I was born to a poor family in 1979.  My mother was only seventeen, and my father, who grew up in Mexico, was only twenty.  My mother has battled depression all her life, and my Dad has almost always been a hardcore alcoholic.  I was within a hair’s breadth of being aborted, but my mother changed my mind at the last minute.

 We barely scraped by and were even homeless at one point, until my father got a well-paying job when I was about eight years old.  At this time I was already in the GATE (Gifted and talented education) program, and I was a model student until about the age of twelve.  For reasons I can’t remember or perhaps never knew, I became very alienated and depressed a good deal of the time. I started getting an inferiority  complex due to my upper-middle classmates. It was here that I was prescribed Prozac, which mitigated the depression but seemed to have strange, even violent side effects.  I became very rebellious, talking back to teachers, instigating fights.  I would write Satanic symbols on my arms, I once wrote the word “Death” on my folder in my own blood.  I did not have a girlfriend until the end of my junior year.  The relationship only lasted a few months, I broke up with her
because I felt I needed my space. She was talking about marriage and kids; it was too much too soon.  I was turned 180 degrees from this when my parents divorced.  I tried to get her back to no avail, and it hurt.  At one point it got so bad that I threw up in the lunchroom.

Not long after I graduated I drifted into alcohol and drug abuse. At first it was just beer and then it went to whiskey, weed, cocaine, meth, acid, pretty much everything short of heroin and PCP.  My friends and I were like those guys In Trainspotting, we partied as much as we could, and hated white middle-class normalcy.

In July of 1999 my uncle offered me a job at an Internet software company.  I worked there for a year, probably the best year of my life.  I was on salary and still had enough time to party on the weekends.  I even met and fell in love with an amazing Indian girl,  But she was about to enter an arranged marriage so the relationship was basically doomed from the start.

 It was about this time that things really began to unravel. I started drinking more and more, often alone,  I would work for a few weeks and then quit, I wrecked a couple of cars and got into fights, and eventually, I found myself homeless.  The only way out I could see was joining the military.  I enlisted in the Air Force, mostly because my dad was
in the Air Force (until he got into a drunken fight with some MPs and was discharged) But I simply could not make the transition. I had become accustomed to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  So I told them that I used to take Prozac, was given a  Separation, and returned to my hometown, homeless again.  This part of my life is still hazy to me, I know that I drank and drugged a lot and had trouble keeping a job. I had my first manic episode while I was in Job Corps.  This was in 2002 and I was Diagnosed with Bipolar I for the first time.

    
Then I reverted to form, went on a two week drunk in Reno, sleeping in an  abandoned car.  I eventually moved in with my mother, started going to AA meetings and fought depression and the increasing number of mixed episodes I was having. In 2004 I got a job as a janitor at a hospital, and it was at this time that I had the most hellacious manic episode I had ever experienced.  I would go into detail about it but to do so would take up far too much space, Suffice to say it was a very, very intense time in my life and several times I barely escaped with my life.  I was hospitalized twice.

The second time my mother now says that I ran into oncoming traffic but I have no memory of this.

 
I then went back to school, living with my Dad, and for a full year the BP was in remission, until my Dad and I got into yet another fight.  In this one he gave me a bloody nose, and as the blood ran down my face into my mouth I would spit it right back at him.  I ran away, homeless again.  I lived in a group home for a few weeks, then a rehab center for about a month, and after that in a homeless shelter.  Needing a place to live, I moved in with my mom in North Carolina, and that pretty much takes us up to the present.

Yet again, I am starting over, but this time I know myself better, know my limitations, my values, my vocation.  I have a plan:  I’m going to save money for the next two years, while concurrently learning Spanish, and move to San Diego, where I have family who might be able to get me a good job.  Regardless, I will continue writing my novels, poems, and essays with an eye toward publication.  I do not have much in the way of material things to show for these past thirty years, my fortune is on the inside, along with the scars that have finally healed.

Led by Dr. Benjamin Goldstein, Psychiatrist and Academic Lead in the youth division of Sunnybrook's department of psychiatry, a team of researchers examined data from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, conducted in the United States. The results of the study were published August 11 online in the journal of Bipolar Disorders. After adjusting for age, race and gender, the team found that adults with bipolar I disorder had a 4.95 times higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease than those without the disorder. The bipolar I disorder patients were also more likely to have hypertension than those without the disorder.

"We know that adults with bipolar disorder have a markedly reduced life expectancy which is due primarily to a high prevalence of premature cardiovascular disease," says Dr. Goldstein, who is also an Assistant Professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. "Our study took a closer look at the association between cardiovascular diseases and bipolar I disorder. We believe our findings have important implications for the way we assess and monitor youth with bipolar disorder."

Sunnybrook researchers examined data collected on 1441 patients with bipolar I disorder, 6831 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), and 34,851 controls without either disorder. The team discovered that cardiovascular patients with bipolar I disorder were approximately 14 years younger than cardiovascular disease patient without the disorder and six years younger than those with MDD. Hypertension patients with bipolar I disorder were approximately 13 years younger than hypertension patients without the disorder and six-and-a-half years younger than hypertension patients with MDD. Results remained significant after further adjusting for education, income, marital status, obesity, anxiety, smoking and substance use.

"Our findings underscore the need for a more integrated care intervention model - one in which the psychiatric and medical health of a patient are considered simultaneously," says Dr. Goldstein. "We should be monitoring youth with bi-polar disorders for cardiovascular disease so we can intervene before cardiovascular disease develops and treat conditions before they lead to more serious consequences. This may serve to increase life expectancy and improve quality of life for people with bipolar disorders."

The findings of the study will inspire Dr. Goldstein's ongoing work in youth psychiatry at Sunnybrook as he examines ways to prevent youth with bipolar disorder from developing the cardiac issues that so often lead to their decreased life expectancy.

Part of it, I think was that I came to realize the depth of suffering and the very hard lives of many people here. Especially the age 15-21 thread: I wanted to say these were OK years for me, but I was ashamed because they were so difficult for many others. And the thread was scary to me too, too. I don't know if you scared me (how?) or if I was scared of something in myself (what?). Maybe it was some kind of trigger. It just made me very uneasy. I felt out of place and I backed off. Didn't read the whole thread.

But I kept on reading, every day. I felt detached but compelled. I think I knew I would come back but didn't know how. Then I saw stricco's funny e-mail responses and I knew I could come back through humor. And maybe I could write this, and send it.

A problem of mine is not trusting and I never talk about how much I need to be able to do so. Its not trust in general, like, Will he keep his word? That can be an issue, but its not a problem unless it doesn't happen. Its this: trusting that someone cares for me, and keeps caring. I can hardly believe that its really possible. I don't think I understand or can feel caring, my own or that of others, very well. So through my life I've always tried to impress people with what I do, what I accomplish, thinking then they won't notice what I really am. And I've been mostly successful at work and elsewhere. But it was never enough; I always needed more affirmation; I couldn't look back; I couldn't trust that it was real, that there was really a caring or loving connection between me and those others. It all mostly seemed, and probably was, superficial.

I've told you about my mania a few months ago, which rather suddenly turned into depression in early April. The pdoc and I are having a lot more trouble finding the right med cocktail than ever before. A difference in my life now is that I'm retired and don't have as much opportunity to do that described in the previous paragraph.

So I've been mostly depressed with some better days, including a few days this week. But today the bottom dropped out again, and I was more miserable than ever, all the more so because I had been feeling better. So I cried and cried and cried.

My wife S and I have been married 36 years. She's been through all this bp crap with me. She's not the most patient person in the world, and she can be very critical, but she's never criticized me for my bp symptoms, even though they have been extremely difficult for her to cope with at times, as you all know. Especially the manic symptoms, which I usually didn't recognize because they rarely got in the way of the (outside) achievements and accomplishments I was aiming for. Oh, I don't like thinking of the way I behaved!!! because I was so blind to it then. I would run to the pdoc when I felt depressed. The rest of the time I would say I felt fine. If I looked manic, he didn't say. But what can you see in 10 minutes every month or three? I liked him I was getting what I wanted what's not to like? Oh BTW I didn't have any tdoc. Just the meds. And my wife. And, the past few years, a spiritual director.

During this time of depression I've thought a lot about all that S has put up with, and all she's done for me apart from the chaos of my bp, how I've been self-absorbed and career-oriented, how I haven't helped out that much, how much, for example, she’s made our home what it is and I’ve been lazy even on the traditional male fix-up projects so that she’s often done them. What a drag I must be. I do so little. I certainly do need her, but what does she need me for?

So I was saying something like that today through my tears, and I said I loved her, and she said me too, like she always does, and I said how can you love me when you do so much and I do so little, and she said she loves me not for what I do or don’t do but for who I am, and I think maybe for the first time, because she’s said it before, I believed it. I trusted her. I can do it, at least once. She cares for who I am, an “I� that I swear to God I want to find and enjoy being. My true self….

My true self, the one God created, not the false self I run around showing to everybody, including myself. The one that always just is. Be here now. A phrase I’ve been contemplating for many years. Hard to do (duh!). Doesn’t answer to the how-to question like most everything else in the world, the world in which I succeeded but which didn’t care for me. Or maybe, more likely, I didn’t care for it, I was just in the game for the recognition…. God, I hate to face up to this self. It seems fundamentally dishonest. But it’s how I got along. And it certainly wasn’t dishonorable, as the world goes. Maybe even it’s the rule.

My dad was messed up and he couldn’t give me the attention and love I needed from him as a child. When I was 16, we moved to another state and I had to remake my life. A big part of it was rejection of my father (I was ashamed of him) and subsituting the elders in a male-dominated, authoritarian church whom I could easily please by making myself into the model boy/young man. The big deal was to go on a church mission where I promptly showed bp behavior, though nobody, least of all me, recognized it as such. Hey, this was 1961-63! Midway some probably obnoxious manic behavior was interpreted by the mission president and others as a challenge to the line of authority and I got called on it. I was devastated: the way I had bought into the system, this was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. Everything depended on knowing my place, but also (privately) on working my way up, excelling and gaining recognition, and that was what I had known about consciously (if secretly). After I was confronted, I went into a depression but recovered soon enough and finished my mission. But then I knew I had a problem with authority and was able, in my mid-20s, to finally work it out in my mind and break with that particular church.

Writing this has brought me a thought. Maybe this is what scared me about your age 15-21 lives, messed up as many of them were. I was horrified, but I don’t think I’m a selfless person whose concern was mainly for you. My life was messed up too, but I covered it up with this conventionally “good� behavior. It got me a long ways, well into my 20s, anyhow. I was lost for awhile, but had some support, and always did well in school. I thought I would fit in on the opposite side of the desk at a university, but when I got there it was m/d x 5 years over the stress of classroom teaching. I had thought it would be the profession made for me. Graduate school had been so lovely. I resigned from the university. One reason I could is because I had S to carry me through. No more serious depressions for a while, but mania or at least hypomania, looking back. I don’t know how she did it. Loyalty runs in her family.

So I can see somewhat of a connection there to my being scared here a couple of weeks ago. Now I have been able to write this. I feel better, and better being here. Maybe this isn’t even the first time you’ve heard this sort of story. I’m writing it for my own sake, but posting it because I want to trust… to actually experience your caring and return it to you.

One of the things that''s visible here is the way people support one another. It drew me here and made me want to participate, and I did. But after a few weeks, I got scared. I had been participating, but now I couldn''t figure out what to say. I don''t know how many posts I started and never sent. I wanted to respond, but couldn''t; wanted to write about my own feelings and couldn''t put the words together, except maybe very briefly and noncommitally.

Part of it, I think was that I came to realize the depth of suffering and the very hard lives of many people here. Especially the age 15-21 thread: I wanted to say these were OK years for me, but I was ashamed because they were so difficult for many others. And the thread was scary to me too, too. I don''t know if you scared me (how?) or if I was scared of something in myself (what?). Maybe it was some kind of trigger. It just made me very uneasy. I felt out of place and I backed off. Didn’t read the whole thread.

But I kept on reading, every day. I felt detached but compelled. I think I knew I would come back but didn’t know how. Then I saw stricco’s funny e-mail responses and I knew I could come back through humor. And maybe I could write this, and send it.

I’ve told you about my mania a few months ago, which rather suddenly turned into depression in early April. The pdoc and I are having a lot more trouble finding the right med cocktail than ever before. A difference in my life now is that I’m retired and don’t have as much opportunity to do that described in the previous paragraph.

So I’ve been mostly depressed with some better days, including a few days this week. But today the bottom dropped out again, and I was more miserable than ever, all the more so because I had been feeling better. So I cried and cried and cried.

Oh, I don’t like thinking of the way I behaved!!! because I was so blind to it then. I would run to the pdoc when I felt depressed. The rest of the time I would say I felt fine. If I looked manic, he didn’t say. But what can you see in 10 minutes every month or three? I liked him… I was getting what I wanted… what’s not to like? Oh BTW I didn’t have any tdoc. Just the meds. And my wife. And, the past few years, a spiritual director.

So I was saying something like that today through my tears, and I said I loved her, and she said me too, like she always does, and I said how can you love me when you do so much and I do so little, and she said she loves me not for what I do or don’t do but for who I am, and I think maybe for the first time, because she’s said it before, I believed it. I trusted her. I can do it, at least once. She cares for who I am, an “I� that I swear to God I want to find and enjoy being. My true self….

Writing this has brought me a thought. Maybe this is what scared me about your age 15-21 lives, messed up as many of them were. I was horrified, but I don’t think I’m a selfless person whose concern was mainly for you. My life was messed up too, but I covered it up with this conventionally “good� behavior. It got me a long ways, well into my 20s, anyhow. I was lost for awhile, but had some support, and always did well in school. I thought I would fit in on the opposite side of the desk at a university, but when I got there it was m/d x 5 years over the stress of classroom teaching. I had thought it would be the profession made for me. Graduate school had been so lovely. I resigned from the university. One reason I could is because I had S to carry me through. No more serious depressions for a while, but mania or at least hypomania, looking back. I don’t know how she did it. Loyalty runs in her family.

So I can see somewhat of a connection there to my being scared here a couple of weeks ago. Now I have been able to write this. I feel better, and better being here. Maybe this isn’t even the first time you’ve heard this sort of story. I’m writing it for my own sake, but posting it because I want to trust… to actually experience your caring and return it to you.

Written Jul 08, 2006