I Am Alive
I am alive. That is one fact that I can’t deny. I breathe in
and out, I feel pain in my legs when I’ve been sitting in the same place for
hours, I hear the sound of the TV for almost every hour in twenty four hours and
occasionally my arm hurts from the constant IV drip in my right arm. I’m alive
to feel the physical pain I have caused my body, I’m alive to eat the crappy
hospital food (which to some they say I deserved since I tried to eat too many
pills) and I’m alive enough to know that I am emotionally numb. I should be
crying right now. Crying for the life I almost lost, crying for the soul that
has already been lost and crying for the unknown life I am about to live. I
should be crying for the people I scared with my suicide email. Mostly though, I
think I should be crying for me.
In five days I will be involuntarily committed to the Alabama state psychiatric hospital. I made it to my fear. I used to fear going crazy, but more than that, going crazy enough to need a state long term treatment center. The kind of treatment I always read about, but never believed I would need. Everyone seems to think that maybe this was where I was supposed to end up all along. I have exhausted all my other options. I gave up on life and I can’t pretend that I didn’t. I still have given up on life, and that may perhaps be my worst quality right now. I wonder every day how to go back to life after you have given up on it for so long. I’m in a in between stage of life right now. I am technically in life, as far as living on this earth and being alive, but I have been suspended for the moment, from the action living this life. I am being taken out of the game, put on the bench to consider how I have been playing the game of life. Maybe you don’t have to be crazy to go to a state hospital, but you have to be lost. You have to be lost about what you want to do in life, be in life, where you want to live, where you want to go, how you will go through each day, or lost in how you will one day want to breathe in and out and keep on wanting to breathe in and out.
If I had stayed in Virginia, then I would still have lost my life. I would have still been just trying to survive. If I moved to Alabama, well, I still lost part of my life. It didn’t matter where I stayed, I still lost my life. It wasn’t the physical life I lost, but I feel like I lost every other part of me. I can still remember the job I loved working with the kids I loved, going to the college I loved, making friends on and off for a few years, having my favorite band in the town that was my home. I had an apartment, friends, animals, music and a job. I had several papers being written up and published eventually. I maintained a popular self-help website and a large support group to go with it. There were even days that I wanted to live. I got up each morning excited to just be alive. I smirked, grabbed a coke and went about my day as anyone would. Some would say I had the world at my feet.
But no one saw the days when I would wake up and wish to be dead. The days where only the thought of helping others got me through the day. I would see violent images in my head. Many of which eventually came true. They didn’t see the days I woke up feeling like a failure and that my life was not worth a penny. Those days happened with a greater frequency than anyone knew. Then there would be those days where I felt great and literally on top of the world. Mania would set in and take me further than I could have ever dreamed. Mania is what got me the world at my feet. That is a truth I am willing to admit, but I don’t think too many people in my life do see sometimes.
I lived a lie. I know it and Kiandra knows it. I remember hiding things even from her, the one person I trusted the most. Why? Because I wanted to be well so bad, I thought maybe sometimes I could fake it. Fake it ‘till you make it, right? That’s a load of bull shit. I faked it until it almost killed me. I have continued to cycle from mania to depression and back again. I was able to hide the cycling because of my convincing manic moods. Sure, I healed in some respects. I made peace with my past in a way I never thought was possible. Hell, I even began to forgive others that needed it. But I never healed the wounds that really needed healing. My self worth has always been bound by what I do and it was never enough. It will never be enough. I do incredible things when I am manic and all I want is to keep that going. I was normal for a short time and that was bull shit. I think it was cruel of God to give people manic depression. He gave me something I can’t harness. If I could just keep the mania, I would be on top of this world and would not feel sad or depressed or angry. I could rise to new heights and accomplish so much. But with every mania, there is a depression waiting in the wings. Depression is supposed to remind you why you don’t want the mania’s. But that is bull shit too. If I can find a way to stay manic, then there is no depression. I successfully kept depression away for almost three years. So I alternated periods of hypomania and one or two full blown manias and then would have doctors bring me to normal, thereby circumventing the depressions. So I didn’t remember what it was like to be depressed, how I would crawl on my hands and knees to open a fucking garage for paramedics to revive my pitiful body, and how depression only reminded me of my failures, most notably, failure to stay manic.
What are the truths? What was the truth I told to Kiandra and what were the lies? The two became blended and I no longer knew myself. But if I am going to get better, I need to find out the truth. Kiandra says I need to be a new me. For a long time I battled against that. I didn’t like the prospect of becoming someone I don’t recognize right now. I wanted always to go back to the old me, or the different me’s I remember. Only, I forgot that many of the me’s I wanted to be…they were manic or some form of it. This now is not just a tale about finding my way out of mental illness, but it’s finding the way to me. I’ve been so many people, but I’ve never been me. Before I was thirteen years old, I was just an abused kid who hid it by being great at so many things like school and sports. After thirteen, manic depression came for me and I never knew much after that. I knew the low’s, but they were hidden by my eventual high’s. Mania could cover any low, any day. I was the golden child still, and my family could hide those depressing times by holding up the inhuman things I could do while manic.
Only now there is no where to hide. I’m in a twelve by twelve room with a TV and my electronic gismo’s awaiting my hearing where I’ll be committed to a state hospital. I am stuck with myself for five long days without much break from my own thoughts. Heaven for me right now would to be given a sleeping pill for all five days and not wake up until my hearing. But somehow, I think this is where I was supposed to be. I needed to face myself. I just looked in the mirror and I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. I asked my father if my face seemed puffy and he said no. Could it be that I am seeing myself for the first time? I thought I had a reaction to the medication from last night and then woke up like this. But maybe that’s not it, maybe my twisted glasses have finally come off and the person I am seeing is the person I am waiting to become. I’m at ground zero. I tried to take my life again and very nearly succeeded. As I’ve said before, I overslept and that saved my life. But I won’t let sleep take all the credit. I did write those emails and I knew when they would be sent. Part of me wanted to be alive, to get help for one last time. The State hospital is my oasis. It is the place I need to gain a solid foundation of who I am. There is a me under all of these illnesses and death wishes. I know at my core I am sarcastic and a smartass with quick wit. I know at my core I am a very caring and understanding person who always strives for something more. Those are my characteristics. It is the action of living that I need to discover. Who am I without mania and without depression? Who I am besides weekly therapist visits and monthly psychiatrist appointments? Who am I without my constant meddling in psychology? Who am I and what do I want to do?
I am addicted to mania. Who am I when we take that away? Who am I in the middle, in the shades of grey they keep telling me about? One day, I need to find out. I need to spend the time in the state hospital to explore a new self, one that I haven’t entertained. I will be well. I won’t give into my fantasy of hanging myself. There is a new me in here, there is a stronger me that everyone sees. I just need to believe that somehow.
