There's something to be said for being in remission from bipolar disorder for nearly eight years. Your illness has basically gone dormant, and you feel the way you'd imagine a "normal" person would feel. Balanced, happy, healthy.
Until one day, you're sent hurdling back to the place you'd hoped you'd never return. Your illness is suddenly front and center, on full display, as your family and friends scramble, grappling with what to do next, how to help you best.
You're sick again, feeling like a failure because for so long, you had it under control. You had the upper hand, maybe even had won. But unfortunately with conditions of the mind, there are no cures yet. These are lifelong diseases we are tasked with controlling.
The two things you've always feared happening have happened. Your best friend died suddenly and the kids witnessed a manic episode.
And so, you do what any cancer patient would do if she relapsed. You sign yourself back into the hospital. You have no idea how long it will take this time, only that the first two days are always the hardest.
After being injected with medicine intended to force you to sleep off the mania, you do the work. The room is dark and cool, the mattress thin and crunchy with its waterproof shell. The one blanket you're issued is barely big enough and scratchy but warm, and you sleep hard for almost twelve hours. The first few days remind you of the other hospitalizations, but this time is different. With experience you know that in here, sleep and routine are your priorities. You give into the system because you know it brought you back before.
Friends and family are a phone call away, once you remember how to gain phone privileges. They visit, too, although it's hard for you to let them see you like this. You feel vulnerable, naked, needy.
But they want to help. They get it now that they've seen the inside. Now they've seen you sick. It feels good to accept the help, their understanding.
You release yourself after a week. You feel the time has come to re-enter the real world, to get back on track. It feels good to feel the warm sun on your skin, to drink in the fresh air. Back at home you're reminded of the reason you relapsed. The sudden death of a dear friend, the stress of so much happening at once.
You realize you're only human, not a failure for relapsing.
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I wrote this post nearly three and a half years ago, but never hit publish. I haven’t made time for writing and blogging like I used to, even though my desire to some day write a book is still very much alive inside me. I swear I think about it once a day, at least. But then life gets in the way. I chalk it up to, “maybe I don’t want it that badly if I don’t put in the effort” but I know in my heart that when the time is right, it will become a reality.
For now, I want to get back on the horse of writing regularly. So I’m showing up with my pen and notebook every day and an intention to share the nuggets of insight that I think will be most helpful to my readers.
I share this post from 2017 to remind you that recovery is not a straight line. There will be setbacks and that doesn’t mean you’re failing at recovery. It means you’re learning and growing and becoming stronger from each episode. At least that’s how I look at it. Once I’ve had time to process it. At the time of this last manic/psychosis episode, it felt like another rock bottom, but I also knew better. I knew from other “bottoms” that it was the beginning of something beautiful, and in time I’d be able to share the story of how the relapse led to my kids’ greater understanding of what having bipolar disorder meant.
I’ll get there, and I hope you’ll follow this journey of mine to return to writing and sharing, so that you can read that part of my story once I put it out into the world.