Learn to be lonely

Always cried when this song played at the end of the movie.

Very appropriate lyrics for the loneliness felt with bipolar.

i'm still here

It's been a long, long time since i last posted on here. a lot has changed during the past 8 months. i still receive treatment from the pa hospital, have a case manager, a psychologist and a physciatrist that i see there regularly. I have also started a program and treatment with a life promotion clinic at the griffith uni which delves into suicidal tendencies. The physciatrist i see there is wonderful so i am hoping that it will help.

I guess as far as the bipolar is concerned, not much has changed really. the meds cause a numbing effect so the extremes of the condition aren't as prevalent. Can't say that i particularly enjoy the numbness though.

I still have the regular thoughts about wanting to be here, last night was particularly bad. After a relatively good day and productive night, as soon as i tried to sleep i started crying. This then led to cutting my arm to release the pain. Decided just to stay up after that and go to the office. Once again i found myself sitting at a train station wondering how long i will endure this for and what the point of living is.

So we'll see where the day takes me. Have an appointment with my psychologist this afternoon so that should be interesting.

Next post soon!!

update

I can't believe it's been so long since i last posted on here! Once again a lot has changed since my last post. i went through a very angry stage where i disliked anyone that didn't understand mental illness or more importantly didn't care. i made the decision to quit the fashion industry altogether and give up photography during this stage because of it being a purely self absorbed and image conscious industry. i have learnt probably just in the past week that i need to stop and think before i make rash decisions and control the bipolar rather then let it control me. it has been a good week and my mood has been stable, i'm feeling quite content and dare i say it, even happy.

i have now taken steps to begin helping others with mental illnesses and am really excited to start studying for a diploma in mental health. this has given me something to look forward to and has given me some enthusiasm to photograph again to pay for my studies. i see this as a way to earn money from an image based industry to help people who really need it.

will write more soon... :)

from vain to sane

i'm not going to write much this evening, although there is a lot to say. a lot of things have changed in the last couple of weeks. i will go into more detail later but basically i am no longer wanting to work in the agency and have decided to give up photography as well.

the title of this post is for a reason, i am completely changing my life.

will hopefully write about this in the next few days.

A time to act

It's now 6.30am. I tried to sleep but for some reason started crying. My tears then turned to anger at this disorder. I seriously hate bipolar and how it effects me and the havoc it has caused in my life. I have had enough of the roller coaster ride i have been through for so many years now. It will not get the better of me and I will fight it with all my strength so I can live a normal, happy and successful life.

I have let things and people walk over me because it was easier than fighting back and causing stress. Soon i will be well again and then to those people that have attacked me, without even the decency to put their names to their words, I will fight back and it will be you that has egg on your faces.

Years ago in Adelaide i didn't fight a case, firstly as I didn't want the person to get hurt by it and then I wasn't well enough. It was then easier to ignore it. I am tired now of thinking of other people and putting their well being before my own. We both know the truth and at some stage it will come out and in court.

I was going to leave all of this as I know the truth, but no longer will I let people tell lies and get away with it. Enough is enough.

update

It's been a while since I last wrote anything. I have thought of things to write during this time but they tend to stay in my head and I don't write them down.  Since my last post a few things have happened. My psychiatrist has now doubled my medication and it seems to be working okay. The only issue is the side effects the past few days, mainly headaches and nausea. The lithium also gives a metallic taste which is rather disgusting.

I have had far less suicidal thoughts over the last couple of weeks, they are still there but far less frequent. It mainly happens now when I try to sleep, thoughts of not wanting to wake up tend to slip into my head.

I did a photo shoot last week, the first in quite some time. I'm not sure i was ready to do that yet as I found that I just went through the motions rather than being excited or indeed creative at all.

I am eager to get things going and stable with the agency and hopefully have staff coming on board to make sure work is coming in. I doubt at this stage that I will be doing a lot with it myself as I still don't feel that I can contribute enough to it on a consistent basis. Also my doctors are telling me to take things slowly and that it's very early days on my road to recovery.

I am growing impatient though as it feels like I will never get there and be normal and i guess I'm apprehensive about never being fully happy.

I have had and continue to have great support from the pa hospital and receive daily visits from the a2a team. I can't thank them and the acute care team enough for the job that they do and the care and compassion that they show me.

I have been lucky enough to also find support from people until recently I didn't know. Charlie is a new friend that I met recently that is one of the sweetest people I have known. She previously was in a relationship with someone who also has bipolar and is aware of how tough it can be. Nevertheless she has shown me strength and kindness in helping me deal with this and with keeping me positive. I am sure i will write more about Charlie in the future.

