So, this is pressure?

I just cried. And yes, I hardly ever cry. But I cried that awful raggedy gut wrenching sob that has no place in front of others. So I cried it alone. And now, here, with swollen eyes and mascara over my hands I start to wonder why.

I spend so much time at the moment devoid of feeling. The highs and lows have levelled out and I like it that way. I never feel anxious anymore, I rarely feel upset. Others on mood stabilizers complain of the flatness, but I enjoy it. After the trauma of my last episode flatness is relief. The flatness is freedom for me.

But that doesn’t mean I am not affected by experiences anymore. I seem to breeze through a particularly stressful time and then suddenly become briefly incapacitated. I suddenly feel all of the pain “It HURTS!!” I recognise, quite angry at this realization. Then I cry, or I dissociate, or I hear voices, or I dip my foot into hypomania. But it always passes. And then I sail away on the Lucky Lithium once more, feeling no sea sickness even in the fiercest of storms.

I realised the moment I dried my last tear what this was about. For some time I have felt like I am being pushed into a box that is too small to cage me. I feel as though I am constantly running through time trying to get everything done yet always arriving late. I feel as though my internal resources are being sucked from me and I’m left running on empty.

Pressure. That’s the word of the day. Most of the pressure I feel is self inflicted, some of it isn’t. I believe all mothers will relate to what I am saying. It’s the daily grind, the balancing of work with family. It’s making sure there is food on the table and laundrey in the cupboards. All normal, everyday pressures.

But having a mental illness affects people in funny ways. I suddenly realise that I feel intense pressure to perform as a parent. As an individual with bipolar disorder I assume I my parenting skills will be scrutinized and I feel I must prove to everyone that I am a good mother. I thought many strange things when I had psychosis, but one of the scariest was that the police were after me and they were going to take my baby away. I know I was psychotic and this was a delusion but I will never forget that terror of losing my child. I feel I must prove to everyone around me that I am capable. What pressure to put on yourself!

Clearly David hasn’t received my memo, as he has chosen this particular shaky time in my self development to become a perfectly normal naughty toddler. I have left social events with David, almost in tears, after a typical toddler tantrum (his, not mine ;)). But instead of thinking “he was so NAUGHTY!” I think “Everyone must think I’m a terrible mother!”

But I forget I am not the only mother of an almost two year old. I forget all mothers go through this experience. Last week as I ‘ignored’ Davids terrible tantrum on the floor another mother came up to me. She gave me a grin and gestured to David “You’re doing the right thing” she said. I wanted to hug her.

But I know I’m doing the right thing. I know I’m a good mother, and that my illness has never had any impact on my ability to parent. I know I have nothing to prove. But just like I can still feel the fear of a previous delusion, I still feel pressure to prove what I already know I am.

If It's Hurting Me...It's Hurting You

I realised today that I have written very little on my depression, the very thing that saw me hospitalised in the first place. From a creative perspective I find my depression very difficult to write about. Depression for me was bleak, cold nothingness. How can I begin to describe the pain of nothingness? I usually try to inject a little humour into my writing, in an attempt to make it more ‘readable’. But there is absolutely nothing humouress about this particular depressive episode. Nothing at all.

My depression was, and remains to be a uniquely personal experience. I rarely talk about it to anyone, including my nearest and dearest. I seldom like to think about it. Irrational as it is, I’m frightened that a thought could suck me down into the darkness again. Because this is the darkness that nearly killed me. This darkness was, without a doubt, the most horrific thing I have ever experienced.

I didn’t really cry much when I was depressed. I’m not sure that I even felt sad. I just didn’t feel anything. I was completely numb from my soul outwards. In a way this is what allowed me to carry on untreated for as long as I did. Robotically, I carried out everyday activities. I did the things I needed to do. I created a facade that I was fine.  

Occasionally I would break down, the numbness would melt away and all I felt was pain. Anger. Grief. Sadness. I started having panic attacks regularly and dosed myself on Valium until I had built up such a tolerance that the drug didn’t work anymore.

One day I was in a near car accident that would have been entirely my fault.  I wasn’t concentrating and made a stupid decision. Fortunately all I received was a loud honk and an angry gesture. Afterwards I felt completely calm, I felt no adrenaline rush, no guilt or remorse. It was then I realised how truly ambivalent I was. When faced with what could have been a serious accident, I felt nothing. I didn’t care whether I lived or died.

Eventually I began to give up. I stopped eating, stopped sleeping. Steven frequently had to leave work to care for David and I. I kept experiencing this bizarre sensation where I felt I simply could not keep going. I couldn’t take another breath. I couldn’t take another step. If I was out when it happened I felt I was going to physically collapse and someone would have to come and get me. They would have to come and get me and I would be stiff as a board, carried out on a stretcher, not even able to move my limbs. In a plea for help I started telling the people around me, over and over, “I can’t keep going. I just can’t keep going.” I think they interpreted this as “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” When really what I was trying to say was “I don’t want to be alive anymore”.

I was consumed by guilt and a pure hatred towards myself. One morning I woke up, listening to the two people I loved more than anything in the world sleeping peacefully. I decided I needed to leave. I couldn’t do this to them anymore. They both deserved so much better than me.

So – out of pure impulse – I grabbed the first article of clothing I could find, a dress, and threw it on over my pajamas. I slipped some shoes on, quietly opened the front door and left.

Halfway down the drive I realised I was wearing odd shoes. So I slipped them off and continued to walk barefoot down to the road. When I got to the road I looked around. Now what? I had no money, no phone, no plan, no SHOES for Christ sake. What on earth did I think I was doing?

