I feel, sometimes, that I am at war with the mentally-well world. This isn’t to say that many of them aren’t lovely or that I have a desire to harm anyone, but I do feel embroiled. And it’s mostly because the well population just doesn’t understand what it is to be unwell. They demonstrate this heartily by repeatedly saying the worst things possible to a person with a mental illness.

The concept that people need to be grateful for the good things in life has been around probably forever. It’s a form of positivity. Rather than being upset you don’t have the Ferrari the guy next door has, be grateful that you have a Volvo in which to take your kids to school. Seems reasonable enough. And the movement of gratitude leading to emotional wellness really hit its stride when Oprah started promoting the “gratitude journal”. Basically you write down what you’re grateful for every day and then, “you'll become a deliberate attractor of positive vibrations”. In Oprah’s case, I’m guessing that’s one really fat journal, and apparently lots of vibrations. But gratitude has no bearing on how depressed I am.

Bipolar disorder is episodic. This means that a person with bipolar disorder will experience episodes of depression and mania (or hypomania). And even when a person is relatively stable, thanks to successful bipolar treatment or just plain luck, it is likely they will still experience a depressive episode at some point in the future. But how do you know if you’re heading into a depression?

I’ve been in treatment for over a decade now and in that time I’ve had more than my share of doctors. Some doctors have been awful, but some have been great and at the top of their field. And when a doctor at the top of their field sees a treatment-resistant bipolar, they have some treatment options that your average doctor might not think of.

I can feel suicide flicking at the edges of my consciousness. This morning I woke up wanting to die. Before my eyelids fluttered and my logic circuits sparked I knew it was going to be a horrible day.

We all take part in the game of denial. Humans need denial to exist. We can’t think about our inevitable death, the fact that we are aging, or that our marriage may end in divorce and expect to care about jobs, mortgage payments and the obvious importance of Jimmy Choos. We know unpleasant possibilities and inevitabilities are true, but on a daily basis we deny them. We need to. Denial produces a workable life. What gets under my skin though, is the fact people expect me to deny my bipolar disorder, my experiences with it, and its effects – mostly just to make them feel better.

Once you’re on a magical medication cocktail, see doctors regularly, have done years of talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), tried shock therapy (ECT), exercise, have social contacts, a support network, a support group, eat well, tried light therapy, dark therapy, and a series of awful tasting herbs and you find yourself still unwell; the question must be asked: If I’m doing everything right, why am I still sick?

When I was a kid, show and tell created the most memorable moments in school. Not the tell part. The tell was boring. We heard about Betty going to a “real, real fun zoo” and Bobby getting a new bike; this information made us shift in our seats, roll our eyes, and make funny faces at whoever was talking. But the showing, now that was great. We got to touch a slimy frog, hear Cathy scream as a budgie landed in her hair and be frightened as a snake’s tongue lashed out in front of us. Showing was where the action was. But with mental illness, it’s never the show that people want, only the tell. People are frightened by, and run from, the show.

Adventures in Bipolar Diagnosis continued from part one... Lamictal was indeed a miracle for me. It allowed me to finish my bachelor’s degree, get a job in my field, and even become a skydiver. In retrospect, it was an amazing time to be me, to be in remission. Everything was good, until it wasn’t. I felt myself slipping about two years into the Lamictal treatment. For no known reason, the medication simply stopped working. This is a common problem with psychotropic meds and something else no one likes to mention.

In late 1998, I knew that something was wrong with me. My life was going well; I was in university, on my way to a computer science degree, in the co-op program and had completed an eight-month job in Calgary. I had been contented and grateful since leaving my mother’s house and moving to a new town. I was more happy than I had been in years. But little by little, I found myself increasingly sad and life became peppered with bouts of meaningless, spontaneously crying. I was unreasonably moved by the foretold unfolding of TV plots and commercials. In November 1998, I found myself in a pitch-black room, unable to get out of bed for an entire day. I was in the south of Spain, a ten minute walk from white sandy beaches and half-naked women. That was the moment I truly realized I was broken: I was in heaven and yet crushed with sadness.