I’m fighting to Bipolar Disorder

Loneliness and solitude, those spectres that forever trail beside me, have led the people around me to call me mechanical, a nerd, a hikikomori. I know perfectly well what they mean. At times I retreat alone into my room, fired by a craftsman’s spirit to make something with my own hands; these days I am absorbed in product design and 3-D printing, though in the past I was devoted to art. I used to draw and, hoping to move on to filmmaking, would sit in front of a computer, the only small glow in an otherwise dark room. I failed, of course, yet from time to time I still show such facets of myself.

But there is a point they overlook. I take pleasure in solitude, yet I feel loneliness keenly. Just as only the weak affect an air of strength, so solitude becomes the sole refuge granted to those for whom loneliness is inescapable. Without coffee, cigarettes, and libraries I might never have remained in this world. Perhaps it was so from the beginning. Having grasped this, I recently tried to shoulder an even greater solitude, and now I find myself trapped in an unprecedented loneliness. Such is bipolarity.

The spectrum of bipolar disorder stretches from depression to full mania. Unlike dissociative identity disorder, where several selves exchange places within one body, bipolar disorder is a single self oscillating between manic and depressive poles, though mixed episodes are common. For example, I may meet a new friend, unable to hide my delight, yet leave early to distance myself and hurry home. In most situations it is the depressed version of me that must bear the burdens created by the manic version. The extreme loneliness and destructive urges that struck me this time are likewise the price of the bravado I displayed during my manic spell when I declared I could live confidently on my own; my depression is of my own making.

Looking back, everything fills me with regret and self-reproach. In the moment, for reasons I do not understand, I cannot recognise that what I am attempting is beyond my capacity, or, even if I do, I cling to a baseless belief that I can accomplish it. Why did I act that way? How wonderful it would be if I could return and undo it all. In depressive phases I feel an overwhelming helplessness in knowing I cannot, and under the crushing weight of my mistakes I sometimes decide to end everything and become one with the universe at life’s terminus. In my notebook remains a graph, worked out geometrically from the height of a building, marking the spot where my body would fall.

When the same errors recur, one inevitably feels that past life has lost its meaning and the impulse to end it all returns. Yet I have also wished to live earnestly, and because I am grateful to my mother for my birth and existence, I could not bring myself to die. By good fortune I have survived, and after visiting a counselling centre and then a psychiatrist I am now undergoing full treatment accompanied by medication.

Past Logs