental illnesses, I suppose. I don't hear voices, or lose track of reality, or black out, or make incredibly dumb spontaneous choices, or backstab people who thought they were friends. On a day-to-day basis, I seem like a pretty normal guy, and, on a day-to-day basis, I am.
But I'm a couple weeks out from being forty-four, and I've never held down a full-time job for more than a couple months, because I can't. I've never finished college, because I can't. Bipolar II has seriously curtailed my life.
I think most people who knew me in high school can attest that I'm not unusually stupid or unusually incompetent. I was seriously socially awkward and weird in high school and college, but in ways that most people found amusing and not particularly offensive, mostly. I mean, I can definitely think of specific times where I acted problematically, but not significantly more than any other socially inept nerd. I think I appeared to be headed for a completely normal life, with a decently-paying job of some sort, a family, normal stuff.
But there were definitely things which had Gone Seriously Wrong at points in my life -- a year when I was unable to enter a school building, for instance. I got a lot of support from my family, partially because my mother had gone through something similar, so my immediate and extended family shrugged it off as a thing which happens -- sometimes a kid just freaks out and can't go to school, and so has to go to the library and teach themselves for a year. And I pretty much did, and I pretty much did okay doing so -- but, looking back, that wasn't a great sign.
There were months I couldn't accomplish anything, ever since I was a teenager.
In high school, my grades were weird. I've said that you could recreate my high school transcript by taking a six-sided die, and writing A, B, C, D, F, Incomplete on the sides, and just rolling it. Ignoring subject, or difficulty. Or how I'd done the previous term. At graduation, there were actually several of us who were either going to not graduate or graduate as part of the National Honors Society, and it wasn't clear which one. But most of the other people in that category had been having weird things going on in their lives at the time, and I had been coming out of a completely normal home life with no disruptions. The only thing that was wrong with me was me.
I got to college on the strength of that I do well on standardized tests, rather than my transcript. Brandeis overlooked my terrible high school grades, and let me in, and I'm happy for that. I didn't get that much out of the classes, since I rarely went, but the people I met are still important to me today. Including my wife, who is the only reason I'm not a homeless bum.
I would always do well for a month or so, then get hit by a depressive episode. During a depressive episode, I can't function. I can't explain it, and I always thought it was a moral failing, and it FEELS like a moral failing. But, if it's a moral failing, why does it hit in a cyclical pattern? If I'm lazy, why does it come and go? And why is it somewhat treatable by medication?
I am deeply grateful for a question Rich Pacheko asked me at one point when we were in our late twenties or early thirties: why am I not successful at anything? Because I SHOULD be. I am reasonably smart, reasonably personable. I learn things reasonably well. Indeed, I may be above average in a lot of those things, but I had trouble managing to keep a job as a second-shift gas station/convenience store clerk. I'm not saying that "convenience store clerk" is necessarily an easy job, but it's definitely a job that many people are capable of doing, and that, externally, you'd think I'd be able to do. And that became a question I had to face.
And I could. For a couple months. And then the cycle hit, and I kept calling in sick because I couldn't get out of the house, sometimes, not even out of bed. The sine qua non of having a job is actually showing up for it, and I couldn't.
Because, I originally thought, I was morally deficient. But, by that time, I had been dealing with it long enough that I had to accept that this was genuinely medical.
Lis helped, a lot. I don't deserve her, but that's okay, because marriage isn't about deserving the other person -- it's about helping each other out. The bit which I don't understand is that, during those times, I WASN'T helping her out, but she was willing to put in the work to help me get to be at least a net benefit to her, so long as I was also doing whatever I could to put in the work to become a net benefit to her. Except, "whatever I could" was often not very much. Somehow, she put up with me, recognized when I was putting in the limited work I could, recognized when I wasn't, and somehow got me to where I am: a net benefit to Lis's life, even if I'm not as MUCH of a benefit as a healthy person would be.
She deserves someone healthier than I am, but she's stuck with me for over half our lives anyway, and has decided that the way that she will get the healthier-than-I-am person she deserves is to push me to be healthier.
And I am healthier. But I'm not healthy. The meds help, a lot. The therapy helps, a lot. Doing the amount of work that I can manage to do helps, a lot. But I'm still sick, and I'm still not able to do the kind of work that I could have expected to be doing in my mid-forties.
My friends are doctors, lawyers, programmers, authors, artists, chefs, mechanics, engineers, researchers, plumbers, and generally very good at their jobs. All jobs with a lot of skill, all jobs which are hard, all jobs that take a lot of work to learn how to do.
And I SHOULD have been able to do a similar amount of work to get good at SOMETHING. But I'm not good at anything. I'm okay at a ridiculous number of things -- I can cook, shoot, pick locks, do first aid, build things, repair things, play guitar, sing, teach, program computers, write, research, massage, develop molecular cocktails, brew and distill, grow food -- all sorts of things. But none of them quite well enough to make a living at it, because I can only focus on learning something for a couple months. Whatever I can learn in a couple months, I can do; after that, a downturn hits, and I'm out of it. And sometimes I can go back and pick up another couple months, but mostly I can't. So I am not even a jack of all trades -- I'm somewhere around a five of all trades. But a LOT of trades.
And that's because I have a mental illness, which has chopped my life into two or three month chunks. With incapacity between those chunks. Medication and training has helped me lengthen those chunks and reduce the length of time of that incapacity, and even be able to manage very basic tasks during the incapacitated times. And I am deeply grateful for all of that, and deeply grateful to all the people who have supported me in getting that far.
But I am mentally ill, and, unless there is a medical breakthrough, I expect to be mentally ill for my whole life. I can manage the illness, with help, but I can't cure it.
That's disappointing, and it also hurts that I'm forty-four with nothing to show for it, and that I will die without any particular legacy. I won't have a business, or a body of writing, a scientific discovery, or children. I can be useful in the world, but only in a support role. I can help other people, and that's good, and I'm grateful for the ability, and I take pride in the successes of people I've helped.
But I'm aware that I'll always be a background support character, not a protagonist. And that's a hard thing to come to terms with. But it is what it is, and what it is is the result of having been born with a deficiency called bipolar II.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
You are not alone
no subject
no subject
If I wanted to quote your penultimate paragraph, starting with "I'm forty-four", in a post on my journal, would that be OK? (citing with, what, a quote to this post?) I feel like writing more, but about *me*, and that's not really appropriate here. :-)
no subject
no subject