Here In My Head (Part One)

I've given myself a few days to reflect over everything I wrote in my last entry. It was very difficult and emotional. At certain moments I thought I might just delete the whole thing. In the end, I'm glad it is here, glad it is out, and I feel better for it.

The events of that night and all that ensued in the following days is no longer the largest obstacle in my road forward. It has only been a few days, but I have already begun to feel myself letting it go. The relief of that idea, of moving on, is allowing me to focus more on the other major obstacles that face me now, mainly my health.

I suffer from long term mental illness, along with chronic physical issues. It has been about two and a half years since I was officially diagnosed and have been receiving treatment. However, therapy has traced symptoms and signs of my illness back through my years in high school, possibly back to the time I was molested.

One of the things that makes my illness so frustrating for me is that I don't actually "fit" into a specific "classification" of diagnosis. I suffer from traits of Bi-Polar Disorder mainly. However there are a number of classifications of Bi-Polar depending on the circumstances of symptoms. In my case, I don't fit in any of them, or you could say I fit in all of them. So my first diagnosis was Bi-Polar Spectrum Disorder ... leaving that open for much interpretation by any doctor that I ever saw. What came next was the discovery that I suffer from an extreme form of Rapid-Cycling, which is actually a classification of Bi-Polar, however, in my case, my symptoms were so extreme, it became a whole new diagnosis. So now, I have Rapid-Cycling Bi-Polar Spectrum Disorder.

Just a little background to bring everyone up to speed:
Bi-Polar disorder is caused by a neurological malfunction of the synapses of the brain. Basically, the synapses either stop sending or stop receiving the chemicals that your brain requires to function properly. Depending on the chemicals in question, as there are a number that can be affected this way, you can suffer from a number of levels of Depression or worse. Unfortunately there is no way to tell which chemicals are affected in any particular person, so treatment is always a shot in the dark.

Bi-Polar is a mental illness that swings between periods of Depression and Mania (hyper activity). The majority of Bi-Polar patients are classified as Bi-Polar 1, meaning that they will experience quite long periods of either Depression or Mania before swinging to the other, sometimes many years.

In my case, I experience a higher number of depressive periods than manic ones. The added Rapid-Cycling diagnosis is due to the extreme frequency that I swing between periods. The average Rapid-Cycling diagnosis is for someone who's swing periods are every few months or so. In my case it can be a matter of minutes and I've done a 180. Better yet, most of the time, I experience the depressive and the manic period at the same time ... which is not a pretty site. It can be brutal. I have been violent, I have broken things, and other times I've just done some crazy things.

It is a little more than three years ago when my symptoms started to get completely out of control. This illness has taken more than just a tole on my health, it has taken a tole on my life. When the symptoms got really bad I started to shut down and cut myself off. I pulled back from the world and the people around me. I took me months to gain the courage to tell my parents, then again, after I did it took me months to convince them that I was legitimately ill. I lost complete contact with a lot of good people. I've done just enough to keep in touch with quite a few, but in all honesty, I was terrified. At planned gatherings, I often would pull out at the last minute, out of fear of having an "episode" in front of everyone, fear of how they might react. My emails mostly go unanswered, and rarely have I ever initiated my own contact to someone.

I realize now that over these three years I've been hiding in a corner, building up walls around me, convincing myself it was for my own protection. Every now and then I'd let someone peer through a certain hole in one wall or another, but never all the way through, and never did anyone ever see the same thing. Outside of a small handful of people who have been helping me through this, no one has really ever seen me. I still haven't seen me.

The walls go back further than these last three years. The walls began the moment "he" forced me to "admit" that nothing happened. There is a lot to dig through, but I have support. I am no longer alone in the darkness.