Recovery Stories

Chris's story - Light & Dark

I played music and as a teenager would play 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' to Mum as she lay in bed (she would go to bed at 8pm to get away from Dad); I played for Mum to let her know that I 'supported' her. Not that she did anything to show she needed support. I always took her side between her and Dad.

I think Mum felt that my brother and I let her down; she expected more achievement from us because she did at one point when I was about 17 say that 'she was a teacher with one child in prison (Keith was put in a cell for a night) and one a College drop out, yet Mrs Bunker, a mere dinner lady had two children at University, what had she done wrong?!'.

I remember acutely hearing 'shrieking' birds when I took our dog for a walk across the fields when I was about 15. I imagined I was in the age of cavemen looking for bits of pot in the ground. I imagined and 'felt' a sort of 'out of time or place' feeling.

At College I tried to fall in love because my friends said I should fancy someone. I had fancied my R.E. teacher at primary school and thought I was going to marry my music teacher at secondary school, I marked in thick pen over the cover of my exercise books 'LOVE' and 'HATE' and doodled hedgerows, pots and faces; of course I had no actual relationships. I was treated as a freak by the boys and I left College. The boy involved at College (though we never even went out or hardly talked) told me he'd seen God and that started me with religious panics and terrors. I started thinking that everything that happened like when it rained it was Noah's flood and I dosed myself with garlic to ward off evil spirits and refused to eat apples because of the snake; though I never read the bible and 'bunked off' Sunday School at the age of about 7 - 8.

The bible became my sanctuary though I only saw bits of it highlighted and I kissed and hugged it as my saviour. I remember being bored when I was younger and instead of reading the Bible I started writing it backwards from the back and was told I was the devil. I don't actually believe in religion, I believe in love, peace, care and compassion and feel that religions can be segregating, dictatorial and dangerous. It is our minds and perceptions that are torturous, things that others tell us and when our minds our unbalanced we grasp in terror at anything.

I ended up living a life feeling that I was actually living in a land and time of God, I felt terrified.

Eventually I broke down; Mum thought I had been taking drugs at College, but I never took or did anything, just studied and tried to make friends.

I would sit in the chair and see black which I first thought was evil, then tension and white blobs all over the place and blue lights. Some seemed to signify words in books. I tried to work it out, (that is me I always have to analyse and rationalise everything, everything has to make sense, trying to work out what I was supposed to do - it wears me out). I thought I could work it out to always do the right thing to save myself and others but everything got more and more contorted.

I just tried to shrivel as far as I could in to myself. I would sit stiff pressing against the back of the chair seeing black snake like shapes slithering up my legs.

I just seemed to recover and got a job during the College break, cleaning the local hospitals as a house keeping assistant.

I left college at the beginning of the next term and got a job devising a progress chasing system at a Printed Circuit Board Factory. After 3 months and regained confidence I thought of the grade 8 clarinet, piano and theory of music I had done and felt I wanted to do more than factory work so I left to go busking around the world. I got as far as my bedroom and my mum and dad had a fit that I had left. I became rather withdrawn. I tried to get pen friends without much success.

I met my ex husband at a gathering arranged by my parents, I married him 9 months later to get a life away from Mum and Dad. I regretted the marriage immediately but had four gorgeous children in May '84, April '86 and twins December '87. I had worked for three years for British Telecom as an operator with no time off sick (I am not a sickly person).

Nathan born in 1987 had heart failure at 3 months followed by kidney failure. We have found out that he has Alstrom's syndrome, which includes retinal dystrophy, he was rendered completely blind by the age of about 11. He has liver fibrosis and diabetes.

My ex husband had been very possessive; I had not been able to have any sort of life of my own. I had not even been able to have contact with my Mum without him there. Women in his eyes just cooked and cleaned and served their husbands without any contradiction and produced children to carry the family name on; without thinking or speaking for themselves. I had to obey.

When the twins were born he had to 'let go of me' because I had to stay away from him, in hospital; I remembered I had a brain. I did not want to go back to his bed.

I tried to get a divorce, I was not allowed to. In 1988 I was diagnosed as post natal depression, then bi-polar.

I started to 'get the knowledge' that Cliff Richard ruled the world, he was the King of Kingston Town and I was to be his wife. He saved my soul and I saved his soul and he was going to rescue me and my children. He was the best impersonator and all voices on the radio, media, were his, singing to me, loving me, torturing me through the radio.

In the 'lows' I feel a freak, useless. not fit to be around. In each stage though I still look after my children 100%.

With help from my Mum's new partner I got a divorce in 1995 for my ex husband's unreasonable behaviour.

I have brought my 4 children up on my own since November 1994 when I was given residence of them Monday to Friday.

I have been on Lithium since 1988, 1000mg every night, that has pretty much stabilised me. I was sectioned to Fairfield's Hospital in the early years; sedated by Haliperidol which bloated me and made me dribble but within 48 hrs my mania had subsided; the psychosis took a few weeks, I was afraid to let go of Cliff Richard because I felt if I didn't have him I had nothing. My episodes tend to be triggered by emotional sexual relationships with men going wrong.

