In a Bipolar's Shoes

Imagine being on a slow roller coaster ride. You have paid for six rounds. They are over. But no one has stopped or slowed it down. You feel excited. The seventh round is like the extra ride you have sneaked in for free. On the eighth round you feel like the guy controlling it has forgotten his counting. The tenth round had already made you feel light and heady. It's pleasant but somehow you are not enjoying it much. By the twelfth round you desperately want it to stop. By the fifteenth all that you want is to get off the damn thing and go home. By twentieth you have somewhat given up and still there is a flickering wish that someone will rescue you from this slow torture! This is my life.

Every single day I wake up, not knowing if I'll be in the highs or in the lows or how rapid my mood changes will be. Life is like riding a mood roller coaster, which is sometimes slow, sometimes rapid and sometimes remains static for days and then takes starts off with a jerk. You are born, bound to the roller coaster. You might be standing at the same position for days but you cannot get off. You are not in control of your moods; your mind controls you, instead.

You do not know whether you will be happy or sad or angry or mad by the end of the day but you know you'll have to live through today to face a tomorrow. Sometimes my moods change almost 8-10 times day, or more. At times it is exhausting to go through so many mood swings. At times it almost my body. I feel a dull, persistent pain which refuses to go away. Medicines don't seem to work. All I want to do is to bury my head in a bunch of pillows and cry my heart out and it maybe just morning!

The Supreme Court has overruled the Delhi High Court's decision to repeal 377

Sec 377 of the Indian Penal Code considers any kind of penetrative act not for the purpose of procreation as unnatural, equating homosexuality with paedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality and the like. We are enraged. It is shameful and regressive. As a bisexual and activist for equal rights, I am indignant. We had a gathering in front of the Academy of Fine Arts today at 15:00 hrs. It was a success, considering that this was organised in a matter of few hours.

When the entire world in legalising homosexual marriages, only our country is regressing. Ashamed? Yes! Enraged? Yes!

No court or law has the right to dicate who one an love or marry. What next? Bring back child marriage or Sati? With thousands of rape survivors awaiting justice, they now criminalise homosexuality! Funny that people can now go to jail for love while rapists and criminals roam scot free. We will not stop till we get justice.

WE SHALL OVERCOME!

THE FIGHT CONTINUES...

Fear!

Last night I had a weird feeling. I was scared for my life. For some time I had been pretty scared of the little sounds and shadows. But last night things turned quite ugly.

I was pretty convinced that I was going to die. Every time a car passed by I thought it was a conspiracy to kill me. Even a little voice, be it of the security guards or anyone passing by appeared to me to be the reason of my death. I was mortally scared. This had happened before but never for such a long period of time.

My session with my therapist has been postponed by more than two weeks now. At some points I don't even want to see a therapist. At some points I do. I wish i could make my mind up without so much of fuss

I am doing good now but scared if these episodes recur or increase what will happen. I have been on Oxcarbazepine 900 mg a day, along with Paroxetine 12.5 mg and Clonazepam 0.75 mg. I am more stable, definitely but not really doing well. I am more hypomanic these days. I am really worried if I end up with full blown mania. The fight is on...

Five Things that people don't know about a caregiver spouse

1. We are stronger than we seem to be
It is not easy to fight with a mental illness. The person we fight for is often not the person we fell in love with and married, during the spell of the illness. It is difficult to see them in that state and yet not break down and give up. We are often at the receiving end of a lot of hurt from them but we brush it off as the illness and fight for them.

2. We are good at hiding our bruises
More often than not we are bruised, psychologically as well as physically. At times it is bad enough to send us into therapy. At times we have to hide it in layers of make up or under shades.


3. We have a lot of patience
We do rant at times but only when we have reached the end of our patience.  What you hear is just the tip of the iceberg. Who likes to see their own lives crumble in front of their eyes? Especially when we had just thought that we had seen the worst that could come. Believe me, you wouldn't want to exchange lives us!

4. We do not need your sympathy
Sympathy is the last thing we want from you. Please try to understand the illness and give a sick person his/her due respect. If the person has been behaving strangely with you it is not the person, but the illness.


5. Every day is a fight for us
Every morning we wake up with only one prayer that things go normally. Every moment of our lives are spent fighting with an illness that makes our loved one a different person. Every breath we take is mixed with a fear, a terror of the illness taking control of our significant one. It is not an easy job to fight for your beloved one, especially when the person(in the episode of the disease) is not cooperating with us. We fight all the myths, taboo and stigma to just get our lives in a working order and just when we finally achieve that, life often deals another blow. We do snap as well.

Finally we need love as well..We might not have achieved much in life but we have a round the clock job. Our dear ones often keep us awake the whole night. They often wake us up very early in the morning. Often we hardly sleep for days. Often we are into anti-depressants to cope up with our lives. We do end up looking old and haggard. We hardly have a life outside. We have lost many friends because our partners might have embarrassed us in front of them. We are not invited to any of your parties. Often we do not go to any social gatherings. Often we are too exhausted to even live a life. But we do appreciate love. It means a lot if someone cares to ask how we are.

Changes are Difficult

Changes have always been the most difficult thing for me to handle. Be it a new school or some new people.

