FLEETING FRIENDSHIPS

 

                                                

 

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky." Rainer Maria Rilke 

                                    

FLEETING FRIENDSHIPS

Revised June 17, 2021

For many years, I found friendships fleeting and exceedingly painful. People who professed to be friends throughout childhood and high school would attend classes with me, socialized with me, but never really knew me. 

The slightest transgression would result in the termination of the relationship mainly on their part. There were never any deep conversations, or shared intimate experiences.

I had had three people throughout my life, who I considered to be, and who professed to be my best friend and yet they abandoned me unexpectedly.

People and situations change. Friends move away, others change friends when someone more interesting comes along.

I never did ask too many personal questions nor divulged my innermost feelings and experiences to anyone, not even to my closest family members. 

Perhaps we do not know one another, or even ourselves as well as we would like to think that we do.

I never understood during my childhood, adolescence, and even during my thirties, a relationship is only as close as we allow it to be. 

It is dependent upon how many parts of ourselves we are willing to share with another human being. I had little experience with genuine friendships. I was of the mindset that sisters and families fought but not friends.

Throughout my adolescence, a couple of my friends (six years senior to me, one was a neighbour and the other my elementary school French teacher) did not quarrel and argue with me. They never added to my suffering. They did not cause me any grief. They were my sages, mentors, teachers, and guides. I learned a lot from them (those older than me) except how to interact with people my own age.

I did manage to keep two lifelong friendships from my youth. Angie who had also been my French teacher. The other Lorraine, who I had met in high school when we were both sixteen and in grade ten. Lorraine is six months younger than me. We shared several classes together. 

Both these women knew me since I was a shy, awkward, teenager who seldom spoke or socialized. But both saw something in me worth pursuing, nurturing, and keeping. They never let my moodiness deter them. They never pressured me to talk if I did not want to. They never made me feel invisible. What I remembered and appreciated most about them was their kindness toward me and their acceptance of me. 

I had never shared a deep, intimate, relationship with another woman until I was twenty-seven years old. The day I met her, in 1984 I flitted and fluttered about like a butterfly. I simply could not sit still in her presence. To say that it was embarrassing is an understatement. She made me incredibly nervous, and I never understood why at the time.

I never imagined that this person would become as near and dear to me as she had. Or that I would value the relationship more than any other friendship I'd previously known, or since. The fight or flight mode kicked in. I sensed she would leave an indelible mark on my life. But I knew too, she would one day break my heart. I was pulled in two opposite directions from the onset and that pretty much defined the relationship. 

It became the most bittersweet, tumultuous, and complicated friendship I had ever had. I quarrelled with her more than I had with my mother, or husband, or sons.

Once we dove deeper into one another's psyches. It was an emotional, mental, and spiritual roller coaster ride. I never fully understood why she had meant so much to me. I suppose because she saw past my walls, kicked down those doors, and challenged me on every level imaginable. I believed friends ought not to hurt one another, and none had as much as we did. One should not feel so drained and exhausted daily. To say the friendship was intense would also be an understatement. The damage we inflicted upon one another was irreparable.

I understood my moods, past traumas, and especially my bipolar disorder (undiagnosed and untreated caused much friction between us). But that was not to say, she did not have her own baggage and faults too. We were like fire and dynamite. 

Once referred to as "two mirrors reflecting one another that the slightest thing we said or did, somehow reflected and effected the other." 

Years later, what was the beginning of the end for me regarding our friendship, was a remark she (a social worker by profession) made during a telephone conversation: "It was bad enough I have to work with people like you all day with my job. I don't need it in my personal life too." Her words cut me to the bone. And yet, in hindsight knowing the dark side of humanity she encountered on a daily basis, I realized that I was an added weight, a burden she neither wanted nor needed in her life. I was grateful for the twelve years we shared. But feeling as I did, the distance between so great, the communication and intimacy gone, I suppose from then on, I made it impossible for her to stay and subconsciously I set about to leave her before she would eventually leave me

In the end, we distanced ourselves from one another, the communication was rote and more a matter of obligation on her part, then sincerity. I knew she was just being polite whenever she called. The calls to me hurt as I could almost predict what she would say. I asked her not to call me anymore because I knew she wanted out of the relationship, and I preferred that we cut the cord rather than continue dragging it out. I felt she did not want or need me anymore. 

