It had been a long time since I checked out the artwork at explodingdog, but I went there last night, and I’ve felt just like this little guy so many times in the past that when I saw him, I almost cried.

Hey, student nurse. Yes, you, the girl who recently did a rotation on a psychiatric ward. I don’t think that while you are riding on the bus, you are supposed to be telling detailed stories to your friend about the patients in the hospital. You know everybody else around you on the bus can hear you, too, right? But you don’t care at all, do you? Of course not. Most mental health workers I’ve seen don’t give a damn about patient confidentiality, so why should you be any different, student nurse? I bet you think that since you didn’t mention any names, everything is cool, right? Well, guess what. It’s not. By the way, those were human beings you were poking fun at. I understand that dark humour has a place among health care workers, to help them cope with the things they have to deal with in their work. That place is not on the bus, however.

Hey, guy from the bus a month or two ago. I overheard you when you were saying, “It seems like everybody I grew up with is dying. One guy died of a drug overdose. Another friend of mine killed herself in jail in Ontario.”

I wanted to say, “You were friends with Ashley Smith? Man, I’m so sorry about what happened to her.”

But, of course, I didn’t say anything.

Yup, I’m still around; I’ve just been too tired to blog lately. It is several hours before my usual bedtime, but I am already seriously considering crawling under my covers. The good thing is that so far I still haven’t gotten the flu that everybody else has. Exhaustion is better than exhaustion plus vomiting plus headache, but it still kind of sucks. I tried to fight the tiredness for a few days by not taking my meds exactly as prescribed, which was a poor idea, because it didn’t bring me back to normal, it just propelled me into a Zoloft-induced state of wakefulness where I felt like jumping out of my skin but I didn’t actually accomplish anything. I’ll take sleep instead of that, thank you very much. I don’t usually get enough sleep, so I just have to keep reminding myself that a temporary surplus of it is A Good Thing.

I started this blog a year ago today, but I’m far too tired to come up with any blogiversary-worthy Deep Thoughts about What I Have Learned in the past year. I’ve been really tired all week. At first I worried that I was getting depressed, but then I realized that almost everybody I know has a cold or the flu or some virus or other. I am not sick, but it seems highly likely that trying to stay not sick is completely exhausting me. Being run-down like this is certainly better than having stomach flu, though, so I ain’t complaining. Since I am not up to spewing forth Really Deep Thoughts (not that I ever am), instead I will simply share with you what are probably my favourite lines of poetry ever:

On a razor edge of reality,
I knew I would come out of this, bleeding and broken,
and singing.
~ Gwendolyn MacEwan, “Deraa”

Speaking of What I Have Learned, yes, it’s true that a year ago, I knew that I had already come out of “this,” bleeding & broken & singing, and that I would be likely to do so repeatedly. I do become surer and surer of this fact as time goes on, though, and I guess that’s a kind of learning, too. Sometimes I forget that I’ll get better every time I get worse, but I have been remembering it more and more often in the past couple of years, and for longer and longer periods of time.

“…how are things since the decision?” Gabriel asked in a comment on my last post, which I wrote over a month ago. I had decided that I didn’t want to ask my doctor to increase the dosage of my Epival. I figured I would ride it out and be all right on the current dosage.

This was indeed the way things were working out, but then I went off meds for a few weeks. On purpose, because I am stupid. Hypomania can be fun. It is not fun nearly as often as most people assume it is, though, or at least it isn’t for me. The times when I am sure I am connected to every other atom in the universe are few and far between compared to the times that all the overload is too much and everything in the universe annoys me. For every hypomanic episode where I am actually productive, I have tons where I go to bed and try to go to sleep but I can’t, so I wind up staring at the ceiling and around the room for six hours, because I am too awake to manage to close my eyes. I am not up at night writing the Great Canadian Novel or cleaning my room or even blogging, because I am too tired for that, but I am still. so. damn. AWAKE and my thoughts keep racing but there’s nothing I can do with them. Even though I’m exhausted, I still have so much energy that I can’t keep still while I lie there. Instead I kick and fidget so much that my muscles are sore for days afterwards, and I flap my hands and hit them off things until I worry that I actually might break a finger.

