I am not the first to lose everything I know, I also know as we all do, I will not be the last. Nothing I have endured is unique, no pain original. The sayings those around me have afforded to me are the life belts all devastated people are thrown.

"In a few months you'll be right as rain, you'll see"
"Just think of yourself for a change"
"Often change is for the better"
"Just see it as one bad year"

And so forth, and so forth.

Did they help, ha, did they.. hell do they ever. It seems to me that pain is to be endured, suffered and no more. Once the severest knifes have been sheathed then perhaps you may decipher it all, piece by breaking piece, and find some lessons amongst the rubble. Some point, some purpose. Some healing motivation. This is where I will differ from some of you. And strike a cord with others.

For you see I suffer from a condition called Bi-Polar disorder, or more commonly known Manic-Depression.

When I say Depression , this is what everyone fixates on, 'oh yes, I think I have that actually, I get down.'   Smile.

Well yes Depression is a part of it, but not the destructive part, that falls into the lap of Mania. Mania is like natural amphetamines, only quadrupled. The chemicals in your mind fuse and suddenly your indomitable. Reality becomes based on external suggestion. Someone tells you your handsome, and you are the most beautiful man in the world, someone tells you your a good piano player, suddenly your Mozart.
Somebody suggests if you sacrifice everything You will be a famous writer , you go home with only one purpose.

It was a Manic episode that stole my life from me, And although while I was having it I was on top of the world, 'Close as a breath to God' even, in truth probably the highest I've ever being in my life, I was actually destroying my world.

I was a married man with a beautiful wonderful wife I adored, living in a house that was incredible in its charm, working in a job I loved, and was a respected , admired, and fun member of a circle of family and friends. Then one day after suffering a long, acute obsession for writing, I did became convinced that If I left it all, all of it, I would be that world successful writer. One external suggestion and I raced home that afternoon and pulled out the pin that held up my life, and was gone.

Got told a skinny hippy was my soul mate, suddenly I'm asking her to have my child and leave it with me, because I want to bring it up, while simultaneously building my travelling theatre company that will stage my plays, and be financially supported by selling the rights of my work to Hollywood.

Told ya I was flying.

Smile & blush.

The extreme part of the episode lasted for approximately two months.

In that time my poor wife was forced to endure a devastation she could neither predict nor make sense of. There was no sense to make. The madness was a rocket and rockets can not turn around. I wish I could say I thought of her during it, but I did not. My life was gone as far as I was concerned , all there was for me was fame and fortune. What a fucken dill, he he he, I had never even had anything published.

It ended with my wife in severe financial difficulty, and no doubt emotionally shattered too, and me living here, scint, and nursing a severely broken leg from a motorbike accident, while coping with the fact that I have had an undiagnosed mental disorder all my life, and will now have to take tablets forever.

But anyway, like I said , my condition is not unique, others have suffered greatly , and greater too, and suffer still. Where as my life is slowly falling in to some semblance of order. I sleep where I never use to sleep, have managed to hold on to two friends , and am working on my self esteem, which I know is the key.

Strangely while my old life is gone now, and although I miss my gorgeous wife who has cut off all contact , but who can blame her, miss too my house, my job and my friends and her family, one of the things I miss most is me. The respected me I killed along with everything else in that one afternoon as our 'one small Troy in the suburbs' fell.

But time not to be sad, look out of my window, the winter sun is out, as it will come out for you, devastated one, if you will only hold on. See it is out and all the clouds are sunbaking, and your tears of winter are transforming in to the gardens nourishment, hanging off the budding leaves like jewels. This is gift see, the secret, the present you unwrap as your depression lifts is to finally realize and gain strength from the realisation that life eventually grows over every ruin.

A smile.

© by Michael   21-June-1997