In hindsight, had we not parted ways, I would not have grown into the woman I am today, twenty-seven years later. 

The day in which I ended our relationship, or more to the point, I had forced her to. I did not tell her this directly. But rather, left a message on her answering machine not to call me anymore. I am not proud of this. She deserved better. It is one of my deepest regrets. But I could not imagine an amicable way of terminating the relationship, to walk away if I had seen her or spoken to her in person. We would only wind up arguing and hurting one another more. It was already clear that any time I wanted to talk about the distance between us, she would become defensive and angry. I did not know how to handle this strain or give her her space. I could not give her what she needed 

The fact that she never once called me afterwards, except when my mother died in 2007 and her sister in 2015, she never fought to maintain our friendship, it convinced me she had not valued it half as much as I did. 

Perhaps, we both just grew weary of the quarreling and constant misunderstandings between us. The fact we loved and cared about one another was never the issue. This was a given. But the problems between us had to be worked on apart. 

Though over the years, I had tried to make amends after my illness was diagnosed properly and adequately treated, and I was stable and more in control of my life. She wanted no part of me. There were no second chances. She believed and may still believe people do not change. I, on the other hand,  believe they can and do.

Years beforehand, in 1986 during a tumultuous quarrel, she nonchalantly predicted I would one day have a network of friends. I scoffed in response. As I had few friends at the time. Ten years later when we parted company for good, I have since made numerous friends over the years, both healthy and mentally ill, either in person, in my community/neighbourhood, through university and online through this disorder. Also through a public and private support page and group I founded on Facebook for people living with bipolar disorder. Many, many, persons who understand my illness and I no longer had the upsets I once had with her. There was no longer any need for explanations or apologies. I found persons who didn't judge and who understood me in ways my closest and dearest relatives could not.

I found my voice and have discussed mental illness publicly at meetings, lectures and such at colleges, high schools, a rally and once at a church.

I have no fears of speaking to live audiences and writing and talking about this disorder. I could identify and express my feelings honestly with others in person, at long last, and not merely in writing. I do not let things fester. I am far more assertive and in control of my life. I have matured and evolved a great deal. I allowed myself to grieve, to accept the things I cannot control or change, and finally to move on

Though I had lost the single most important friendship I had ever had and have never experienced that bond as intensely again. If not for her, for the lessons she taught me, for the love she brought me, and believe it or not, in letting me go,  I would not have made the changes I needed to make, set the priorities I needed to set in my life, and gotten the help that I needed, or be where I am today had I not met her and we parted company as we had. I cannot deny this. And I won't regret that chapter of my life though bittersweet. 

Love and Prayers

Lynn Marie

Lynn Marie Ramjass

 

ANOTHER DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL by Lynn Marie Ramjass

 

"When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and step into the darkness of the unknowing believe that one of the two will happen to you. Either you'll find something solid to stand on or you'll be taught to fly." Richard Bach

I had originally written Another Dark Night of the Soul in November 2008, almost a year following the death of my mother. It was originally posted on my Living With Bipolar Disorder public page and private group on Facebook. 

I also posted it on an old blog Thanks For Tomorrow that my friend and partner of my mental health groups, Tracey Lynn Barfield set up before her death on January 10, 2014. She was more proficient in computer related matters then I was.

I hadn't written in the blog much since her passing because it was like going home to an empty house.  

Therefore, I decided to start my own personal blog this year May 2021 after six years of silence. I am not fully certain the mechanics of it all. 

ANOTHER DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL                                        

"Walking with a friend in the dark, is better than walking with a alone in the light." Helen Keller

November 2008

By Lynn Marie Ramjass

I find that I have descended into yet another ‘dark night of the soul’ in which there is no solace, only suffering, sorrow, and silence. I have sat within that silence and searched the depth and breadth of my mind, heart, and soul. Sadness, grief, anger, remorse, confusion, despair, loneliness and isolation, old familiar feelings, like long departed friends, gradually take positions on the floor of my psyche. I cannot evade them nor deny their existence. I cannot run though I want to. Instead, I acknowledge them, I enter that darkness and respect that they have come for a reason.

