Life in the manic depressive lane

I’m going to try and be purposely brief for this; not because I have anything to hide – but because I don’t want to dwell too much on the past and want to get into the journey going forward. If anybody would like to know more about anything please let me know. I suppose this story starts in my childhood. When I was 9 I started getting pains in my hips that were very painful, it stopped me doing sports that I loved and resulted me spending a lot of time in hospital having operations and having to spend time in a wheelchair.

Secondary school was less dramatic, I made friends with a group, some of which are still good friends today.  The first time I remember Mental Health symptoms were around the time of my GCSE’s.  I would have been 15.  I couldn’t concentrate at school and was getting confused and my memory was non-existent.  If I didn’t know better I could only describe it as feeling like a zombie.  I remember quite vividly when my dad was driving me around Derby on the way to a hockey match (no doubt) asking if I was taking drugs.  I wouldn’t have minded, but I genuinely wasn’t.

Trips to the Doctors resulted in me being misdiagnosed with various ailments; post viral syndrome, Anaemia, Labyrinthitis etc.  Nobody ever mentioned that it could be mental health.  Despite there being a history of mental health issues in my family – I suppose in the 1990’s you never talked about mental health.

I went for the next few years through a cyclic pattern of feeling great and on top of the world and then crashing, barely able to function or get out of bed. At times I would have to take time out of work or college sleeping for 20 hours a day solid. In 2005 I had my first experience with a Psychiatrist. Dr Farrell was his name (Name changed) he said I did not present with a psychiatric condition, but he believed my symptoms presented as Narcolepsy without cataplexy. The subsequent brain scans showed no such evidence.

Thinking back, I can now reflect upon the manic episodes.  In 2005 on a spur-of-the-moment chat with a friend while walking through a London park I decided I needed to climb the world’s highest freestanding mountain.  Two days later I was booked for an expedition to climb Kilimanjaro.   Cars – these were a persistent change in my life by the age of 28 I had bought and sold circa 15 cars.  Some only keeping for a few months.  I lost a lot of money on cars.  Some were brand new and others were paid for using overtime that was a plenty at work in my younger years.  My favourite was a Subaru Impreza that was nearly new I only had for 6 months.  Clearly, now understood as manic behaviour.

Children.  Well, the most rewarding experience I have ever had in life was becoming a dad.  Our first child came along in 2006 and the second in 2007 (names removed for anonymity).  Wow, what a tough, yet rewarding experience! My two boys have kept me going through the tough times. 

Once, I got an idea into my head that the only way I could successfully raise a family was to move to Canada. Within a few days of having the idea, the house was on the market and we were on a flight to North America. Ultimately it was a combination of this and other factors that I believe ended my first marriage. I won’t go into full details, but my first wife was less keen than me of going to Canada. A couple of months later we had a divorce.

I spiralled out of control for a while after the failure of my marriage.  I suppose you could say I went off the rails.  I did this, keeping my job going and getting 2 successive promotions at work.  But burnout was evidently coming.

I was going to keep it out of the Blog, and to be honest I’d rather skirt over the issue – but it needs to be talked about.  At this point I entered into a relationship with a woman who did all the chasing and I could only describe as ‘trapped’ me.  This is what I would later come to recognise as an abusive relationship.  Several years later I still had counselling talking about this abusive relationship.  The counsellor asked me to look up 2 words; sociopath and psychopath.  It is only then that I realised that it was all pre-meditated, for whatever reason I was targeted.  I never really told anybody about this, even my now (perfect-ish!) wife Linda.

I did have one friend who supported me through all of this; she was an angel through the dark times that ensued.  I’m not going to expand on what happened – but I ended up hurting her and for that I am sad. 

2012 me and Linda started a relationship off. What started off as a few dates and movie nights turned into a relationship that has become my pillar of support over the years.

Since then Linda has become the centre of my world.  It became apparent to Linda from the outset that I had ‘issues’ we just didn’t know how severe they were.  In 2012 I was in a severe depression, barely able to function at times.  We kept it hidden, Linda kept me together when I was needed and made family appearances as necessary.  Other than that we tended to keep to ourselves.

We moved in together in another manic twist.  We were out for a walk and saw a house on the estate that said ‘house of the week’ on it and me and Linda went in the showroom and bought it.  Trading in my house as part of the deal.  Within a few weeks we had moved in.

Around this time I met Dr Smith (not real name), he is the first medical person that really started to listen to me (and Linda). He is a consultant Psychiatrist. By this point I had already been on anti-depressants for 10 years. Dr Smith quickly (within 12 months) of outpatient appointments had diagnosed me as being Bipolar. This did 2 things. 1) it explained the cyclic nature of my condition and 2) presented me with a new care path.

At this point, we began trying new therapies and medications. Most notably Lithium – this drug has all but chopped the peaks off my moods. It was also around this time that I was sent to the Sheffield Adult Autism Centre. I know conversations between Linda, me and Dr Smith had suggested that there may be ‘something else’ going on. I don’t know why – but I was seen very quickly and my attitude was to go there to prove I was normal and move on. At the end of the assessment day it came back as me having High Functioning Autism. This took me a while to get used to. In-fact only a handful of people know. I suppose I feel embarrassed.

Next time I’ll share what happened in 2018…