I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 22 and, initially, this was absolutely terrifying to me. My experience with bipolar disorder was limited to one family friend who my family talked about in hushed tones like he was a leper or something.
I didn’t really understand what it was or how it affects your life because it’s not hugely talked about – all I learned from a quick Google was that Stephen Fry has a form of it and that it has the highest suicide rate of any mental illness. A pretty mixed bag, we can all agree.
As a society, we’re getting better all the time at talking about things like anxiety and depression, but bipolar disorder still isn’t spoken about all that often, and when it is, it’s largely people jokingly calling themselves “like, so bipolar” because sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are unhappy (which, on some level, is still a working definition of the condition).
I’ve always felt weird talking to coworkers or bosses about when I am experiencing episodes and having a hard time at work (you should ask my previous employer how many days I had off for “food poisoning”), because it’s still not really an accepted thing. What changes that is more people in the public eye talking openly about their experience with it and showing that they are still normal, functional human beings.
Carrie Fisher was dedicated to being frank and honest about having bipolar disorder and to crushing the shitty stigma that comes with it. Waking up this morning to a Twitter filled with outpourings of grief for Carrie, one that really stuck with me was one of those Tumblr quote/meme picture things of her describing bipolar disorder to a child at a convention:
Carrie Fisher explaining what ‘bipolar’ means to a little boy at comic con pic.twitter.com/1CzpspovFe
— Reptilia (@maaaaaadiison) December 27, 2016
Or, in text form:
“It’s kind of a virus in the brain. It makes you go very fast or very sad. Or both! Those are fun days. So judgement isn’t one of my big good things. But I have a good voice, I can write well. I’m not a good bicycle rider. I’m just like everybody, only louder and faster and sleeps more.”
I’m not 100% sold on my voice or my writing, but otherwise I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mental illness described as succinctly or as accurately as that. She was committed to using her platform as a celebrity to talk about it with honesty and humour and, while it means the world to me, it will mean even more for people who are new to the disorder and terrified about what it means for them.
She didn’t shy away from describing the ugly parts either. There’s a tendency to romanticise the disorder as the source of some artists’ creativity but, while you sure can get a lot of weird shit done in a manic episode, the truth is that it’s just as liable to make you feel like shit or freak out as it is to help you make some weird found art sculpture at 3am.
In an interview with America‘s ABC News (not to be confused with Australia‘s beautiful ABC News) in 2000, she spoke about dealing with the uncomfortable surprises of your own manic behaviour:
“The world of manic depression is a world of bad judgment calls. Just every kind of bad judgement because it all seems like a good idea at the time. A great idea … So if it’s talking, if it’s shopping, if it’s — the weirdest one for me is sex. That’s only happened twice. But then it’s wow, who are you?”“You can’t stop. It’s very painful. It’s raw. You know, it’s rough … your bones burn … when you’re not busy talking and trying to drown it out.”
If someone could have told me earlier on that the not being able to shut up and the constantly bankrupting myself were both symptoms of the mental illness I had and not just character deficiencies, as I believed them to be, I imagine I would have had a much nicer time.
As she points out, while you do get better at dealing with it and understanding it, it stays with you for life:
“I outlasted my problems. I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on. Better me than you.”
She was also unreservedly supporting of using medication to treat mental illness, something that hippie dipshits tend to roll their eyes at before suggesting that maybe you should just try meditating and drinking more water. Speaking at a rally in Indianapolis in 2001 for increased funding for mental health, she told the crowd she was thankful for her medication:
“Without medication I would not be able to function in this world. Medication has made me a good mother, a good friend, a good daughter.”
While we’re being honest, this wonderful piece of advice and encouragement she gave to a woman who wrote in to her advice column in ‘The Guardian‘ is the closest I’ve gotten to crying today:
“We have been given a challenging illness, and there is no other option than to meet those challenges. Think of it as an opportunity to be heroic – not ‘I survived living in Mosul during an attack‘ heroic, but an emotional survival. An opportunity to be a good example to others who might share our disorder. That’s why it’s important to find a community – however small – of other bipolar people to share experiences and find comfort in the similarities“Don’t I sound like I know what I’m talking about? The truth is, I’ve never done what it sounds like you’re doing: balancing school, home and work. I left home and school. So as difficult as it seems like it can be, you’re ahead of the game. You’re doing more than I did at your age, and that’s courageous.“You don’t have to like doing a lot of what you do, you just have to do it. You can let it all fall down and feel defeated and hopeless and that you’re done. But you reached out to me – that took courage. Now build on that. Move through those feelings and meet me on the other side. As your bipolar sister, I’ll be watching. Now get out there and show me and you what you can do.”
What an incredible woman.
Photo: Getty Images / Daniel Boczarski.