I have sat with them as the days have turned to weeks without words of expression, until I finally ask, to none in particular, the reason why they are here and what it is that I have to learn. I suspect a profound change in my person and in the process of becoming the woman whom I am meant to be. I cannot help feeling both the loss and the presence of my mother and my Nanny simultaneously.

I feel as though I were again, within the belly of the whale, my own private prison, where there is no light, only darkness and shadows. I must face the void and work my way through it. Though I cannot know with absolute certainty how long this will take.

It has been months since these intensely painful and dark emotions have overwhelmed me. The mute silence is both deafening and maddening. Though I pray frequently and fervently, the dark night remains. I cannot suppress this experience or deny these feelings, for to do so, would surely plummet me into madness and perpetual despair once again. And I cannot live like that, not anymore.

Though presently, it feels as though God Himself has turned his back. The words resound through the vast expanse of the universe and my pleas go unheard and my prayers remain unanswered. I trust that a higher power shall make both their presence and their will known to me in their own good time.

I have been reading quite a bit. I have literally hundreds of books in my personal library. While reading Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS, I was particularly taken with the following passage:

“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track my hurt; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”

I have always found solace in nature, in books and in prayer. Strange how my full name means “gentle  waters, waterfalls, refreshing pool” and my maiden name "brilliant hostage." I confess at times I feel as though I were just that and held against my will when darkness envelopes me. Oh how I can so readily relate to that passage. There are, as you know, hurts that only God or some higher power may touch. There are wounds that given sufficient time may heal, but there are others that never fully heal.

I have faced significant losses in my life, and no one is immune to sorrow. I have learned as Ernest Hemingway wrote “I am strong in the broken places” and survived things I previously thought would utterly defeat me or spiral me into lunacy and darkness indefinitely. But these experiences have only served to make me a stronger, more compassionate, tolerant, and understanding human being.

There are no words to heal the broken hearted. The pain may dull over time, but it never completely disappears. This sorrow consumed me when I lost my best friend, my grandmother and finally my mother. The three most influential women in my life. Words cannot fully express what torture mom went through, or the sense of relief that I felt when she died as she was in so much pain. Words cannot fully convey my suffering with her loss and in being the only child unable to be with her when she took her last breath on December 17, 2007.

I stand on the shoulders of some strong, kind, generous, empathetic, compassionate, and loving women. Women who strengthened, encouraged, and inspired me. I feel the presence of my departed ancestors and close female friends who either died, or parted company for other reasons that they were unable to continue the journey with me. They walk with me daily for I carry them in my heart! 

There is comfort in this knowledge. In every remembrance of them. I've learned to feel the full weight of my sorrow, sadness, disappointment. Allow myself sufficient time to grieve. And eventually let it go. I'll pick myself up and move on. 

Lynn Marie Ramjass 

MY THOUGHTS ON MEMORY, MOVEMENT, MOODS AND MADNESS.

A DEEP DIVE INTO LAUREL HOLLOMAN'S MEMORY AND MOVEMENT 

By Lynn Marie Ramjass

May 29, 2024

I've only recently within the past three years become acquainted with, the abstract art of American artist Laurel Holloman. One look at a recent photograph of Laurel Holloman's past 2019 Paris art exhibit painting aptly titled Memory and Movement, and my thoughts were immediately catapulted back through spheres of time and space. 

To my childhood, to a dark time where friends were either imaginary or found in books or works of art. 

As a child, I found a golf ball one day and I took a sharp knife and carefully cut the top half away. I did this because I wanted to know what made this hard coated white dimpled tiny ball bounce. 

In so doing, I watched as bands of tiny colored rubber spilled forth across my palm.

Laurel’s painting somehow reminded me of this, and all those tiny elastic strands stretched out against a pale blue sky. 

Now at 67 years old and suffering severe writer’s block and anxiety for several months. I felt something shift and my abnormal mind immediately equated it with the wiring in my brain. 

This painting had such a profound effect upon me. It was as though I’d been asleep, and something deep within suddenly awakened. The electrical impulses deep within my brain were fully charged and operating on full circuit. 

Before I continue, I’d like to share another incident from childhood that left a lasting impression upon my teachers and fellow classmates alike.

