I Am Not My Diagnosis

When I think back to my youth, I know the signs were there. While I did not have words like depression and mania in my vocabulary yet, I certainly felt them. I recall sitting in the back of my father's parked truck one day and feeling this overwhelming thing come over me. I was eleven years old, and it felt like a light had went out in my brain. Everything was thick and void and dirty, as if all my innocence and vitality had been sucked out and replaced with musty cotton. I sat there paralyzed in my new rag doll form, unable to cry, to move, to comprehend. I sat there and experienced depression, true depression, for the first time. And that was only the beginning.

By age sixteen, I found myself plummeting into a terrifying hole of despair. I barely spoke to friends. I cared nothing about school work or extracurricular activities. I practically starved myself because I didn't see the point in eating. I went through the motions of every day life in a fog, and I would go home to my dark room, immediately climb into bed, pull the covers over my head, and try to forget I even existed. I rarely slept; instead I would cry until my eyes were too dry to produce tears, and I would have delusions and visions of dead poets who came to visit me in those long, dank hours before dawn. My parents were unaware of the internal war that was going on in their daughter's bedroom. Not a day went by that I didn't think seriously hard about killing myself.

I stayed physically sick a good portion of that year, and it was not long before my primary doctor began asking me questions about depression. He urged my parents to let him try me on an antidepressant, but it was the nineties and recent hype about the dangers of psychiatric drugs had them too worried to give in. The doctor suggested participating in outdoor activities every day to allow for adequate absorption of sunlight, and so my dad began taking me along on his evening strolls. I don't know if it was the exercise and sunlight that did the trick, or just the natural course of the illness, but eventually I climbed out of the awful hole I was in, picked the cotton out of my brain, and tried to remember how to be a live human being again. My parents hoped, as did I, that it was just a teenage phase I had gone through and now that it was over we could get on with our lives.

The next decade of my life would have appeared fairly normal to any outsider. Even my family and closest friends would have been hard pressed to know anything sinister was going on behind my I'm fine facade. Sometimes I really was fine! Other times, I was falling apart at the seams. The old rag doll would come take its place inside me at times, but in between I was having new problems occur. My mind would race, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't concentrate. I would start five different elaborate projects and not finish any of them. I was irritable, restless, and prone to angry outbursts. It caused strain in my marriage, and it made parenting my two young daughters very difficult. In 2006, I was referred by my primary doctor to a mental health facility, and it was there that I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Upon further analysis, it was determined I had also been a lifelong sufferer of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Social Anxiety. Finally, a name (well, three names) to place on what I had been experiencing for a good portion of my life.

The relief that one feels to have a cause to the effect is often short lived. The spark of hope from my new diagnosis quickly gave way to fear, then dread, then anger and denial. In a way, being diagnosed with a mental illness opens the gate to many of the same stages of grief, as if our old self has died and we must learn to accept the disoriented aftermath. I didn't like being told I was broken, especially when there was no one-step cure. What good was a diagnosis if it wasn't going to fix me? After all, I just wanted to be normal!

For a while I felt like I had a poster stuck to my backside. "Bipolar" it proclaimed in red bold faced letters. My husband was a pastor at a small Baptist church, where the congregation was filled predominantly with older generations who had little faith in modern psychiatry. Any mental malfunction would be quickly chalked up to me straying from the chosen path of God, I presumed, so I decided I would keep my troubles to myself. Only, it wasn't that easy to hide the varying stages of turmoil I was experiencing. I began missing a lot of church services. My absence meant there was no one to teach Sunday School to my class, or to keep nursery, or to shake hands and smile pretty like appropriate pastor's wives do. I would lie in bed those Sunday mornings, long after my husband had left with our girls in tow, and I would sob my eyes out. I was ashamed of myself. I was ashamed of missing church, of letting down my family, of letting down the congregation. I was ashamed of my diagnosis, of being bipolar, of being a complete and utter wreck inside.

Here is the message I want you readers to take from this: We are not our diagnosis. I detest the proclamation of "I'm Bipolar" or hearing someone's quip of "she's so bipolar". No. I'm not Bipolar. I have Bipolar Disorder. There is a difference! This illness affects so much of our lives; in fact, I can't think of a single facet that it does not, sooner or later, affect to some varying degree. But it is important to recognize that we may have a debilitating illness, but that illness does not make up who we are as a whole. Bipolar Disorder is not a death sentence to who we are and what we enjoy. It can certainly get in the way of those things! It's easy to get confused about where the disorder ends and a person begins. When I received my diagnosis, I thought that label described me-all of me! As if it replaced who I had been living as all the years prior, and would determine who I was for the rest of my life.  I believed this, and became ashamed of myself, and instead of reaching out for support, I just burrowed myself into a hole.

It took me a long time to accept the cards I have been dealt. I have an illness, just like cancer or diabetes or lupus, or a million other diseases. The part of my body it attacks is my mind. I did not bring it on myself. It was not a sign of weakness or a falling away from God. It does not make me a bad spouse or a bad mother. I am not broken. I am not my diagnosis.

I have certainly made mistakes. The problem with mental illness is that it alters your ability to reason, to rationalize, and to determine reality from delusions. Decisions end up being made in a rash manner, based on feelings more than common sense. The decisions I have made in states of depression or mania have altered my life forever. Six years ago I left my husband and two young daughters. This is something that, to this day, haunts me on a daily basis, and I know it always will. Looking back, I fully realize I was in a psychotic state and my rationalizations at the time were not sane. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, as if the whole universe had opened up to me on some higher level and shown me what I was supposed to do and how it would make my family's life so much better. Crazy. Yeah. I can see that now, but at the time I thought I was doing a super thing. And that breaks my heart.

I still struggle to forgive myself for that era in my life. I have made mistakes since that time, some derived from bipolar symptoms, and some from just regular human error, but none have affected me and my children as much. 

Mistakes will be made. Our emotions will get the best of us, and our reality will be warped at times. It takes a lot of effort and years of learning to recognize triggers and signs of an off-the-deep-end phase, and our disorder will never be completely predictable, or 100% manageable 100% of the time. But we can choose to allow Bipolar Disorder to define us, or we can make a conscious effort to define ourselves. I am Amy. I am a mother. I am a daughter. I am a writer. I am loved by some special people in this world, and I love them with all of my being. I have dreams, and hopes, and aspirations. I have flaws, like impatience, procrastination, and low self-esteem. I have many insecurities. I have regrets. I have hurt, and I have been hurt. I have good days and bad days. I am kind to others, and I have a great deal of compassion. I like to help others. I make my kids laugh. I am a decent cook (most of the time). I am creative and insightful and perceptive.

I will not allow Bipolar Disorder to rob me of my gifts or personality. I will not use it as an excuse to act out or as a means to get what I want from someone. I will not accept defeat when I am at my lowest. I will not lose myself.

I am not my diagnosis.


-Amy Purdy