Well it's now 5.15am and i haven't been able to sleep. My sleep patterns are still all over the place, will be so happy if they can become normal. I have a blood test at 8am to check the levels of my medication so I will try and get a couple of hours sleep.

Hopefully it won't be so long until I write my next post.

monitoring mood

had a visit today from the acute care team from the pa hospital to check on my progress, it was good to see them and i was happy and in a good mood. they showed some concern on me overdoing things and to watch my symptoms.

i thought at the time that everything was ok, but i have now been awake for 22 hours and am constantly needing to do something.

i am a bit worried because in the past this can lead to a manic episode and that is the last thing i need at the moment.

i guess on the upside, my day has been very productive. i have made calls that i have ignored for the past few months and it feels good to be out of the depressed mood i've been in the past four months.

i had a look at office space for the agency that i will most likely sign a lease on and also built a website for my photography. added a new page for the agency on facebook and got in touch with sane australia, a charity dedicated to mental illnesses. i hope that could be the start of me helping others.

going to try and sleep now and monitor my moods carefully tomorrow, have blood tests on thursday morning and an appointment with my psychiatrist so i guess i can ascertain how things are going then.

happy

i have been taking new meds for 5 days now. i'm feeling really good at the moment and haven't had any thoughts of suicide for the past few days. I can't remember the last time that those thoughts haven't been present. i don't think i'm entering a manic episode as i have no thoughts of grandure or of spending money i don't have. i am hoping that my emotions at the moment are a result of the meds and that i am stable.

I feel happy to be alive and am excited about resuming work and begin living again. i have a lot of things to sort out at the moment but i am not daunted about this.

i plan on looking at new premises for the agency and also looking for somewhere new to live.

life feels good at the moment.

new meds

saw my psychiatrist today and started new meds. has to be monitored for a while with blood tests to get the dosage right. i am hoping this will at long last stabilise everything so i can get back to work and living my life again.

i am quite content at the moment and am excited about the future, i miss working in the agency and shooting and am looking forward to slowly getting back into it.

i guess now with knowing the signs of manic episodes and also depression, it should be easier, plus i also have psychiatric support now.

it's time to start living again

back to life

at 1.30am on tuesday morning i drove to a dirt road around goodna,
stopped the car at the end of the road and got out and had a cigarette.

i then cut the hose i had bought earlier and put one end in the exhaust and the other end in the rear window. i then taped up the window to prevent fumes from escaping.

started the car and sat there for an hour and 15min inhaling carbon monoxide from the car exhaust. i can't  really say why i turned the engine off, i have tried to remember but am unable to.

i took the hose out of the exhaust and drove to the emergency department at the pa hospital.
i was treated for carbon monoxide poisoning which basically means receiveing oxygen and monitoring of blood and oxygen levels in the blood.

my emotions were all over the place, from thinking next time i will do something quicker to maybe now i will get help.

around 7am i was taken to mental health to be interviewed. it was interesting to see the other people waiting.
there was a lady in a private room who had overdosed on heroin in a bid to commit suicide. she was on the phone to someone and yelling at them because they had told a friend of the heroin overdose and not that it was a suicide attempt.

there were two young guys in there, one was twenty, not sure about the other.  it was sad to see such young kids in a mental facility. also a young chinese woman that swore she didn't have bipolar and that it was her friends and family that didn't understand her and she was normal. i hope she confronts her illness rather than denying it.

around lunch time i was interviewed initially, i think for the first time someone understood my symptoms and actions. not only that but they were prepared to help.
i was then interviewed by a psychiatrist and she confirmed type 1 bipolar and a plan to treat it.

to start with cutting down on my dose of anti depressants which quite frankly have been useless and starting me on meds to stabilise my moods.

i have an appointment with the accute care team on friday morning to start the treatment and a promise to monitor it until the right dose is achieved.

they agreed to allow me to leave after my promise not to harm myself. i thanked the nurses and doctor, trying to stop myself from crying as someone had at last agreed to help.

it does sadden me to think that i needed to take such drastic action to get help, if carbon monoxide poisoning did not take so long then i wouldn't be writing this now. during that time in the car it gave me time to think and i now remember why i turned the engine off, my vow to help others that suffer from mental illnesses.

i fell asleep around 12 last night and slept until 5.30 pm. i am feeling okay at the moment and relieved i think that maybe with the right treatment i can decrease the suicidal thoughts and manic episodes.

