.
"At 39, Alice G., the unmarried housekeeper from Belleville, Ontario walked through the doors of the Toronto Asylum for the Insane, as it was called in 1893 and never saw the outside world again. Explaining the "supposed cause of insanity" the physician who committed her scrawled on her form, "disappointment in love affairs." Beside occupation he wrote "spinster." By society's standards, Alice G. was to be pitied: childless, poor, lovelorn, and worst of all, insane..." by Erin Anderssen.
The article further described that it was Alice's mother who had brought her to the hospital. She was crowded into a dormitory where it was cold and infested with rats. There was no private toilet. She worked in the laundry room for forty years ironing and hadn't earned a cent. The article provided a black and white photograph of an old, frail, tiny, toothless, woman with a vacant expression.
What saddened me further was during all this time Alice hadn't received a single visitor.
It compelled me (for the first and only time in my life, to write the editor of a newspaper).
An excerpt from my letter to the editor reads:
"I recognized that wild-eyed look in her eyes. Having seen it in my own reflection, in the shop windows, as I wandered aimlessly down city streets, out of my mind. In intense summer heat and with no identification. Guided solely by the burning belief that someone, somewhere, would help me. I was then 32 years old.
The morning of June 6th, 1989, after my 3rd visit with a psychiatrist of my own volition, became the date of my first hospitalization. I would see that look in the eyes of the other patients within the confines of a psychiatric ward.
I read Alice's story and I wept bitterly. For had I not had the treatment available to me today, as a woman living with bipolar disorder (previously known as manic depressive disorder) I would most assuredly succumbed to the same fate as Alice G.
It is doubly painful for me to note, most likely some of my ancestors had lived and died as she had.
We've come a long way in the clinical treatment of mental illness. Without which, I couldn't cope, or function as normally as I do today. However, myths and stigma still prevail."
My journey to acquire proper treatment took me eleven long, painful, and lonely years. Though I had a loving support system. They could not know what I dealt with within the corridors of my mind: two misdiagnoses, four hospitalizations 1989, 1992, 1995, and 1997 (in three different hospitals). A succession of psychiatric doctors, nurses, medical tests, and medications before finding one that worked best for me and a pdoc (psychiatrist) I trusted!
By the year 2000, my GP (at the time) Dr. Daniel Leung in Scarborough, Ontario referred me to a friend of his Dr. Francis Lee in York Mills, Ontario.
For the first time, I met a psychiatrist who treated me with dignity and respect. His compassion, the fact he faced me directly when I spoke to him and he to me (spoke to me and not "at" me) impressed me. He listened carefully and "heard" me, as he took notes accurately. He'd proven this when I'd asked him to read them back to me. I knew then, he'd "seen" me as "a human being."
(Initially my mistrust of psychiatrists stemmed from my first experience with one before becoming subsequently psychotic and hospitalized. That first pdoc had written incorrect information in his notes concerning my family history. I was not made aware of these errors until many years after my last hospitalization.
Though I had contacted the College of Physicians and Surgeons to have them corrected. I was informed that he had died in a car accident in 1998. They advised me to attach a list of my objections to my hospital records.
Hence, it was years before I trusted another pdoc and Dr. Lee entered my life. The errors previously were grievous and affected not only me and my future mental and physical health care, but members of my family of origin's characters and reputation
I never disclosed to them what he'd written.
It proved that unlike Dr. Lee, that psychiatrist had not been listening attentively as I relayed my history and trauma. In fact, he retraumatized me both in and out of the hospital, in more ways then I care to share here. Not to mention the various doctors within the hospitals themselves, who tended to treat you as though you were a product on an assembly line.
Dr. Lee, prescribed one medication (a mood stabilizer) that fortunately worked for me. It is the only medication I take and it continues to work today, twenty three years later. He remained my psychiatrist for five years until I moved further away and had sought one closer to home. A friend who worked in the local hospital's outpatient psychiatric ward referred me to another psychiatrist whom I am still with today.
Thanks to: compassionate, knowledgeable, and competent psychiatrists, the correct diagnosis, reading all I could regarding my disorder, a medication that worked best for me, learning new coping skills, a strong support system, and my stubborn tenacity to never give up, I was able to achieve heights I couldn't previously imagine.
I was able to attend university part time and obtain an English Literature degree in my forties and fifties. Whilst in American Literature class, I discovered American poet Theodore Roethke's poem In a Dark Time. It quickly became my favourite. In reading it, I knew that he was troubled in mind like me. "In a dark time the eye begins to see..." However, it was the last stanza that resonates most with me. I am mindful of Alice G. I am mindful of me, and anyone who struggles with sanity.
