One More Chapter
I should be going to bed. But I have bipolar disorder, so even if I go to bed now, I’ll probably be tossing and turning until about 6:45 a.m., at which point, I’ll be deliriously tired and then have to get up and struggle through the day, only to be wide awake at bedtime tomorrow night. Nothing new — it’s been like this all my life. When I was little, my dad would always let me read “one more chapter.” He sleeps about the same — all or nothing. He gets it. He would come back in thirty minutes and ask where I was. I was always just enough into the next chapter that it was a 50/50 shot that I might be able to finish out one more chapter.
Sleep is a huge component of bipolar disorder. Many practitioners now see bipolar disorder as a circadian rhythm disorder. I’ve had doctors in the past who would do nothing beyond either Ambien or Lunesta to treat the insomnia. The thought was that I wouldn’t go for more than one night without sleep.
Wrong.
Without some kind of medical assistance, try three or four nights. I spent a summer working in Fiji without sleep medication. For three months, I got maybe an hour or two every night. You can guess how that went.
This evening, I’m writing one more chapter. Actually, two more chapters. In fact, two more chapters is the truth. It always has been, whether I confessed to my dad or not. I got word today that I was able to get into a clinic that will see and refer me to a sleep medicine clinic, and both clinics will work with me on finances, because I don’t have insurance right now. And the specialist doesn’t just do the standard pulmonary sleep medicine practice: he also deals with neuropsychiatric disorders. Almost four decades of lack of concentration, fatigue, frequent poor health, just being able to get up, get ready, and get out the door in the morning — finally, some help. I’ve lost jobs because I just couldn’t wake up.
The second chapter is more of a surprise, though. I was diagnosed with depression 23 years ago after a suicide attempt that resulted in a month-long stay in the hospital. It was too late to pump my stomach, and I had to drink the horrible charcoal smoothie for a week. (Note: do not try this at home. Or ever.). Many of the things that have shattered me over the years are rooted in feeling unloved, unworthy, not nearly as valuable as the money that was spent on my mental healthcare. “Do you see what you’ve done? Now, we have to use what little we had saved up for your college on this hospital bill because you weren’t thinking. You weren’t thinking of anyone but yourself.” Always, my worth was told to me in dollar signs. Before being discharged, we had a family counseling session. I had hope that there would be changes at home.
There weren’t.
I stayed on the medicine they told me to take for the next four years, but it didn’t help. I was still depressed, and now, I was on a medicine that physically made me tired, but mentally, I was still going a hundred miles per hour, and I couldn’t get up out of bed to do anything about it, not even read one more chapter. I weaned myself off of it before going to college.
That didn’t go so well, either. Fortunately, I worked in mental health while in school. They could have fired me as a no-call/no-show, but they didn’t. They knew what I didn’t yet know, that I needed help, that help was available, and it was not like the “help” I had gotten before. I dropped out of school my senior year, moved to the city, and started working.
It took over ten years to find a doctor and therapy regimen that worked for me. One of my early doctors told me that I needed to be on birth control at all times, in small part because I was on Depakote, which can cause serious birth defects, but primarily (and this was emphasized at every visit) that if I ever had a child, that child would be at high risk for also being bipolar.
Did everyone catch that? Don’t go giving birth to people with bipolar disorder.
It’s been a very lonely journey. I stopped talking about being bipolar to my family years ago. We can talk about everything but that. It’s a reminder that I’m persona non grata on the family tree, and I have more problems than they want to deal with. I was quiet for many years about being bipolar, and then when I had a deep bout with depression seven years ago (when I started this blog), I discovered that giving in to the stigma surrounding mental illness was compounding the problem.
I opened up. To my friends, to strangers, to the world — there are people who love you and truly do want to help. It’s incumbent upon me to tell them when and how I need the help. I’ve kept silent the past two years dealing with divorce and a custody dispute for fear that, again, being bipolar would be used against me. I don’t know why I’m afraid! Per my doctor, “There’s absolutely nothing to be used against you.”
