The Messy Reality of Mania

I have decided to write a more vulnerable post than I usually do because I want people who do not understand mental illness to understand bipolar better and I want to let other people like me know they are not alone. Too often bipolar is portrayed as an illness of non-functional people and no one really knows what the illness is like for those of us who live and work with rest of world every day. Also, when those of us who write about having the illness are never honest about the darker sides of it, especially when we are in the midst of living it, we make other people with bipolar feel like what they are experiencing is abnormal. I hope this post helps raise awareness that in the midst of struggles like this, we still work to be contributing members of society. I also hope that others with mental illness feel held in a community of people who understand what they are going through.

Recently I have been noticing what I have to do to clean up after a night of mania, all the things required to be able to "present well." (Presenting well is what they say when those of us with mental illness are able to look ok on the outside and function just enough to get by.) This post-mania clean up and presenting well is one of the hardest parts of the illness and I wanted to share with you why with the story of a average day after mania.

After finally falling asleep at 7am, I wake up two hours later in a panic that I might have missed my alarm and I am late for a meeting. (I did not miss the alarm and now I am awake hours before I needed to be.) I think of the many tasks I still need to finish so my work does not fall behind, so I frantically lay in bed with my computer and get a few things done through the haze of sleep deprivation. I hope that everything I write sounds coherent. I have extreme stomach pain from everything I ate and drank last night in a binge eating episode.

I get out of bed and find that coming down from a mania and being extremely tired has made me quite dizzy, and I trip over my own feet and run into the side of the bathroom door. I barely brush my teeth and I shower, but don't wash my hair because that is too much work. I get dressed and try to pull up my pants without aggravating the now angry, red, and swollen cuts I made on my thighs and stomach. I know every step I take for the next few days will hurt. I make sure my son does not come into my room before I am fully dressed so he does not see the damage to my body. When I buckle my belt I realize my stomach is in fact two belt notches larger than it was yesterday thanks to everything I ate.

For me, this photo is a bit embarrassing, but real.

After I am dressed, my husband tries to get me to eat something for breakfast but I am full from various fast food items, the wrappers of which I now have to clean up. It is humbling and shocking to have to gather up the remains off all the things I ate since I don't really remember eating some of it. My husband has already cleaned up the shards from the dishes I broke in anger the night before. There is a lot of regret and questioning "What the heck did I do?" and "Was that even me?"

In order to not look like death warmed over, I sit in front of my extensive makeup collection doing everything I can to attempt to cover the huge red welts I have nervously scratched into my face. I put concealer under my eyes and curl my lashes to make me look less tired. A bit of light shimmer eyeshadow in the inner corner of the eye helps brighten the eyes as well.

At some point the night before or that morning I had sent my therapist an email saying I was not doing well, and he calls to help me look at what happened and see what triggered it. His call helps me realize the mania was not random, but a reaction to an event. This understanding stops me from falling into self-loathing, shame, and plunging into depression. Thank goodness for good therapists!

I try and interact with my son and husband, trying not to let the stomach pain and drowsiness make me too snappy. I fake a smile and hope my son has no idea how bad I am doing. I drag myself to meetings, with the pain of my stomach making me double over just a bit, and my brain being completely filled with what seems to be cotton. I can't really follow exactly what is going on so I smile appropriately and ask relevant questions, all the while knowing that while my body is in the chair, my mind is trapped somewhere else. I can see myself looking fairly presentable and not noticeably off to people who do not really know me, and yet I feel a million miles away trapped in a post-mania fog. I track the conversation while having a totally other conversation in my brain of how terrible I am and the agony that is life, which I have to live day after day.

I do all the things I have to do to "present well" and not cause too much alarm, and I go home. I get in bed and sleep, until my husband makes dinner and he and my son try and wake me up so we can eat together and we try to make tomorrow a better day.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie