For Rebecca

Thank you very much. I am glad that my entries give you a better understanding. I am sure it is difficult being a parent of a bipolar child. I am sure it is very difficult to gauge what is normal and what is not. Knowing that your daughter is bipolar allows you to be a tremendous support and to an extent a guide. So for the two of you this knowledge is a blessing.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record but I really did wrestle with what was wrong with me for years. It was and has been apparent for sometime I behave differently than a lot of people. But when I was younger I would have never attributed it to an illness. On more than one occasion I had asked my parents if I could see a therapist. It was on those occasions when I was most depressed. My parents are good people, and one would think that knowing the illness ran in my father’s family you would take my request seriously. But my parents had a difficult time accepting that between the two of them, they had produced a child who was less than perfect. My mother always would comment she did not “raise” me to be like that. How could I be depressed? Why would I need a therapist? I was not “raised in that kind of home”. She was absolutely right. What was ailing me though had nothing to do with my environment or the amount of nurturing I received.

I think I have mentioned before that I have dropped out of college essentially three times. I am a sixth year senior with no degree in sight (and I am not currently attending). Every time I have gone from the A to D student and then I withdraw. For the longest time I attributed my dropping out to extraneous circumstances. True, each time there were difficult circumstances surrounding my withdraws, but the last time I dropped out, which was in 2005, it felt like déjà vu.

I started thinking long and hard about what was going on in my life and it occurred to me that I was a run away train long before I skipped the tracks. The anxiety and paranoia set in and then comes the depression. You skip one class the first week. You skip two classes the second week. By the third week it is totally hit or miss if you go to any classes at all. You start drinking or taking pills. You do whatever you personally need to do to take the edge off. You do a variety of things you shouldn’t hoping they will make you feel good again. Everything seems hopeless. I need a reason to leave school and eventually the reason comes. One of my grandparents died, then my other grandparent died, then my husband and I were separated. You need the reason because a reason is something that explains everything to everybody when they start to ask questions. It is far easier to say A.) I am very depressed over the loss of my grandmother than it is to say B.) I am extremely nervous every time I enter the classroom/lecture hall. I can’t listen to you when you talk professor. I am sure everyone is talking about me, and honestly I’d rather be dead. Anyone can understand A, but very few can relate to B.

Nothing in life is certain but I wonder how things would have turned out if the first time someone suggested I was bipolar, I followed through and went to a psychiatrist. Had I the means to manage what was going on then, I might have a degree now.

Life is a journey that is difficult to navigate but it is much easier done when you understand the road your on. So when you daughter goes through the bad times remind her that they do end. Help her find ways to alleviate the burden that she carries. I don’t know that there is anyway to put an end to the symptoms that is 100%, but help her find her own way to press on. Life is fleeting, we have to make the most of it.