#HereAndNow: The C-word

In 2011 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I remember the diagnosis with startling clarity. The mosquito whine of the ceiling fan, the smears on the psychiatrist’s glasses, the flake of chocolate wobbling on his lower lip as he asked me, ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ My mental confusion. He had just admitted me as a patient to a psychiatric hospital. What was he expecting me to say? ‘I popped in for a mortgage and a full body massage’?

My diagnosis brought relief. It made sense: the overspending, the obsessive thinking, and the meandering detours from reality. My diagnosis brought relief. It also blew my world apart. Every memory was filtered by a new lens of knowledge. I had to return to my cocoon phase. A fully-fledged butterfly learning how to be a caterpillar again.

But my journey with mental health really began as far back as I can remember. In childhood I displayed all the classic symptoms of ADHD. I was either over-engaged to the point of disruptive or truanting on Mars. But I was never treated for it. The chain-smoking school nurse did diagnose me with ‘disalexa’. No, I am not making that up. Or anything else.

I was often called the C-Word. Being called ‘crazy’ then didn’t have the same stigma that it does today. And it was rarely said with any malice. But still. Soon, I had so many people telling me I was crazy, to try and deny it would have been my word against everyone else’s.

Even my GP diagnosed me as ‘crazy’ after I confided in him my niggling suspicion that I felt things in a higher definition than my peers. He qualified it ‘crazy in a good way,’ which was kind. I left the surgery feeling more confused than ever. Apparently, there was a whole spectrum of crazy, but at least I was at the ‘good’ end.

How did it impact me? ‘Crazy’ became part of my identity. It was part of my individuality. You know how important that is to us Westerners. It made me embarrassed to seek help. Who was I to complain about my ‘crazy’ when others clearly saw it as a compliment or a term of endearment?

I took my first ski run down the black slope at Verbier. If you know nothing about skiing, like I do, that’s the slope that is reserved for expert skiers, not kamikaze amateurs. It’s amazing what you can do if you have no fear of failure. If I could bottle one symptom of Mania and sell it to you on the Dark Web, it would be that. Unfortunately, there is no bipolar symptom buffet.

So, for a few blissful moments, I skied confidently down the abyss. But then my brain started sending confusing signals. It was no longer proclaiming I had been born on skis, which must have been painful for my mother, it was warning me that this exhilarating ski sensation was completely alien to me. Even before my body buckled, as my head filled with doubts, I knew I was about to crash.

Miraculously, I only twisted my ankle and didn’t break my neck. After the ski episode, everybody agreed that I was not at the ‘good’ end of the crazy spectrum. It made me aware of the power one word can have on you and how it can shape your life.