We don’t need labels, We need treatment

For years I searched for the right diagnosis but now I have realised it wasn’t the label I needed, it was just the right treatment. The first psychiatrist I went to see diagnosed me with a mood disorder of a cyclothymic type. This would have been great, since he was right, if he actually then monitored my moods and gave me the right treatment. He didn’t do anything so my search continued as I did not know at that time myself that it was bipolar.

The second label was Autistic spectrum disorder which came out of the blue then it was rapid cycling bipolar. By the age of 15 two people had already got it right but I still received no treatment at all and I was left to deal with my mood disorder on my own. When I was sixteen this was when it went all wrong. I was admitted to hospital to trial some mood stabalisers and ended up being discharged a week later with Prozac and a diagnosis of emotional unstable personality disorder. I started DBT which would have been great if I actually had a personality disorder. They then discharged me for apparently not cooperating (because I knew I didn’t have a personality disorder) and I was left on my own again. For the first seven years of being ill I went without any treatment from psychiatrists, psychologists (besides the DBT which was not treatment for bipolar), therapists and medication. All I got was some labels. I knew it was bipolar, my mum knew, some doctors knew but couldn’t offer any treatment and I told them over and over again but this only made things worse. Clearly because I was the service user I could not possibly know anything about mental health and especially not my own mental health!

Many times I had tried to end my life, sometimes just being sick and passing out for hours and sometimes ending up in A & E. A couple of times when I was there they decided I should be admitted to a psychiatric ward so they would phone my old psychiatrist (who seemed to have power over everyone in the whole of Tayside) and he would tell them I couldn’t because it wouldn’t help someone with emotional unstable personality disorder. I desperately needed mood stabalisers at the least and at the most a trip into hospital but I was left to become even more ill. For seven years my days had been spent, drunk, sleeping, not sleeping, on drugs, cutting my wrists, hearing voices, trying to kill myself, in pain and most importantly my mental health was deteriorating minute by minute. I had no stable periods at all. I was either down, up or both every single day and it could change about 20 times a day.

Eventually as I was getting no help from the NHS my dad put himself in thousands of pound worth of debt for me to have a few weeks in a private hospital when I was 19. I was eventually told I had bipolar and I tried some mood stabalisers. About 30 thousand pound it cost for me to do this twice in two years. 30 thousand pound for six weeks in hospital altogether, some medication and to be treated like a human being in a country where we are supposed to have free health care. I might add that my family do not just have that kind of money to go spare.

So I got the diagnosis but I would have been happy to have the mood stabalisers without the label. Now I am stuck with the label forever. I will always be someone who has Bipolar. Without that label I could have taken the medication, become stable and forgotten all about the label. I find it strange to think that the only reason we have these diagnosis is so that doctors can put us all in boxes and the only reason for that is to make it easier to give people the right treatment. But as soon as someone has a label it becomes part of their identity. I think this is wrong. I am not Bipolar. It is not a part of me. It never was. It is an illness which one day I will learn to recover from and I will say goodbye to it.

Depression – It came back, it always comes back.

I just wrote a big post about how depressed I am then deleted it. Who actually wants to read about how depressed and feeling sorry for myself I am? Nope didn’t think so. So guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to write a depressing post about how depressed and feeling sorry for myself I am.

For the last few weeks my mood has gradually gotten lower and lower. I don’t know how or when it started and I really can’t remember how iv ended up in such a mess once again. Of course with bipolar it still goes up and down a lot but the majority of the time I am down and have no memory of it ever being any different.

Today I woke up and within ten minutes I was thinking of ways to end my life. I was also fantasising about what it would be like to be drunk or how it would feel to cut my wrists open. Horrible I know but a mind of a depressed person is funnily enough not filled with sunshine, rainbows and sparkles. It is full of blood, death, pain and misery.

Later on in the day I found some energy and decided to start on my five goals which I had set myself for the day. They were;

1. Go and sit in the garden for a while

2. Have a shower or a bath

3. Watch a film

4. Read a page of my book

5. Go on the exercise bike for five minutes.

I managed to sit outside for a while and it really is amazing what some sunshine and fresh air can do to me. People have been telling me this helps for years and years but I never did believe them enough to try. Of course this was my idea so of course it worked. I then put some headphones on and went on the exercise bike. I managed to do 45 minutes and then went in the shower. Three goals was pretty amazing considering I thought I might jump off a bridge at some point today.

The depression has gone I was thinking. I can hardly even remember feeling depression. What are you all talking about, I have never been depressed! BOOM it came back with a bang. I burst into tears, I screamed at my mum, I told her I didn’t need any of her help and she should stop getting involved. I got angry and I kicked the door. I went into my room, turned off all the lights, lay in the pitch dark and then went to sleep for hours. I woke up feeling miserable, ashamed, exhausted and no memory of ever feeling any better.

