A short passage to portray the bleakness of a son’s depression following months of bipolar mania. Combined with the enduring love shown by a Mum at his side, despite everything. 

 

Why me?

Robert Lowell, a literary genius and Pulitzer Prize Finalist, was hospitalised over 22 times between 1949 and 1977 and diagnosed with manic depressive illness. He describes in his book Setting the Mind on Fire, the fizzled stale state that comes after mania, the depressive let down, is one of consuming fatigue, doubt and fragility. He writes that his depressive breakdown left him feeling like a cracked plate, ‘the kind that one wonders if it’s worth preserving’. He and the dish were one, he said, and it was not the dish that he had ordered. The plate had lost its strength and carrying capacity. ‘It can never again be warmed on the stove nor shuffled with the other plates in the dishpan; it will not be brought out for company, but it will do to hold up crackers late at night. The plate could no longer bear any weight; it could only go into the ice box under leftovers.’ 

I find this a compelling description as I watch my son sink into this dark ether where nothing and no one appears to bring any pleasure or joy. He lays in bed for hours fully dressed staring at the walls, his eyes hallow and now devoid of the intense cobalt blue, replaced with a watery grey. 

‘I hate feeling like this he says, I’m doing everything right, the tablets, being around people that I love and that love me…keeping a good routine, trying to go the gym, trying to work, getting good sleep…but I still feel the same, it’s getting worse not better…..’  

I try everything in my toolbox, to show him love, he will allow me to touch him now, hold him. I place an arm around his shoulders and gently kiss his forehead. I notice there are more gey hairs in his dark blond hair. He looks older than his 23 years, like he has already lived a lifetime of stress and turmoil in his young life. A life stolen from him by an evil and cunning disease. A disease that deceives you into making you feel the best you have ever felt, invincible and charismatic, like Tony in the film Scar Face speaking to you telling you ‘The World is yours.’ And it keeps you like that, for a long long time, building you up, grandiose, lavishing money on people you hardly know, making irresponsible and poor decisions, often irreparable, damaging relationships with family and friends and anyone who tries to disagree with you. And then when the disease tires of this constant high, it dumps you in the most spectacular way, dropped, tossed aside like yesterday’s rubbish, like a lover that has used and abused you and moved on to the next….like you never even mattered at all. It runs away, looking back with an evil cunning smirk like the devil in a black cloak looking for its next victim to torture. 

And then follows the crash, it can happen immediately, or it can take weeks to arrive or in Josh’s case, many many months. Alex from the crisis team said at one meeting ‘Josh is certainly A typical bipolar – he is not following the usual pattern of what we would normally see at this stage’ At the time I was reassured by Alex’s comment – maybe he is not Bipolar after all, maybe they have got it wrong. Josh was hypomanic, manic and again hypomanic for 10 months. I hate to use cliches but the best way to describe it is to use one ‘What goes up, must come down’ and the longer you remain high, the longer it takes to come down, and research suggests too that the higher you have been, the worse and darker the depression will be that follows. All this is in my mind, is he going to feel like this for months? When will it end, how will it end? I try the positive thinking my weekly counsellor tries to teach me and gently say to him ‘you are not going to feel like this forever Josh’ ‘It’s just the next phase until you feel stable again’. 

 ‘Why do I have to feel like this, why me? Why have I got this thing..this bipolar thing, if that’s what it is?’ It’s one of those questions as a parent you dread, usually asked by a small child. One that you cannot answer so you squirm inside. I have no answer. I don’t know the answer. Nothing I can say will explain it. My hearts breaking inside, feeling like it’s collapsing from the outside in, all four sides forced together under pressure till it splinters and cracks. I can’t hold back the hot sting of tears, they prickle and spill over down my cheeks and I try to construct a meaningful reply. 

I tell him it’s because he is bright, I tell him this thing only affects people who are extremely successful, those with high IQ’s, artists, pop stars and businessmen. I tell him they call Bipolar the CEO disease. ‘It’s, it’s because you are too clever Josh, everyone I have come across who has suffered in a way like you are, are super intelligent, successful. There are celebrity’s, sport stars, actors and musicians who have bipolar…. I trail off, not knowing if it was helpful at all. I hope that this will boost and reassure him a little, convince him he is not alone, that there is hope.  I wonder if I should continue, other things I have read in the past state research shows that to some people it has become ‘desirable’ when compared with other mood disorders because of its association with creativity. For example, Charles Dickens and Beethoven are thought to have had bipolar. I refrain and decide it’s not the right time to say this and I truly cannot believe that anyone could think that this awful condition is ‘fashionable’.  

He turns his head way from me and into the pillow ‘I don’t feel clever anymore……..I don’t feel anything.’ 

He closes his eyes, his hood up and puts his head deep in the pillow pulling the duvet over his head. It’s my cue to leave his room.