The day to end the week to end the life?

Happy Wold Bipolar Day! 

I had actually decided to kill myself today (or tomorrow depending on which continent you are on). Not because it was ‘world bipolar day’, (which it isn’t anymore here in Australia but is where most of my readers are reading this from thanks to weird internet induced time travel rules) no, that was simply an ironic coincidence that I didn’t even know about that until Tuesday evening. But because back in early December when my body was giving up on me again, I was starting to feel the icy whisper of Bel’s voice in my ear once more and the withering tentacles of depression clawing at my soul, so I made a deal with the devil. 

“Let me have my trip to Melbourne with my best friend, let me have Christmas with my family, let me ring in the new year, climb up Mt Kosciusko and wish my mother a happy 70^th birthday, let me be free of this metaphorical cage and then, then you can have me.”

I picked the date, the 31^st of March 2017 as the day I would take my life. Just long enough past Mum’s birthday and just long enough before my niece’s not to be forever associated with them.

Once the date was picked my mood 180’d and happiness verging on hypomania ensued. I had a ball crossing off bucket list items in Melbourne where for the first time in 15years I ate ‘real’ food and ‘real’ cakes like it was a normal thing for me, without fear or guilt even though I didn’t run for 5 days. I was not compelled to exercise incessantly or burn myself nor was I subjected to the expected constant verbal abuse by a now seemingly silenced Bel. 

It’s funny, I haven’t seen that friend and only spoken to her on the phone twice since we got back, whereas once upon a time we spoke on the phone daily for hours. But even though it would be nice to catch up with her, if the last memories we have together were of an amazing adventure, then somehow that just feels right. 

I returned from Melbourne about $1500 poorer and fairly hypomanic, as evidenced by a folder in my computer full of poetry, rap songs and well over 1000 photographs. I had a few ‘off weeks’ here or there with many hours through the middle of the night spent deep in reflection; December seems to do that to a lot of us.

Christmas time was spent with family, his and mine. My 32^nd birthday came and went, I’m not good at birthdays I still struggle with the various parts of my mind asking why I’m not dead yet and how can I possibly be 32 when I am still living in my high school mindset and don’t recall anything since my 16^th birthday. 

A burst of “New Year New Me” hypomania followed and the world was my oyster. I photographed, wrote, drove to the beach and climbed Mt Kosciusko, I was binge eating again but my exercise plan was equalling it out in my mind. Then I hurt my ankle and freaked out momentarily about not being able to run/ shed calories. The freak out was more about the fear of the dreaded and currently subdued Bel returning to eat my head because of her obsessions and fears, than the actual fears and obsessions themselves. Strangely the feeling of impending doom passed and I coped. True to her promise Bel remained in her box.  

The kids returned to school after the summer break and my boss at the pet shop announced to me that they would spend one last ditch effort trying to sell the shop and then they would be closing down at the end of March. The end of an era, I had spent the best part of 17years as their employee. It was sad but as I remembered my pact with the devil, the timing was rather convenient.

As the weeks went by I was still hypomanic, I drove too fast and blew hundreds of dollars on expensive headphones and assorted crap. Good things were followed by bad, then good again. My daughter turned 8, Dad got diagnosed with Dementia and I spent my mother’s 70^th birthday celebrating with her. The shop didn’t sell and the closing date was official, but I ran faster and further than I had ever run before; running from my shadow.

I had intermittently wondered about my decision to kill myself. It wasn’t really practical anymore – I had blown most of the money I was planning to use to fund my suicide on manic shopping sprees, Mum was going to need me to help with Dad now, besides I was having a lot of fun generally and I didn’t particularly want to die. I started to wonder if on the 31^st of March Bel would just suddenly possess me and drive us into a truck or if perhaps I would just die from something completely random like a falling tree. 

So here I am, sitting at home on my computer on ‘D’ day letting antipsychotics flow back into my blood stream, It’s been a crazy up/down week of life lessons for each part of me which I have explained in the previous posts that I have posted before this one, separating them because it was all far too long winded for one post, like over 4000 words kind of long winded. 

If you really have nothing better to do or you are killing A LOT of time, then by all means continue starting from Monday through to Thursday. I have posted kind of backwards so they appear "how you would normally read a book" for better context.

I guess right now I don’t know what the rest of this day will bring, I am currently a little bit of each part of me, mostly Suzi I think but Bel is still nowhere to be seen. I’m supposed to have my final Pet Shop shift ever tomorrow which couldn’t possibly be worse than Wednesday’s effort and as much as I hate goodbyes and dying today could get me out of one, it’s about time that I actually finished something that I started. 

Just as I ended that sentence, the phone rang. It was the best friend I went to Melbourne with. We spoke for an hour and a half about all the important things in life. I told her how much she meant to me and that I didn’t need to talk to her all the time to know how blessed I was to have her in my life. I also told her that I looked forward to seeing her again soon. 

So Bel, if you are out there, don’t make a liar out of me, I’m ready for a fight. Bring it on, Bitch.

Monday

 On Monday I played in the roles of the different part of me. Katie gave an impromptu random speech on Bipolar in a shopping centre. It began as a chat to one person about homelessness who mentioned the way that mental health can be a factor and I commented that I had Bipolar Disorder. 

He was an opinionated man who admitted he knew nothing about BP aside from what he had seen on TV but was interested and willing to listen, I felt a surge of passion engulf me as I educated him on the finer points of mania & depression, I was watching myself from a distance as the words flowed from my mouth of their own accord. The man asked a bunch of stereotypical questions but absorbed the new information and thanked me for giving it to him. He said he would go home tonight and tell his wife about this young lady with bipolar who talked too fast

 I looked up at one point and realised I must have also been speaking too loudly as we had gathered a little crowd. This ended in my first real hug from a complete stranger and filled a void in me with a rather euphoric contentment and a sense of achievement as though I had finally stood up for myself and made a difference. 

I left the shop and headed over to finally see my friend who I have been meaning to catch up with, she also happens to be a hairdresser and dyed half of my hair purple for me. I drove home on cloud 9, singing loudly with the music up and the windows down, finally expressing the carefree ‘Kate’ part of myself on the outside for the world to see.

Tuesday

 On Tuesday first thing I saw my psychiatrist for a regular appointment, I had not seen her since before my pact with the devil back in December. While I am honest with her, I have never shared the way I separately identify with the different parts of my personality with her, (that’s way too private, so I have only shared that with the entire internet, lol) but this session I accidently let something slip and then tried to cover it up. I think it’s ‘Suzi’ that she talks to. She looked at me for a minute and asked if I had been disassociating more often lately, I said ‘kind of’ and she just nodded slowly but didn’t comment. 

She remarked that I seemed happier within myself and I admitted to her that I felt like I had been free since I had chosen a date to end my life, she said that made some sense as I wasn’t having to deal with the pressure of spending each day deciding whether to live or die. 

I refused to give her the date as she would have been compelled to act on it somehow and besides as I tried to reason with her, for all I knew my state of hypomania would just allow the day to pass like any other anyway – then there would have been a big fuss for nothing and people would have had to know, that would have been as embarrassing as hell and as a people pleaser from way back, embarrassment is a far worse fate than death.   

She wasn’t happy about it and I saw tears in her eyes at one point, but for all she knew ‘the date’ was months away so locking me up now would be futile. We have discussed my persistent suicidality issues numerous times before and she has tried every trick in the book, but over time I think that she has had to face the reality that no matter how hard you try, some people just can’t be saved. I told her that she had done everything in her power to help me, and she already HAD helped me so many times before; she told me to call her if shit hit the fan and she would drive the hour and a half out to my farm if need be, she is truly wonderful. 

After my appointment I put on my generally disorganised but loveable “Katie” hat and went and picked up my Dad and took him to the National War Memorial, I really wanted to spend some quality time with just him. We had a nice lunch and looked at the exhibits. Dad teared up a bit while we were watching a movie about “G for George” a bomber plane from the second world war, he was a toddler living in Denmark during WWII and told me that his earliest memory is of the sound of bombs dropping and the terrible shaking of the ground. 

We had some wonderful deep and meaningful discussions, he is spending much more time living in the memories of his past now and is opening up about things he never normally would have, his stories are amazing and I am so glad we had the opportunity to connect that day.

Then Suzi had to reign us in and try and coordinate picking up child number 2 from a soccer day in town, collecting children 1 and 4 from the school bus 1.5hrs away and depositing them at home before taking child number 3 who is in yr7 next year to a high school orientation night 50min away.

I don’t recall much of the evening, but the business of the day had messed with me and I was only half present in any conversation. I kept noticing myself responding to something mid-sentence and having no idea what the topic actually was and then had to try and cover up my vagueness. 

As we were leaving I checked ‘Katie’s’ Facebook feed on my phone and suddenly saw the profile of  “A” a close friend from high school who is featured in my book, there was no nice way of sugar coating the fact that he now looked like a total crack head and it suddenly hit me how easily I could have followed that same path, but here I was at an event with my third child starting high school and I suddenly had no idea how I got to this place in my life. I’m married? When did I have kids? I could intellectually remember their birth dates and what they looked like but I felt like I was watching a slideshow of someone else’s life. 

I scrolled down further and suddenly saw the tributes flowing in for a friend, M.R, a local lady and prominent member of our small town community whom I had spent a lot of time with on the show committee had died that morning after a battle with cancer. After my breakdown in 2015 I had abandoned all my community projects without explanation and I had not seen M.R in over 12 months, I didn’t even know she was sick until a few weeks ago and I had been meaning to contact her.   

A voice suddenly said “What’s wrong? Mr 11 was looking up at me. “You look like someone just died…” but then Suzi smiled back at him, changed the subject and bought us greasy hot chips for dinner and we sang along to music on the car ride home; Bel didn’t say a word.