Review of Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things: Learning to Love as a Bipolar Aspie
Kitt O’Malley over at Kittomalley.com, so generously reviewed my book on being Bipolar and Aspie and the fight for sanity and love, in a post on her blog. Kitt, a psychotherapist and mother and wife, writes about vital and informative topics pertaining to mental health, ranging from being a Bipolar parent to a relationship with God. She can also be found at @kittomalley on Twitter. A big THANK YOU to Kitt for posting this review.
Afraid of Love
Bipolar 1, OCD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. These were the labels awarded me when a major breakdown at age 28 literally catapulted me into therapy. Later came yet another label, Asperger’s Syndrome. In crisis, I was given a choice: medication or a mental hospital. I chose medication.
At this point my life began. Having left behind a trail of failed relationships, I started my quest for love, this time by journeying within. For many years, I lived in a world of delusion and psychosis. Somehow I managed to keep working my job in a university library.
All along the motivation to get well arose from a partly delusional, somewhat complex, unrequited love for a woman at work. Heretofore, heterosexual I learned that I was bisexual. A surprise. Much more importantly, I learned that I had severe problems with my own identity. I was very split by Bipolar Disorder. So split I felt like two different people. Before loving anyone, I had to overcome major problems with closeness due to Asperger’s Syndrome.
I thought I had found someone to love but love was not to come until I struggled through 7 years of hard therapeutic work. I had to start from scratch. When love came, it came in the form of a man. He became my husband of 25 years, Thomas.
My book, “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things“, chronicles the journey just pre-breakdown through psychosis, towards some semblance of sanity. It closes with my finally finding love. And though it starts off with insanity, it addresses the very human problems of intimacy and fear of closeness. Meant to give hope to the mentally ill and help enlighten their therapists, my saga may help those of the sane world who have issues with love and intimacy, not just the mentally ill.
Available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, iBooks, and Smashwords, for $2.99, my book explains what it feels like to be Bipolar and on the Autism spectrum and explores the phantasmagorical mystery of love.
One review on Amazon.com by a psychologist:
Rapid Cycling
Patterns of the microcosm
echoed in the macrocosm
vibrating thoughts
no meditation
lots of frustration
can’t calm down
do the Hong Sau
Yogananda method
the only hope
in this mind
doing 120 mph
in a 35 mph zone
time soon for sleep
frogs singing
a pre-dawn high
drained at noon
rapid cycling
twilight now
back to racing
raving
raging mind
need gentility
humility
quietude
to feel awe
to ponder
hit “Pause”
love in the afternoon
a natural anti-
depressant
sent sight soaring
in space
seeing patterns
everywhere
echoing symphonically
in noisy ears
the hum of quiet
seems too loud
flashing lights
status migrainous
with all over
crawling feeling
“not-theres”
stop I say
stop I pray
stop the way
the world spins
hurling in space
the race
the pace
exhaustion
please
take this body
in your arms
work your charms
on this alarm-
ing state
with alacrity
the paucity
of peace
needs mending
Oh evening
send hope
for ending
these frantic antics
quell the panic
break the day
and bring on
the dawn
of dreams
The Reign of Pain
Tears,years, fears, pain, pane, rain, car, far, are you there, somewhere?
I can’t hear you. I can’t see you. I can’t feel you. Any more.
Why did you have to die? Why did you have to go?
Your kids bleed for you, you know.
Your wife aches for you, you know.
I pine for you, you know.
Your absence is our has been.
Attachment our sin.
And in this reign
of pain we fail
we ail
each in our own ways.
It may be a thin veil
that divides our souls but
why then does it feel like an iron curtain
creating the great divide
between our being and your nothingness?
(Written for the three year anniversary of my brother’s death.)
Overloaded Circuits
On circuit overload
can’t turn off the current
despite parallel despair
know a fuse will blow
but can do little to stop the flow
mania and depression
together = paranoia
Two Different Worlds
I am Bipolar. I used to think I was two different people. In the remarkable article below Bipolar Disorder is described as inhabiting two different worlds.