i realise that i have a long way to go and that it wont be easy but at the moment i am okay with that.

time to die - my last post

it's been 19 days since my last post. i think i have slept a majority of that time, easier than being awake. i've had a few legal issues with not enough funds to cover cheques back in december and early january. i remember thinking at the time that i would be able to cover them, always a problem when i don't have a hold on reality and then slip back into the lulls of my disorder.

i have been staying in a motel for the last 9 days because i have nowhere else to go and can't ask friends for help as they wouldn't want to know about it. sure they may show some sympathy but that would be the extent of it. one "friend" that i asked numerous times to read this blog flatly refused saying he didn't need to. i guess i wanted him to know how i was coping. it gets back to how i have felt all along, no one cares enough about mental illness. i feel again that i am on my own with this so the past 9 days i have spent on my own.

tonight is the night that i will find peace, i am in a relatively good mood. i'm not depressed or manic. i slept most of today and then had a shower and rushed to bunnings before they closed. i had ten minutes to buy hose, a stanley knife and duct tape. it was quite surreal asking staff where the garden hose section was and stanley knives. i found myself running around the store so i didn't run out of time to get what i needed. i wasn't sure what diameter hose to buy to fit in to the exhaust without it being to large to tape the window of the car up.

it is 10 pm now, i will probably burn a cd soon so i can listen to it in the car later. have some washing to do as well, strange really why i would want to do that when i don't plan on being around to wear them.

12.40pm now, watched tv for a while, didn't do washing though. i have been having second thoughts about going through with this and trying to get my life on track and of course the agency. i even signed up for a new web hosting account.

i am getting tired now, going to get changed and go for a drive. if this is my last post then i say goodbye and i hope that anyone reading this will understand. i also hope that it may send a message to health departments and that so much more needs to be done for sufferers of mental disorders, especially when they cry out for help.

another day

i have been awake now for around 38 hours, tried to sleep before but i can't.

did some interviews today as they needed to be done, wasn't planning on going back to the agency to do them. (should probably fill you in on what "the agency" is at some stage)

it's a funny thing this bipolar, how just driving, a random thought will enter my head to steer the car into oncoming traffic. suicide is ever present in my mind, even when i'm not depressed these random thoughts will enter my head from nowhere. it can be anything from seeing myself hanging, holding a gun to my head or even stabbing myself. kind of weird when you think about it.

if i didn't know better i'd think i was possessed!!! (yay! made myself smile)

think on that note i will try to go to bed happy for once... Hope it lasts at least until i'm asleep.

vincent van gogh

These are some lyrics from the song 'vincent', obviously about vincent van gogh. Strange when i think about it as he has always been my favourite artist for as long as i can remember.

Around 10 years ago when i had a photo studio in adelaide, i went through a stage where i would turn all the lights off in the studio, tell my receptionist downstairs not to disturb me, and then i would just sit in a corner of the studio in the dark, sometimes with music playing, other times not.

I remember feeling like i was being tortured from the inside and that no one understood either me or my creativity, which was at an all time high then and when i took my best photographs.

I would compare how i was feeling to how vincent van gogh must have felt, delusional maybe as i will never be as gifted as he was. The strange thing is this was 9 years before i was diagnosed with the same condition that he had, bipolar.

anyway below are parts of the song that hit home to me the most!

look out on a summer's day
with eyes that know the
darkness in my soul

and now I understand what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free.
they would not listen
they did not know how
perhaps they'll listen now

and when no hope was left in sight on that starry starry night
you took your life
as lovers often do

and now I think I know what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free

they would not listen
they're not list'ning still
perhaps they never will

sleeping to avoid life

12 days since my last post. once again i'm not really clear what i've been doing in those 12 days. the past week i've been sleeping a lot to avoid life. had a few really bad days the end of last week culminating in cutting my arm to stop the pain. I was really ready to finish it this time and always have a plan of how to do it. Something keeps me going though and i'm not sure what that is. It's not support because i don't have that and i'm not about to ask for it from friends, not that i have many of those. I tend to lose them easily through lack of contact although it's easy to make new ones when i'm going through manic episodes.

I think i regret letting people know i have bipolar, i thought it would help them understand me a bit more and at least know why i act the way i do sometimes. Bottom line is they have no patience for the symptoms i sometimes have. I am not looking for sympathy or pity, far from it, just acknowledgement that i can't always control my disorder.

I thought reducing stress would make a difference to everything, not sure that it has though. I still don't want to be here, i think the only thing that has happened is that i'm not having the manic episodes. I think i miss them because of the intense high and excitement that they give me, instead of this dullness that i have been living with the past few months.

