Daybreak

As I travel through my fifties, I am feeling a bit worse for the wear. I'm tattered, worn and often having trouble telling up from down. Luckily, I tend to have a hopeful personality and still believe that there are many good things coming my way.

Many years ago I was diagnosed with multi-lateral bipolar 1 disorder. What this means is that not only has my life been a series of manic and depressive episodes, but often both at the same time. It's been a swingin' party, let me tell you.

My depression first hit when I about six years old. I remember those dreadful mornings, sitting on the front porch steps in Alexandria, rocking back and forth with what I called my 'morning sickness'. Despair would crush down on me like a night full of terrors, and I would feel sick to my stomach with a panicked apprehension that it was there to stay. As I grew older I found that it took more and more distractions to keep it at arm's length, but quite often it swallowed me whole without a moment's warning. I never really knew who I would be from one moment to the next; I could be having the time of my life, laughing and playing with friends or cousins, and suddenly I would shut down like a broken elevator and careen into a morass of self-consciousness and speechlessness.

The older I got the firmer the hold mania began to take on me. I was the crazy friend, the one whose behavior you could never predict ~ and I aimed to amuse. As I look back, I see that I wouldn't have known a boundary if it slapped me upside the head; life was simply a race with me trying to outrun despair and hopelessness. I must admit that there wasn't a lot of psychological and emotional progress going on during what should have been my formative years ~ I was so appallingly unhappy. My family bore the brunt of it; when I was with friends, I worked hard to be the cheerful person people wanted to be around. "Laugh it off" was my outward motto until I returned to the safety of my home, where I shed my false exhilaration.

After I left home, all bets were off. I must admit I felt a bit unhinged to be unbridled in a world so full of things I had never experienced before. I went to the bars and discovered a me that loved to drink and dance and carry on like a mad monk. I made friends, dated, partied and had parties that are remembered to this day. But of course there was the dark side of life. I was un-tethered from the very sheltered home life I had been raised in, and the pain was deeper than ever before. I missed a day of work every week or two, lying in bed and sobbing all day long. I honestly don't know how I kept my jobs, because I simply did not have the emotional stamina to get through life like everyone else I knew.

My undiagnosed condition did lead me into many exciting life experiences. I developed a psychological quirk which was touched off by my thinking, "I could never do that!" My immediate inner response was, "Of course I could!" Paging through the paper at lunch one day I saw an advertisement for the Miss Minnesota Pageant, and sat wondering how anyone could actually get up the nerve to enter one of these, which promptly led me to respond to the ad. I entered the Miss Brainerd Lakes Pageant, was crowned, and went on to the state level. I didn't win the Miss Minnesota title, but I had a thrilling and eventful year, and discovered strengths in myself that I hadn't even suspected existed.

One of these experiences came about because I needed to raise money for clothing, etc...I had very limited experience with a guitar, but I could sing, so I taught myself to play one song for the talent portion of the contest, and went on to hold 'benefit concerts' to earn the money I needed. I continued performing after it was all over, and soon it became a part-time job. I made a cassette tape of me singing and playing songs that I wrote, and brought it all over central Minnesota to find gigs. I performed professionally for over twenty years.

After I had my second child, the depression hit depths I had not known existed. I finally found a psychiatrist and spent many years medicated to the gills ~ I continued my white-knuckle ride up and down through the years until I slowly developed into an agoraphobic. I basically quit functioning. I locked my door, ignored my phone and hid. I turned from an outgoing, take-on-the-world kind of person to a dark, quiet shadow who could rarely leave my apartment. I spent ten years in the dark.

My children had grown up and moved to Minneapolis, so I seldom saw or heard from them. My friends had given up on me years ago; for the most part it was only my family who kept me from going completely under. But one day I realized that I hadn't felt much of anything for so long that I didn't even remember what I was hiding from anymore. So I began the long process of weaning myself off many of my medications and took a long, hard look at my life, and thought about what was left of it. I really didn't know what to do.

One day, I was thinking about how much I had loved living in the cities in my early twenties, which led me to thinking about my boys, and I thought, "What am I doing here?" Within a half a year, I had found an apartment in Minneapolis, someone to move me, and an astonishing sense that I was going to do well here. My agoraphobia disappeared the moment I walked into my apartment and hasn't reared its ugly head since. It has been two years, and I have found love, friends and I have rediscovered my children in their adult forms.

I won't say life is perfect or that I will ever be healed, I don't know if that is possible. But I am growing and learning, and I feel that I finally have another chance at leading a contented and productive life.