Point of View
It happens
every now and again
a psychotic break
reality blurred
thinking slurred
torrents of
uncried tears
MAJOR fears
choked inside
unable to open the door
to walk in the sun
or talk to someone
and then…
it passes
at least for this time
fractured mind
heals
and I emerge
purged
of demons
shaken but
crawling back
out of the dark
blinded by light
laden with guilt
over is it
unjustified anger
and justified hurts
or justified anger
and unjustified hurts
or no justification
just endless conflation
of swirls of emotion
that feed the
desire to die
I come
creeping back
confused lack
of any cohesion
into the world
of “reality”
or Maya
depending on
one’s point of view.
Eye-Contact and Animal Healers
As someone with Asperger’s who spent much of my life avoiding eye contact until I was properly medicated, I still feel uncomfortable with eye contact in human interaction. Yet I actively seek out eye contact with animals. I am not alone in this. For people with Asperger’s and Autism, eye-contact with humans is fearsome and yet with animals, sublime.
People say eye contact with animals is less threatening, yet I believe there is more to it than that. Gazing into the eyes of an animal, I feel love, depth of consciousness, and connection– all qualities quite impossible to feel with humans, except in fleeting moments with my beloved Aspie husband who, too, has problems with eye contact. Perhaps because Aspies and Auties are so starved for affection, so hungry for a form of love that they CAN handle, animals offer pure and simple love, and unconditional acceptance. The truth is animals are excellent therapists and natural healers!! P.S. Animals are good for depressives, too.
(For more information on eye contact and Asperger’s and Bipolar Disorder, see the memoir I wrote of my experiences with love, called “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things” http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html)
Interview with Slade Suiter of Authenticity Radio on Being Bipolar and Asperger’s
“http://www.spreaker.com/embed/player/standard?autoplay=false&episode_id=3642270”
Dark Clouds Overhead
Things have spiraled out of control. I am following far too many blogs and comments and finding it hard to keep up with all the new posts I want to read. I am on too many animal rights, environmental and political lists. Right now I have had a few weeks of migraines nearly everyday and am finding it hard to get myself to Physical Therapy to treat some problems that need addressing. I am losing my temper at my loving husband and he, in turn, is under so much pressure at his clinical social worker job that he is losing his as well. Clearly something has to be done. I cannot stand the person I have become.
This means I will not be posting for awhile and I am not sure how long, or, if this is turning into a bad thing altogether. I will not give up the animal activism and environmental lists because this is one of the few ways I can give to the world. There is a reason I have been on disability for the last 13 years. I have a major mental illness, Bipolar Disorder, and Asperger’s and these take their toll on my life and those around me. So please forgive me if I don’t read all your posts, or read them and don’t respond. I love some of you, and care for many of you, but now have to get my life back. This means more meditation, more Reiki, possibly learning Qi Gong and lots of prayer. It feels too bad right now to stay on the road I am on.
Good-bye for awhile and my warmest regards,
Ellen
My Mind is Broken
It is 3 A.M. and it is another night I cannot sleep. I have taken two sleeping pills to no avail. When I am manic sleep does not come easily. I write. I eat. I check email. I pace the rooms back and forth, in and out of bed. Luckily my husband does not wake during my perambulations. The mania is not of the inflated ego variety, though I have had that at an earlier time in my life. Years ago I remember going by Harlem on a bus route home one night when I was flagrantly psychotic and proclaiming, “These are my people!” Why I said this I couldn’t tell you now– sparked most likely from some manic feeling of camaraderie. But, of course, it was beyond grandiosity and just plain crazy (yes, that is a psychiatric term). Perhaps the roots arose out of the closeness I had with my Sicilian grandfather who was not exactly white and who had much spirit– what an African-American might call “soul.” And from my father, a jazz trombonist, who spent his youth sleeping in bathtubs in Harlem when he would come to the city from white suburbia for jam sessions. He, too, like my grandfather, had “soul” hidden under white skin.
In any case, thanks to the anti-psychotic family of medicines I am not grandiose tonight. I did forget to take my meds the other night and, like Karma, that affects everything about my life. I am just raring for the day to start, for the morning to come. I see a drunk sitting outside on a stoop smoking. I want to see, not the people of the night, but the purposeful people of the morning, going to school, going to work, walking their dogs. Two hours and forty-five minutes to go. And then time to wake up, have coffee, pray, make plans for the work of the day. How can fifteen minutes seem like an hour? How can the cool night breeze masquerade as a morning zephyr? I will make one last attempt to go to bed and sleep. First, I will post a video of Jusuf’s, formerly known as Cat Stevens, of a beautiful hymn he sang, “Morning Has Broken.” I am also posting a photo I took of a marsh in the morning light. Enjoy! And Good morning!
