Having loved and lived with my wife for 15 years who suffers Bi-Polar type 2, I have run the gauntlet of the life lived on the edge of here and gone for a long time.
Many mental health issues are not single ‘things’ you solve with a medication, it’s the complex web of the illness, the years of trauma built up before the illness is diagnosed, it’s the PTSD that comes with that, and for women particularly it’s all the balancing of biochemical and hormonal systems that always seem to be in revolt with one another
Bi-Polar in particular is a unique life for all involved as it swings between the whiley highs, the good times and wild parties, through the social outbursts, and at the time, horrific social scenes that in time you end up looking back and laughing at, to the darker days and haunting endless nights that can go on for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.
And then there are those days, those nights. The smashing of windows and kicking in of doors to get to your loved one. The emergency services and police being called when you threaten to break people’s legs if they don’t get her into the ambulance now, and the seizures of your loved one in a hospital bed, and asking for the first and last time in your life to be lied to by the doctor ‘Is she going to make it?’… ‘Well she’s taken a lot’
In the Western world we have a beautiful movement of awareness and inclusion driven around neurodiversity and this is great, and growing awareness around industry with programs like Mates in Construction for men which is much needed, though there is still a strong stigma around suicide, and I get it, how could you understand or know what to do or say, no one does, and each case is not only different but evolves over time
And my heart goes out to the partners of the inflicted by any illness that leads them to the edge, I hope you can find support when you need it because I know it can be draining, and you have to have the strength to not let your heart calcify or break from the depth of compassion that is needed to walk this path across decades if it lasts that long
And to everyone else, all I can offer is the advice to not be scared to talk about it with those that suffer, you can’t get it right so you won’t get it wrong, but just talking, listening, empathy, patience, understanding something you will never understand and understanding that this is all that is needed, and life will either go on or not for each of us and know that we will all be dead soon anyway, and to remember above all else, if you have the choice, choose compassion