Dear 18 Year Old Me

My wife once asked me if I could go back in time and talk to the me of yesterday, what would I say? After thinking about it for some time, this is what I would say to the bipolar me of yesterday.

Dear 18 Year Old Me:

You don’t know me, but I once walked in your shoes for many, many miles.  Like you I struggled with feelings of anger, suicidal depression, loneliness, bitterness, and rage, so I know how you are feeling. I know there are times when you feel alive, and invincible, like you own the world, or at least will, one day, some day. And I know there are also days when you could care less as to whether you live another day, because nothing makes sense, and life seems to be nothing short of a waste of breath. I know you fall in love easily, and are always looking for someone to love. I know you are a passionate person and willing to lay your life down for so many people, and that is good, to some degree. I need to warn you, though, that giving so much of yourself away doesn’t make you a great person as much as it makes you co-dependent. You need to understand that co-dependency isn’t just for women with alcoholic partners willing to destroy their lives for the sake of helping someone who will most likely never love them back. Co-dependency belongs to anyone willing to give of themselves to the point of their own harm. This isn't what love looks like, even if Jesus did lay down his own life for the sake of others. His sacrifice was a calling. Yours is a desperate grab for purpose and meaning, which you will never find by letting others use you. Stop it now.

And while we are on the subject of bad habits, you will not find comfort by getting drunk all the time. The answers to all your pain-filled questions are in the bible, not in a bottle. You should be witnessing about Jesus to white Russians, not drinking them by the gallon. Drinking only makes the depression worse. In the same vein of thought, put down the cigarettes before they start to kill you. Your image is not enhanced by drinking or smoking. These are only vices that make your problems with anger and depression worse by the day.

I want you to also know that what you are feeling can be changed by talking to the right people, the right doctors, and getting on the right medication. Prayerfully, seek out these people. Work with them, and let them help you.  No, God isn’t going to take away these feelings of pain, and frustration, but the right combination of medication and counseling will go a very long way to making you feel stable, normal, and healthy. Yes, with the right help you can and will wake up one day and for the first time in your life not want to kill yourself. With the right help, life can and will hold purpose and meaning. When you do reach this point in your life, you will find it easier to walk with God, and live out your faith in Jesus. You will be able to become the man of God you have always wanted to be, free from the bewilderment of why God allowed you to be the way you are. Do know, however, that the help you will find will only be a tool for you to use to overcome your depression and mania. While you will have the power and ability to overcome, it will be your choice on a daily basis to use that ability in a positive, healthy way. The mania and depression might be abated, but your sinful human nature will still exist. Thus, you will have many choices to make as to where you want your life to go, and Who you will ultimately follow.

I could say more, but for now I want to leave you with this to chew on for a while. It is enough information for you to use to find your way to a healthier and more satisfying life. I will add one thing; no matter how you feel, the God of Heaven truly loves you. One day you will discover that what you are living with is not as much an illness as it is a gift from God that you will use to help others who are walking in similar shoes. 

Bipolar Diagnosis

I never had a whole lot of confidence in psychologists, psychiatrists, biblical counselors, or anyone else in the mental health field until I was well into my forties. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when the scientific study of the human brain and human behavior was at best experimental.  Many mistakes were made in those days by well-meaning mental health professionals, and sadly much to the detriment of the patient, and sometimes to the family. In my case it was both.

Throughout my life, from childhood to adulthood I visited a handful of psychologists and psychiatrists, and two bible-based counselors. Each one listened to my story, determined something was wrong, but except for one, not one of them could tell me I was bipolar. Maybe I did not give them enough time to figure me out, because the one who did spent the better part of a year with me sorting out the pieces of my life. But in the early days of evaluation what little information that could be gathered lent itself to mere speculation. In my elementary school years my parents were blamed. In my teenage years my behavior was blamed on the way I was raised in my elementary years. As an adult doctors and counselors blamed it all on the emotional and spiritual baggage I was carrying around with me.  One psychiatrist even came close to finding a diagnosis, saying I had mood swings, and prescribed medication to help control them, but that was not enough to effect a positive change.

