The first time I was severely depressed, I was 20 years old, and Al and I had just broken up.
I had lied to him. We were in an open relationship and had agreed to talk about our other romantic interests, but there was this one guy that I didn’t tell him about. He eventually found out and confronted me about it. I was utterly devastated. I lived in Montreal, and it was my last semester. I had a full schedule with 6 courses and was also trying to find a job. One day, while walking to class, I had a complete breakdown. I thought I was going to die right then and there. I was having my first panic attack. I got so scared that I immediately went to the university's clinic and asked to see the doctor. After explaining my symptoms and describing my episode, she diagnosed me with depression and prescribed Celexa and talk therapy once a week, which I never had time to attend with the course load I had. Three months later, I had finished my courses and had decided to return to Lebanon, so she gave me a three-month prescription for Celexa and wished me well. Back home, as soon as my mother discovered I was taking antidepressants, she panicked and called her family doctor. You see, my mother had always been a very cautious person when it came to medication. And she was convinced that whatever was troubling me could be resolved with therapy rather than medication. So I weaned myself off the meds and started seeing a therapist. I was still depressed as fuck, even more so now that I had graduated and didn’t have a job. I felt like a failure. I was lucky because my first therapist was one of the best CBT therapists I’ve ever had. He gave me excellent foundations to start rebuilding myself. I still have the therapy journal I kept when visiting him and often read back through it. This depressive episode lasted for a little over a year. When I emerged, I had a full-time job at which I excelled and decided to volunteer on a couple more projects. I was working all the time, late nights and weekends. There was no end to my energy and patience. With my bipolar diagnosis, this must have been a hypo-manic phase. My boss at the time said that I had outbursts of enthusiasm and energy that quickly shriveled down once I lost interest or faced challenges. I think that’s when the cycles really started. Every year during spring, my energy would increase, I’d start taking on more work, I’d get really excited and enthused by whatever it was I was doing, I’d start taking on more than I could handle, and by the time summer was over, I’d have crashed and burned, and I’d become depressed. A cyclical life that’s the kind of life I seemed to be leading. A series of upward and downward cycles that almost always start the same way and almost always end the same way. However, this time, there is some sort of diagnosis. Bipolar disorder. It had only been two months since my episode, and I expected myself to be fully operational again. Yet here I was, with 5 days of work under my belt in any given month, a meager salary from a couple of places, and a partially functional mind. Most of the time, I feel tired. Sometimes, I would decide it was time to activate the beast mode. But I couldn’t manage to find this mode around. Again. I knew it would come back if I just let it be. So in the meantime, I was doing the best I could, with a smile, as often as possible. I guess I’ve always been this way, and I should just be used to it by now. I feel, however, that this mind of mine keeps evolving and morphing. The cycles keep changing and cycling. The most comfortable thing I could do during this period was sleep. Everything else seemed uncomfortable. Writing, talking to people, being in front of a screen, holding a book, driving, and being surrounded by noise and various stimuli. I’ve been feeling weak and exposed. It had made me an unpleasant company. That’s probably why I was isolating and feeding into this weird circle. I felt like I was drowning, but I was swimming against the current at the same time. I didn’t want to be negative anymore, so I would think positive thoughts, but my body felt heavy and empty simultaneously. When I was manic, I enrolled in a writing academy to improve my writing skills and encourage myself to publish more. I dropped out of the academy in the first few days because I couldn’t write a single article. I didn’t have it in me, not this time, this week, or this month. I was a writer without words.
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AuthorI was born in 1986 in Lebanon. I'm still trying to find my passion in life and in the meantime I'm learning to navigate my bipolarity and redefining stability. Archives
February 2024
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