Chapter 9 Mental

a downward spiral into a mental health crisis.

At the age of twenty two, I found myself crying unexpectedly, at random moments, for seemingly no purpose other than an overwhelming, physical compulsion to do so.

I had put these new crying episodes I was experiencing down to an emotional ‘letting go’ of the occasional stress I was under. Or perhaps it could be hormonal, either way I was up more often than I was down so I chose to focus on that and assume that the down moods would eventually go away on their own. As the weeks and then months went by, the tearful episodes began to have a paralleled up side where I would experience a type of ‘high’. Euphoric moments where I felt that the whole world was aligned in my favour, I was exactly where I needed to be, right time, right place, the world felt exciting and I had everything to look forward to.

After a few months, these high and low extremes started to appear closer together as well as beginning to feel more aggressively persistent. A pattern began to form where I knew that when I experienced one extreme, the other would undoubtedly follow. This pattern only appeared peculiar to me when I started to feel the swing of euphoria followed by a deep despair all within the same day, sometimes within a few hours of each other, as if there were two different people trapped inside the same body. Eventually, I confided in a friend that encouraged me to go and see one of the on-campus councillors.

I laughed out loud the first time that the counsellor suggested it was ‘depression’ as my limited understanding of that word simply meant feeling sad all of the time and that was just not what I was experiencing at all, I mean the highs were great. I just couldn’t understand why I was experiencing these desperately down moments. Life was hectic admittedly but I was still really enjoying uni life. The on campus bar was frequented most nights, I would just meet my friends there after I had finished work, either that or I hung out at home with my house mates. I certainly didn’t consider this to be a ‘bad time’ in my life and I certainly didn’t think my mental state warranted the label ‘depression’.

It was only when the counsellor explained what the word ‘bipolar’ meant, that everything suddenly seemed to make sense. It hit every angle of what I was experiencing, the moments of having loads of energy, happy, ambitious, enthusiastic and then within a few hours, I would go from that elated feeling to feeling anxious, upset, annoyed, angry and feeling like my life just could not be any worse. Only by talking through what I was experiencing with the counsellor was I able to learn what ‘depression’ really meant. It isn’t the same as having a ‘bad day’, it doesn’t get better or go away after a good nights sleep. It’s not how you feel when you’re a bit low and it’s not a temporary or a one off isolated incident. For me, at its worst, having depression was a manic experience. It felt confusing and isolating with everyone else around me appearing to be living in a different dimension, seemingly finding life so easy. How was everyone else finding it so easy?