It's time

Sudahlah lepaskan semua, kuyakin inilah waktunya.

I will go to sleep tonight, and I will wake up with new hope.

Everything that has happened, I will let go.

Easier said than done, but an attempt for sure.

:) Wish me luck!

I danced my way out

I have a curtain that hides my face away from the world. I'm not sure what I want people to see anymore. The truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth.

Wait. That sounded like a line out of a debate speech I gave when I was 15.

Didn't your nightmares begin then? I vaguely recall one night when I was a baby. I couldn't sleep, and my mother held me in her arms and sang songs to me. She pointed out a lizard to me. Perhaps that is why I find comfort in such things. A song. Animals. Strong arms that hold you through your pain.

Only my arms could hold me now. But they will suffice.

I know this sounds so jaded. But maybe I truly do not need a man. I know I hang around a lot of guys, and this is probably why guys always see me as one of them. I'm always a dude. But in reality, I'm not. I have a heart that can only belong to a woman.

And oh, how much more of a sexist can I be?

I can't be fooled, I thought.

I crossed the road, looked behind my shoulder. I saw you.

You followed me down the street.

We held hands. We laughed.

Then the world stopped spinning for a moment.

I kissed you.

Run away with me, you whispered.

And reality came buzzing in.

I was trapped. I was trapped.

I am me, in my skin.

I found my way out.

I danced my way out.

Some days I feel like I've lost everything but my mind.

Other days I feel like I've lost nothing but my mind.

When your mind's made up

The truth is, I'm struggling so hard just to live right now. People can call me "emo", or "difficult" or whatever it is they want to label me, I really don't care. Except that I do. I think it should be safe for me to write here, or rant here. I know I have two followers, and they both do not know him, so it should be alright. In any case, if I receive complaints, I'll take the post down. I mean no harm. I just need to write this down. I need to acknowledge how I'm feeling.

1.04am, 24 Nov 2011
I've been severely depressed the whole day. I am missing the people who left my life - whether by choice, or by death. I feel crippled. I have no one. My fiance and I broke up because he fell for someone else. He said I was too difficult to handle, and she was the "better" choice. I wish I never had bipolar.

I wish I was dead. I would want to take my own life. But I've tried it before. And two years ago, I tried it and ended up causing more trouble instead. That was what led my ex to fall for someone else. That was what made me alone.

Maybe I shouldn't bother.

~~~~~~

He kept saying, even after we were over, that she is the true one he really loves. I hope one day they'll be together. I am very angry at him, and the many things that have happened, but I wish him the best. Except that it's crippling me inside.

I have "uncertain" feelings for other people, too. But I'll probably never act out on them ever again, because the last time I did, I got a big blow right at my face. And now the person is keeping away from me. I wish I knew what I did wrong. I wish we could still be friends.

So the other day I was talking to a friend, and I said that I was tired of making the first move. I was tired of even bringing things up, athough this confuses me so. You see, I have lost people in my past, some by death. And I regret completely for not being honest with telling them about how I feel. So I chose a different route. I chose to tell them how I feel, as long as I'm still alive. But then they shun away. They run away.

Am I really that scary?

I thought he was the right one. Now I feel like no one can ever love me or accept me for who I am, including the fact that I have bipolar. The break up happened three months ago, I thought I would have felt better by now, but I still feel miserable. And every time I see him, I can't help but feel so hurt. I'm reminded of someone who went down on his knees and made promises he couldn't even keep.

I've always been unlucky in love, so when he happened, I thought that I had my break. But now it all seems to fall apart. I just feel so hurt.