Anyway, that’s not even what’s been really bugging me lately, although of course I have been having some nights like that. I’m mainly just ashamed of myself. I know I shouldn’t go off meds without telling anybody, but I did it anyway, and I’m ashamed of that. When I am ashamed of myself, I don’t want to write any posts. I don’t want people to know that I’m being a dumbass. I’ve held things together quite well overall, but now I’m starting to scare myself a bit, so I’m going back on meds. My bank account can’t handle this hypomania, and it hasn’t done anything positive for me except make my life a little bit more interesting. It would be fun to have an I Love Everything and Everything Loves Me episode, but this isn’t one of those. You would think that by now I would have realized that I can’t make them happen.

Overall, I am fine, though. You likely wouldn’t notice that anything was out of the ordinary. But I do. It’s good that I can keep the slight trouble I’m having with things like anger and paranoia under control… but I’d really rather that I didn’t have to wrestle with these things. I’d really rather that they were non-issues. Hence, meds.

Speaking of keeping things under control, though… You know those statistics that tell you that (some large number)% of people who suffer from manic depression also have substance abuse problems? I’d thought for a long time that I’d dodged that particular bullet. In the past few months, though, I’ve realized that I have a problem with what Experimental Chimp wonderfully termed “binge drinking and consequent inappropriate-yet-impossible-to-remember-behaviour.” I don’t think I really want to say any more about that right now, though. I’ve already babbled enough.

I don’t like writing posts that are All About Me, by the way. Or at least not all about me as I am right now. I’d rather talk about something I read in the newspaper or on another website, or tell stories about stuff I did/that was done to me Back When I Was Crazy. Because, you know, for the most part, I am “well” now. Whenever I mention currently having any symptoms whatsoever of bipolar disorder, I feel that it smacks of failure. I guess if I was really 100% “well” and “recovered,” I would be so mentally healthy that such things wouldn’t faze me at all and I wouldn’t see them as failures. But I don’t think I’ll ever be that well.

New Year’s. A friend asked all of us what we hoped for in the year to come.

“I want to not fuck up,” I said. Felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, realized these people had never seen me cry, which feels so weird, because I have always been used to absolutely everyone who comes into contact with me at all seeing me cry at one point or another. But although the people present were close friends of mine, they have only been so for less than a year and a half. During most of that time, I have been the New, Improved Polly on medication that actually works for me.

Did not want them to see me cry now. Had to explain that I wasn’t really being upset and maudlin, that I was actually trying to be positive.

“It’s just that I went all through 2007 without fucking up,” I said. “I was sick for so long, and the past year was the first year that I’ve been well. I just want things to stay that way.”

I then almost immediately proceeded to come dangerously close to fucking up.

I spent the next few weeks hypomanic in a bad way. Yelled at people for no reason. Obsessed endlessly about certain things. You don’t even want to hear about my sex drive during those weeks (hint: really, really high). Drank way too much, alone. Spent too much money.

With little warning and absolutely no fanfare, I slipped into a mild depression and stayed there for a few more weeks. Believed I would never be happy again. Wondered what was the point of anything. Continued to occasionally drink too much, alone. Had to try very hard to keep from cutting myself. Sent disturbing emails to friends about wanting to cut myself. Only managed not to cut myself because I knew my two-year anniversary of not cutting would be coming up soon, and I really wanted to make it to two years without screwing up.

Then woke up one morning and felt better, just like that. Not caused by anything. Nothing had changed except for my mood. The weather was still utter wintery crap, but it suddenly wasn’t bringing me down anymore. (Seriously, if you are not in Canada right now, stay away from this country until at least May. I am not joking.) I still had the same slight personal problems I’d had for a while, but I was suddenly able to look at them rationally and not blow things out of proportion. It’s so weird when you wake up and all of a sudden you are well. It’s also weird when you wake up and all of a sudden you are unwell, but I don’t like that one quite as much. I can’t help but think of it as some cosmic dude or dudette mucking about with a remote that controls my emotions.

