As some of you may know, I have written two nonfiction books, Bipolar Me and Bipolar Us.

Now I’m working on a different kind of writing project – a mystery novel. I had written about two-thirds to three-quarters of it when life happened and I had to put it away for a few years. Now I am back to working on it, and one of the changes I decided to make was to have my main character, a journalist, be bipolar.

It would be too easy and too cheap for me to make the murderer bipolar, and less interesting, I think, than having the person who unmasks the killer struggling with a mental disorder while she does so. The world has had enough of psychologically damaged or deranged killers – especially serial killers. Such a novel would do nothing to lessen the stigma surrounding mental illness – would, in fact, increase it. Too many people already believe that most people with mental problems are dangerous.

One of the people who beta-tested my first four chapters described my main character as “ditzy,” which wasn’t what I had intended. Now, I think maybe she was on to something. Perhaps Maggie seems ditzy because bipolar puts her out of sync with the neurotypical world. Perhaps her reactions are not “standard.”

I don’t want the book to be about her bipolar disorder. It’s still a mystery novel, with a crime to solve, interviews with suspects, dangerous situations, and all that. I just want to have a bipolar person playing an active, positive role.

But how to introduce the concept of bipolar? Should I just have Maggie say early on, “I have bipolar disorder”? (It’s written in first person.) Should she explain what that means to another character?

I think I’d rather have bipolar disorder as subtext, dropping hints that Maggie may have certain traits like imposter syndrome, hypersexuality, and depression; that she takes meds for the condition; that she functions well most of the time, but sometimes an event will send her off the rails. There might even be a chapter where the action stops for a few pages while we see Maggie trying to fight off the depression that is threatening to stall her quest for the answer.

I don’t know of too many bipolar protagonists in fiction, and even fewer in mystery fiction. The only one that comes to mind is Bo Bradley, in one of Abigail Padgett’s series of novels. (I wrote about her and her character once: https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-nE.) In my interview with Padgett, she said, “the experience of people who live with real, clinical mood disorders is still fraught, dangerous and revelatory….But the general public, including me, cannot ever actually ‘get’ what a manic or depressive or psychotic episode feels like.”

That may be true, but people experience many things in fiction – spaceflight, mountain climbing, murder – that they never do in real life. One of the marks of a really good writer is to transport the reader into the story so that it seems real, so that the reader understands what it is to fly that starship and meet that alien, climb that mountain or die trying, or kill that person who threatens you.

Perhaps, if I plan, write, draft, tweak, and edit carefully, I can show the experience of trying to do work – important, difficult work – while fighting the effects of bipolar disorder. It’s a different sort of writing than my nonfiction books.

It’s still a long way off. First, of course, I have to finish writing the damn thing. Then I have to sell the idea to an agent, who will then try to sell it to a publisher. Or I could go the indie route, which would be quicker, but not as satisfying.

Any suggestions?

On Friday, November 13th, at 7:00 p.m. (Eastern Time), I will be a guest on the Bi-Polar Girl podcast! Tune in to it on Apple Podcasts.

Image by glopphy/adobestock

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and anxiety a couple  of decades ago, after being misdiagnosed with major depression. During that time, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about bipolar disorder. I’d like to share them now.

1. Educating people about bipolar is part of my mission in life. Many people with bipolar disorder prefer to keep it to themselves, while others reveal it to only a few selected people – usually close friends or family. And those are valid, personal choices. I have been open about my diagnosis. I’ve maintained my blog (bipolarme.blog) for years. I’ve written two books (Bipolar Me and Bipolar Us). I talk to friends and family about it, even the ones who don’t really understand.This helps me as well as some of them. I have learned that more people than I thought have bipolar, depression, or another disorder.
2. Other people may be able to “chose happiness,” but I can’t. I’ve seen in my reading and heard from friends and strangers that they are able to keep their bipolar or depression in check through positive thinking or choosing happiness or other non-medical means. None of that has ever worked for me. For me, my condition is a brain illness and must be treated with medication for the underlying causes and with talk therapy for developing coping mechanisms and getting a reality check.
3. Even meds and therapy don’t keep me from relapsing. I still get depression from time to time. I just don’t fall as far. (I have bipolar 2, so I seldom get mania.) But the medications help me to know that my depression will end, and the therapy helps me know how to hang on until it does. At the back of my mind, I always know that I will find my way back to baseline stability, if not as quickly as I’d like.
4. I am still able to work, be married, and have many friends. These are blessings that have come despite my bipolar disorder. I may be able to work only part-time, but I am proud of being able to use my education and bring in some money. My husband and I have been married for over 30 years. He is being treated for depression, so he knows a lot about what I go through. And I have good friends who stick with me even when I am difficult (and I certainly can be).
5. I can still step out of my comfort zone and try new things. I have ridden a zipline, though the act of stepping off the edge was terrifying. I gave a public reading of my first book, though I hadn’t spoken in public since before my major depressive crash. 
6. I still can’t do everything I’d like to. Being in large groups is still difficult for me, especially if I am the center of attention, such as hosting a party. I can’t even be at a party very long without having to leave. I can’t do holiday shopping in crowded stores. In fact, I do most of my shopping on the Internet.
7. My creativity is not lessened. My two blogs and two books are evidence of that. And I’ve been working on a novel – a mystery – and am in the process of getting back to it now that I have a new idea for some subtext it desperately needed. I can write poetry, sometimes about bipolar disorder. I can make jokes and conversation. I don’t often feel writer’s block and can push myself through it, even though it sometimes takes a while (as with the mystery).
8. Bipolar may be a life sentence, but it’s not a death sentence. Yes, I’ve had suicidal ideation (and I’ve written about it – https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-Me). But I got through it and I know that I still can, should the feelings return. And I know that, unless science makes some really spectacular advances, I will be dealing with bipolar for the rest of my life, getting through with the help of medication, therapy, my husband, and my friends.