Getting back to that surprising second one more chapter: my brother is currently riding in the Mongol Derby. Both of my brothers are in the military. This brother and I have had a life-long turbulent relationship. He hates me. I used to hate him. Now, the only thing I hate is the explosive anger we were taught as an automatic response to grievances large and small. I hate how horrible I have been to so many people who have shown me love. I am so glad that while I make frankly rotten choices in spouses, I make nothing but the best choices in friendship. Every good friend I’ve ever alienated is at my side now. They have taught me how to respond in loving, productive ways to the curve balls we are pitched. They are the ones who have gotten me through every depression, financial, relationship, or occupational crisis. They became my family. I thought I had finally found the family I’d always desperately wanted when I married my ex. I was hurt more deeply by losing them than I was by losing him. I lost parental figures I could confide in and trust and who would remind me that I have worth. It’s the loss of what I thought was an unconditional, parental love that hurts the most. It was never there to begin with.
When my brother returned from his second deployment, he dealt with PTSD, depression, and thoughts of suicide. He’s the one my parents are proud of, but I wonder how supportive they are of his depression. I’ve tried to let him know that no one should go through this without family. I wish he had reached out when he was dealing with this. The eldest child usually has the privilege of taking the machete through the rain forest to carve a way for the younger siblings. I’ve been there. I know how your mind works. That’s what made it so much fun to do plays together in high school — we knew precisely how to act off of each other for a maximal entertainment experience, on- and off-stage. I can guide you to things that will help deliver you from the anguish that lies ahead. Just like taking up cello, or piano, or doing a report on black holes (with the same teacher, ironically), and now picking the most random spot on the globe for a grand adventure — I’ve got your back in a way no other family member ever will. For the love of God, go read some Thich Nhat Hanh and watch some South Park. Dissect the anger we’ve been taught, learn how to defuse it, and end every day by laughing.
And open up (well, you have that down, and now everyone who listens to NPR knows about that open up bit). But open up not just on the big things, like this, but in the moments when you know you’re not doing well. Be public. Tell your friends when you need help. Tell them what and how. They want to know. Tell your sister. I’d drop everything. I’ve been there at 3 a.m. wishing I had someone to reach out to, but feeling that I was just a problem no one wanted to deal with. Believe it or not, there are many, many people who would go out of their way for you. When you are in a bad spot, it takes a lot of people. Many hands make light work. Build your village! Join my village — it’s like taking shelter while you’re out chasing tornadoes, and being ushered to safety by people leading you in from the dark, wrapping you in a blanket, and soothing you until the storm passes.
(Also, we need to agree as a family to bond over things other than tornadoes. Not a good year for Finleys and tornadoes. All five of us in two weeks? I am up for travel or spades or something other than getting just a little too close.)
Little brother, I would like to make a proposal: there is one adventure I’ve been planning for two decades, down to each mile. Meriwether Lewis has been an inspiring force in my life. He, too, was bipolar. My ambition is to write a biography of Lewis from the viewpoint of another person with bipolar disorder. I can’t do that until I’ve followed the entire trail, down the Ohio, up the Mississippi, taking way to damn long in St. Louis, and then up the Missouri into who knows what. I’ve been up as far as the winter quarters in North Dakota. I don’t know what lies beyond that, much like the Corps of Discovery in 1805. This is an adventure I think we should do together. Mostly because you are better at hunting than I am, although I’m hedging my bets on being able to get a fire going faster.
Lewis was asked by Jefferson to lead the Corps of Discovery, and he asked Lewis alone. Captain Lewis knew, however, that he while he could do this on his own, he needed William Clark, that his strengths would bolster his weaknesses. Lewis’s beautiful prose paints a journal portrait of the American west before we carved it up into plats with barbed wire. Unfortunately, while his journal entries filled with scientific data and the only ethnographies of some native cultures before they disappeared in smallpox or other epidemics are invaluable details of American history, they skip long expanses of dates. Clark’s writing, riddled with colorful spelling and questionable grammar, was routine and reliable. His cartographic notes were extraordinarily accurate. Without the writings of both men, so much context would have been lost.
So, let’s do this. And before you start thinking your older sister can’t hack primitive camping (Fiji, you twerp!), just remember that one time when we were stuck in town for three days after heavy rains washed out the roads to get back home. What did we do? Went hang gliding. You, the Mountain Dew-No Fear-poster boy went up the first two times. But the third time? You were very surprised I went up at all (for the record, I made it up to 3,000 feet — 1,000 feet more than you, neener neener). I think you would be surprised by many things. And after the past year, I think you would surprise me in many ways as well.
Please, be safe riding. Come back home safely, because if something happens, Mom and Dad are going to send me to go fetch you.
And never stop opening up.
Bipolar Diaries 
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