Starting afresh is not an option always. Often I have been faced with changes which I found very difficult to come to terms with. And it is when I hit rock bottom. I have severe trust issues and hence it is even more difficult for me to make new friends. It always starts with me being extra eager to make new friends at the same time suffering from the crippling fear of people finding me stupid or repulsive. I make cheesy jokes, go the extra mile to please people just to keep them in my life. Soon the horrible realisation dawns upon me that I am actually not an essential part of any group or even one single person. And as I start losing hope I start behaving more and more aloof. The longest conversations are the ones that happen in my head. I begin looking down on myself and starts another cycle of self-loathing and self-harm

I have been told to not act like a  wuss and 'accept' changes as they come. But no one every told me how! I still haven't figured out a way to adapt to a change. It becomes even more difficult when more than one change happens simultaneously. At times I am literally scared and I try to hide in the comfort of my house. I shrink back into my shell of desperation. I shrink back into my shell of desperation. 

Losing Touch With Reality..

By the end of 2007 I was happy surrounded by my imaginary friends as gradually started losing touch with real people. At times my imaginary world even helped me take my major decisions in life.

Life became a complicated series of exercises and it was difficult to keep up with the world around me. I withdrew more and more into myself and the realm of my head. I had lost almost all of my friends. My grades plummeted down to the bottom of the class. There were more and more complaints against me every day. I was either too pushy or too withdrawn, too fierce or too careless, always lost in my own world. I had hardly any interest in anything that was in my syllabus. Once I was among the toppers of my school and now I was struggling to pass. The expectation that my family had on me was enormous and it was too much to take.
Mo
The more disappointed I was in my results the more I would surrender myself to my comfort of my imagination. My faceless friends accepted me and acceptance was of primary importance to the girl who had no expectations for her sweet sixteen.

Isolation from my peers made my imaginary world more and more vivid and important to me. I was content in their company. They never judged me. I got all the appreciation and admiration I needed from them. At that time I would gladly give up a boyfriend to be with my imaginary friends. They helped me cope up with my loneliness. They chose my clothes for me. They dictated my hairstyle and my actions and loved me, no matter hwat. Gradually I was becoming dependent on them.

The Unnoticed Cry for Help

The transition from secondary school to senior school was not a smooth one for me. My fifteen year old head had too many things going on inside it than it could handle. It was difficult to concentrate on anything with all that racing thoughts which crossed my mind 24X7. Even before I could process a thought another started forming. It became exhausting after a point of time. Then I started developing psychosomatic symptoms.

It all started with excruciating headaches. Then followed the stomach ache. No it was not a teenage bellyaching. It was not a 'phase'. My health started deteriorating and so did my results. For most part of the year I was down with some pain or the other. I had to take painkillers and even injections to simply function in life. Tests came up with no positive symptoms. I started losing interest in almost everything. I lost focus and nothing could hold my attention for long. The counselor at school suggested that I seek psychiatric help. 

The Indian society, even in the twenty first century, still considers a psychiatric problem to be a taboo, almost at par with venereal diseases. My first attempts at seeking medical help was promptly dismissed. Soon I was  indeed taken to a therapist but  that was of not much help. I couldn't connect to him and I ended up never talking to him about my feelings. I was prescribed a couple of anti depressants and that was the end of the matter. 

My problem was not solved, or even remotely addressed. I was not sad, I was going through a huge emotional roller-coaster every single day. My moods swings drove me crazy. I kept going through binge-eating, self harm, guilt trips and I did not know what to do. My grades started slipping as I found it very difficult to concentrate and remember things. I withdrew more and more into my imaginary world.

Bipolarity- The Begining

2007 was a life changing year for me. I had just taken my ICSE exam and my entire life was hanging on, or I thought, on the string of the result of my first board exam. Like every other teenager I had my issues. Immense pressure to build a career, not so understanding parents,  low self esteem to name a few... This was also the year of my struggle with my sexuality

I had realised that I liked girls as well as boys. This was a big shock to someone who has been brought up with 'traditional Indian values'. Values Schmalues! Heck I was struggling to accept myself as a bisexual. Torn between the constant denial and guilt, I found myself in an all girls' school from a co-ed school. I became the 'unaccommodated man',err bisexual. I was The Outsider. Honestly it was tough for me to accept so many changes in such a short time. I became the socially awkward sore thumb. I was angry..angry with my over-protective parents, my well adjusted classmates, all the beautiful girls with the perfect figure and those with the perfect grades..or so I thought. In reality I was angry with myself. I hated everything about me..the way I looked, walked, talked..every single thing.. Often the anger felt really weird as I felt kinda happy and angry at the same time. I felt really really excited, almost high. At other times I was down in the dumps. I found it hard to cope up with my ever changing moods. I took up smoking, more as a diversion from the drama that happened inside my head all the time. I became more and more disconnected with reality and started living in my imaginary world, with imaginary friends. It was my respite from the confusion that tore me up, day in and day out. In this imaginary world of mine I was the popular kid. the more I started getting aloof the more I tended to smoke.

Soon I found another way out of my misery. It was easier and way cheaper than smoking. I began slashing myself with sharp objects. Razors, shards for glass, medicine flaps, straightened stapler pins anything that could draw blood. I liked the sight of my own own blood. It kinda relaxed my frayed nerves. In this context two things are really important. Firstly, I did not cut myself to die. I had tendency towards self harm, but I was not suicidal. Secondly, I always tried to cut myself in some obscure place where no one would see. I often cooked up cover stories for my visible cuts to avoid a scene.