"Dark, dark, my light.
And darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat maddened summer fly,
keeps buzzing at the sill.
Which I is I?
A fallen man,
I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself,
and God the Mind.
And one is One,
free in the tearing wind."
I read it aloud at my mother's funeral, as I delivered her eulogy in December 2007. And again in American Literature, my last day of class. My publicly addressing my mental health began on July 5th, 2002. (Five years beforehand, at my maternal grandmother's funeral-I wrote and delivered her eulogy). It was then, friends and family discovered what she knew all along. The light within me was far stronger than the forces determined to extinguish it. It was she who took me as a teenager to see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest starring Jack Nicholson. Where I felt a strong affinity to the movie but couldn't explain or know why. It was she who gave me the novel A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar. The story of John Forbes Nash Jr.'s struggle with mental illness. We'd gone to see the movie starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly together as well.
It was she who instilled a passion for books and films in me. And it was she whose fraternal twin brother, as a young man had a partial lobotomy.
No one openly discussed mental illness. No one asked questions of him, or of me. I was once so immersed in shame. I couldn't breathe. Let alone think, or talk about it. No one discussed the rampant cases of clinical depression within the family. No one discussed my mother's attempt to end her own life (I was nineteen at the time). It was years after my having developed Bipolar 1with psychosis, I understood unipolar (previously known as clinical depression- my mother's disorder) and how much she must have suffered. I neither wanted, nor asked for this disorder. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
The day of my grandmother's funeral. My rock. My fortress. My light! Her light hadn't extinguished. Rather, it burned brighter! I felt her standing next to me. It was as though she never left.
American poet e.e. cummings comes to mind. "Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk wonder, curiosity, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." I felt her spirit. I carried her in my heart.
My voice never cracked. My stance never faltered. My faith and spirituality never wavered.
The day she died. My heart shattered. My cup emptied. As I'd spent every rancor tear. Never had I sobbed or felt such primal pain. I fell to my knees and then into a fetal position on the bathroom floor. The cries like that of a wounded animal, frightened me and both my sons.
Whilst everyone expected me to plummet into madness, yet again, when she lay dying (And I confess I feared her death would be the death of me). Instead, I remembered my path thus far. They discovered, as I did: My voice! My strength, My light, and I could write!
I began university that fall. I worked and volunteered in my community, all part-time. My mental illness became public when I unwittingly spoke at a meeting regarding inpatient mental health care in my town. It led to my name in a local newspaper. Then to a rally where I was one of the speakers. Afterwards I was interviewed on local television Global Toronto news. This led to lunch with the then CEO of the CMHA (Canadian Mental Health Association) Durham branch-here in Ontario. I was asked to train for their T.A.M.I (Talking About Mental Illness) volunteer program. Where a group of us with various mental disorders were asked to speak to students regarding our journey.
I met students in the school library. There I pointed to various posters around the room of famous persons I knew both living and dead who had bipolar disorder. Afterwards, I shared my story. Mindful that at their age, I hadn't anyone to talk to about it. The crippling depression I'd accredited to a dysfunctional upbringing. It was richly rewarding to have students shyly approach me afterwards and either share their stories, ask my advice, or simply thank me.
Later, in 2010, when I became a grandmother. I continued my studies but gave up my part time job and volunteer work. In order to help with and get to know my grandchildren, in ways I hadn't been able to with my sons. But not willing to forfeit my mental health advocacy entirely, two years later, I founded two bipolar mental health support groups on Facebook in April 2012. (One public and one private). I still maintain them today (March 2023).
For I knew what it was like to not have anyone outside of the hospital, or within my circle of family and friends, who related to me and my experience. They didn't know the fear of losing your mind and not know what had happened to you, or why. Or how to cope with the fear, loneliness, stigma, silence, and isolation. I wondered how many felt just as lost and alone like me?
I needed someone who knew the intensity of that darkness and the brilliance of that light. Someone with whom I didn't have to constantly explain the depth, breadth, and width of my feelings. Someone with whom, I didn't have to fight, to share a thought, express an opinion, an emotion, or the right to simply exist. Someone who tasted my shame, felt my soul sucking pain, and smelled my acrid fear.
So, in honour of World Bipolar Day, I share these words with you. The journey is long, lonely, arduous, and steep. But there is hope. Please never give up. The purpose of the support groups and talking about it is to lessen the stigma and the loneliness. There are more of us suffering silently than realized or necessary.
World Bipolar Day. I love you Vincent!
Lynn Marie
