The Endless Question

Who Am I?

It’s a question people struggle through for their entire lives. Identity is fluid and ever-changing, shaped by events and biology, by everything, with, if you’re lucky, a shining centre anchored in the depths that cling onto the facets that make you human and make you you. People say, “I don’t change”, but that’s untrue. The very centre of you may not, but beliefs, principles, preferences can and will change over the years.

Take, for example, the lonely tale of the ex-punk. Kids who pogoed in dark, sticky clubs in the seventies have, by and large, become the respectable men and women that drive to work and smoke in secret. We change because society demands we are a certain thing for our age or generation. As people grow older, they feel it’s simply not appropriate to be spraying, “X-Ray Specs” on their clothes anymore, and that the idealism and nihilism of their teenage years is best retired. I think this is very sad. As wise old Johnny Rotten (now the real estate broker Mr. John Lydon) once said, “Anger is an energy!” and surrender, to me, entails death.

Toiling with the question of your own identity is something that a lot of people would point out as being self-obsessed or introverted. But Socrates said, very truthfully, that the unexamined life is not worth living.

But do we drive ourselves to madness in the quest for who we are?

Madness, you’ll soon grow out of it, my mother told me, you’ll soon grow up and darling you’ll be normal, all this violence is just hormonal

I’m only twenty one yet I don’t consider myself very young. I’ve met people my age who are, without meaning to be harsh, vapid and driven by hedonism. Maybe I am cantankerous and old due to my experiences.

When I was in school, I had a reputation for many things. One was for “brains that burn”, according to my English teacher. I was well-known as being wiser and more intelligent than my peers, yet, never moved up a year. I also had a reputation for erractic behaviour and for my penchant for arguments.

I was summoned to the headmistress’ office many times in my school life, mostly for “worrying” yet highly literate essays and stories I would write. No-one ever called me ill, instead, I was deemed “too intelligent” and my teachers thought that it was driving me mad. It was obvious as well that I would be driven by “creative” energy, only to slump into despair soon after- the classic madness/genius behaviour that I was assumed to be stricken by.

This, of course, was utter crap. I was simply a manic depressive young woman.

However, before anyone knew this, the things associated with me were mad creativity, an unusually good way with words and a fearsome depressive streak that would keep me off school for ages. No-one ever wanted to stop me when I was manic, it was far too enthralling to watch.

Something else that was assumed was that I was simply being a teenager, if not a quite gifted one. Mood swings and depressions are normal in teenagers. The addition of my prolific self harm also helped cement this assumption. But my depressions were not ordinary teenage depressions- the key thing was that they were almost never caused by outside events and nearly always preceded or followed a period of intense activity. So for years I went by, depressed, then gifted, but never both at the same time.

For a long time I believed my own hype- that I was some sort of prodigal genius, an artist, a one day literary figurehead, but then depression would come and obliterate such esteem. I spent my life is a horrible duality of the self, and the conflict eventually destroyed both the creative and despairing energies of me and left me immobile. When I was mad and creative I thought I was a god, then depression would come and hate myself for ever daring to think I was anything above the pathetic wretch that I was.

Sometimes I look at it all and see that a lot of it is manic depression related. I’ve never written so much as when I’ve been manic. As I am now, moderately depressed, I feel sad that maybe it isn’t some gift I have, maybe I’m not that intelligent, maybe I’m just manic depressive.

Was she was or is she is

The thing I have wondered ever since my diagnosis is how much is me, and how much is manic depression? And does it really matter?

Life before my diagnosis was different in some ways. The lack of awareness and clarity was a curse and a blessing. Cursed because my deep delusional depressions led me to believing I was responsible for the world’s ills and that if I killed myself, I could avert World War Three. A blessing because the speeding, manic highs that came before the terrifying psychotic breakdowns are unmatched in my daily, bored, medicated life.

Yet I still get all the bad crap that was there before I was diagnosed- I still can’t hold down a job, have a habit of becoming psychotic, still experience the crippling depressions and complete inability to function.

I’m not a different person, though, but sometimes I feel that I’m no fun anymore.

See, I love writing, but I have no idea if I am talented or if I am only any good when I’ve got that manic energy. I don’t know if my writing is any good at all, in normal circumstances, I don’t believe it is, but I miss that manic self-belief.

I don’t really have any clue who I am anymore. It’s been months since I’ve been awake without drugs in my veins. I have no idea if these medications are clouding my personality, and no idea if manic depression has scrabbled the picture of who I am.

I know I am at my most vivid when manic- most humourous, most bizarre, most talented, most outgoing, most sexual. Even if I only half-remember those times. In my daily life, though, am I funny, am I outgoing, I don’t know.

Because I have never really had any long period of being “normal” and euthymic, I don’t know what I am like without any symptoms of my illness.

And it leads me to understand why a lot of people who experience mostly the elevated hypomanic side or mania without depression resent calling this an illness at all. If you’d never fallen into the horrendous depressions that manic depression guns down upon you, and never experienced the confusing, frightening clusterfuck of unstoppable, dislocated racing thoughts and psychosis you would feel at your best and most wonderful and feel gifted like I used to.

It’s something I have struggled with. Medicating that out of me is what I am told to do. Sometimes, I remember the awesomely destructive impact that manic depression has had on my life. It fucked up my schooling to the point where I couldn’t continue and I am so disabled by my rapid swings that I can barely hold down a job. I look at my arms and face and stomach and see the damage that depressions and insane, agitated, panicked manias has forged on my skin. When I think of this, swallowing those pink Depakote pills feels somehow worth it, as I grasp the increasing fat on my stomach and find more hair in my hands every day.

But most nights I take Seroquel with tears in my eyes to escape the crushing depression that has stalked me throughout the past decade and wish that somehow some starlight energy would come and transform my life. The thought of medicating away the possibility that it might ever happen makes me want to cry. Just for even a month of something else, not this mindless, fearful life I am living, is like a paradise. Sometimes, I miss that desperate, insane, twirling, screaming, shouting, laughing, crying, creating seventeen year old.

My own self feels like a country I have been expelled from. Day after day I look into the mirror at a bloated face and wonder who the hell I am, and if I will ever change from this sad mess into something worth saving.

It’s the question that drives you insane, you see. I don’t know what stops people from just accepting, day to day, who they are, as exhibited by how they act. When how you act is incredibly inconsistent, you can see my problem…