I now recognise signs like over worry, terror, becoming irrational and if I feel my brain racing I now take 2.5mg of Olanzapine at night as well as the Lithium until I feel more settled again.

Jane my Community Psychiatric Nurse comes to see me every week, two weeks, month, depending on how I am and my changing situations; She is going to keep a closer eye on me for a while as I am going through a pretty major life change, though I am pretty confident about it. My children have all become pretty much independent and I am about to start full time work again.

I don't know why the psychosis is always Cliff Richard; I don't particularly like him except when I'm ill and think I can't live without him! Why not Barry Manilow or Donny Osmond? I've never been into that sort of music, it is the sexual man and saving of souls I am obsessed by (when ill!).

I am loving, intelligent; I care deeply and take responsibility very seriously. I am (when well) daft, sense of humour is my saviour and it is my yard stick to measure my illness by, I become very serious and withdrawn pre mania and feel too miserable to have my sense of humour post mania, until well again. I have a wicked sense of humour and love to laugh and have jokey people around me. My priorities are around people's welfare, emotional and physical. Some people say I am deep, I find my pleasures not in material things but in people's happiness.

I love Nature and think the World is a beautiful place and I am only happy when I feel part of it. I paint and draw what I see as aesthetic natural beauty in portraiture (the light in someone's eye) or landscape. I am very down to earth and like nothing better than to share a rude joke. I get on well with men but cannot maintain a relationship. I have a lot of interests and can keep myself busy as well as looking after others. I am a happy person.

My original psychiatrist in 1988 said, "you have a brain you have to use it, if you don't use it constructively it will use itself destructively". I have as well as being a mother, done a lot of studying and achieved qualifications in subjects ranging from Holistic Therapies to Computing. I have just accepted the post of Support Time Recovery Worker for the Mental Health Service and NHS Trust.

I am not ashamed or frightened of my illness any more, it has taught me a lot and given me patience and taught me where to find my true treasures and pleasures in life. I know I am prone to becoming ill but I always try to catch it before it takes me over and if I do 'relapse' I know I will be well again very shortly to resume life where I left off, intelligent, able and capable of dealing with things that most of society (apart from us select few) know very little about and thus frightened of. My illness has made me a rounder and more knowledgeable person. I am not frightened of mental illness any more, some people have to live with asthma and other such debilitating illnesses.

Being accepted for this job though has made me feel so good that I will be able to support myself and come off Income Support. I feel I have more value that I am accepted, wanted and could be useful to society in general. I feel grounded and have something to focus on to feel normal. Getting my confidence back and keeping it is all important in my outlook on life, view of myself and general stability.

Mine is a story of light and dark and I've learnt not to be afraid of the dark but to blossom in the light and enjoy it when it shines on you.

Chris

June 2005 --------------------------------------------------------

This story and other Recovery stories can be found at http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk

____________________________________________

Graham's Story

I am 37 years old and several months ago I was diagnosed as having Cyclothymia, a "milder" form of rapid-cycling manic-depression. A previous diagnosis of unipolar depression several years ago had started me on a journey of much research and reflection, culminating in a realisation that my moods had been swinging both up and down for 20 years.

I have never been hospitalised, my symptoms not being severe enough for such treatment. Unfortunately, the downside of this was to keep me in an ignorant limbo, my problems never really coming to the attention of anybody around me and my own attitude being that I was 'just a moody so and so'. My rollercoaster moods resulted in various spasmodic attempts to seek help, but this was always thwarted when a good mood would convince me that I didn't need help at all.

Not knowing what my mood, my attitudes, my motivations will be from one day to the next has been a lonely and silent torture and it is impossible for me to look back over the last 20 years without seeing two completely different people. As a management professional, with all its macho pretences, work was a permanent struggle as my confident self drove me to ever harder challenges and my depressive self fought to keep me in a safe cocoon. Constant job changing and career analysis paralysis has been my ruin. Even before diagnosis, I always had an intuitive sense that a decision point would have to come in my life.

As I sit here today, I have no idea what the future holds as I am 'unemployed' and battling with my demons about a 'proper job' and its connotations for me. However I am back on medication and am looking to engage in some form of counselling. Slowly but surely, I am discovering my own voice for the first time since childhood. I have started to write a memoir of my illness and its connection with events in my family history, as well as making music and designing - all things I have never had the time to do before (unemployment isn't all bad).

I don't have any quick fixes or revelations to offer because I think it is different for every individual. What I hold onto more than anything is a stubborn belief that like everybody, I have gifts and insights from my experience which I want to share and build on. We live in a world obsessed with very limited definitions of normality, success and so on. Personally, I'm not going to be a part of it anymore and its unhealthy demands on me, and if you are reading this then that world needs to hear your voice too.

September 2003 -----------------------------------------------

This story and other Recovery stories can be found at http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk

____________________________________________ (more)