This was written a year ago in a mild manic episode. Right now I am fighting depression triggered by Lyme disease and antibiotics. I have zero creativity so resort to rewrites. Hope to be back writing soon and commenting on fellow bloggers’ posts. Please excuse the silence but that is how it is being Bipolar. (Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase, my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
“Couldn’t Look Away” – Book review by Alistair McHarg of “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things”
I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone interested in psychological exploration – from clinicians to self-diagnosticians to concerned family members to lovers of extraordinary tales well told.
Do not imagine that this is a lesson-plan about Bipolar Disorder, or Asperger’s Syndrome, for that matter. On the contrary, we see Ms. Wolfe wrestling with a panoply of symptoms residing on different points of a spectrum – we never know exactly where we are, and neither does Ms. Wolfe. We get first person, real-time intimacy – the raw data, not the spin.
Asperger’s, autism, schizophrenia, paranoia, mania, depression, and challenging questions of gender identity blur back and forth until one is overpowered by the sense of a shape-shifting, ghostly enemy. We witness Ms. Wolfe inaccurately interpreting social cues the way an anthropologist might puzzle over artifacts from an alien civilization.
The writing is austere, elegant, forceful and almost chillingly honest. There is not an ounce of self-pity to be found, or self-aggrandizement. Serious students of these illnesses could hardly find a more useful document because – using meticulous diaries she kept through the years – Ms. Wolfe has made scrupulous accuracy her battle cry.
From very early on I found myself caring about what happened to Ms. Wolfe, wanting to know more. I sensed sweetness, innocence, and vulnerability – and that made me want to protect her. Consequently, the dread I felt as I watched her struggle with her own mind – and the outside world – created the tension of real drama. One would have to be a cold fish indeed to not suffer along with her as she trudges ahead with heroic determination.
Ms. Wolfe has achieved something quite remarkable. She has applied the direct simplicity of science to a human ordeal and, in the process, accomplished what art does, when it is at its very best. She has fearlessly and generously taken us into her world and – in doing so – enriched us all.
Alistair McHarg
Springtime Blues no.3
I am tres desolee
today
spring blossoms
morph to snow
when drained of color
against a grey sky
as I morph to lows
after a false high
Swarms
The attack
not killer bees
nor locusts
nor hornets
nor any insect
but the contents
of the mind
Tied up in knots
not safe
not secure
not strong
not peace
Sick with
the plague of fears
negative thoughts
insidious
invidious
poison
killing joys
bringing tears
of pain
and loss
and grief
The swarms cloud the sun
taking away the Light
and all it enraptures
attacking
the very source
of life
Love
Two of Me?
I look down at the catalogue card on my desk. I look at the first subject heading. It says: “City planning – Zoning.” I see the word “City” and I see the word “planning” but I see them as “City – planning – Zoning,” something I’ve never seen before. I go over to Tony.
“Tony, is this a new subject heading? I’ve never seen the two together before.”
Dr. Lencek is standing by, listening and he says, “Ah, indirect communication.”
I hold the words in my mind. “Indirect communication.” What does he mean?
Tony answers gently, “Ellen, that’s not a new subject heading— we’ve used it before.”
I look down at the card. Of course, it isn’t a new heading. Now the words look normal. “City planning – Zoning.” My face burns hot and red. How stupid! I’ve used the heading for years. I slink back to my desk in embarrassment.
“It will get easier,” Dr. Lencek says.
“INDIRECT COMMUNICATION.” DR. LENCEK SAID THAT AFTER YOU SAID YOU HAD NEVER SEEN THE TWO TOGETHER BEFORE. YOU MEANT THE TWO PERSONALITIES INSIDE YOU. YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE. YOU WERE DESCRIBING YOUR MENTAL STATE IN INDIRECT COMMUNICATION. THAT’S WHAT DR. LENCEK MEANT. THAT’S WHY DR. LENCEK IS ALWAYS TELLING YOU TO FREEZE ONE PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME AND KEEP IT IN THE MEMORY. “HOLD IT IN YOUR MIND,” HE ALWAYS SAYS. HE IS TRYING TO GET YOU TO BE ONE MIND— ONE PERSON. YOU’RE SPLIT IN TWO.