If memory serves, I believe it was in grade five or perhaps later in elementary school. I was ten or eleven years old by then. We were given an assignment in school to write about the topic “Lost.”

Whilst other children wrote about inanimate objects. I wrote about a black man being lost in a white society. 

My favorite book “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, clearly left a lasting impression upon me. 

I knew then, I was not like the other children. The topic of being lost would always follow me like my shadow, and remain permanently embedded in memory. 

As I followed the natural progression of movement through the various phases of my life. Many years later, as an adult, married with two young sons aged nine and ten (born a year and a half apart) and for reasons I couldn’t then explain.

I lost my mind periodically over the next eight years. This experience was the most terrifying, mind bending, heartrending, and life altering period of my life. 

During four separate psychoses from ages 32 in 1989 to 38 in 1997 my brain periodically felt touched by fire.

It was as though my thoughts and memories flitted furiously through my mind as a tape recorder on fast forward. Every single word, thought, action and every chapter of my life's book, I knew with certainty whilst confined to a psychiatric ward were embedded in my memory. I knew that others experienced this too. 

My thoughts, words, and actions though they made sense to me, were like Theodore Roethke’s “heat maddened summer fly buzzing against the sill.”

 His poem, In a Dark Time described the experience perfectly. It became my favorite poem. 

These memories are stored in our lives’ memory bank like a computer’s hard drive. Memories and movement from birth to present followed a steady flow and natural progression through cycles and circles of time and space. From past, to present to future. 

Memories were either seared in my mind, would begin to fade, recalled fragmented like shards of broken glass, or were forgotten entirely as I aged. 

How do I describe the sensation and experience of mania in terms you the reader would understand? 

If you’ve ever been seated in an aircraft, the sensation, that instantaneous rush between your ears, the twinge in the pit of your stomach, as the plane lifts off the runway and ascends into the heavens. 

For me, it is the exact sensation when I felt my mind take flight. Only those who experience mania and or psychosis would understand those troubled in mind like me.

The mind is bountiful, brilliant, and beautifully complex. When fully opened, however, it extends to strata strophic proportions. 

l was always a deep thinker. At times I experience a steady stream of consciousness. I began university in my forties and studied various topics. Therefore, it came as no surprise I fell in love with philosophy, and philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. 

“The unexamined life was not worth living.” Socrates

“The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.” Plato

NOTE: It didn’t escape my notice that Plato referred to the soul as feminine. Did this phrase refer to the Divine Feminine? The feminine aspect of the divine power that connects the earth. The energy that exists within all of us. Many ancient cultures maintained this divine feminine concept.  

My experiences of mania-bliss. Where my mind, heart, and soul flew towards a bright, brilliant, blinding light was a state of altered consciousness. 

Some cultures refer to as “enlightenment” or “Nirvana.” Therein, the soul finds peace. A peace that passes human understanding. A state of euphoria-mania- where one feels a oneness, an intense connection to the Creator, the Universe, and the Divine. It is a divine eternal energy that defies the speed of light and sound and physical matter.

 A mystical experience a universal connection to all living things. An innate knowledge that all living things are connected and interdependent upon each other. 

Some experience it through meditation and or intense prayer. The latter is merely communion or communicating/talking aloud or contemplatively with a higher power, a divine presence. Meditation is merely listening for the response.  

Some people take hallucinogens to achieve this altered state of consciousness. Still others like me, required medications for the opposite reason, to keep us tethered to the earth. But as the mind/soul flies too closely to the sun, like Icarus whose father Daedalus built him wings so that he may fly. Icarus, however, flew too close to the sun. His wings singed and burned, and he plummeted to the ground, once again, at a terrifying speed. Down, down, down to a subterranean depth. To inevitably experience a level of dark, dank, debilitating, depression. In essence, Dante’s Inferno.

It isn’t a place but rather a state of mind. There where there is no light deep within the bowels of the earth, the corridors of the mind, the sanctuary of the human spirit. The soul lies stagnant betwixt heaven and hell and there must decide to either rise or fall. 

Here deep within the human psyche one feels as though they’d been buried alive. It is a conscious choice to give in or get up. 

Many famous and ordinary human beings suffered such unimaginable psychological, emotional, and spiritual soul sucking grief. Like fingers of a hand either balled into a fist, or wrapped around the mind, heart, body, and soul in a vice like grip. Each a misery to carry within the body. 