Today was a good day, actually a really good day. Most days recently I only seem to get the bad bits but I was lucky today that I got that good bit. Some people might say I should be grateful and not complain because at least I got that good bit. But it’s confusing, very confusing to never know what life is going to be like from one minute to the next. It is so unpredictable and I have no idea when I am going to blow up, when things might get just that bit worse or when I might wake up one day and think ‘I have had enough’. I go to sleep every night hoping to never wake up. I wake up every day wanting to give up. I never do but there’s only so much I can take. There is only so long I can keep living (existing) a life like this. There are only two options, I can either fight it or die. The latter seems much more inviting!

Being stable isn’t all its cracked up to be

Its a dark place where I am just now. It is lonely, scary and there’s no way out. Bet you have all been there too. This dark lonely place is supposed to be me in recovery. I am better than I have been for years. I am in ‘recovery’ but somehow it doesn’t feel quite like that.

The reason I am in this place is not because of the bipolar. In my eyes I am not depressed although in my mum’s eyes I am quite severely depressed. It is because in my recovery I gave a way a pretty big part of me. I gave away my life. I gave it away and now without it I am nothing. I have nothing and I am no-one.

I keep trying to build a life up. I try and fail many times. Everything I seem to try goes terribly wrong. I do not know what having a life actually is. I have no memory of ever having one. I had a child’s life sure. I had a bipolar life. I lost my teenage life and I am not quite sure what an adult life even is. All I knew was bipolar and now that it is gone, what am I left with? I am left with no friends, no job, no education, no identity, no reason to get changed out of pyjamas never mind leave the house, a criminal record and a lot of very painful memories.

It is hard to see a reason to keep going. I did what they asked of me, I took the medication every night, I stopped drinking, I stopped talking to anyone who could upset my mood, I started to sleep during the night and I said goodbye to my bipolar self. I did all this and for what? To sit around all day with nothing to do and no-one to talk to, with not even enough emotion to become angry or upset enough to be in floods of tears, not knowing who I really am or what I want to do.

For years I fought a non stop battle in which I never won but I kept on fighting. Coming out of hospital on lithium and feeling a tiny bit more ‘stable’ I started to think maybe I did win. In a psychiatrists eyes I did win. I am stable and that was the prize right? Without that battle I don’t know what to fight for anymore. The prize wasn’t as good as I thought.

Tomorrow I might feel better (but still only OK) and i’l forget all about feeling like this. I’l put on a brave face and act happy but the next day I might remember again and then i’l forget, and then i’l remember and my life will go on and on like this until maybe one day i’l give up.

Dear 14 year old self

On twitter this morning ‘#dear14yroldself’ is trending and it has made me think a lot about what I would say. There’s too much to say in 140 characters so I thought i’d give it a try here.

Dear 14 year old self,

Right now as it’s during the week you will be sleeping. You probably won’t get up until it’s dark and then you will go back to bed. You did this every day. I remember how exhausted you were. You will be looking forward to the weekend when you will get so drunk you have no idea what you are doing and probably take any drugs handed to you too. I would love to tell you that you were a mess, to get a grip and pull yourself together. That is probably what you are telling yourself but I know now you weren’t well.

You were in a deep depression. I remember the pain of waking up every day. The pain of being alive in this world. You feel disgusted in yourself and you punish yourself almost every day making your arms bleed. It wasn’t that long ago that I was still punishing you too. I hated you for what you were doing to me and I forget that you weren’t well.

I won’t tell you to do anything different because you couldn’t. You were coping the only way you knew how and you did it pretty good job of it considering the things you had to deal with and what people did to hurt you. You kept yourself alive and I thank you for that because now it is not so bad. It is still hard, very hard, but most days it’s OK.

I want you to know that no matter how much you hate yourself for doing the things you have done, for all the things people have done to you, for the way you look and the way you act, one day you will learn to accept that it is not your fault.

When I was in hospital the last time and I had cut myself a nurse said to me ‘who are you punishing, are you punishing yourself or are you punishing that young girl who was in pain already? Imagine you saw her now, would you go up to her and cut her wrists or would you give her a hug?’ I would give you a hug 14 year old self and I would stand there beside you holding your hand for the next six painful years.

If I could go back right now I would

My mind now is slower. It is calmer. Words and ideas take longer to get to me. I think maybe it is the same as other people now but it feels so slow. I feel like iv had the edge taken off me. Sometimes I miss that edge a lot. Sometimes words just flowed around in my head. Ideas came quickly and fast. Of course they were sometimes too fast. Too fast that I could not catch any of it and I became confused and tired.