I feel weaker than ever now, though I am sitting. I look over at Dr. Lencek who is standing nearby Tony’s desk working. I want to hug him. All the times I was so nasty to him when he was trying to communicate with me . . .
IT’S THE PLAN. IT’S THE PLAN YOU OVERHEARD DANIELLE DISCUSSING WITH CAROLINE. YOU OVERHEARD DANIELLE SAY HOW SURPRISED SHE WAS THAT THE PERSONNEL HEAD WOULD ALLOW THEM TO GO THROUGH WITH THE PLAN. DANIELLE HAD THOUGHT THE HEAD WOULD HAVE SAID NO. THEY WERE PLANNING TO SHOW YOU HAD TWO PERSONALITIES.
But why would they bother helping me in this way? Why would they bother helping me at all after all my moodiness and fits of anger?
I am shaking now. I try to get up from my desk to look up the call number for the book. Dr. Lencek is standing by. Tony and Danielle are standing to the side watching me as I try to get up. I try to put one foot in front of the other. It is as if I have forgotten how to walk. My legs and feet don’t move the right way. I look up at Danielle. She probably overheard most of the conversation between Tony and me from this morning. She knows what is wrong with me. This is why she has kept away. She is watching me with an expression so dramatic that it is easy for me to see worry and compassion. There are tears in her eyes. For once I can feel the love. I want to run into her arms and cry. But I cannot walk. It is as if I am a big baby and when I finally do manage to walk slowly past them to the back of the room, I am unable to respond when Eva passes by and says hello. It is taking all my power and concentration just to walk to get where I am going. I suddenly am so exposed. Like a baby walking down the aisle. But, no, it is like I am being wheeled down the aisle. Something is moving me down the aisle and it is not my feet. I am in a big, dark, round cave. And in one corner of the cave is a small opening where the light shines in.
From Chapter 11 of my memoir on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Eye-locks-Other-Fearsome-Things-ebook/dp/B007TOOF56/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1345051643&sr=1-1&keywords=eye-locks Also available on Barnes & Noble Nook, iBooks and Smashwords.
Mania Free-flow
This is the mind in mania, a sampling of the free-flow of racing thoughts and rhyming words that occur. On first glance, the meaning may seem random but in the context of the memoir, themes of paranoia and the flip side of mania, depression, are apparent.
I catch the Number Four bus. The bus is crowded. The motor in my head starts racing again.
IT’S PANIC. AND THEY’RE PUSHING. PUSHING AND SHOVING. AND THE STREET LIGHTS ARE FLASHING— GREEN VENOM/BLOODY TEARS ALTERNATELY ON THE RAINDROP WINDOWS OF THE BUS. AND THAT WOMAN OVER THERE IS STARING, DAMNED BITCH! AND THAT HAIRY MAN— THE EYES ARE PROBING AND LOCKING. IT’S SHOCKING. THE MIND MOTOR’S GOING FASTER AND FASTER STILL. NERVE ENDINGS FIRING. AXONS AND DENDRITES SYNAPSING ALL OVER THE GODDAMNED PLACE. AND THE STREETS CRAWL BY. FLIP FLOP. THE CAMERA SHOP. GOTTA MOP THE CAMERA SHOP. FLIP FLOP. THE BUTCHER SHOP. CHOP. CHOP. RAW MEAT DROPS AT THE FEET OF FAT FLESH. TICK TOCK. THE ROUND, WHITE INSTITUTIONAL CLOCK TICK-TOCKS TO THE CHOP CHOP OF THE BUTCHER SHOP. A SEAT. SIT DOWN. CLOSE THE EYES. YEAH. THAT’S BETTER. NICE AND EASY DOES IT. TRANQUILITY. SENILITY. DEBILITY. THE MIND MOTOR’S RACING. THE HANDS ARE SHAKING. GRAB HOLD OF THE BAR. YOU’LL GO FAR IF YOU GRAB HOLD OF THE BAR. KEEP THE EYES CLOSED AND GRAB HOLD OF THE BAR. THE BLACK HOLES IN SPACE TAKE THE PLACE OF THE RAY OF HOPE WHICH LIES LIKE A DOPE BURIED UNDER THE FALLEN STARS. A MURKY MIASMA AT THE BOTTOM OF THE UNIVERSE. REHEARSE THE HEARSE. ANOTHER STAR IS DYING AND TRYING TO REST AT BEST IN THE BOTTOM OF FOREVER. AND PEOPLE ARE LEAVING. AND THERE’S MORE SPACE. AND I’M DOWN IN THE VALLEY OF THE DESPAIRING DAMSELS, SITTING WITH THE DOTTED, SPOTTED DALMATIANS, IN THE PURPLE PANTRY PUDDLES OF THEIR PISS.