Yet through the mania, anxiety, fear, and the debilitating depression. Many famous and ordinary human beings continuously left and continue to leave extraordinary magical, majestic impressions, imprints on Terah=earth=heart. Indelible marks on the minds, hearts, and souls of other human beings. These men, women, and children who lived, loved, and led throughout the ages. Their movements with such tender hearts, open minds, and courageous spirits. They left paths for others brave enough to follow. 

There are countless creatives: artists, writers, poets, composers, musicians, politicians, astronauts, scientists, and ordinary people. Who lived in such unimaginable pain and suffering. Those who lived, loved, and led with their hearts and their souls. 

I've stood in the depths of hell and atop the tips of mountains. In complete darkness and in brilliant light. I've leaned into the fiercest wind, crawled through mud, mire and excrement. I've sobbed until every tear was spent; every promise broken. I've been alone with traumas I never shared with a soul as it was happening. 

In leaning into those life experiences, as much as it pains me at times, and I want off this wild ride, riding that wave, the roller coaster of intense thoughts and emotions. I’d rather feel them, the full weight of them than to feel nothing at all.

I was fortunate to have found myself and my sense of purpose while most lost, frightened, and seemingly alone. 

I never allowed my pilot light to extinguish. As imperfect as I may be, my authenticity, vulnerability, and capacity to love with every fibre of my being. Some deem me a freak and others a force of nature. Love me or leave me. If you choose to not to stay, I’ll hold the door for you and wish you well. And pray you learn as I had, that through all the triggers, the darkness, chaos, and confusion. There were always, always, these incredible glimmers of light. 

The warmth of genuine love that often, I felt the flutter of butterflies and the wisp of angels’ wings close by.

At times I heard my children's laughter; or the sound of the voices of those whom I loved most.  I see, feel, smell, and tasted fear, joy, and hope. For hope as American poet Emily Dickinson wrote was a thing with feathers.”

I walked in the darkness, and I basked in the light.  I can honestly confirm that I respect and appreciate both. Because despite all the heartbreak, suffering, and disappointment. There was hope and eventually a spark of overwhelming exuberance for life. My own, and all whom I encounter on this pathway of pain. 

All life and all lives matter. Human, animal, trees, rocks, minerals.  All connected. We can rail, rant, rave, proclaim otherwise.  It won't change the fact we all rely on one another.  

Lynn Marie Ramjass 

May 19, 2024

Yesterday, May 8, 2024 the day before Laurel’s New York art exhibit, I was reminded why I am here. My sense of purpose beyond being a wife, mother, grandmother, and whatever role life has assigned me.

No one knows better than I do, where I have failed in many of those roles. I am estranged from many people in my life and not always by choice. In several cases, by necessity, to protect myself, my mental health and my peace of mind.

You can slam the door in my face, refuse to talk to me, or never see me again. I will still love you and wish you well. Though we may never again share the same space. I honestly hope you find whatever it is you are looking for and need with someone else.

There are times I've felt as though my heart was literally ripped from my body. I can visualize it still beating in the palm of your hand. It is the same physical sensation as when the chest tube was yanked from my chest following my open-heart surgery at 38. After doctors discovered I’d been born with a hole in my heart. Atrial septal defect they said. By 42 I’d drown in my own blood.

The memory of that first sensation, my first broken heart, I recall vividly. The memory of awakening in ICU with tubes everywhere and an exhaustion that accompanied my healing. I am hard-pressed to compare the exhaustion and pain of natural childbirth, losing my mind four consecutive times, and open-heart surgery were all equally painful. A dear friend once told me “Often the healing hurts more than the original wound.” My body and heart healed far quicker than my mind. That took several decades

I'm aware of my imperfections. Of the many who have either severed ties with me, or there were none to begin with. 

Many don't see, hear, or know me. They only think they do! Even more don't want to. Some cannot stand me. If you think I'm cold, selfish. Unkind, uncaring you seriously don't know me and grossly misjudged me. 

I can't remember a time when I wasn't taking care of others, concerned with their needs and ignored my own.

People didn't like it when I found my voice. They didn't approve of what I had to say or share. I didn't ask for any of this. It was thrust upon me. 