One reason doctors had such a difficult time understanding my behavior and giving me a proper diagnosis was, because up until 1980 anyone with any type of mood disorder was simply labeled manic depressive. At that time the term bipolar disorder started being used and distinction was being made between full blown mania and hypomania. For me, however, and anyone growing up in the 80s with Affective Mood Disorder, the matter was further complicated, because it was not until the end of the 1980s that doctors began making a distinction between adult and childhood bipolar disorder. The reason why this was messy was, because anyone born in the mid to late 1960s was during this time of enlightenment coming into their adulthood. Therefore, doctors evaluating teenagers in late adolescence and early adulthood were just beginning to get a firm grasp on the evolution of the disorder. In other words, many doctors did not even realize how the disorder was changing, and the effects those changes were having on those of us trying to make sense of the hell in which we were living.

For me that early diagnosis was simply that I had mood swings, which was so obvious a child could have come to the same conclusion.  And so I slipped through the cracks and went untreated and improperly diagnosed for another twenty years. During this time I was verbally abusive to my wife and my children, perpetually depressed and suicidal, unable to hold a steady job, and headed for a breakdown. Thankfully, I did have a complete and total breakdown, for had I not, I would have never reached that rock-bottom point in life where I had no other choice but to seek help, and subsequently, finally get diagnosed as Bipolar II.  My counselor, Jerry, being a brilliant man did what others could not do and put the pieces of my life together and came to conclusion that my problems were not much behavioral, as they were the sum total of a mental illness that I had been living with my entire life.

Breakdown

On Sunday August 29th, 2009 I woke up crying into my pillow. I was a month shy of my 41st birthday, a husband, and a father, and one step away from ending my life.

For forty one years I lived with an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. The breakdown I was experiencing was the culmination of 41 years of recurring depression and mania. To the trained eye my symptoms might have been obvious. I might have even been diagnosed and treated with medication, and sent on my way to lead a somewhat normal, healthy life like I do today. But past dealings with psychiatrists and psychologists had left me jaded, and fully convinced that the field of medicine that dealt with the human mind was little more than junk science. I had gone down that road before, which only led me to a dead end. So, I dealt with the pain of my depression and the highs of my mania the best I could. But with each passing day, week, month, and year, layer upon fragile layer of my psyche withered and died. A storm was brewing within me, and on August 29th, 2009, the first bolt of lightning struck, the raindrops began to fall, and the winds brought everything crashing down around me.

The mind can be a beautiful place. It can hold hopes, and dreams, and fantasies that are good and pure and can change the world to make it a better place. It can hold memories of love and happiness, joy and pleasure. It can be a place of peace and comfort, a place of refuge and solace where no one can enter without permission. It can be a private place, a happy place. But it can also be a dark and lonely place. For many people the mind is a cold cavernous place filled with thoughts and feelings that are often filled with pain and torment. For some of these people their minds are a place of haunting memories, depression, and hopelessness. Try as they might to change their way of thinking, they can only see pain-filled chasms of emotional, mental, and often spiritual torture. They are plagued with thoughts that quite often cannot be controlled as inner demons scream death both night and day, until the thought of dying becomes more hopeful than the thought of living.

I cannot help but wonder how many people in the world today experience the inner demons of depression, even suicidal depression. At the same time, I wonder how many people scratch their heads in wonder at how a person can feel so low as to want to take their own life. I have never attempted suicide. I have come close to carrying it out a couple of times, but each time something got in the way, or I simply did not possess the means. I can tell you that had I ever owned a gun I would not be here today. I remember when I was in therapy and my counselor finally did figure out I was bipolar that it was a miracle I was not dead. Some people are able to hold on for one more day. Some people cannot. I did.