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.