I first thought I might be bipolar in my first semester of freshman year of university. I was sitting in EECS 1103 learning the fundamentals of programming in a 150-student lecture hall when I saw an email from my mother. My friend and floormate saw the email's sender and made a small aside like, “Oooo what did Wendy email you about?”. I didn’t answer him because I had already read the body of the email and had started tearing up. I ended up leaving the classroom and crying between the sets of double doors between the lecture hall and the main atrium of Featheringill Hall before returning to my seat and finishing the rest of class.
The email announced to the family that my mom’s cousin, who was closer to my age than hers, had killed himself after a long battle with Type 1 bipolar manic depression (BMD).* No one in the extended family knew about his battle with mental illness until after he ended his life and broke his internal cyclical struggle. I immediately researched BMD and the differences between the types — 1 and 2 were the most recognized types at the time. From the DSM IV, I learned that I suffered from most of the behaviors and symptoms associated with BMD. While this self-awareness was crucial, I delayed seeking any clinical diagnosis and medical treatment until 8 years later when I was 27.
Don’t get me wrong, I tried self-medication. Alcohol helped temporarily, as did caffeine, weed, LSD, psilocybin, supplements like lion’s mane and ashwagandha, intermittent fasting, workouts, sports, creative outlets, and interacting with family and friends. These all helped me survive eight years with an undergrad degree from the engineering school, two companies with about two years of tenure at each, and a diverse social network. But even with all those blessings, my mental state had not noticeably improved and my manic and depressive states only had gotten more extreme, especially with the added stress of the COVID-19 epidemic.
My manic episodes are strongly influenced by new-to-me stressors such as relationship changes, family deaths and illness, work/academic pressure, and those unplanned life events that shake up my world just enough to put me in a more manic mental state. My mania is like my depression and it’s a slippery slope. My impulsivity and seemingly endless energy supply lead to more impulsive actions, which puts me in more unfamiliar situations and usually ends when I make a decision that forces me to come to terms with the longer-term consequences of my actions made during the manic episode.
Some of these consequences are financial, social, familial, or simply physical. These manic episodes are typically followed by a longer depressive period where I’m dealing with the consequences of actions from my manic episode as well as dealing with other common general depression symptoms like low self-esteem and motivation. People don’t typically interact with me during these lows, because my social anxiety during this mental state pushes me to socially isolate.
This reminds me of my maternal cousin once removed. My only memories of him are as a happy, amicable, funny, caring, smart man. Some people in my social network only see that side of me, my baseline or manic mental state. I intentionally hide my depressive side from family and friends beyond my natural inclination to not interact with many humans during that mental state because I don’t like myself during those times and I feel like I drag people down. It might not be the healthiest way to deal with my depressive episodes, but I believe I’ll be more comfortable sharing my depressive episodes as it happens as I share more private parts of my life in retrospect on my blog, podcast, or IRL.
To that end, thank you for reading this journal entry and attempting to understand it’s author. I’ll be making more.