I still haven't done anything about documenting mental illnesses, don't have any motivation to do anything at the moment or the energy to propel myself forward out of my current state.

I even wonder why i continue to write this blog, who even cares enough to read it. So i do it for me, nobody else, and the way i feel at the moment i don't give a fuck whether they do or not. I have dealt with my illness by myself and will continue to do so until i decide i've had enough.

ignorance

proof that people not only don't understand mental heath disorders, but really don't care!!

this was written about me, my first emotion was anger and then sadness. thoughts of why the hell am i fighting this, no one cares!!!

"I know he has been having some medical problems lately but that still isn’t a reason for him not to contact anyone, especially me".

"Frankly, I’m a little ticked off myself so I can imagine how you are feeling".

"You are more then welcome to try and give him a call on his mobile".

"I really don’t care if he gets upset at me for giving out his number, and if he does then oh well"!!

what i fight against everyday

tears

don't think i should have written that last post about relationships.. i'm now sitting in front of the computer trying not to cry. Why can't i just be normal!!!!!!!

can't stop the tears now, need a hug but have no one to give it to me. am i destined to be alone forever, will i get better, or will i succumb to the peace i desire so much.

11 days ago

well it's been 11 days since i last wrote anything, i can't believe it's been that long. i'm finding it difficult to remember what i'm doing with my days, not sure why.

things have been ok, no highs and no lows. only the occasional thought about suicide but i manage to push them aside as soon as they enter my head. it's a strange place i'm in, i guess it's what you may describe as "normal", not that i'm sure i know what that feels like. to me it's just living day to day without excitement or sorrow.

sometimes if i'm watching a movie and especially if there is deep and intense love, i find myself feeling sad and lonely. i don't think i'll ever have that, sure i have certainly felt it in the past but have always managed to sabotage all my relationships so they failed. at this point i don't think i will ever be able to commit to a relationship as i'm scared of how bipolar causes me to go from being a hopeless romantic to a total bastard in the matter of minutes. i have learnt how to control this to some point, not sure i want to test it though. it does hurt to know i have pushed some beautiful women away from me, seeing the hurt in their eyes at me being so cold and indifferent to their feelings.

the last was brooke, she made me so happy and helped me out of six months of depression. i would instantly light up whenever i saw her, she could make me feel dizzy just by kissing me. i regret not having her in my life now and am really angry at myself for pushing her away and forcing her to dislike me. fuck i hate bipolar sometimes!!!!!!!!

background - part 1

i remember as a child putting a pillow over my head and trying to suffocate myself, praying to die. i don't know why or if anything led up to me doing that, i do remember it happening numerous times though. it is very daunting to me that as far back as i can remember i have not wanted to live, i don't know how many times i have gone to bed and prayed not to wake up.

i had a reasonably good childhood, made friends easily enough and did well at school. i never really had a close relationship with my parents and still don't to this day, sometimes it bothers me but only if i think about it.

i can't recall any manic episodes during my early teens, besides from the suicidal thoughts, i think i was reasonably normal. i enjoyed my final year at school and it's where i first learnt about photography. i have always considered it as one of my happiest years, i absolutely loved making my first pinhole camera to teaching boy scouts how to use a camera and developing the photographs. that year i played a priest in the school play and received an outstanding achievement award as the highest achiever for my class. i don't consider myself to having much creativity back then, something i think bipolar has helped me with.

my future looked exciting and i was happy. i was accepted into college in adelaide to study photography and was moving away from home to do this. i lasted about 3 months at college, somehow losing motivation and that initial passion i had for photography. i'm not sure if this was the start of my disorder or just being a restless teenager.

back to life

It's 6.25am and i haven't been to bed. i am quite happy about that though as i am feeling good at the moment and planning things for the future. i even checked messages on my phone for the first time in over a week. the past week or so has been really tough, have slept a hell of a lot so i wouldn't have to think. when i wasn't asleep there were those constant suicidal thoughts and planning how i would do it. hopefully i'm coming out of that stage now.

i have thought about this blog and why i'm doing it, in some ways it's like my personal diary i guess. i know it's a huge step for me to share my private thoughts. i really have to get on with my initial intentions of it though, to give people a better understanding of mental illness. i have found again in the past couple of weeks that people have very little patience with some aspects of my disorder and i'm not sure how to change that or even if i can.

i think it's about time i write something about my background and how bipolar has affected my life, then onto doing what's really important.. Helping Others!!!!