~~~~~~

I have been going through such a rough time. Some days I am happier that he is gone, but some days I can't help but remember the better days (or, when I'm "sane", I call them my more manic days; when every thing seems fine and dandy even when they actually weren't). I am an artist - I'm an actor and writer, and I wish I was more inspired during moments like these. I do think that these moments of neuroses do help with my craft, though. At least I'm trying to look at the brighter side of things.

~~~~~~

2.20pm, 24 Nov 2011
It's 2.20pm, I just woke up and I still feel terribly depressed. I don't feel like I'll ever be okay ever again. I'm so sorry for bringing negative energy here. When my ex-fiance and I were together, he always said I always bring people down. He said I was good for nothing. I asked him why I was always proud of him, but he was never proud of me, and he said that it was because I did nothing.

I'll never bother any of you ever again. If you want to find me, you know where to find me. Otherwise, goodbye, have a nice life.

And it kills me that to every person I have ever said "I love you" to, I have meant it.

And it kills me knowing that they never did.

My heart's a stereo

It's taking me all my strength, can't you see? It hasn't been easy. I can't stand being in the same room as you, or you, or you.

I don't understand why I still have a heart. I don't want to cry anymore. The truth is, I can't do this anymore.

I keep seeing you walk away. In that corner of my mind, I still see that vision of you walking away. I know in my heart that I will never see you again. I've been tortured so much this year. Just when I thought I had something figured out, everything else fell apart. I am devastated. Crushed.

But that's the way it's always been, isn't it? I sit next to you. I hold your hand. I wipe your tears dry. I give you my heart. And all this time, you gave your heart to somebody else. I know, I know. Set them free. Let them love, because isn't that the essence of who I am, anyway?

But once in a while, every once in a while, I sit down quietly in my room. I lie down, I stare at the ceiling. I hug my pillow. I wish you were here with me. I want to tell you so much but I'm afraid I'll just push you away, just like how I've pushed everyone away in my life.

Love was never an easy game to play, never for me. Just once in my life, I need an easier game plan. Or no plan at all. Just to fall deeply into someone's arms and just to lie there, dazed, perhaps.

I miss you. But I'll never get to say those words to you. I can never love again, if love only means giving my heart away to someone, and watching someone give their heart away to someone else.

I'm doomed.

That childlike heart I gave you that you threw away

I had to share this story I found online. It was a comment left on a post about loving someone with bipolar disorder. This story made me believe that it is possible to love a beeper, wholeheartedly, and with complete acceptance. I can relate to this all too well, except that unlike her husband, I never found someone like her who would love me for all that I am. And, I now believe that for the rest of my life, I never will.

~~~~~~~~~

release_the_bats 12 Mar 2010 @ 11:32 pm

I have loved someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder. I am an experienced researcher in psychoneuropsychology and other areas of psychology, which helped immensely. When we met he was badly misdiagnosed, which became very clear to me early on (those intense and sudden “arguments” were illogical and betrayed signs of hyopmania.) His diagnosis was “generalized anxiety disorder”. He was unmedicated, had lived a horrific life – alcoholic abusive father, mentally ill but never diagnosed mother who was in & out of the biggest mental institution in the city regularly. His memories of her were sketchy – cooked & kept beer for his father well stocked. His memories of his father were far more vivid. His only other relationship scarred him so badly he never dated again. I have lived with Major Depressive Disorder my entire life. At times a good day was getting out of bed. A great day was getting out of bed and brushing my teeth. At other times I won scholarships & topped the Dean’s List (always with tremendous struggle because depression never left-it merely..well, that’s another story). When I met him I found him easy company: His quick wit, offbeat humor & keen intelligence made me laugh & was good medicine. But I warned him that people with GAD didn’t wake up in psychiatric hospitals having stumbled in after losing time. There was mutual attraction but the point was never pressed & we were both shy about it. One day after sharing a coffee, bundled in his big parka, he gave me a big, long hug, our usual parting gesture. Then another. Finally he turned to leave, took about 8 steps, then rushed back, gave me a chaste peck on the lips and ran away quickly as if terribly embarrassed. I was smitten. Our courtship was difficult to say the least. And not just the “turning on a dime” temperament. The excitement of falling in love was fuelling his mania. I had to learn to be vigilant for small indications he was beginning to spin out. He had to learn to listen to me – which was very hard for him – and take such observations seriously. I had to set boundaries, which I was always notoriously bad at. And we fought! We eventually started to live together. I had already been helping him set up psychiatric appointments with specialistsand accompanied him every time, most of the time being allowed to sit in. He rarely suffered from depression – more “melancholy” or “pensively sad” occasionally than seriously depressed. He was mostly manic – VERY HIGH manic. As bad as anyone I’d every seen, even in teaching hospitals. Most phenothiazines were like candy to him. He slept poorly but often drifted off with his head on my chest listening to the regular beating of my heart while I played with his unruly hair, both of which soothed him. One day I noticed my credit card was gone. He didn’t come home. I cancelled the card although very little had been charged to it – a case of beer for some friends. I phoned every hospital, every shelter, every acquaintance..I was frantic. Two days later I got a call from the only purely psychiatric hospital in the city: Did I want them to mail my credit card to me? I asked if he was there, if he’d been there. That was confidential. I raced down there in a taxi, walked into the ICU and asked to see him by name. They pointed to a room at the end of the hall. When he saw me he wouldn’t look at me. “Why didn’t you just let them mail your card back?”, he spat out., “Why did you come here?” It wasn’t anger at me – it was at himself. Manic people have very poor impulse control. The card was on my purse – it was an unthinking gesture. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I ruined everything. I know…over nothing! Just leave me alone, please…don’t make it worse!” He looked so small (he was not a large man) and vulnerable – fragile even – in his hospital gown. I took his head in my hands and forced him to look at me. “Why?”, I asked. “I don’t know!!” And I knew he was telling the truth. I held him close and kissed him gently. He looked confused. He couldn’t understand how I could take him back – how I could still love him? He started to weep openly. I hopped onto the bed, put his head in my lap and stroked his hair…I don’t think anybody had ever forgiven him for anything.