Other times it felt like my mind was so clear. I had everything worked out. I could draw. I could write. I could do anything I wanted to. Nothing in the world stopped me from achieving what I wanted to do. Of course I was wrong. Of course in a while my brain would become slower again, even slower than it is now. So slow that I found it hard to move, to get out my bed, to go in the shower. There were no thoughts apart from dark dark thoughts. Thoughts involving blood, pain, death.

Right now for some reason I even miss those moods. To feel so much pain made me see life in a different way. It was a dark world I lived in but it had meaning. The pain was my meaning.

Now, sometimes my mind nearly grasps onto these feelings. For a second I could be falling back there. I could be falling back into that deep whole, or flying away into a world of madness. But I always come back. It doesn’t last long enough to feel that painful energy or to hear the exciting ideas or to make sentences full of creative words.

I am sorry if this post doesn’t really make much sense to you but to me right now it makes all the sense in the world. Not much else does make much sense any more.

My thoughts on the London riots

I have just finished watching a program called ‘My child the rioter.’ It made me angry but maybe not for the same reasons the London riots in 2011 made you angry. When the  riots were going on my brother said to me he thought all the rioters should be shot and they were scum. David Cameron said ‘parts of our society are sick.’ He blamed the parents and so did many others. The way that program was made I would say the journalist filming it sounded like he thought the same.

In my opinion we as a society make children the way they are. It is easy to blame the parents and I am sure in some cases maybe it was down to the parents but not all parents are perfect and maybe it was also down to David Cameron’s parents that he turned into such a ********. I obviously think stealing, setting fires and whatever else they did is wrong but I understand their anger. I would love to think I would never have done those things but the truth is if I lived there and if I had been the teenager that I was I most likely would have been involved. Not because I would have wanted to cause trouble, cause people harm or distress but because I wouldn’t have been thinking about anything at all. I wouldn’t have cared and I wouldn’t have realised the pain I would be causing people. It is easy for us all to sit and say we would have never have done things like that but given the right circumstances I believe anyone could do those things and worse.

Many people who have never been involved with the police think they are all nice and only want to protect us. I thought the same and my parents thought the same. I have seen how nasty a group of men who are in power can be. I have seen them act like a bunch of teenagers. I have heard them say the words ‘That is 1-0 to the police then.’ I have been flung to the ground and handcuffed by two police men for no reason other than apparently being too young to sit in a park at 8pm. I have seen so many videos of the police beating people up. If the police are going to act like this then I really don’t know how they expect a group of teenagers to eventually react.

It is now six months since the riots and what has changed? Nothing. In fact in my opinion things have only gotten worse for the working class and vulnerable groups in society. Thinking of what our society could be like in another six months time is a scary thought.

I know this post isn’t necessarily about bipolar but in some ways it is because if 1 in 4 people experience mental illness in their lifetime then how many of those kids do you think had a mental health problem?

The man who lived in the house

I didn’t always have such a complicated relationship with my dad. When I was little I would sit at the top of the stairs with my cover waiting for him to come home. He would read me bed time stories and I remember always wanting to be with him. It is only recently I have realised even at that time he was hardly ever there.

When I was twelve (the age that EVERYTHING changed), I started to hate him. I couldn’t stand him. It wasn’t long before I refused to be in the same room as him never mind talk to him. To me he was just ‘the man who lived in the house’. He tried to do what he thought a Dad would do. The only thing is he had no idea how to be a Dad never mind be a Dad to a daughter who was going a bit…..mad.

He tried shouting at me. I paid no attention. He eventually decided he would do everything he could to avoid me and ignore me and that’s what he did for the next few years. He was never there and even when he was there physically he was never there emotionally. Sometimes I force myself to think that it could have been worse, that he wasn’t that bad and that at least he didn’t hit me or anything. But to be ignored when I needed him really hurt, and I don’t think i’l ever forgive him.

What I needed was for him to see through all the madness and still see his daughter. He couldn’t. To him I was gone. To me I was gone too but I needed someone else to bring me back. My Mum did that.

A few months a go after ignoring him for weeks I decided to try and talk to him. I burst into tears and told him I was angry that he didn’t protect me. I was hurt that he didn’t love me. I was lost that I didn’t have a Dad. He said sorry with no emotion. He didn’t mean it.

Now he texts me and tells me what he is doing. I reply and pretend to be interested. He isn’t interested in what I’m doing and I have now started doing what my brother and sister managed to do years ago. I have started to do things on his terms and I have forgotten about my own needs because….it’s easier. But will I ever forgive him or ever stop being angry at him? No I don’t think I will.