From Chapter 2 of my Bipolar/Asperger’s Memoir. For more information see:
Also available on Barnes & Nobles Nook, iBooks and Smashwords
“For the Truth Shall Set Ye Free”
I first remember things going wrong at age 5.
I am standing in the corner of the bedroom with my mother beside my brother’s crib. She is telling me I am cold and selfish, like my father’s mother whom she hates. I now think she hates me. She tells me I will wind up all alone.
It is just after the births of my brother and sister, only 11 months apart, and my 25-year-old mother, is totally overwhelmed. My brother is the apple of her eye, with Mom’s dark coloring and the looks of her adored Sicilian born-father. My sister is Daddy’s little girl. I remember feeling all alone, and being cold and hard at that age, confiding only in my stuffed lion, Leo. Many, many years later I come to see this cold, hard me as a dissociated self. Many years later my mother apologizes to me. And I apologize to her.
I set out on a life-long struggle to be different from my father’s mother, doing everything to try to be warm and loving like my mother’s Italian family. I fail. With acute stage fright most of the time, I cannot initiate a smile, nor greet people. The most basic social skills are lost to me, much to the chagrin of my parents. Often I cannot respond to people. At times I cannot organize my thoughts well enough to speak. I feel evil and selfish. I want to fit in and can’t. I want to pass for normal and don’t. I want to have a family and never will. I want to find love and it will take me decades to do so.
The “defensive personality” serves me well, covering up many, but not all, of my autistic symptoms. I live dissociated from many of my numerous fears.
My story begins when I break down. My fiancé, Sundra, goes back to Sri Lanka. I change library jobs from a relatively comfortable clerical position in a small library to a position cataloging art books in a huge office. The new job is in a giant room with three different departments and about 40 employees of all ages and ethnicities. There are no cubicles or dividers so everyone can see and hear everyone else. It is as gossip-ridden as a small town. There is no privacy and there are fluorescent lights. It is all too much. But it is here I meet Danielle who is to change my life forever and, later, Jimmy, who becomes my husband. My journey begins when my autistic shell breaks, at age 28, when the “superficial personality”, the dissociated me, falls apart. I seek therapy and am diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Not until thirty years later do I find out I have Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, as well.
I write my story as a message of hope to all those who are as lost as I was, to those who think, as I did, that they cannot find love. I open my heart to help others avoid the suffering I went through and caused. I nearly lost my job and my mind pursuing love. I hurt other people. I could have been seen as a stalker due to my typical Aspie approach to a romantic interest. Love threw me over the brink of sanity and made me psychotic at times. I didn’t know I was Bipolar and my psychiatrist didn’t know I had Asperger’s syndrome.
Finally, I write this book to psychiatrists and other therapists that they may understand their patients who have the same issues and delusions.
From the Prologue to Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things:
Aspie Empathy
There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.
By Dalai Lama XIV
Pema Chodron says Pain has its virtues.
Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), an Autistic Spectrum Disorder on the mild end of the spectrum, is often characterized by a supposed lack of empathy. What it really means, and many professionals still do not know this, is that there is a different kind of empathy. An empathy in which we, Aspies, are so overrun with feelings that our system crashes– to use a computer analogy.
For example, my aunt is on death’s door and my cousin calls to give me the news. Suddenly she starts crying hysterically and shouting that her mother can’t die and leave her, that she needs her mother, and conveying a powerful sadness. I start crying, too, and try to say some words of comfort or of wisdom acquired from losing my own parents. All pales and I am reduced to stuttering. Why does this happen? I am overcome with her feelings and feel them myself. And the computer freezes up. System crash– whereas, a Neurotypical (NT) would know what to say and be sympathetic and empathetic and help my cousin. I make vague attempts that wind up as feeble words. Does that mean I am an unfeeling person? No. Ineffectual, yes. And maybe seen as heartless despite my attempt to convey love and sympathy for what my cousin is going through.
