Suffering

Around the age of 13, after a sixth school change in five years, I had my first depressive episode. I have no idea if there was a mania that preceded it - this was before I knew to look for the mania to warn of the depression that follows.

It's easy to use words like mania and depression now but at the time and for many years later I didn't have any labels for what I was experiencing. What surprises me most, in retrospect, is how unaware I was that there might be a problem. Each soaring high was taken as my birthright and each inevitable crash filled my head with its own circumstances. I didn't see the pattern until I was over 30, despite spending months at a time hiding from the world.

I couldn't see the problem because my mind was too full of thoughts, but it might seem odd that none of my friends and family noticed. Well, that's not entirely true... they noticed I'd stop returning their calls for months at a time, they noticed I'd be in love one day and on to the ugly break-up the next, they noticed that I went from "fair-haired-boy" to "persona-non-grata" at job after job. Drama after drama. But they didn't notice I was sick. They didn't notice because when they were around I hid it by paying attention to them... it's funny the way people think those who pay them attention are the sanest people in the room.

And they loved it. Until, that is, I'd be so spun out, so lost in the depressed result of an earlier manic episode, that I didn't have the capacity to hide in plain sight by focusing on them. So I'd hide under the covers and unplug the phone, and let them think I'm lame because I didn't have a better explanation to give them.