Revelations + Destinations

La vida lithium

this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on January 8, 2011.

If you share living or working space with someone who has bipolar disorder, and you claim that you have never felt (a) disdain, (b) pity, (c) irritation, (d) fear, or (e) all of the above at any given time, give yourself a pat on the back. Well done, you are a good liar. Unless emotions or bipolar disorder are entirely alien to you, you can only be lying. Not feeling any of such emotions toward someone who takes lithium with his favorite breakfast is impossible. I know. These emotions, I have drawn from my loved ones and colleagues alike.

I learned that I have bipolar disorder in 2007. Another evaluation this year just proved what I already knew three years ago. I have been under treatment the last few weeks, after a major depression that was so morbid I told my mother to sell all of my organs when I died so that we could pay off our debts. I also asked my youngest sister to burn all my clothes and my journals and everything I owned so that after my death, they could live as if I never existed. And I was sketching my own tombstone.

I do not intend to cause my family any pain. But when the illness rears its ugliest head, I simply cannot help it. The mostly happy and loving and sparkling personality they know turns into a mess of tears and wails and screams. The person who never runs out of things to say would only respond by blinking her eyes. The woman hopping, jumping, pirouetting in glee would turn catatonic in fear, anger and despair.

My family has felt it all: disdain, pity, irritation, fear. Add a few other emotions, like awe at my boldness coupled with fear over my seeming recklessness. Or admiration for my spontaneity accompanied with disgust over my inability to plan. Or respect for my tendency to break conventions coupled with disappointment over my occasional insubordination and disregard of rules and authority. I know that my emotional volatility has caused them a lot of anxieties.

I am the eldest among four girls. Ideally, I should be the stable, successful, role-model type. But I am nowhere close to being an exemplar. My younger sisters are endlessly frustrated over the cruel reality that Ate will never be an ate to them. I am aware that my mother constantly worries about what the future holds for me. She is afraid that her eldest child would be unable to establish a stable career and find a stable relationship.

At best, my family tolerates what is happening but I am not sure that they understand. I know they are trying, but it is too much to expect them to understand me and how this disorder affects me, because I myself find it hard to understand.

My doctor (who has been very kind and patient to me) likens bipolar disorder to diabetes. With diabetics, the insulin supply is faulty, causing sugar regulation to be erratic as well. With people who have bipolar disorder, the problem has to do with lithium. Lithium, in salt form, is crucial to mood regulation. My doctor says there will be times when I would need sedatives or anti-depressants, but the lithium tablets I’ll be taking for the rest of my life.

It’s almost funny how pills that cost only P8 can spell the difference between emotional volatility and emotional stability. For P8 a day, I could be a step closer to establishing better relationships with the people around me. Imagine paying only P8 daily to enjoy a happy, stable and productive life.

I remember my mother, opening our fridge and taking out Quilonium and Risperidone tablets from tiny Mercury Drug plastic bags and reminding me to take my “vitamins.” She didn’t know until recently that I have bipolar disorder. For the longest time, she referred to the wild oscillations of my moods as “topak” or “sapi.” Up to now she cannot bring herself to say the name for my condition: bipolar disorder. She still prefers to call my medication “vitamins,” and my condition, “sapi.”

But no matter what you call it, it will not change anything. Bipolar disorder has no cure. It can only be managed. I have been suffering from/enjoying this condition for most of my adult life. I say “suffering” because it has been impacting my relationships, personal and professional. I say “suffering” because at its worst, it fills me with so much self-doubt that sometimes I am unable to function. I say “suffering” because at times, I still whine and ask The Big Boss why among my mother’s four children, I have to be the one to suffer this disorder.

And I say “enjoying,” because as much as this malady gives me emotional torture beyond my fair quota, it has its gifts. Especially the gift of feeling the full range of emotions from ecstasy to excruciating pain, and experiencing these emotions as intensely as a painter sees colors and lights and shadows has helped my writing.

The sporadic bursts of energy and positivism, the hypomania, can also be beneficial at times since I am able to inspire people around me. When I am at my most confident, it can be infectious. Good energy and brilliant ideas spread like wildfire among the people I live and work with.

It’s not easy to be bipolar. Lithium can only do so much. I feel mad when people claim to be bipolar, without any professional evaluation, supposedly because its “cool.” If they knew what life is really like for someone who has bipolar disorder, they would be crazy to wish that they have it.

But the creativity that comes with my bipolar disorder ranks only second among its gifts. The best gift this illness has brought me is a new concept of family. I have extended my immediate family to include my aunts who have been kind enough to shoulder the cost of my treatment, and cousins living in the United States who are more familiar with this malady and are more understanding of me. I have extended my family to include my psychiatrist, who constantly reassures me that all I need to do is heed her advice and I will be able to manage this illness well.

Some members of our family still don’t believe in bipolar disorder, in my need for medication and talk therapy. They say that I am just selfish, weak-hearted and that this is all just in my head. I remember a passage from Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love”: “When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times, you must grab on to the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face first out of the dirt—this is not selfishness, but obligation.”

I am desperate to be happy. I am desperate to be whole. And if I need to take lithium to achieve that, much as I hate pills with a passion, I will take lithium every day for the rest of my life without fail. When I am healed, when I am whole, when I am the boss of this illness and not the other way around, then maybe my severed relationships will be healed, too.

Joie Go

Joie Go, 27, took up a pre-med course in the University of the Philippines, but is now trying to enter the field of TV and film writing. She prays that this article will lead to a better understanding and acceptance of people with bipolar disorder and the creation of a support group for those afflicted with the malady, if there is none in existence yet.

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