Relationships are supposed to work both ways. One person alone should not be doing all the giving and the work. 

I'm too exhausted to fight for anyone's love, respect, understanding or approval. I started holding doors for people when they decided to leave. For reasons some never had the courtesy to explain.

So, Laurel's painting Memory and Movement means a great deal to me. It's even more personal than my other favourite from her recent art exhibit in NYC May, 9th 2024 Hibernation. 

Memory and Movement is roots, connections, arteries, and veins. It's pathways, and synapses. It’s particles of stardust in sunlit skies. It's human connections, unconditional love, divine ties. The everpresent, everlasting, kind that bind. In short. It’s the intricate workings of the Universal Mind!

~Lynn Marie Ramjass

Dear Friend

                                                                    

                      

"Go, go, go said the bird/ Humankind cannot bear very much reality/ Time past and time future/ What might have been and what has been/ Point to one end which is always present." T.S. Eliot (1936) Burnt Norton lines 42-46 

Years ago, I used to volunteer with CMHA (Canadian Mental Health Association) I met the then CEO of CMHA Durham Branch, Linda Gallagher at a town meeting in Ajax. Upon hearing my experience living with Bipolar disorder 1 with psychosis, she later invited me to lunch and suggested that I join a program called T.A.M.I. (Talking About Mental Illness). Where a group of individuals like myself, living with various disorders, would go to the high schools and talk to the students. It was a richly rewarding and humbling experience. Especially when several  students not only learned of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (the four various types), and clinical depression from those who actually had it, but when they would later approach us afterwards. 

Many would either ask questions or were brave enough to share their personal experiences regarding mental illness. It was comforting to know that unlike when I was in high school (in the mid seventies) there were resources and support now available for these youngsters that I had never had when I was their age. 

I'd written the following letter several years ago. It was originally published on my old blog in 2013, as a means of introducing myself to others who had come to me personally for help in understanding and coming to terms with their own diagnoses.

I initially composed it after I received a call from my dear friend Angie who had originally been my grade eight French teacher (Angie is only six years older than I am). We have been good friends now for fifty-one years come this September 2021. She asked that I visit with a friend of hers who also suffered with bipolar disorder. She felt I could offer her friend support, encouragement, and hope. 

Both my husband Ian and I visited her friend and her friend's husband We were able to offer insight from both our perspectives. Me who actually had the disorder and he as someone living with and loving someone who had it. 

Whether I spoke to people privately in person, or publicly in high schools, a church, a college classroom, or a rally, it was always productive. And yet strange to me, that I had gone from a shy, awkward teenager who loathed crowds, barely spoke, and petrified at public speaking, would find my voice because of my mental illness and fight so passionately to help eradicate the stigma attached to it. It is a cause I passionately believe in. It was and still is personal! 

I had given up public speaking, my volunteer work, my part-time job, but kept my part-time studies at university, as my grandchildren arrived. I chose to spend as much time with them as possible. 

However, I was unwilling to part with my mental health advocacy. In April 2012, I founded both a public and private support group on Facebook for those Living With Bipolar Disorder. This afforded me the means of communicating with persons globally and reach a wider audience. I have never looked back or regretted it.

The letter, I have since revised as there have been some changes in my life since first haven written it. I include it here on my newest blog this June 2021.

I would be remiss, if I did not acknowledge, I am often humbled by the lives that have been touched, changed, and some saved by my words and experiences. The knowledge that we are not alone in this struggle helps them and myself daily. The thousands of persons from all parts of the globe who regularly communicate their suffering and understanding, among themselves who share their strengths and their weakness, who offer support, encouragement, acceptance, and inspiration of one another is profoundly moving. They have helped me every bit as much as I have helped them. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

I would most likely not be here today, if not for the love, loyalty, support, of my husband Ian (43 years married this 2021; together 45) who has stood in the fire with me and not shrunk back. And our two sons, our daughter in laws, our four young grandchildren, the many family and friends who love and support me unconditionally.

I have a strong support system and people to help me through these challenges. There are so many others who have no such support. And it is heart breaking. To those suffering in mind like me. 