All in all, I have to say it’s been a good life, despite my bipolar disorder, and I expect it to keep on being so. As I mentioned, educating people about bipolar is one of my passions, and I hope this post helps people understand the realities – not just the depression and the mania, but the possibilities.

…doesn’t mean you should make it into Halloween costumes.

Halloween costumes for adults have gotten ridiculous. You can find “sexy” costumes for almost anything. One year I saw an ad for a “Sexy Crayon” costume. Then there’s this year’s I-kid-you-not Sexy Mail-In Ballot. I find them perplexing and not at all sexy.

Another appalling trend in Halloween costumes, though, is the “mental patient” and “asylum” tropes.

We know that it is scary to have a mental illness. My bipolar disorder makes me question my every feeling and wonder if it’s real or pathology. Schizophrenia is an even scarier mental illness, both for those who have it and the people who interact with them.

Mental illness is also scary to the general public, especially if they hear nothing but the horror stories of mental patients on murderous rampages. The news media feed these fears with endless speculations about what disorder a killer might have had or what psych meds he or she might have been on. They ignore the fact that people with mental problems are more likely to be victims of violence than causes of it. Only in extreme cases, such as a person with both schizophrenia and anosognosia, is violence even remotely likely. The “he must be crazy” reaction to reports of a seemingly inexplicable murder are nevertheless widespread.

Yet there remain harmful and outdated stereotypes regarding mental illness that manifest themselves in holiday costumes. The most common feature of a “mental patient” costume is a straitjacket, despite the fact that such restraints have not been used for decades. But “straitjacket” is visual shorthand for “dangerous mental patient.” It’s as out-of-date and offensive as “sexy nurse” costumes featuring short, tight white dresses and nursing caps, with oversized toy hypos. I haven’t seen a nurse in anything but scrubs in years.

Another disturbing trend among Halloween costumes is the association of mental illness with blood. Many of the costumes feature blood smears or bloody handprints. You can even get “insane asylum” home decor adorned with stark concrete walls and multiple blood smears and handprints. These are suggested for use in throwing “theme parties.”

Combining pop culture with insanity is another source for Halloween costumes. The Hannibal Lecter mask appears in many costume lists, often combined with a straitjacket. (It’s usually advertised as a “cannibal” mask, to avoid copyright difficulties.) Another, more recent, one is the Harley Quinn “Suicide Squad” costume, featuring tight short shorts, black hose, and a huge prop hammer. (At least, as far as I know, no one has tried to do a sexy Hannibal Lecter costume, though I ought to Google it to make sure. There is a “sexy insane asylum patient” costume with a peek-a-boo straitjacket.) Horror movies are also fertile ground for “crazed killer” costumes. In addition to Hannibal Lecter, there are “hockey mask” and “Leatherface” (Texas Chainsaw) masks.

If you find yourself at a costume party with a person wearing a straitjacket costume or  a house decorated with an asylum theme, my advice is to leave immediately. Don’t engage in conversation. This is not the time for educating the populace on the realities of mental illness and the harm that stereotypes do.

Fortunately, this year there may be fewer costume parties because of social distancing requirements, fewer chances to insult and make fun of actual mental patients and those who have spent time in psych wards. Maybe by the time this pandemic is over, we can go back to insulting and misrepresenting Wiccans with sexy witch costumes.

