An Inadequate Depiction of a Bipolar Life.

Usually I sit here and think about how clever I can be because I know my sister will be laughing when she reads it (although she has informed me she is far to lazy to read beyond two lines under a picture). I thought it would be good to write about something more serious. Most of you know that I was diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder about 4 years ago. I think most people with mental illness yearn desperately to try and communicate it in a way that people will understand. I wrote this last week one night when I couldn't sleep. It's a bit rough and I'd like to do a little more work on it but I thought I'd share it with you in hopes that you might see a different correlation of the illness than you have or at least have had in the past and in some way might see it the way I've come to see it.

I have always had a picture in my mind that I’d like to someday have commissioned. It is of a boy, no older than 11 or 12 with his back to the viewer at an angle pouring his heart out to God. I see him on a small ceramic kitchen floor. His head is bowed and though you can’t see his face you can imagine the squinting eyes and brow as the young boy seeks for the Lord’s guidance and understanding to the greatest of all questions, his reason for existence and relationship with his Maker. It’s his first time to want to really know but what he lacks in articulation and theological understanding he makes up for with his faith. His body kneeling close to the ground weighed down almost literally by the burden of such a desire to understand and know, with maybe some hope or belief he might even see a miracle like Moses and the burning bush or the Apostle Stephen. That’s not his purpose but his faith is so pure and strong that he has no doubt of the possibility, but more in the likelihood. I wish there was a way you could look at that picture and after a second look could notice something else. After you were overwhelmed by what felt like that plea to the Lord for truth that you may have made at some point in your own life and, as a result, changed the whole course and outlook of what you determined from that day forward you would become; Or if not a literal day or moment, perhaps it reminds you of years of resolve to be better and more child-like in your relationship with God. At that moment when all the feelings and thoughts of a rebirth in your own mind are rekindled you would notice something else, something of a different emotion, there is blood trickling down the young boys’ left arm. Your first thought is it is just blood and before you misread such a beautiful message you search for answers on the canvas to give you a reason for the blood. After a few minutes of inspection you notice a knife block on a counter in the background missing one of its own. Your first reaction might be disbelief or false explanation. Then a feeling of disgust or of the morbidity and sadistic mind this artist must have to portray an innocent child in such a manner, especially at an age when most don’t even recognize or express such thoughts. You might feel bad for seeing something beautiful initially and then seeing something completely different that might provoke some innocent child to irrational action. You might want to cover the eyes of your children looking on with you. I don’t know what that reaction would be, it might be different for all of you but I think that whatever it is, there is a good chance you feel conflicted with what you initially felt. Maybe after further inspection you realize that the blood from the arm has already been forming a puddle between his legs. Maybe all you can see is a little bit between where his feet lie near the bottom of the canvas but it is enough to infer that there is a puddle under where his knees and legs are knelt in prayer. I would hope by this point, if you stuck around long enough to try and make sense of it all, your heart would start to yearn for this boy. You want to tell him how much he has to offer and that he is too young and there is so much ahead. Perhaps you wonder where his parents are or his support and whose son he is. Maybe he is deprived of love and attention. Maybe even a little tear wells up inside and starts to drip down your cheek as you think that this boy needs serious help and you wish you could reach out and wrap your arms around him and nurture him to full health. You’d write the check to get him the best doctors if he’d just open his eyes and realize the beauty and happiness that can be his if he keeps pushing forward. My hope is that at this point, or if you sit in front of the painting long enough, this boy will become more than a picture but a son to you and you want nothing more than to understand what is going on in his head. He understands he has a Heavenly Father who loves him because he is earnestly praying to Him, you saw that first off. You know he is young and may infer from the prayer and faith you felt in him initially that he has been taught well and has many family members and friends who if only knew he was in such pain would rush to his aid and yet something does not make sense. Maybe it’s the overwhelming peace and love you felt initially in conflict with the pain and suffering that a child of this age must be going through to take such drastic action. Look at it once more. This boy is the boy you first saw but maybe his prayer is of gratitude and faith that God will embrace Him and even at that moment is there with him regardless of the outcome. Suddenly you want to provide, or ask God to provide, some spiritual comfort to this child, an angel even. Then maybe you would see the boy praying through his struggle and those it will affect with the same faith as the boy you once believed to be praying for the first time. You would see that that same faith existed in this little boy struggling to find a way to live through and with a demon that has less to do with Satan and evil and more to do with an illness like diabetes or leukemia, but this illness is in his mind and in his brain. This boy is so isolated in his illness from those around him because of the internal nature of it that the only way he can find a way to express it is to God after he’s tried all he could to deal with it on his own. He is looking for a solution and is so desperate that he has turned to physical pain to relinquish the internal pain. Maybe that blood is a symbol of his fight to live and not to die. It is in this most solemn prayer and pouring out everything he has to God that, though suffering, he finds some peace. And then maybe after all this pondering you might realize that all of a sudden this picture seems a lot like one you have seen or heard described many times before. A son whom said, “not my will, but thine, be done.”

I don't know if you'll feel what I feel in all that. It's something that hits close to home for me that has taken me years to work through and I continue to battle to this day. I don't want to force you to see it the way I do but I want you to ponder that perhaps that boys suffering is not evil or "messed up" or sadistic. He doesn't need to be "fixed" or "cured." Ironically, it is his pain, suffering and what one might term irrationality that has brought him to his knees in a prayer more humble than any ever before given. It is the cutting and feeling of death knocking at his door that has brought him to a place of pain and suffering that is a tiny portion of what his Savior, Jesus Christ has suffered. I'm not really purposing that I embody this boy entirely but to me it is a story of so many I've met and talked with in the hospital, on flights, in school, church and random places. There is a pain and suffering that goes on around us in epidemic proportions. Suicide and mental illness are rapidly growing and it is time for us to stop looking at it as something to be institutionalized or something that will be fixed by a motivational book or a prayer and blessing (although possible if it's the Lord's will). This is a disorder and disease. These people are as sick as the cancer patient whose body is fatigued and frail from Chemotherapy. There is no easy fix. There is no magic pill. These illnesses are a life long battle and I wish we would look at those casualties of it not as suicides but as the terminally depressed. Lets leave the judgements up to Christ. People with mental illness long to be normal but until they accept it and realize they can still contribute it wont get better. Our part is to help them come to that by accepting them fully in spite of what they might do or say that doesn't make sense to us. They are coming to grips with a reality that we may never have to come to and that is a life of pain and suffering combined with happiness and joy.

A few quotes for perspective:

“How will you know I am hurting,
If you cannot see my pain?
To wear it on my body
Tells what words cannot explain.”

"I don't know if I'm getting better or just used to the pain."

"I'm often silent when I'm screaming inside."

"There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line."

"Suicide is what the death certificate says when one dies of depression." - PETER D. KRAMER

"Those feelings that are the most painful are those ones that nobody can explain no quote can describe... and no tears or smiles can make them go away. They're the ones that hurt the deepest the ones that last the longest and take forever to forget about ."