I am Miserable

 Don’t ask me how I am. Just don’t do it. Asking me how I am will only result in one of two things: a dishonest answer or honest tears. I don’t particularly care for either outcome. This is because I’m miserable. I’m hellaciously depressed and have recently undergone a couple of unfortunate situations. i do the best I can to ignore all that — after all, nothing can be done — but when I think about how I am, I get really upset. I know how I am. I’m horrible.

Why I’m Miserable

It doesn’t really matter why I’m miserable, I suppose. You could be miserable for a myriad of reasons. For me, it happens to be the intersection of interpersonal rejection, housing displacement, and depression. Any one of those things could make a person miserable, but having all three is a ticket to assured misery.

How Being Miserable Affects Me

For me, the depression and misery represent the overwhelming arch of my day. I wake up miserable. I experience misery. I go to bed miserable. If you’ve ever been seriously depressed, you know how true this is. Some people do experience wavering amounts of depression during the day, but I’m not in that group right now. I’m in the group of people who experience depression and misery, and that is all.

I know that sounds unrelentingly, unwaveringly horrible. And it is. But it’s not meant to depress you, the reader. It’s meant to represent a reality that many people face.

How I Deal with Being Miserable

There are copious amounts of depression coping techniques out there. The one I use most often during a miserable day is this: distraction. Distraction is my most useful misery coping skill. When the depression is deep enough and dark enough, distraction is the only thing that remotely helps me to get through the day.

Distraction from Being Miserable

Distraction takes many forms. Most frequently, I distract myself in multiple ways at once. For example, I often have the TV on while writing. The writing itself is distracting, but if my brain wavers from the topic, the TV noise will be what it focuses on. If the TV weren’t on, the writing wouldn’t be enough to keep my attention off the misery.

When I’m not writing, it’s a phone news feed-TV combo. Sometimes, it’s a puzzle-TV combo. Sometimes it’s a cooking-music combo. The point is that one stimulus isn’t enough. My depression and misery are so strong they defeat one stimulus. The distraction must be in multiple domains to work.

And I absolutely never ever can think about how I actually am. I must focus on anything but that. The reality of where my brain and mind are at is soul-destroying.

Can You Distract Yourself from Misery Forever?

I’ve been depressed for so long it feels like forever, but no, distraction from misery isn’t a forever solution. You can’t fix a problem that you can’t look at. You can’t address a problem you can’t articulate. You do need to understand your misery and depression to have any hope of lessening it.

But in my experience, you have to look at the misery and depression very carefully. If you move too quickly or allow yourself to get too sucked into it, you’ll get painfully, maybe badly burned. You have to only look at it a glimpse at a time. You have to barely brush against it. That way, you can get to know it without it devouring you.

How to Defeat Misery

As I said, there are a million depression coping techniques out there. There are also a million psychotherapy suggestions and medication options, too. Any of these things could possibly work to defeat misery. But, in my experience, in an endless, intrinsic, inky-black depression, it’s medication that shirts the narrative. While coping techniques can save your life, it’s actual treatment that can make you want to live.

I’m in a particularly nasty situation as I'm mostly treatment-resistant, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to give up. Misery feels impossible to survive. But I can survive it. I have gone through it before and will again. And if I can, then you can, too.

The difference between being suicidal and wanting to die

I believe that being suicidal is not the same thing as simply wanting to die. Of course, if you’re suicidal, you do want to die (or, more specifically, to end your pain through death) but, if you simply want to die, you may not be actively suicidal. Please understand that wanting to die and being suicidal are both serious and dangerous, but I would suggest they are not the same.

Wanting to Die

I admit it — I’ve spent so much of my life wanting to die. I know people hate to hear this, but even today, I experience the desire to die at times. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with my life or my experiences, it’s just that there’s something wrong with my brain. And in my brain, the thought that repeats is, “I want to die.” It’s on an endless loop sometimes. It’s torturous. I can’t stand it. There seems to be nothing that will adequately quiet the thought.

I can sit in this wanting-to-die state for days, weeks or months. The state seems immovable.

Being Suicidal

In saying that, I haven’t been suicidal that entire time. In my opinion, being suicidal moves you from the realm of wanting to die to the place where you are actively start taking steps to die by suicide. This might be picturing your death, writing a suicide note or making a plan. I tend to picture my death over and over and over. Again, my brain seems to produce this thought endlessly.