Another example shows me as a monstrous teen. I am 15 and my mother gets a phone call and starts crying hysterically. I immediately know it means that Grandpa is dead. I adored my grandfather and had a very special relationship with him. In some ways which I will not go into here, too special in a not-good way, especially for so young a child. I know there is no room for my grief. It is only my mother’s that counts. There is no one to go to with the devastation I feel inside. So how do I express it? Do I cry? No. I say to my father, “I guess we won’t be having hamburgers for dinner.” A totally callous remark. And my father chastises me for being “unfeeling”—for my lack of empathy, when all the time I am in great pain inside. This on the surface is what Asperger’s lack of empathy looks and sounds like. Underneath the surface there is a chaos of feelings rampaging within. Now an NT might actually feel less deeply, but would act and say something appropriate and certainly wouldn’t make a remark like the hamburger one. It is not that I wanted hamburgers– I hated them. To this day, I don’t know why that remark slipped out.
Things like that still happen. I did not get officially diagnosed with AS until age 61, though I knew I was autistic decades before, having worked with autistic children on the serious end of the spectrum. Aspies feel emotion and shut down, just like an overloaded computer. It does not mean that they have no feelings nor empathy. It is a different kind of feeling and empathy. And I have noticed a tremendous reservoir of feeling for animals that can be expressed more easily, for animals are so less threatening and more straightforward than human beings. If I were more intelligent, I would become a vet. Now, whenever I can the chance with an animal, I give Reiki, which many animals respond to quite naturally. It is definitely easier to give Reiki to an animal rather than to a human being. My husband is the one exception. He is a special case, lumped in with non-humans simply because I am so comfortable with him, a high-functioning Aspie himself.
I learned to try to pass for normal– in some ways, quite successfully. I became an expert observer of people though I could not, and still cannot, interpret what I observe. But I owe my success to my mother having a mood disorder which got passed down to me as Bipolar Disorder– and to my father being an alcoholic. Why? Because in order to survive, to minimize fear and pain, I had to become a keen observer of my mother’s moods before she lashed out at me. I would scour her face for every nuance of mood although I still seldom knew what was to come. This extreme vigilance served to protect myself. Similarly with my father. I would study him, scrutinize his behavior when he came in the door on the rare nights he came home when he said he would, and did not stay out drinking. Just because he came home early did not mean he was not drunk. A facial expression, a different gait wherein he tried to walk normally, the way he said hello, would give it away. I became expert at detecting drinking, often knowing long before my mother did that he was drunk and would tell her. She wouldn’t always believe me. I was terrified of my father when he was inebriated. Once, as a very little girl, I heard him sick in the middle of the night and my mother was with him in the bathroom, semi-hysterical, yelling at him for my father was obviously out of control. I felt sick myself, tried to drown out the sounds with a pillow, and was scared to death I would have to run to the bathroom and be ill also. This turned into a life-long phobia and obsession. I loved my father but when he was drunk I didn’t want him anywhere near me. And sometimes, especially when drinking gin, he could be mean. Were his true feelings coming out—“In Vino Veritas” or were they just drunken ramblings of a disturbed mind? For he did have a disturbed mind, an outcome of a tragic childhood and he used alcohol to self-medicate his demons. His father was an alcoholic, too.
Pain has its virtues. I learned to study people and became so astute that it hid my Asperger’s symptoms for years. Female Aspies seem to be better at hiding their disability than males. I learned to study people but I still cannot decipher what expressions mean. I can see something happening on the face but am often still not be able to tell what it means. This just increases what is already acute social anxiety and is hard to translate into socially appropriate responses.
“Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.” Certainly my childhood was not a tragedy by any means. But parts of it were tough and those parts made me strong.
Next time you see an Aspie act without empathy, especially a child, you might check in with them to see just what they are feeling. I would wager that they are feeling a great deal and simply cannot process or express their feelings.
Mourning Mania and the Only Path to Take
I once had the fire, raging within, unchecked and veering out of control. Now it glows like a pile of burning embers I sift through periodically, as if panning for gold. Once a cauldron of creativity, ideas bubbled around inside my head at break-neck speed, spinning like a troop of whirling dervishes. But far more valuable, the flames fueled what can only be called the presence of God within, being at one with Jesus. Such beautiful states were sparked by the same fire that also torched a living hell within—for such were the cycles of my mania and depression.
