Abigail George
I AM an author, poet and essayist. I am also a blogger, novelist and screenwriter. I have written over twenty books. I am forty-four years of age.
The reason I am writing this is to help someone in the same situation where I found myself twenty-eight years ago so they can benefit from my own funny, unique, sometimes hurtful, painful, uncomfortable and even humiliating personal experience.
I am writing this to answer the questions I had about myself, the discovery that my depression was not clinical depression but that it was manic depression, the onset of my mood swing and Christianity in my own life. If North America can be described as the “Prozac nation” by the North American author Elizabeth Wurtzel and the USA coined the terms “hype” and “spin”, then why is mental health such low on the list of priorities of the people we voted into power when it affects everyone around us directly or indirectly, in a significant manner or otherwise?
It is a psychiatric illness also known as a bipolar mood disorder or mood swings. I have lived with this debilitating, mysterious and deadly disease my whole life. I have struggled to overcome the stigma attached to this disease by people who are intimidated by anything they do not have any control over.
This is my story. Sometimes I imagine that I am standing on a stage giving a seminar when I say those words.
I am just like you. Nothing is extraordinary about my life except how I choose to live it. Some people have to have physical proof that something is amiss with their bodies. We put so much of our faith into the hands of healers. Faith is a supernatural force of will. Time, God, homoeopathy, holistic repatterning, reflexology, full body massage, tea, herbal infusions, therapists, psychiatrists and doctors are all healers. We don’t have time to visualise and reflect on what our bodies are trying to tell us why we are hurting.
The illness was there for a long time. Now when I look back, the truth about it is undeniable. It can be cured or, at best, prevented from recurring to the best of the patient, the doctor and the pharmacist’s ability.
I don’t believe in labels like gifted, talented, creative genius or eccentric.
It is such an acceptable illness that influences subtle nuances in an individual’s behaviour that it takes a cluster of specific symptoms to diagnose it. It takes charge of your brain’s serotonin and dopamine levels. The feel-good hormones in your brain are when your slow descent into a personal and very private hell begins (your secret pain).
I was raised in a liberal-minded household by parents who believed that love, happiness and peacefulness were greater aspirations than prestige, position and status. I am part of only a lucky few. I was taught not to bear grudges. I was told that when someone hurt my feelings, to ignore them and see them for who they were. I was introduced to being forgiving and understanding and that there wasn’t any difference between the rich and the poor children at my schools. I was taught that the noblest profession in the world was being a teacher and reinforcing values and excellence, as well as enriching wonderfully young lives filled with so much hope and promise.
My parents taught me by example. My father is a community leader, and my mother is a teacher.
The word stigma is a synonym for phobia or fear (for a better word). People choose to see the very best in someone, and their judgement is clouded when they ignore the rest. Acceptance is something that comes at a very high price. The denial of human dignity comes at a significant cost with unforeseeable circumstances.
The signs and symptoms of a hypomanic episode are as follows. You behave wild and free, have depressive slumps, and spiralling depression. You don’t sleep. You don’t nap. You are the focus and become the centre of the universe. You are beautiful, intelligent, and determined, but the reflection everybody else sees is militant, horribly annoying.
You feel humiliated in later introspection, while others feel uncomfortable in your presence. You were Dr Jekyll incognito and Mr Hyde in the flesh.
There is a genetic predisposition to depression and mania as well. My father’s side has had a history of mental illness, including alcoholism, depression and suicide. Depression is a devastating illness that affects millions of people worldwide. The more family values are on the decrease, the more suicide is on the increase.
People refer to their depression as sadness and stress. Mental health seems not to be a moot point for people in government. To the world at large that is still suffering in silence, I say, break the silence and add a visible, outspoken voice. There are more of us out there than you realise. Keep on fighting. I did. I do every day, and as I take my first breath for the day, I thank God I am alive. It’s not brave when you’re not scared; sometimes, I have good days and bad days.
I had no idea I was sick for a long time. Later, in the beginning, stages, it defined who I was. My whole life revolved around hiding my disease. Sometimes it was easy to hide, and sometimes it wasn’t. It was cerebral. It was a catalyst. There was no scarring, no wound, no stitches and sutures required. I have changed. I have changed for the better only just these last few years. I am a more sociable person. I am kinder. My rough edges are softer. Perhaps it is a cliché, but it has become true. As the famous song goes, “We can find love if we search within ourselves”, but also, I believe, everywhere if we look hard enough.
People who have mental illness think they are a burden to society. Fact. The suicide rate amongst teenagers (the most vulnerable group) is growing. Fact. Social grants are also increasing due to a decrease in family values, growing up as orphans or having a single parent, poverty, unemployment, depression and stress. The list goes on. Rape, domestic violence, battered woman syndrome and the stigmatisation of mental illness are never-ending.
Fact. Some people continue to have blind faith in their medical aid or fund, that is, if they have one. Ignorance is like scar tissue, subterranean and lurking beneath the surface. Whoever said ignorance is bliss was duping her or himself. Unless a forum or a platform can be raised to break the silence and annihilate in one blow the stigma of mental illness and prejudice. Suffering in silence from depression and stress, families will break up, and kids will be caught in the crossfire of divorce. There is nothing more devastating in the world than a child who feels unloved and has no self-esteem.
Both Princess Diana and Mother Theresa said that the most significant disease today is the feeling of being unloved.
I felt bewildered when I read “The Girl in the Parisian Dress”, an article published in another famous women’s magazine on Ingrid Jonker, a celebrated South African poet. She was a genius that goes without saying, but also profoundly emotionally unstable because of her childhood and her past, and the one man whom she would never gain approval or love from – her father. You can’t colour happiness outside the edges of your life and imagine it’s a sea mist surrounding your body when inside, you’re backsliding and waning in gloom and doom. Everything around you is blacker than night. William Styron, an American writer, described depression as “darkness visible”, and that was the name of the book he wrote chronicling his depression as well. I think that no two words describe depression and stress better than “darkness visible”.
There is one thing that I have learned during the past eighteen years. The future is still in my power, even though the past cannot be changed. Mental illness is not a human stain. Currently, I am working on an anthology of my poetry, a collection of short stories, and I am beginning work on a novel co-authored with my father called “From hell to Eternity: A Memoir of Madness”. I have received grants from the National Arts Council which encouraged me to begin to write again. This time with both my survival and my experience in mind but to put together some of my earlier poetry in a collection entitled “Africa, Where Art Thou?”
Yes, my life has turned out rather unconventionally from who, what, and where I’d envisaged myself being, but not a day goes by now that I am not thankful. I do not question why I am here or my divine purpose. I am no longer driven by fear and uncertainties, and I behave self-consciously. Although there is still a sorrow here, I cannot reform, that yields stillness in quiet moments of reflection or contemplation; every event in my life composes furious life anew. Through all the infinite wisdom of my mistakes that came before, the love of my family remains. It is a reminder of what came before and what lies ahead in my future.
INSIDE EDUCATION
