BEING BIPOLAR, Part Fourteen: The Cost

Being Bipolar is a series that began in the winter of 2011.  Every so often I write about what it is to live with the mental illness known as bipolar disorder, or manic depression as it's also often called.  I do this in the hope that others will gain insight and understanding about diseases of the mind, and also I do this in an attempt to inspire others who live with such conditions.  These diagnoses don't have to be the end of the chance for a good life.  I want to believe that in however small a way, I might be helping people realize that.  In this series I attempt to write about the subject with honesty and with candor and, on occasion, with humor.  I am not a psychiatrist.  However I do come from a background of being a state-certified peer support specialist in the South Carolina Department of Mental Health for four years.  It is especially in that capacity that I do my best to document what it is to exist alongside mental illness.  If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, especially if you are having thoughts of self-harm of harm to others, please consider calling 911, or go to your nearest hospital emergency room.  Trust me, I've been there, done that.  You may also find help and encouragement from a support group, such as those sponsored by mental health advocacy organizations like National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami.org).  Help is available.  You only need reach out for it.  People care about you.  Remember that.

This has not been one of the better seasons of my life.

For a year I had an amazing career as an artificial intelligence trainer.  A dear friend had recently gotten her foot in the door of that industry and she was able to get me started in that also.  After nearly four wonderful years at the state department of mental health - a position I would have stayed in forever had the economy not become so bleak - it was a great break to have.  It paid good money.  But more importantly to me, it was a chance to use the vast majority of the skills and experiences I have picked up throughout my life.  I got to bring those to bear upon the tasks at hand.  The research and analytical skills that I gained early on and finely honed during my time in college lent themselves well to the job.  It played to my skills for writing.  It was getting to use a mind that has always spanned matters as far apart from each other as World War II history and aerodynamics and Catholic theology, and everything in between.  I was on the cutting edge of technology, using my full mental toolbox, and I was thriving with purpose fulfilled.

And then, I was downsized.  Which is a bare euphemism for "let go".  I wasn't the only one either.  A lot of people were dismissed.  I was told that I was very good, but I didn't have seniority enough to keep me aboard.  And so I found myself out of the AI business.

Will I get back in?  I think so, sooner than later.  It's such an evolving field, and admittedly quite a scary one.  But the technology is still a long ways off from AI on the level of science-fiction creations like WOPR from WarGames, or Skynet.  At its heart, artificial intelligence is advanced mathematical set theory married to dialogue emulation.  For all their seemingly vast power computers still can't simulate the human factors of desire, intuition, mystery, and love.  That isn't going to change anytime soon.  But I've been told that I've got significant talent when it comes to "whispering" to AI.  So in the long run I think I'm going to do okay.

It's the time being that is so lousy...

So this is now my fourth month without a real job.  I'm looking around for something, anything within reason, that will let me pay the bills.  There are some remote jobs that I've found, but I've discovered during recent years that I am best engaged alongside other people.  That is one of the things that I loved most about the peer support specialist position at the mental health office: I didn't just work with others, I got to help them, in so many ways.  The same friend who got me involved in the AI field told me that I really am at my best, most in my element, when I'm helping people.  I think she may be right about that.

I'm looking for honest work, something for the time being until a better opportunity arises.  Unfortunately I'm coming up horribly short.  It's still a bad market for job seekers out there.  And I wonder if there are other qualities that are working against my favor, but that would be digressing considerably.

That, as much as anything, is what enticed me to update my LinkedIn page, which is something that I haven't touched or looked at and perhaps even thought of that much in the past ten years or so.  When I first heard about LinkedIn, I thought it was a gimmick.  But better minds than I convinced me that it could be an effective tool to get myself "out there" for potential employers.  I spent much of this past weekend giving it an overhaul...

...And it was tough.  The past several years weren't so bad.  I've had employment more or less since 2013, when I began freelance technical writing.  But there was a ginormous span of time before then that I didn't have any employment at all.

That was the period of my life when I was hit the hardest with manic depression.  It made it impossible for me to focus enough to work any job whatsoever.  Those "lost years" were spent fighting my own neurobiology turned against itself... and that's pretty much it.  There were no great accomplishments or personal achievements in my life during those many years.  There was only a diseased mind and a thrashing about to control it with medications and counseling.

