Introduction

Hello, everyone. I’m Misrael. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get in on this blog. I was extremely reluctant at first, but then Joel reminded me that I had previously agreed to write for him. I tried to back out, but then Joel told me that I have a bad habit of backing out of commitments to him and that i’d better follow through this time. So i’m here.

One of the reasons I was reluctant to write for this blog is that I actually have very little to say on mental illness. Other than the lithium and risperdal pills that I pop in the morning and at night, and the weekly therapy (which everyone would benefit from, in my opinion), and the weekly socializing and chitchat at support group, mental illness really doesn’t affect my life much. Maybe it’s so normal to me now that I don’t notice it anymore.

On the other hand, mental illness has affected my past. Bipolar runs on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family. Schizoaffective and schizophrenia run in my ex-stepdad’s side of the family. Asperger’s and autism also run in my mother’s side, and I have a schizophrenic uncle on my Dad’s side. That’s a lot of mental illness for one family, and it has affected me quite a lot.

I have bipolar 1 and high functioning autism. I don’t show a lot of the symptoms of autism anymore, and I really don’t have typical autistic issues. As a result, although I am technically autistic, I don’t identify with the label much.

In other news, I am genderqueer and gray-ace/asexual. I am also gray/aromantic. I have a best friend that I try to see every week, who has issues with anxiety. I will call him Abaven on this blog. He’s 73. I’m 20. I don’t know whether I can say i’m in love with him yet, because I haven’t known him long enough for that. He’s also definitely not interested in me that way, which is a relief in some ways and a pain in others.

But this blog is going to be about mental illness, not about my love life (unless the two intersect). So you probably won’t be hearing much about Abaven on this blog, unless you tell me in the comments that you want to know more.

Any question and suggestions as to what to write about would be appreciated. Like I said, the reason I was so reluctant to write for this blog is that for me…blogging about mental illness is like blogging about having brown eyes. Yes, my brown eyes are beautiful. Yes, I can see because of them. Yes, I need glasses. Yes, I have been gifted with a beautiful pair of tortoiseshell glasses that bring the brown out. It gets boring after a while, because there’s only so much you can say on brown eyes.

But if you still want to hear about me, let me know. Post suggestions and questions in the comments. And until then, see you on the first.

Joel Revealed

Because Quinn posted a brief introduction, it falls to me to do the same. The sketch of who I am runs like this: I am 57 years old, a graduate of a prestigious undergraduate school, and a graduate school dropout. As you might expect of someone with my illness and an idealistic bent, I chose the wrong major — Anthropology — which made it hard to get a job after my academic career crumbled. My immediate emotional support network consists of my wife, a Boston Terrier, and a gray tabby cat. For years, I could only brand myself as a failure.

My diagnosis with bipolar disorder (I don’t do numbers) came when I was 47 years old. I had texted my last will and testament to my wife then sat down on a log in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park to ponder just how to slice my wrists. The phone rang. I answered. The voice of my psychiatrist spoke into my ear and asked me if I was all right. She persuaded me to get down to South Coast Medical Center (now Mission Laguna Beach Hospital) and commit myself. The next day a staff psychiatrist asked me if anyone had ever told me that I might be bipolar. I sat for a long moment and wondered just where I had missed this message in my life.

It isn’t as if it wasn’t there. I took Prozac for 11 years. One day and I was out of my depression. That was a warning. People told me about the dangers of the SSRI such as suicidal thoughts, but though these infested my mind, I disregarded them. My wife kept telling stories about people with bipolar that she had known or read about even before I sought the help of a psychiatrist. Once I had that depression diagnosis that is where I wanted to stop. People told me that I acted crazy. Some asked if I had been taking drugs or drinking. It wasn’t until that day when the hospital psychiatrist asked me the big question that I realized that people had been hinting about this all along.

Oh, I could –and will — tell you stories from the time when I was in college and thought I was God — but with the catch that I had messed up the Universe and couldn’t fix it — to my various failed schemes and plots. Today I volunteer at various activities, lead Meetup hikes, and help other people with mood disorders get a grasp on their illness through DBSA, the Bipolar_Blogs Twitter account, and various chatrooms. Note that I use the word “illness” — bipolar is not a character flaw, but a disease of the brain. And I call myself a patient not a consumer, one of a growing number of us who rebel against this terminology.

I hope to have other voices from our DBSA Chapter writing here, telling you the stories of their lives, sharing their discoveries, and commenting on culture. It is not an easy step to come out as living with a mental illness, but I hope more of us will take it. Too many people think wrong things about what kind of people we are. If we want truth to rule, we need to tell you who you are.

And I am Joel. I live with Bipolar Disorder.