Bipolar
The gift that keeps on taking...
If I had known that I was bi-polar when I was growing up my life would have been so much easier. Understanding how a roller coaster works may have given me some warning to hold on tight when the sharp bends and free falls came without warning.
My psychiatrists (I have had at least 6 over a twenty five year period and about 20 different psychologists and counselors since I was 8) say that I have been this way all my life. I had a car accident when I was eight, head first into a van and was thrown about twenty feet.
I had manic/depressive episodes as long as I could remember. I was officially diagnosed in 1997 and almost hospitalised. I relapsed again while on prescribed drugs in 1999 when my husband died and went off my meds, I lost weight but went full on crazy bananas.
I can't remember much about that time, it was as if I fell asleep in December 1999 and woke up in July 2000. Most of that year and the beginning of 2001 is a blur.
My last counselor, lets call him George, and I had a huge breakthrough with a therapy called EMDR. This involves the client, me, watching a moving light while the counselor asks a series of probing questions. As the brain is involved in two activities at the same time it helps gives the counselor access to the subconscious.
George, had been doing this sort of stuff for a long time, about forty years - he mostly worked with Maori and other indigenous youth around the world-and he had a very holistic way of looking at psychiatric medicine.
He knew about Makutu, Matakite, dreams, Tohu and Rongoa. He said I had PTSD from past Trauma that I had to work through but he did not think I was bi-polar (He couldn't diagnose me as he was a psychologist not a psychiatrist). He said this 'term' was a handy dandy category where Pakeha medicine puts people like me.
I didn't really want to know what he thought a 'person like me' was, but he said, "It is obvious to me that you're a Matakite. It is also obvious that you live in between this world and the other one and that you're confused about what is real and what you are conditioned to believe is real."
Well I was totally god-smacked because every doctor, psychiatrist and other counselor I'd talked too, in all the years I'd been having treatment for this horrible thing had always put the blame for it squarely in my brain. ( I think this is the case for a lot of Māori in the mental health system.)
George shrugged that off and said that he'd worked with many, many people like me here and overseas and that "..."There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet I.5:159–167)
2011 I graduated with my degree in Visual Arts and Design and my brother Hone gave the Graduation Speech at Whitireia that year...to finish my degree I gave up my bi-polar medication (I was on four different drugs for it) for the last year and then went on to finish an Advanced Grad Dip in creative writing.
Being bi-polar isn't unmanageable. Without meds I have studied, and gained a degree and an advanced grad dip. I have written many books and been a successful artist and designer. I am not a danger to anyone, except myself when depressed. I am not ashamed of the illness, I am just so saddened that the medication which probably helped my mind, messed up the rest of me.