Dear Friend:

Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard wisely said: “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.” Many years later I read a maxim by Oscar Wilde “The final mystery is oneself.” It is a mystery why you and I have been afflicted with this troubling disease (bipolar depression). Perhaps, you too, once asked yourself “Why me and not the other members of our families?”  Perhaps, you also felt that it was some sort of a curse, or a punishment for past sins. In the beginning, when I had lost my mind completely for the first time in June of 1989, I felt what seemed to be an inner battle for both my soul and my mind. I felt, tasted and breathed a fear that I had never known before. I felt such shame in accepting the fact that I was “troubled in mind.” I felt certain that I had a broken brain as well as a broken heart. I did not know where to turn with that pain and for the better part of my life, I internalized it.

There was then, and sadly still is, such a stigma attached to mental illness. I was concerned everyone's perception of me would change. Family, friends, and strangers would know that I was “different.” I believed that people would treat me differently if they knew. Perhaps they would love and respect me less. I could not talk about it. I would not talk about it. How could I talk about something I myself did not know or understand. Mental health professionals misdiagnosed me twice. It took six years for them to reach an accurate diagnosis, another five years to find a medication that worked best for me, and a psychiatrist specialized in this field whom I trusted. The first who listened and heard and helped me. 

In the beginning, I did not know what had happened to me, or why, but I could not forget the experience. The only thing I knew for certain was that none of my family, not my husband, or our children, our families or our friends, as much as they loved and supported me, could possibly know nor understand what I was going through. They recognized that something was seriously wrong with me. Hell, I knew something was wrong with me. But they did not know how to help me. My husband's immediate response seemed to be “She’s broken, fix her.” 

None of them could feel my pain, share my shame, or touch my fear. Embracing that fear was the most difficult thing for me to do. I was not certain if it was my own fear, or the fear that I read in so many other peoples faces strangers and loved ones that bothered me more.

For the first time in my life, I surrendered completely to a higher power, the universe, as I desperately needed to take control of my situation and my life. I needed help to endure this trial. I had to trust that it  the universe, call it what you will would see me through. Though I had felt it before under different circumstance never more to an unseen presence than I did when I first lost my mind.

It seemed that finally something or someone heard me. It was the second time in my life that I became acutely aware of this presence. The first was when my mother had tried to kill herself when I was nineteen years old and I had found her sprawled on the upstairs hall floor in October of 1976, shortly after she had overdosed on a bottle of sleeping pills. But this was the first time that I personally trusted something outside myself enough to help me personally. Perhaps that was part of the problem; I could not completely TRUST anyone.

 I recognized that I had fallen apart like Humpty Dumpty and wondered if I would ever gather the fragments of my former self together and be normal again. The truth is that I am not normal, I never was, and I knew it. But how does society define normal? We are all wounded and broken in various ways and to different degrees throughout our lives. Ernest Hemingway had written about being “strong at the broken places” and others have said that there are within each of us wounds that only God may touch. Mine was a wound, or a succession of wounds, so deep, I myself, did not know the extent or the depth of that pain.

We hurt and we heal by various degrees. Several years later, after my open heart surgery at aged thirty eight to repair a hole in my heart, my friend and ex-teacher Angie told me that sometimes the healing process hurts far more than the original wound. And she was right. This is a truth which can be applied to spiritual, psychological, and emotional wounds as well. They are long painful healing processes that do not occur overnight.

Our lives circumstances and our personalities make us very different people. We each have our individual coping mechanisms. I do not know you and you do not know me, but I share your pain-I know it well. I have been where you are now and lived with my disorder for many years. Every day is a constant struggle when you are mentally ill.

Galileo had said “We cannot teach a man anything, we can only help him to discover it within himself.” What helped me may not necessarily help you. The drugs that worked for me may not work for you. It will take years of various medications and a long succession of doctors until you find the proper combination that works best for you. As I revise this writing in June of 2021, I currently take only one medication. A mood stabilizer Epival 500 mg twice a day.

I have been on this medication for twenty one years and there is no guarantee it will not stop working one day. Or that I would never experience yet another psychotic break. But I do not live my life in fear. I take each day, each step, each breath at a time. Grateful that I have lived as long as I have. I am thriving in spite of my disorder. Sometimes, I honestly think because of it.