Defeated, I dutifully checked the post box and started walking back up the drive. On the way I passed a tree. One of those weepy trees with long concealing branches. Before I knew what I was doing I sat inside the tree, huddled in the dirt. Suddenly I felt safe. I could see people go past, joggers, people walking dogs, women with prams...but they couldn’t see me. I felt like a child once more.  On the off chance that someone may see me I concocted a story where I was doing some weeding. The fact that I was in a dress, with my pajamas visible, barefoot, with no gardening implements in sight didn’t really concern me.

Suddenly our front door burst open and I heard Steven running down the drive. When I saw him he looked absolutely frantic.

“Steven?” I called out. He stopped. Looked around, clearly confused, then spotted me under the tree. He paused for a moment and then parted the long branches.

“What are you doing under there?” He asked calmly.

“Just...sitting” I said nervously. At this point I knew I had screwed up. Big time. Wordlessly he held out his hand. I hesitated and then took it, climbing out from underneath the tree. We walked back up to the house and I tried to explain that I felt safe there, that I wasn’t going to do anything bad.

Steven just turned to me and said “do you have any idea how worried I was?! Don’t ever do that to me again. Ever.” I cried, told him how sorry I was. He just nodded and walked away.

I felt truly terrible. I realised what it must have looked like to him. My phone still at home. My (odd) shoes left in the middle of the drive. I realised that this couldn’t go on.

When I went into the bedroom Steven was laying face down on the bed. I apologised and we held each other. I saw that he had been crying, or at least close to it. “do you think I’m bad if I go in to hospital?” I asked him. He looked at me “Quite frankly, I think you would be selfish if you didn’t go in and continued on like this” he said.

Suddenly I realised the effect that this must be having on him. Working fulltime, constantly on edge that he was going to get a call from me saying that I need him. Coming home and cooking dinner every night, feeding and bathing and putting David to bed. He had come to appointments with me, taken me to hospital, taken days off work to look after David. He had never once lost his patience with me. This man is a saint. I realised that he looked tired. I had been so consumed with my own despair that I hadn’t even considered him.

I realised my problem, my illness, was hurting him just as much as it was hurting me. I vowed to put an end to this. I decided I needed help. I made the decision to go into hospital.

I just wanna feel....

If there is one thing that my GP, child health nurse, psychiatrist and psychologist all seem to agree on, it's that I really didn't express much emotion during my last depressive episode. They all cite this fact as one of the reasons why I slipped through the cracks for so long, and things got as bad as I did before receiving adequate help.

They are probably right. When David was only a few weeks old I visited the child health nurse, talked about David for the majority of the session, only asking for some resources for post natal depression at the very end. "Are you feeling depressed?" the nurse asked, clearly surprised. I told her yes and filled out the Edingburgh scale for her. It was only after seeing my score that she became concerned, urging me to see a GP that very day. I remember her telling me that I didn't look or act like someone who was depressed. I wondered what a depressed person was supposed to look or act like.

Months later, in the midst of a mixed state, I poured my heart out to a community psychiatrist. Telling him how I thought the police were after me, that I was considering drinking toilet cleaner, that I simply couldn't go on. But actions do speak louder than words. It wasn't until I broke down and screamed at him that he believed I had a problem.

My weeks in hospital were a baseline of emotional detachment with occasional blips of insanity which invariably resulted in me being medicated and escorted to my room. I was off or on. I was quiet, off in my own little world. Or I was falling back to earth with a thud, and screaming with the pain of it all.

The thing is, it wasn't that I didn't feel pain, I just didn't know how to express it. How can you express a deep intangible pain? Where do you even begin? "I feel depressed" just doesn't seem to cut it. Because of my attitude, and the way I described how I was feeling, people didn't seem to take me seriously. The more my attempts at asking for help were unsuccessful, the less inclined I became to talk about it. It just seemed like a no-win situation.

At some point in hospital my medication was adjusted so that my pain went away. It was incredible! I didn't feel anxious anymore, I no longer felt depressed. There is so much that you can achieve when you aren't weighed down by depression and insecurities. The best thing was that although my negative emotions were dulled, my positive emotions soared. I feel happy and excited so much more than I used to. I don't know whether that is due to the medication, or simply because there is more room for positivity now my negativity has been dealt with.

But in the recent weeks I became a little concerned. While at first the absence of negativity was freeing, now it felt a little...odd. I never felt upset - even when I had a good reason to be. I never felt stressed - even when I should. On one occasion, shamefully, I even picked an enormous fight with Steven. Just to see if I could feel upset. We fought and shouted he stormed off, and I sat there screwing my face up trying to cry. Nope. Nothing! While Steven fumed in the bedroom, I went back to my book.

This week I talked to my psychiatrist about this, and she reccomended that I reduce some of my medication, particularly since I haven't had any problem with depression. So I cut down my dose and forgot about it. Until last night.

Last night Steven and I had a little argument. Nothing too upsetting. But as he stood outside, talking on the phone I suddenly burst into tears. Now I'm not talking a little sniffle, I'm talking loud, messy, gut wrenching sobs. Alarmed, Steven raced inside and tried to calm me down. But I was unstoppable. I cried about all the things that I never had a chance to deal with while I was on the medication and couldn't feel. I mourned the lost time I felt I had, I cried for what I had been through. I cried for purely selfish reasons. I sobbed and bawled, and GOD it felt good.

What's more, I slept better than I have done in weeks.

Like a storm after a drought the air is clearer now. Although I'm scared I will feel to much again, I'm relieved I can feel something. I guess it's a balancing act, trying to find a steady point between the two poles. And I'll get there. I know I will.