I had been seriously considering asking my doctor about increasing my medication when I saw her, but ultimately I didn’t, since I wasn’t having problems functioning and my mood swings were quite tame compared to the way they used to be a year and a half ago. I figured I could deal with it without more drugs, but afterward I worried that maybe it was stupid and pigheaded of me.

Now that I feel better, though, I’m pleased to see that this was indeed the best decision for me at this time. I’m glad I got through that rough patch while remaining on only a minimal amount of medication.

One in six teens inflict self-harm (TRIGGER WARNING: if you don’t want to see a photo of cuts on someone’s forearm, then don’t click this link), the Globe and Mail tells us today, and the sub-headline of that article is “Abusing yourself isn’t a suicidal or attention-seeking action, research suggests, but a coping mechanism.”

Well, duh. We’ve been trying to tell people that for years and years¹, but who bothers listening to self-injurers? Especially to teen self-injurers. We are not doing it to get attention.

The research, published in today’s edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, shows that 17.6 per cent of teenagers self-harm - a number that includes 21 per cent of girls and 8.7 per cent of boys.

This being the media, though, they have to warp the contents of the actual study, Nonsuicidal self-harm in youth: a population-based survey, so that “Ninety-six of 568 (16.9%) youth indicated that they had ever harmed themselves” from the original journal article, somehow becomes “17.6 per cent of teenagers self-harm” — present tense, plus an inexplicable 0.7 bonus. (Admittedly, I haven’t read the whole study yet because I was having computer problems earlier today and I am lazy, but I shall get around to it, and if there is an explanation that I missed for that extra 0.7, then sorry, my bad.) I suppose it’s mainly a case of people wanting shocking headlines, as the Globe and Mail article does continue as follows:

A total of 568 young people aged 14 to 21 were interviewed. Ninety-six of them said they had, at some point in their young lives, harmed themselves deliberately.

About one-third of the teenagers had done so only once, another third on two to three occasions and the other third had self-harmed repeatedly. On average, their mutilating actions began at age 15.

Much of the article is an interview with the study’s lead author, Dr. Mary Nixon, and it’s pretty good except for one comment that directly contradicts other things in the article:

“We’re trying to raise awareness that it’s not uncommon in young people and not related to mental health problems,” she said.

“It” being self-injury, of course. It’s such a weird quote that I’ve got to wonder if it’s a typo or a misunderstanding or something. I don’t think SI is always related to mental health problems, but I think it is the majority of the time.

The research shows a clear link between self-harm and mental health problems. Those who hurt themselves are more than twice as likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and impulse disorders.

It is not entirely clear why girls are more likely to self-harm than boys, but Dr. Nixon believes it is related to the fact that rates of depression soar at puberty and that girls not only mature earlier but react differently to stress.

See? Does not compute. SI is indeed related to mental health, although it’s very rarely suicidal or attention-seeking. (Never say never. All generalizations are bad. Tee hee.)

Dr. Nixon, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, said when teenagers harm themselves, it is often assumed they are doing so to get attention, but the behaviour is far more complex.

“A lot of these kids hide their cuts and burns. It’s not attention-seeking, it’s something else,” she said.

THANK YOU. I really appreciate somebody saying this and it being national news.

¹Although we don’t phrase it that way, because then it would sound like we were talking about masturbation.

It was a shock to hear the other day that Heath Ledger had died, seemingly due to an accidental or intentional overdose of pills. He was a talented actor, appeared to be a genuinely nice person, according to what his friends and neighbours said about him, and he had a two-year-old daughter he loved very much. I am also crass enough to mention that he was hot, although his death wouldn’t have been any less upsetting if he hadn’t been attractive.

It’s strange that when someone dies and nobody knows whether it’s suicide or an accident, most people’s immediate response is, I sure hope it wasn’t suicide. I’m not sure it’s any less sad if someone who definitely doesn’t want to die suddenly winds up dead. It’s easy enough to think of reasons behind this knee-jerk reaction, though, and here are a few:

• Suicide is considered a major taboo.
• It’s very uncomfortable to think of someone who is suffering and unhappy before they die, and more pleasant to think of them as having had a pleasant and rosy life up until their death.
• People feel that it’s something someone should have seen coming and been able to stop, unlike a freak accident that might have been less easy to predict.
• In a case like this, where it’s somebody who Had It All, you know that this guy had talent, money, fame, good looks, and a child he cared about, and still might have been depressed enough to purposely end his life, and you wonder what the hell kind of chance any of the rest of us have of being okay.