The first step in my own recovery was learning all that I could about bipolar and the particular type I have. It helped that my husband Ian was willing to learn all he could about it too, in an effort to understand what I was going through and what he should expect. I then learned to accept it. Knowing that it is incurable, hereditary but that it could be controlled gave me the hope and reassurance that I would not be lost in this darkness forever.

I then found a doctor whom I felt comfortable with and finally a medication that worked for me. This process did not happen overnight. It took me over nine years and three more psychotic breaks before it was finally under control. Living with bipolar disorder is not for the faint of heart.

In the mean time, I deepened my spiritually and strengthened my relationships with many of my loved ones. I read numerous books that helped me, on my journey. One in particular by a renowned psychologist Dr Kay Redfield Jamison who is herself bipolar. Her book “An Unquiet Mind” changed my life. It gave me the courage to go to school part-time in September 2002 to work on my English Literature degree in my forties. I received my degree in my mid fifties.

When reading the epilogue of Jamison’s book, I cried uncontrollably because for the first time since developing this disorder, someone described precisely how I felt and what I experienced with brutal honesty and raw emotion. She spoke as a patient and a fellow traveller, on a long and arduous journey rather than as a doctor using medical jargon that I may or may not understand. Her approach was emphatic and compassionate rather than cold and clinical. She spoke from human experience rather than from a clinical perspective. She shared the pilgrimage with me and knew the darkness, both the highs and the lows. She did not let her illness define her, and from then on, neither would I.

I too, had several things in my favour. I have a huge loving and supportive family including my in-laws, good friends and intense faith in a higher power and a strong sense of humour. Sadly, as I witnessed for myself during my hospitalizations, many patients, coping with mental illness do not have these blessings. Many have no one to help them through these challenges.

Please understand that although most of my family does accept that I have this disorder not everyone in my family and not all of my friends understand nor want to understand this illness. Many of them view it as a character flaw, a weakness, or a blemish on the family history. Many do not want to deal with the issue and therefore, will not talk about it. They do not ask questions or really want to listen. It seems they are more concerned with their comfort than mine. Or they do not know how to approach the subject and perhaps fear that it would upset me. In many cases, I think it is because it frightens them and the possibility that it could happen to any one of them; or to future generations is an abject reality they simply cannot or will not face. T. S. Eliot had said, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality” and he was right.

 If I had cancer, heart disease or any other physical disease they would be far more tolerant and understanding, but mental illness is generally viewed as a psychological disorder and the biological component is seldom addressed. It is partly a chemical imbalance in the brain which a drug helps regulate. If not for my medication, I would not be able to function as normally as I do these past twenty four years.

I love to read, to write, to reflect and to record these reflections in my journals. I used to enjoy long walks, intimate candlelight dinners with my husband, and dancing with him until the wee hours of the morning (something we used to do years ago before my osteoarthritis ruined my knees).

I have returned to my first love art! I spend hours sketching and painting. I love movies and popcorn, cooking various culinary dishes from different countries, good food, good company and good conversation. I love the sanctity and peace I feel in my home, most especially our beautiful garden which my husband and I built together. I love being with him, our children and grandchildren, our families and our friends. I cherish their presence, love, and support.

Most importantly, I have learned to embrace the pain, feel the full weight of it and then let it go. It had taken me many years to let go of past hurts and disappointments, to allow myself to grieve and move on. I have learned to count my blessings and savour the moments as they come. It is only now in my mid sixties, I have truly begun to love my life. I have allowed myself the freedom to love and to allow myself to be loved in return. I have, since embarking on this journey, found a sense of purpose in my life, and as strangely as it sounds for having developed this disorder, a gratitude for having become a more compassionate, empathetic, kind, loving, and tolerant human being because of it.

Bipolar depression is part of who I am, but I do not let it control or define me. Life wounds all of us and the scars forever remain. Although I have learned to accept and to control my illness, I also learned to view the world and myself through very different eyes. Catholic author John Powell had written: "Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud and the other saw stars." It struck a deep chord in me. I have since changed my perceptions regarding many things. 

I can recommend various books to help you toward better spiritual, psychological and emotional health. Books have always been my closest companions. They are friends, teachers, and guides. I do not know you, but I shall hold you in my heart, in my thoughts, and always in my prayers.

 Love and Prayers

Lynn-Marie Ramjass