In 2013, Allie Brosh was the darling of the mental health community, on the strength of her best-selling book, Hyperbole and a Half and her blog of the same name. Then she disappeared for seven years. This year, she finally resurfaced with a new book, Solutions and Other Problems. 

Hyperbole was such a success because of the humor it contained, as well as the unflinching look at clinical depression. 

It was instantly relatable to those of us who had been through it too:

[I] could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.

Sometimes humor and insight were combined, as in this passage:

[T] rying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work.

It also offered hope, including the famous passage where a single grain of corn helped the author break free from her depression. The book was illustrated with gonzo drawings of the author as a peculiar stick-figure-ish entity with a pink dress and a strange yellow triangle of a ponytail.

Now, seven years later, along comes Solutions, with that same propensity to tear your heart out with truth about loss, grief, and loneliness; relationship concerns, family tragedy, and physical health scares. Then without warning, you come across a passage like this:

Some years have been pretty hard, but overall, I have a pretty easy life. If I find a dead deer, I don’t have to fight a bear for it. I don’t even have to eat it if I don’t want to.

It should be noted that the stick-figure author avatar has a larger wardrobe now. And that, for those who fear that a book containing so much serious material will be difficult to read, rest assured that there are still plenty of dogs, bananas, a drunken kangaroo-pig, and poop stories.

If you get this book – and you should – it will be worth your while to shell out for the print edition ($30 for the autographed version), as the electronic edition is unsatisfying. The illustrations which flesh out this work even more than they did Hyperbole, do not come off to good effect electronically, with the hand-printed dialogue occasionally unreadable. But you need to see the illustrations, in particular Brosh’s extended series on the lives of her and her sister.

During the seven years that she was off the map, Brosh never lost her legion of admirers. In an interview with BuzzFeedNews, she sounded very like Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess), when she said:

Hey there, weirdos (<—they like when I call them that, I promise). You are more dear to me than you could possibly know. … I don’t know where you all live or what you all look like, but I’ve seen pieces of who you are, and it’s good to know you’re out there.

The comparisons between Brosh and Lawson are inevitable. Both write books that address serious, even devastating, topics with a hefty dose of humor. Both have extensive followings in the mental health community. Both have a tendency to self-isolate, but keep writing through the trauma. 

Brosh says that she has given up her blog because she was more comfortable with the book-writing process. And Instagram. And playing online games anonymously.

I, for one, hope that she continues with the book-writing process, and that her planned third book doesn’t take another seven years to produce. I don’t think I can wait that long.

I’ve had a lot of various types of trauma and stress in recent weeks. Moving. My husband’s heart problem. Finances. Dealing with insurance, mortgage, and contracting people. Now I have a new/old one – returning to work after a month off.

The good part is that I work at home. I don’t earn much, but the money is essential to our budget nonetheless. I work on a computer. My old computer died (more stress), so I had to get a new one.

You’d think that would be a good thing. But I rapidly discovered that my new, fast computer didn’t want to talk to my employers’ older network. In particular, a peripheral that I absolutely need to do the work wouldn’t work.

So I started working the phones. The IT company we use couldn’t help me. Apple said it was a Windows software problem. Microsoft said it was a hardware problem. The software people said I needed drivers. Geek Squad said they could give me an appointment at some future date. 

My anxiety quickly turned to panic. I was missing assignments, something for which I could be let go. I kept putting the company off. “I’m getting it fixed Thursday.” “No, it still doesn’t work.” Finally, someone at the IT company gave me a work-around. I made notes on it, but he talked very fast. And I didn’t get a chance to try it out till days later, when I couldn’t read my notes. I was about to miss another deadline.

At that point, my panic turned to hysteria. I got IT on the phone again and tried to explain what was happening and what the other IT guy had said for me to do and I still couldn’t get it to work help help help! He couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. I read my skeletal notes to him. I couldn’t decipher them and neither could he. I started crying. He said the person I had talked to previously would be in – the next day. And hung up.

In desperation, I called back the next day, and my first IT guy walked me through the process again. This time I took better notes. I asked him to apologize to the person I had cried at. Since then, I have completed two assignments successfully and now have the correct byzantine procedure committed to memory.

The moral of this story? Stress begets anxiety. Anxiety begets panic. Panic begets hysteria. Of course, it’s best simply to avoid stress in the first place, but let’s face it, that’s just not possible.