The moment of truth for me came when he had his first psychotic break. I woke up one morning and he was gone.He showed up two days later covered in mud and confused. I’d been sick with worry. I called an ambulance but he became openly hostile (though he was NEVER EVER physically violent with me or anyone else, he could cut you with words…that ugly argumentative belligerence so typical of mania or rising mania.) The police were dispatched and he was handcuffed and made to ride in a cruiser. Ugh! I will tell you there is almost nothing worse in the world than seeing the person you love most in life-someone who is part of your soul (because this happened several times through the years) completely delusional with 2 200-lb security guards leaning on him while someone else fastens him to a hospital bed with big leather buckles in the 4-point position. Straining until the veins on his head were popping, he was under the impression it was a secret black-op mission and I was the spy who turned him in for reasons I never understood. I was terrified, horrified – no training or research had ever prepared me for this. I bent over to kiss his forehead and he spat in my face spewing a string of vulgarity at me that I’d never heard him use. (He later claimed it was impossible he had used that language with me; he refused to believe he was capable of it. I said I understood he was in a world of fear that didn’t correspond to reality.) I wept softly outside his room. He didn’t want me there. The nurses said I wasn’t welcome if he didn’t want me there. I left my University windbreaker with his name written in it and a note saying I loved him. It was the 5th month we had been living together. That was when I made my decision to not cut bait. Many wonderful (and often horrible) times ensued. Years..Overdoses on anything he could get his hands on to ease his anxiety (I eventually bought a small safe to keep my own drugs in to prevent this). Once he was almost unconscious in ICU for 12 hours. 2 hours later, after rousing to full consciousness he’d been moved to a room. One hour later he flew into a psychotic manic state yelling into the phone he’d been taken prisoner, ripped the IV out of his arm so violently that long blood streaks lined the hall he ran down in hastily donned jeans and hospital gown and tore off into a stairwell. The nurses assured me security had been alerted and would catch him. I shook my head with tears in my eyes and said, “No they won’t”. “Sure they will – they’re waiting for him and it’s 2 am.” At 2:30 I was standing in a hospital parking lot yelling his name into the darkness. Three days later he turned up at a psychiatric hospital, confused and unsure what had happened. We were never married in a church, but we did exchange vows and rings, with a friend as witness. I told him I promised that no matter how ugly things got I would not run away; I would never abandon him. I asked if he could honestly say the same thing. He did. I know friends who exchanged traditional vows (which i believe our sentiments sum up) in a church ceremony who were divorced after having childlren when my man and I were still going strong. Through a severe depression and some ugly family and chronic physical problems, he was always there for me. He was attentive, sensitive, and free of any machismo or need to do anything but BE with me. I loved him like my own life. I’d been betrayed by men before. With him *I* noticed beautiful women. He didn’t even take a second look. I once asked if he ever thought of suicide (a place I’ve visited many times). His answer was, “No – I”d never kill myself. Never. But I do believe that when death comes, it will be the only cure for what’s wrong with me.”
An understandable opinion: The constant merry-go-round of medications, the combinations, the side-effects, the drugs for the side-effects. His mania was extreme and intractable, and I don’t need to remind anyone who has loved someone with mania how long it can take to get an even mildly adequate combination.) He had to take leave from work. It was a difficult time. But there was something wonderfully childlike in his wonder at just being loved. He doted on me when I was sick – and often when I was well. He was unashamed to go buy me tampons or ask if my period was troubling me…it didn’t matter to him. It was just part of what love meant. He always had my latte ready and every morning without fail greeted me: “Good morning Sunshine! NOW the sun is officially up!”

There was something zenlike about him just being in the moment all the time. I learned so much from him. I learned to have a real relationship – an honest, vulnerable, no holds barred relationship.

Two days before we were finally financially able to manage our own small one-bedroom we were packed and excited. He had been dong much better for a year – back to work, far more stable, in a CBT group, trying meditation with me. He still had terrible panic attacks. He still had to be very careful. He still slept poorly. You can only take so much medication. But it was better. No more disappearances, no more frantic “where could he be” nights for me. That night we barely slept and woke up early. He was joyous, danced with me, delerious with finally “being able to properly provide” a decent place for us. But no sign of mania whatsoever. Just happy. We had breakfast and took a nap so we’d be fresher to meet the realtor that afternoon. I fell asleep with his arm around me and his breath on my neck.