I lost a lot during that time.  Job opportunities.  My faith.  Friendships.  Self-control of my baser instincts.  I even lost my wife.  And that's something I will never forgive myself for.  Many times I lay awake at night especially, and feel haunted by all the people who I drove away while in the midst of madness.  So often it has made me want to die.  At times I have even prayed to God to let me die.  Because then maybe I can go to Heaven and see everyone I hurt and maybe... maybe... they would want to see me, too.  Especially those who had been closest to me.  My cousin Robin told me awhile back that we will love deeper than we ever could on this earth: "Grace will abound" and there they will finally know how much I loved them and still love them.

Relationships.  Purpose.  Career.  God.  All of those things and more went into that abyss along with my employment history and if they ever came out it was met by a person with a more jaded and wounded outlook on life than one should have.  I've thought that if I could save my professional life, that maybe everything else for a full and meaningful existence would fall into place.

So I had to examine my experiences in my LinkedIn profile.  And that big blank chasm was driving me crazier than usual.  It made my page something that I would be very hesitant to share with a prospective employer.  Questions would be asked and I would have to explain myself.  I can not lie.  That's the last thing a person should want to attempt with the people considering them for a job.  What was I to do?

It was that same dear friend who came through for me again.  She suggested something that was brilliant, and I probably might never have thought of this.  As she put it, those "lost years" do count for something after all.  They were a time when I was faced with a life-altering challenge that had to be confronted, with no choice in the matter.  Reining in my thoughts and emotions became a full-time occupation.  And it's something that I will spend the rest of my life on this earth striving to maintain what control I have over it.

There is now something filling in that gaping hole in the chronicle of my employment.  From April of 2004 - the month that the diagnosis of bipolar disorder was given to me - on through to August 2013 and the start of my freelance writing career, I was "Health Manager" at "Overcoming Adversity".  And that isn't a falsehood.  Those are nine years which are now accounted for, and there was some work scattered throughout it here and there.  But the highest priority was my well-being.  And I can hold my head high knowing that I was doing my best to overcome the obstacle of mental illness, trying to have some semblance of a full life.

I prefer to believe that the time since then has demonstrated that I've come a long way indeed.  Of late I have been on the forefront of the biggest technological revolution since the rise of the Internet.  I've been a mental health specialist who not only helped others, I was able to persuade some out of making the very worst mistake that a person can make in this world.  I've been a news reporter and writer of opinion pieces read by a vast audience.  For more than a year I was producing videos for a daily television broadcast.  The year that I spent traveling across America with my dog Tammy is part of the record too, and that became one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.  I've written a memoir, spanning well over a hundred thousand words covering the entire length of my life, that is now being pitched to literary agents.

None of those things would have been possible without that working on myself for almost a decade.

Bipolar disorder has cost me a lot of things.  But I want to think that it hasn't necessarily cost me my future.  It will be twenty-five years at the end of this month since my first trip to a behavioral health facility.  At the time I was very confused, very upset, and very frightened.  At the time I thought that my life was over with, that there was no hope left.  That was now half my lifetime ago and the worst of my condition was yet to come.  And if anyone had told me then that life was going to get even harsher for me, well... Lord only knows what I might have done.

(An entire chapter of my book is devoted to the six days I was hospitalized in that place.  It's pretty thorough.  Right down to the movie that the staff played for us that Friday night and the picture that I drew and put on the wall next to my bed.)

But here I am, today.  I admit to having some envy.  Borderline jealousy, really.  I look at the LinkedIn pages of people I know, and theirs are laden with achievements.  Maybe that's why I spent so much of the weekend trying to figure out how to make mine more impressive, not just for sake of potential employers either.  I'm glad that I did though.  Maybe God used it to wink at me, a little.  Perhaps He used my friend toward that, too.  The cost has been more than any person should have to deal with.  But when I looked at my page after working on it for awhile, I had to admit to myself: "Wow, that's pretty impressive.  I've come a long way after all.  I've got nothing to be ashamed of so far as my career is concerned.  Maybe God hasn't given up on me."

I might say that I could be content with that.  But I'm not content.  I never have been and I probably never will be.  Alexander on the edge of India wept because he thought there were no more worlds to conquer.

God willing, that will not be me.

Categories: being bipolar, bipolar disorder, mental health, mental illness, psychology