The danger of mania drew nigh when the flames scorched what was left of my reason and my perception of the world, sending me into a morphing reality where I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn’t. This alternative/alternating consciousness clouded my vision as I ran up against the walls of mania and depression, like a little girl, lost in a house of mirrors, not knowing how far she was from the light of day.
To say I could not function is a huge understatement and was a by-product of my living in another dimension. I remember once not being able to respond to a store clerk simply asking if he could help me. That question had always been troublesome for my Aspie nature, but in a Bipolar mania I was unable to open my mouth to speak, and this sent me running out the doors of the store, seeking a hiding place for my tears. One of the many times I lost my speech.
To make matters worse the fire would rage and then die out suddenly and completely, leaving me like a trapeze artist suddenly finding there was no safety net below. Despair was total—no creative juices, no God and a mind replete with self-loathing in a totally black, bleak void. I was a dead tree in the depths of winter, with decaying stumps where branches used to be. There was no future and I had no access to any of the goodness of things past.
Alternating between these two ways of being in the world was exhausting, confusing and totally disorienting. And then I had a breakdown and psychosis spewed forth from the detritus of my mind. I was reborn into a the world that was totally overwhelming and hellishly over-stimulating. I had to learn the lessons of childhood all over again, starting from square one. This time with professional help and MEDICATION! Not the self-medication of alcohol. Psych meds. Heavy duty ones of the Thorazine variety. Anti-psychotics.
At first, it seemed I was now wrapped the “cotton-wool” Virginia Woolf described as her moments of “non-being.” My cotton-wool was more of a mental straight-jacket. The medication had toned down the world outside and inside as if I were under water in John Lilly’s immersion tank. Clearly medication adjustments had to be made and they continued to be made over and over again until my doc and I found a balance—the Golden Mean of medication, with me as a willing patient since I could no longer function at all without it. Medication meant that I didn’t have to go to hospital. Medication meant that I didn’t have to kill myself. Medication meant that therapy could now teach me how to live and, more importantly, how to love. I had been seeking love all my life but was too dazed by the blaze within me to see it, feel it or return it when given. Now, at long last I could.
Most Bipolars are not med-compliant and go off their meds when things get better. And then they veer into the vertiginous descent to hell once more and wind up in hospital/jail/homeless/dead. There is no virtue in my med compliance. I have tried stopping the meds a few times resulting in a reality so painful, that, humbled, I go crawling back to them. Life events have necessitated raising the dosage now and then. Like when my father was dying of cancer and later my mother and, just a year and a half ago, my brother.
Every so often I lament the loss of the raging fire of creativity and the burning desire for communion with God but now my thoughts are slowed down enough that I can sift through the embers and find little sparks which inspire poetry/prose/paintings/photographs/prayer. I find smoldering embers of religious feeling and have to work hard to fan the fire, it’s true. But now I can channel the creativity and religious feeling into works of art that I can be shared with others. Not torn up, destroyed or desecrated in a sudden descent into depression. Now I have to work harder to pray and have practiced meditation to find real religious feeling. Despite the loss of mystical states, I find myself more motivated to become a better person in God’s eyes without the former pseudo-spiritual feeling possessing me and my ego. Most importantly now I can love: people, God, and even myself at times.
Slowing down is not boring. It enables one to function/produce/LOVE. I have accomplished more in every facet of my life after being medicated and treated than I ever did before my breakdown. The same ideas are there but now I can use them as building blocks of art/faith/relationships. I think myself more materialistic and self-seeking than I was when I was totally out of my mind. Yes, it is true that I am, but paradoxically that makes me better able to try to give something back to the world, to love others and to pray harder to God. I have lost the effortlessness of it all and I have to pedal harder to get somewhere where treasured feelings are deeper, and more lasting. I could not love before—not myself, not others.
Sometimes I mourn the manias, until I am reminded of their undesirable attributes as they occasionally race through my mind scaling the protective walls of medication. Now I finally know them for what they are. Dangerous. Scary. Out of control. And I now know they will be followed by a crash. When I mourn the days of raging fire, others remind me that the middle road is far better. I remember my Sicilian grandfather whom I adored, preaching the “Middle Path,” which I think he got from reading Marcus Aurelius. And I wonder if he said this from his own experience of some sort of psychological problems he may have had. His daughter, my Mom, certainly had a mood disorder, if not Bipolar Disorder itself. Maybe he did, too.