An hour an a quarter later I woke up and found him dead, in our bed.
He was still warm.

I dragged him off and furiously started compressions with a phone under one ear calling an ambulance.

Hours later, those terrible words.
“I’m sorry ma’am…there’s nothing else we can do.”

He was 38 years old.

The official cause of death was sudden unexplained cardiac arrest.
“Fibrillation – it happens to us all sometimes. Usually the heart gets rhythm back again. Very rarely it doesn’t.”

A little over a year has passed since then – that first year during which I almost never left bed and wanted to die. I took a lot of sedatives to dull the pain enough to live through. I miss him. I MISS HIM WITH MY WHOLE BEING.
I don’t believe in a soul that survives death. I wish I did. Most days I feel like I”ve been in shock for the past year. That I’m just realizing he’s not coming back this time. Like part of my very self has been ripped out. I’m not sure who I am anymore. I see his beautiful face lying cold in that horrible coffin. I cry every day. Perhaps one day memories will be a consolation, but right now they are like acid – like stingers spearing my heart mercilessly.

I don’t regret one single moment. One night of worry. One huge fight. One horrific episode. Nothing. He taught me to look at the world with the wonder of a child – not childishly, but with a childlike heart. He taught me so much. I felt so loved. I had something, if only for a brief time, that some people never know their whole lives.
In memory of my beloved husband, and dedicated to anyone who knows the intense joy as well as the frustration and pain of loving (and being loved by) someone with bipolar disorder.

A blessing or a curse

Today, I heard of a guy who apparently attempted to cycle to Afghanistan to help liberate the people there. He didn't even get past the Malaysian borders. He didn't even have a passport. Apparently he didn't even leave the vicinity of KL. The authorities stopped him, and started interrogating.

But here's the thing. It triggered something in me. For someone to do such a thing, to possibly just wake up one morning and decide to go on a mission, that person has to have some bipolar quirks. There's no other way to say it, or explain it. There is only one thing that can drive a person to do such a thing; an act out of compulsion that baffles many - mania. When one is manic, that person can do many things that the person can't even explain why or how...

Which got me to thinking. I realised that my bipolar disorder was both a blessing and a curse. I mean, if I never had this illness, I don't think I would have lived my life the way I did. In fact, most of my living was done out of compulsions and impulse. Living feels free when you are manic. You are in control, you are happy, you are literally on top of the world. On numerous occasions, I have felt like I was set up on a mission. I read an article somewhere about someone who was bipolar who offered to drive a busload of kids somewhere, and halfway through, he got bored and just left. A little selfish, definitely, but who else would do something like that? To visit the extreme of life?

But sometimes, I do wonder, if I'm old and dying and when I think back upon my life, will I just see specks of craziness that peppered my entire life? I sometimes wish for stability - to wake up feeling one way, and to go to bed feeling the same. And NOT feeling numb, or numbed by the pain. I always say this, but I can't help but feel this way: that I never asked to be born with this; I didn't choose it, it chose me. For some reason, it chose me.

So I have no choice but to fight it, or succumb to it, or basically, live with it. This illness makes me strange. And people don't like strange. This illness ruined all my relationships. Nobody could accept me fully for who I am, or was, because of what I have (even before I was diagnosed). Relationships are ruined by violence; fiery words that meet fist fights and tight slaps, especially when I encounter another person who has issues. My bipolar is made worse when I am with someone volatile. It becomes undeniably an abusive relationship, though it took me years to realise this. And just like most abusive relationships, you can't get out. You simply can't. On good, manic days, you only see the good in your partner and yourself, and there is no other craziness that resembles the euphoria of love like mania. Then the bad days come, and you cower, with no self-confidence, taking in word after word after word, bringing you down, down, down, into the lowest point you can get to. On even worse days, the relationship turns physically abusive - from slaps to punches on the stomach to hair pulling to shoving.

It has come to a point where I realise my struggles with bipolar will always be a personal struggle. To however amount I affect others, I am always alone.

After all, when I was in the hospital, having nurses pump my stomach, I was literally alone. I had no one to hold my hand. All I could hear was the voice of a nurse taunting me, asking me why I didn't just swallow the entire bottle.

And later on, to hear from a doctor that I took enough of it that I could have killed a horse. But I lived. For some strange reason, I lived.

So on days and nights when I feel like I have no purpose, I think back to that night. And I wonder why I lived. So maybe I'll never have relationships. Maybe I'll never have a proper career. Maybe I'll never be able to have a family. Maybe, simply put, nobody will want me.

But here's the deal. I am here. I am alive. My fingers are slowly letting go of this string called life, but I'm still hanging on.