Work is particularly fraught with stress for me as a person with bipolar disorder. I used to be able to work full-time in an office. I can no longer do that. I am fortunate that there is work I can do at home and get paid for, but I am able to work only four days a week. I’m slow at doing the work, and what might take someone else a few hours takes me all day. This is a definite blow to my self-esteem. Sometimes I find myself thinking, “I used to be able to do this. I could even give speeches and have business lunches and travel to business conventions. Now I find myself weeping at the IT guy.” That competence I once had is gone and I can’t recapture it. It disappeared sometime around my worst major depressive episode. (Actually, it had started crumbling before then, but I didn’t see the signs.)

My going-back-to-work anxiety has been made worse by the fact that it has been hard lately to take care of myself. Even the most basic things are slipping away. I missed a therapist appointment and the next one I could get was a month off. I started to run out of my medications. I found eating and bathing too exhausting. I even missed doing last week’s blog post, something I almost never do, because I was simply too tired from all the stress.

This evening I finally get to see my therapist and get new prescriptions. Maybe I’ll cry at him a while. He can handle it. The IT guy shouldn’t have to.

I post my blogs on Sundays and have done so for years. This week I am all used up, too tired to write anything inspiring or interesting or enraged or helpful.

My husband has been in the hospital this week for a heart problem and just came home. While he was there, I had to deal with the usual bills, computer problems, appointments, and furniture deliveries. I actually used a grocery delivery service because I just couldn’t face shopping and carrying bags. I ate take-out and take-out leftovers. I had lunch at the hospital every day with my husband.

I don’t want to compare our situations. Almost having a heart attack and getting another stent is objectively worse than anything I went through. But I must admit to a little envy for the rest he required and still requires, people to take care of his needs (including me), and someone to pick up on all the responsibilities at home. It’s petty, I know.

But I’m just too tired to care about that. I’m too tired to write. I’m too tired to do more than the bare minimum. Please excuse me. I’ll try to be back next week with something more to say about mental health and bipolar disorder.

We moved into our rebuilt house this week. I’m home at last, after almost a year and a half of waiting and a total of about five intermediate moves to various types of housing while our house was being built. All my friends think I must be joyously happy. But I’m not. I’m depressed and anxious, not happy or even hypomanic.

Oh, I’m glad to be stationary at last. I hate moving and have done far too much of it. I’m glad to have our old, much beloved bed fully assembled. I like all the light from all the windows. But I’m not enjoying everything the way I “should.” In fact, I’m practically immobilized.

That’s the thing with bipolar disorder. You never know when it’s going to hit and where it’s going to take you. In my case, it most often takes me down.

This move has come with a lot of triggers for me, in addition to my hatred of moving. My study is not yet usable and my computer died. That’s a big thing for me, not having my own space to retreat to and be comfortable in.

In fact, it’s hard to be comfortable in any room of the house. Almost every room is full of boxes, from our old belongings to new furniture we had to order (and often assemble). My satisfying vision of how the house would look is nowhere in sight. It’s making me irritable, too, another of the lesser-mentioned symptoms of bipolar depression. I want to snap at my husband and I feel disgruntled with the progress (or lack thereof) on getting the house in order. Right now the only room without empty (or full) boxes in it is my husband’s study.

Then there’s all the details that overwhelm. I have mobility issues and can’t do much about moving heavy boxes and assembling furniture. Most of my labor in this project has been mental. Appointments, bills, insurance, contractors, mortgage company, misrouted mail, incorrect shipments, credit cards, finding places to live – hours on the phone and the computer. (At one point my “study” was two boards across four boxes in a tiny apartment laundry area.) Watching our insurance money dwindle. My brain, which is glitchy at the best of times feels positively used up. But the details keep coming.

This sort of thing has happened to me before – on a trip to Ireland, for example, when one moment I was feeling absolute happiness and in a second plunged into paranoia and depression over nothing at all really. I know that’s the nature of the beast. The moods come when they will and stay as long as they want to. I have little to no control over when that happens.

It seems ungrateful to me to bitch about our present circumstances. We are, after all, settled once again, and I can watch the chaos around me slowly turn into a place I can live forever (or at least until the next tornado). But my bipolar depression has kicked in pretty thoroughly, with nary a speck of hypomania – or even balance – in sight.

I am hoping that soon my study will be usable and I will have that space to work, hide, or veg out. I want my comfy chair and my stuffed animals and my prints and posters around me again. There’s no guarantee, though, that that will lift my mood. I don’t think there’s anything in our immediate future that can. As always, I just have to take my meds, practice self-care, and wait for the pendulum to swing once more. And not let the phone calls and emails and bills slide while I’m waiting for the upturn.

ETA: New computer purchased and set up. Study now marginally usable.