My husband is my biggest reminder of the importance of medication. A clinical social worker, he knows well of what he speaks, the bulk of his knowledge coming from 23 years of living with, and loving me through my suicidal depressions and my florid manias. And these days, he is the man I adore. I am still constantly amazed that I am able to give love to a real other, another human being, however imperfectly. In the days when passion fanned the terrifying, tumultuous flames of phantasms of love built upon superficial desire, I could not. Nor did I think I would ever be able to love or be loved.
Medication, therapy and my husband have helped me stay sane and walk the middle road. And the middle road is the only path to take.
“Never, Never”
“It won’t happen again. Never. Never. Never. It’ll never happen again. No. No. No.”
The words to a song by Yusuf, better known as Cat Stevens, about a love affair gone awry. The words reverberate in my head repeatedly in true Bipolar style, as in true Aspie style, I listen to the song over and over and over and over again. My perseveration on the song fashions the words into a mantra, sending me full throttle into another state of consciousness, like the whirling dervishes of Istanbul who spin until they enter a mystical state. Since I no longer alter my consciousness with alcohol, cigarettes or recreational drugs (was too crazy to go that route), and since I am on anti-psychotic medications which keep me in reality, I have to use music, meditate and take refuge in nature to venture into my much-missed mystical states of being. The states today are washed out versions of the vibrant intensity I was accustomed to earlier in my life. But then, at age 28, my mind, never too strong to begin with, broke down and reality shattered into so many smithereens of glass. “It’s always a trade-off,” the experts say. But (and a “but” with a capital “B”) the psych meds hold me together and, most importantly of all, they allow me to love.
“It will never happen again. No. No. No.”
I can’t say that. My first major manic episode was ignited by a flaming crush at work that catapulted me into the fractionated world of psychosis for a very long time. Some thirty years later I am unsure just how far away that world is. It is not unusual for love to trigger the first manic episode in Bipolars, and I had another when I met the man who was to become my husband. This time the psychosis lost the war– because the love was reciprocated and nurturing– the most stable thing I had ever experienced. And (big “and”) because I was medicated. Though it felt like another break with reality was encroaching on my psyche, it never materialized and has not since.
But there have been close calls now and then. Writing my memoir of madness while working part-time, I would go to my job with all the raw feelings I was writing about whirling around inside me and, seemingly, outside me as well, as though stamped on my forehead. The memories and flashbacks bubbled up from deep inside like a lava flow of feelings. But no breakdown.
Mania is not the only state that flirts with psychosis. So, too, does the underbelly of the beast, depression. Loss of loved ones and caring for my dying mother brought me perilously close to the precipice again but extra medication kept me on the sane side of psychosis.
Even now any highly emotional experience (and being bipolar there are many) can shake the foundations of the self. Beholding great beauty in ecstatic encounters with nature, profound connections between thoughts and ideas, connecting deeply to another person—all these can send me reeling into space wondering if I can make it back to earth. These are all dangers I engage in somewhat recklessly for they make up the majestic magic and mystery of life. Friends and family I have helped keep my feet on the ground, but my husband is my real anchor to reality. Should something happen to Tom, well…
No. Unlike a dead love affair, I can’t say the descent into madness “will never happen again.” As I drift in and out of tantalizing trips into mania and try to flee the inevitable free fall into depression, I hang on for dear life and will not let go.
Enjoy the song sung soulfully by Cat Stevens, “MaybeYou’re Right…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUnxkW4zeM4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
“Inspirational” (a 5 star review for “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things)
This book is worth the time. The writer is unbelievably honest about her
experiences and she had me caring about her from the very beginning. She is a
very brave woman for being as open and detailed as she was. Her mental battles,
her struggles with everything and as for the writing, the delivery of her
thoughts was intense and well delivered. I have epilepsy and I can tell you that
after reading her story it has helped me. She has inspired me and reminded me
not to forget what I know. This is a story that I highly recommend and I want to
say thank you to the writer for allowing me to experience it all.
Michael Edward
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
MOONSIDE 
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