Anyway, suicide or accident, it’s still a tragedy.

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher is one of my favourite books. It’s probably my favourite memoir of all time. My eating disorder has never been that serious, but I can relate to the author eerily well. It was often as if I was reading about what was going on inside my own head, only expressed much more eloquently than I could hope to do so myself. I’m a good writer, not that it’s evident on this blog… but Marya Hornbacher is an amazing writer, and I am in awe of her. The book is an honest an insightful portrayal of illness, although I wish she had written about her actual recovery. Even more than that, I’ve often wished that someone would write a book about manic depression that was just like Wasted.

So I was pretty excited when I was reading the People article about “Britney’s mental illness” (no, I’m not even going to go there right now) and there was a sidebar about Hornbacher’s upcoming memoir, Madness: A Bipolar Life. There are some very annoying annoying things in the book description, but at least I know Hornbacher didn’t write the jacket copy herself:

At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type 1 rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disease there is.

Ugh. Yeah, I’m also rapid-cycling bipolar I, and so what? Do not brag about how your manic depression’s penis is bigger than other people’s, okay? This is not something where you can just whip out a tape measure and settle the matter once and for all, and even if you could, it would be pointless. There are sucktastic things about all flavours of bipolar disorder, and mental illness one-upmanship is really tacky and helps nobody.

Also, Hornbacher’s fiercely self-aware portrait of her own bipolar as early as age four will powerfully change the current debate on whether bipolar in children exists.

This is another one of those don’t-even-go-there things that is probably unfair of me to comment on until I’ve read the actual book.

I can’t say I like the title much, either, but I’m still dying to read the book. Probably there will be parts that will annoy me, and there will be parts that I love, like this passage from Wasted:

People who’ve Been to Hell and Back develop a certain sort of self-righteousness. There is a tendency to say: I have an addictive personality, I am terribly sensitive, I’m touched with fire, I have Scars. There is a self-perpetuating belief that one simply cannot help it, and this is very dangerous. It becomes an identity in and of itself. It becomes its own religion, and you wait for salvation, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and do not save yourself.

Or this part, where she falls down and is too weak from starvation to get up:

Halfway home I began to run, a faltering, stumbling run, eyelashes fluttering with snowflakes, face numb, hair falling into my face with the weight of wet snow. I slipped and fell and could not get up. I sat there in a heap in front of the vice president’s mansion. I, up-and-coming young journalist, A student, maniac, starving artist, invisible basket case, me. I cried with an impotent fury at my legs for refusing to stand when I told them to and thought of my cousin Brian as my hands, pure white, indiscernible in the white snow, scrabbled about trying to collect the contents of my bags which had spilled. I thought of my brilliant and wonderful cousin, dear friend and lifelong confidant, who’d been in a wheelchair since he was small. I thought of how he must feel every day, legs refusing to work, through no fault of his own, through some miserable joke of God, and I thought: This is your own fucking fault. Get up. GET UP. I hated myself with a pure and fierce energy and I wished myself dead.

I don’t hate myself anymore. It’s been a long time since I did. But that excerpt says everything you need to know about the way I felt back when I did hate myself.

Lately I am trying very hard not to do inappropriate things or to overshare, which is why I haven’t been posting. The Internet is not a good place for oversharing. Hello, world, here are all the stupid things that are going on in my head lately, all the stupid things I am trying so hard not to say and do. Nope, not gonna happen.

My current state of mind is the result of recent personal issues. They might not be the sole cause of it, but they’re definitely the main cause. I am trying to deal with these issues in a healthy way, instead of drinking too much, not sleeping enough, spending too much money, and sending people inappropriate emails. So far, I am only being mildly successful at this, but I’m trying.