It seems that nothing will move my brain from this place until the medication kicks in.

The Difference Between Being Suicidal and Wanting to Die

In my experience, wanting to die is passive and being suicidal is active. Thus, being suicidal is considerably more dangerous. I’m not saying that a passive desire to die can’t hurt you – certainly it can – but I would suggest that being actively suicidal is more of an emergency situation.

Why does the difference between suicidality and wanting to die matter? Well, I think it impacts how you communicate your feelings. For example, when I simply want to die, I don’t feel that I’m in imminent danger but I know that feeling and thought pattern could be a stepping stone to full-blown suicidality so I need to deal with it and absolutely not ignore it.

If, on the other hand, I’m actively suicidal, that’s the time when a suicide safety plans needs to be put into place and even a trip to the hospital may need to be arranged.

While I absolutely think that both states need to be recognized and dealt with, I still think it’s important to recognize the difference between a serious problem and an emergency situation.

Regardless, if you are feeling either one of these things, you need to know that treatment helps – in fact, treatment is the only thing that does (if you ask me). That might be talking to your therapist or doctor, but definitely talk to a professional. Hopefully you can successfully communicate your specific state and your professional can assess your active risk for harm and get you the help that you need.

If you feel you may hurt yourself or someone else, please call 9-1-1 now if it comes down to your life or a three digit number, your life wins every time. That is what emergency personnel are there for. 

Dating Someone With Bipolar

I am fishing from such a small pool of people who can love me the way I need to be loved. Especially if we’re going over my three week mark then from now on we’re going over it as a team. So please no filtering and here are some useful pointers:

1. If you’re seriously thinking about dating me, your first bit of homework is to watch Modern Love episode 3, then let’s talk.
2. I take two types of medication every night. You’ll know if I haven’t taken one because I’ll still be chatting away at 2am.
3. There is always a lingering feeling of not wanting to wake up tomorrow as it would make everything so much easier. It’s just there. I live with it; I hope you can too.
4. I have coping mechanisms, some healthy, some not. The healthy ones will seem a tad strange to you, I just need to be reassured a little differently. I will want to plan. This illness is unpredictable and makes me unpredictable, so I will ask when I can see you again whilst we’re still on the date. Not because I’m keen (I’m probably keen) but because it’ll ground me and my anxiety.
5. I was once described as ‘the most complex simple person’ someone’s ever met.

One of my biggest fears is not finding my lobster because of being too much hard work for someone. If I couldn’t make it work with you, or you, or you – who forever remains the one that got away, then who can I make it work with? Who’s gonna want to brave it with me after those first three weeks? And if someone does how am I going to block off my flight path? (Any advice guys?)

If by some miracle we’ve made it past the magic three weeks then here is a guide of what you can expect…

• I will not follow the rule book. (Like who uses those anyway?)
• I will present you with three date options and they will be laid out as riddles.
• I will drive you to a doctor on our second date for your eye appointment, so you’re not alone.
• I will stay up and text you at 2am because that is a good time to text, right?
• I will keep little notes of things which happen during the week to tell you when I see you because I get excited.
• I will help you move to a new house after two weeks of dating.
• I will most likely adore your friends.

Hi, I'm your new peculiar partner in crime. 

In this day and age we live in a society where ‘single’ is just as celebrated as much as ‘married’… but the grass is always greener. We live in a new world where the rules and opinions of sex, dating and relationships are elaborate and varied. We live within this weird no-mans-love-land where somehow through all this ambiguity we still have to ‘play it cool’. I don’t believe in ‘when you know, you know’ or ‘if it’s right, it should be easy’… nah, I’m calling bullshit. I dare you to say that to a person living with bipolar, dare ya. No wonder when it comes to the matters of the heart even the most stable of humans will wobble.

Heartbreak

I’ve only ever opened up to one of you about my mental illness, it was terrifying. Not only did I nearly leave that too late for us, but I made myself unbelievably unwell because of it (as I always do). You made me feel safe and for as long as I live, I’ll never forget that. All I can say is keep things simple, don’t go into something with preconceived conceptions or a plan. Finally, STOP breaking your own heart and as always stop with the stupid filtering.

Before I go I just want to say that whilst you may not find your lobster first time around the journey, memories and smiles you make along the way is something worth treasuring. Sometimes you just have to take that leap of faith or just take that chance not just on that person but on yourself.