Alone with the Darkness.

Of course I don’t mean the rock group who Believe in a thing called love. I am, of course, referring to omnipotent dark cloud that gathers in my mind and refuses to lift and allow some sunshine in my life.

The low’s of bi polar are horrible. If you have this, then you’ll know only too well what I am referring to. It’s not a mood. It isn’t an atmosphere. It’s a bleak, weighted, horrible sense of nothing. You don’t want to get out of bed or even be awake. The thought of getting up to even to to the toilet is horrific enough. If you don’t have bi polar then imagine this; imagine it’s a Friday evening and you’re all happy and everything in the world is rosy. You have a beautiful wife/partner and you have it made. You go to bed and when you open your eyes in the morning, imagine having your whole world taken away from you. Your wife, home, job – THE LOT. Imagine that was to be your life every day for the rest of your life. Nothing was to ever get better. That pain. Then it just vanishes. Only to return a few hours later but worse. That feeling is a fraction of what bi polar sufferers feel. The highs are the highest highs ever. But the lows are plain, fucking horrific.

I have never attempted suicide. I have thought about it on many occasions but that is all it was. Sadly, for many people with bi polar, the thoughts about suicide have become practice and many men and women have taken their own lives.

The evening I won the comedy award, was about as high as I have ever been without the help of class A pharmaceuticals. When I got home that night, the darkness set in big time. I actually sat up in bed and played tetris on my phone for about 3 hours because I didn’t want to sleep I was so low. I eventually fell asleep and when I woke in the morning I was the same darkness shrouded guy. Then a few hours later I was as high as a kite again.

If you relate to any of this, please speak to your GP or physician because they can and will help you. There’s too much stigma still attached to mental illness. In my town I know a whole bunch of people who think that if you have a mental illness then you are a “psycho.” Those people are blind and ignorant and watch reality television shows so they don’t count. Asking for help is the biggest step you’ll ever take on your journey. There is so much help available all over the place now. I had enough of being called a psycho and a weirdo from people who don’t know how to spell the word “know.” I now speak up proudly about my mental health and helping others in the same boat. There’s no shame in it. People don’t understand it. And what people don’t understand scares them so they mock it. That’s fine. Let them. These people don’t need pity. They need and education.

They’ll never know the need to shut yourself away from the outside and sit in a room wearing the same clothes for 4 days and never going out or even washing. Not because you want to be like that but because you don’t have any inclination to do so.

It’s a complex, odd, interesting, fascinating, wonderful and frightening thing being bi polar. I embrace it now. I have to because who knows when the darkness will set in again and this post could have been so different.

 

Until next time.

 

JD x