I remember now, I used to laugh

My mum text me last night after I went to bed and said ‘Have you noticed you have got your sense of humour back?’

When I got out the hospital in June 2011 I was far from feeling better. It was a struggle to stay away from drinking as that is all I knew. Gradually my ‘friends’ started to disappear out my life as I didn’t want to go out at the weekends anymore. I suppose they didn’t know who I was anymore, I didn’t either.

Recovering, feeling more ‘stable’ and deciding not to drink were the hardest things (and still are) that I have ever done. When you get the cold you eventually start feeling better one day and you are back to yourself. When you break your leg, one day it is better again and everything is back to normal. Recovering from mental illness is like losing your whole identity all over again.

‘Crazy’ to me was normal. It was like a roller coaster and when I was on that roller coaster I wanted nothing more than for it to fling me off the side into a river and drown me but suddenly being let off the roller coaster and having nowhere to go and being completely lost is a million times worse.

I have spent 8 months trying to figure out who I am (and still am). I lost my identity, my sense of humour, my friends, my ‘fun’ and ‘crazy’ personality and even the way I thought I looked changed. I have been trying to get these back, minus the ‘crazy’ personality. I forgot what ‘fun’ was. I forgot what it was like to laugh.

In the past couple of days I have heard myself laughing and making jokes. It is possibly the best feeling I have felt in the past 8 months and I hope there is more to come!

Wondering who I would have been

Tonight I am thinking about what id be doing if I was the person I would have been If I didn’t get bipolar. I know there isn’t any point thinking about it but my brain likes to think about pointless things.

Before I was about 11 I was a happy child. I was quiet, liked to draw, loved animals, had lots of friends, was good in school, hardly ever cried even when I was a baby and my mum and dad thought they had got it completely right with me! Out of me, my brother and my sister they thought I was the least likely to ever have turned out the way I did!

I always wonder what I would have turned out like. I wonder what I would be doing now. I would probably be at uni somewhere, have a boyfriend, have lots of friends and be having fun. I used to get upset that I’l never be that person. Now I am glad. If I was her I wouldn’t know half the things I know now. I probably wouldn’t have such a drive to help people and do something good in the world. Id probably be quite naive and just be thinking about my life and my friends.

Sometimes though I do wish that I had gotten bipolar when I was older instead of so young. I wish that I had gotten to develop my personality without it being changed by all the things that have happened. I just wish sometimes I had gotten to know the person I was going to be before it all got taken away from me.

Other people my age I imagine already know sort of who they are. They have been to school and tried different subjects to see what they like and what they are good at. They have met different people their age and learned social skills. I have spent most of the last 10 years hiding away and only socialising with a very small number of people.

I feel like I have been reborn into this new person. I will never be the person I was when I was a child. I will never be the person I was going to grow up to be. Hopefully I will never be that crazy bipolar me again. So I guess iv got to get to know this me and I guess I’l have to get used to her.

My blog, My thoughts, My life

I know I do not owe anyone  an explanation for my behavior in my life because for anything that I have been charged with, I have apologized to most of the people involved, I have also been given my punishment years a go and I have changed into a better person. I do want to say though that I am not using my illness as an excuse. There are no excuses for doing the things I have done in my life and believe me I will carry the guilt around forever. I am however using my illness as a reason. There are reasons behind everything and in my opinion Bipolar was the reason to why I was even in those situations in the first place. The illness turned me into a person which I would not have been without it. I am also not blaming anyone for anything. I do not believe it was my schools ‘fault’ that I have no education but I do believe they could have done more to help.

This blog was a safe place for me to write my feelings and memories. I did not expect anyone to even read it never mind the offence I seemed to have caused yesterday. I am not going to apologise because these are my feelings, my thoughts and my memories. No-one can argue with that. I do enjoy reading the other side of the story and being helped to think about things in a different way. I don’t enjoy people twisting my words, criticizing me or forming opinions about me and even my family just from reading a few things I have written.

I want to say thank you though for the amount of people on twitter who were there supporting me yesterday and no matter what I write on here they don’t ever judge me.  You are an amazing bunch of people and very rarely do I ever feel alone any more!

One more thing I wanted to say was getting comments about my mum was very hurtful. So many people have said ‘where was your mum when you were out causing trouble?’ Well she was sitting up all night panicking and worrying about me. She was trying to phone me hundreds of times and even coming out looking for me or reporting me missing. She tried everything she could. I wasn’t like the rest of my friends who would eventually listen to their parents. But I did not need discipline. If my mum had pushed me away even more with shouting and screaming at me I would have ended up being put in foster care, sent to a secure unit, ended up in jail, on the streets, taking herion or dead. My mum was the only person who kept me in this world when she could and she never ever gave up. She saved my life.