Inching forward towards the goal.
Well it has been a full year since I broke my self-imposed blogging ban but you will see there is a complete lack of blogs from then until now.I put it down to the PhD trough syndrome, where one doubts everything that one wants to say, its honesty, its truth, its function but most of all its impact and affect. The latter has been my biggest concern. Like many people who regularly use Facebook and other forms of social media to keep in contact with friends and colleagues scattered geographically, you will have experienced the times when a written post is totally misunderstood or the context mis-quoted. I too have had precisely that happen and it seemed to be a mixture of poor word selection or sentence construction, combined with a cultural sensitivity gap which all combined to create a very tense online situation.
This occurred after making the decision to 'come out' so to speak as a woman with Bipolar Affective Disorder. It had occurred to me that it was easier for a celebrity to speak out about mental illness as their careers were already established and a proven track record could attest to the high functioning. However, for many people with Affective Disorders they look to the celebrities and say, "Fine, that's all very well for you but you can afford time off work and the necessary medical breaks to your career and no adverse impact will happen. If anything you will gain approbation in the media from every corner plus help those unknowns suffering your illness some hope that they too can aspire to reach for their goals".
This is true only in so far as it goes. In theory we all should be able to achieve our goals and aspirations but in reality this is often not the case. I have found over the years that stigma still rules in relations between people and those with affective disorders. We the non-celebrities once having revealed our illness are then scrutinised through an often distorted lens, that created through the general populace exposure to the celebrities stories. The you can make it mantra is all very well but the proverbial planets need to align for it to happen.
The most important factor in achieving professionally and personally living with BD is having friends and family around you who are knowledgeable about the illness and flexible enough to recognise each of our slight differences and eccentricities within our illnesses.
The biggest problem for me is the kind-hearted friends and family who are vigilantly on the lookout for any shifts in my cyclohymia (mood-state cycles and patterns). I can be simply happy and excited, speaking rapidly and people feel the need to intervene as I must be headed towards full blown clinical mania. Or the exact opposite, when I am simply sad or flat people are fearful of the sudden drop into clinical depression.
No! I have a range of emotions like everybody and they are responses to situations good and bad. I have a right to be both joyous and sullen without the assumption that I am falling ill. Trust me when I say my medications ensure the extremes do not occur or begin slowly enough that there is time for medical intervention.
I am lucky to have at least one good friend who has worked out my 'tells' if you like and she knows to leave me alone when I am exhuberant but to cautiously observe when my anxiety levels are increasing. She loves me being happy and joyous and feeling like I could conquer Everest. However, she also knows when I need to turn off the television and radio news, as the overwhelming sense of despair and helplessness is leading me towards catastrophising. I hate feeling disempowered.
The mis-understanding on Facebook occurred precisely during one of these moments of darkening moods. I react very badly to wanton and senseless killing of man or creatures. On this occasion it was yet another school shooting in the United States. Being an Australian who realised that gun violence was on the increase and that freedom and peoples rights also carry responsibility after two particular incidents in Australian recent past, our Country enacted strict gun control legislation.
There was the usual outcries that the law-abiding would comply and the outlaws and criminals will not. That being said to expect otherwise is foolish but no reason not instigate these changes. However, when ever this topic arises with American friends the whole Constitution and Amendment debate rears its head thereby bogging down both further debate and discussion and political action.
I have heard all the outcries and still feel children's lives are sacred. This is a problem with solutions even in a Nation that holds strictly to the right to carry weapons.
Next comes the discussion about gun violence and deviant behaviour from 'crazies' for whom no legislation would be effective at preventing. That too is a cop out. It is saying that all violent homicides and suicides with guns as choice of method is only perpetrated by 'crazies'. We can all be 'crazies' in the right confluence of events.
Well the misunderstanding came from this. A FB 'friend' had a close relative suicide by gun and was still grieving the loss. When I postulated that there was no need for semi-automatic weapons to be readily available in department stores for sale without gun control licensing, it was argued vociferously that there was no difference between death from semi-automatics and shotguns and that it was patently clear that I had zero experience with guns so basically I should shut up. I must never equate gun ownership with the ever increasing use of guns as suicide choice or domestic homicides let alone mass shootings.
Thus the moral high ground had been established and I was the ignorant outsider from another Country who knew nothing on this issue. I felt like I had been slapped in the face and even demeaned. I also felt guilty (BD people do guilt and self blame very well).
the facts are far from this. I have had experience with guns. My own father held a shotgun to my head and threatened to blow me 'to Kingdom come' if I continued to dial the police on the phone. I shakingly left by the back door to get in my car and drive to the police, waiting to be shot or hearing him open fire on my mother and even himself in a murder suicide.
It is not something one forgets.
Nor is it something one forgets when you are a mother who's son has had a gun placed in his mouth over illegal drugs and firearms.
I can never equate what I have experienced with being the survivor of a gun suicide but I do have very strong and distressing memories of gun violence. To be dismissed by two American friends who feel that as an Australian I am out of touch, just making 'social media capital' of recent events is down right insulting.
This exchange had no place for cutesy little Emoji to assist communicate tone or inflections so I am left wondering at my own ability to communicate in the written language. I pride myself on having language and communication skills as my most valued professional and personal attributes.
This self doubt at my inability to clearly articulate my own feelings and knowledge has been my constant companion for the last twelve months as I struggle towards submitting my PhD. My words seem always inadequate, misguided or unclear.
It is this that has prevented my posting blogs. The year I decided to become public about having mental illness seems to have undermined my own sense of myself as a writer and performer. My question is can I only speak truthfully and honestly if I hide behind the safety of comedy and stand-up jokes. It seems when people laugh at something I say they actually get the message I am trying to convey.
Yet when I speak in my PhD writings or write on Facebook, my words are one-dimensional and lacking the depth of thought, meaning and emotion they carry.
Bravery is the answer. I must continue to lay myself bare and be prepared for backlash and misunderstanding. In these next months I must be true to myself. If I lose a few FB 'friends' then so be it. It is obvious they bring nothing to the social media relationship but pain for me. This hurts when you are the one trying to respond positively to people a long way away when they are in a very dark space and despairing of the future. I respond as carefully as possible but the minute their status changes to one of happiness and contentedness it seems I lose value and what I think and say no longer has relevance as I want to speak beyond the topic of 'them'.
This is the disease of social media. Perhaps I should not have left blogging. At least here nobody is answering back...well not as often.
