My life has been healed and enriched by the love, patience, and selfless help of family and friends, and also through years of hard work and behavioral modification. While growing up, I had an unusual number of fears and delusions that often accompany bipolar disease. My problems seemed to have begun when I was very young, but I do not spend time wondering why-I am thankful that this plague is in the past and feel that it will never return to me.
Even as young as 3 or 4 years old, I was confused. I can recall being very frightened of God, thinking that He was an immense, slow-moving gray mass that would kill me if I did anything wrong. A variety of other crippling fears and nightmares prevented me from sleeping except from sheer exhaustion. The resultant severe lack of sleep further contributed to my bouncing in and out of reality. I had no friends in elementary school because I was afraid of people. In 7th and 8th grade, I made 2 friends, but one moved away, and the other hit me once, so I avoided her after that.
I began carrying weapons to protect myself from treacherous things I saw in reflective surfaces such as silverware, water, windows, people’s eyes, etc. I communicated with people and beings that were not real. Eventually, this imaginary battle took precedence while the rest of my world stepped aside.
During my late teens, I did not realize that loneliness is often a choice that we make for ourselves. It happens to us, as it did me, when we choose to ignore the friendship and companionship of family and friends. I did not realize at the time that I had the power within myself to overcome the destruction caused from my bipolar disease, which was diagnosed at 19 during a lengthy hospitalization. I had no interest in continuing my life.
Severely depressed people often do not care whether they live or die; therefore, major life decisions such as marriage and school are of little importance. Everyday choices and decisions are worth even less. For this reason, depressed, mentally ill people often appear to have impaired judgment. They do not care what happens to them or anyone else. Thus, I escaped from the hospital and ran off to Florida with a released patient who was a suicidal alcoholic. Surprisingly, he did not seem repulsed by my impaired judgment and odd behavior. We married several months later. He did not complain about the insurmountable medical expenses I incurred from chronic diseases which were caused from a combination of a non-functional thyroid (diagnosed and cured years later) and my collapsed emotional state. In spite of my volatile environment, I began to regain mental stability, although very gradually.
Each Sunday I walked to a small church just around the corner. One Sunday in church, the minister told us that we are made in the image of God; and therefore, we are very important. He also said that “…we are what we think”. Not only did this mean I was important, but it also meant that “What I think, I can become.” I was haunted by the hope that these words brought to me. I could not stop thinking about them. This was the first time that I had ever considered that I might be important and worthwhile. Additionally, these words implied that I had the power to become whatever I set my thoughts upon. The more I thought about what the minister said, the higher my hopes rose to become an average person who people would not recall as anything out of the ordinary.
At this time, I did not believe anything was wrong with me, however, I was acutely aware of the fact that people avoided me. I had no friends, but I yearned to fit into society and have friends like other people did. I desperately wanted to be like everyone else, and I cried a thousand times, wishing to be an average, ordinary person. It was fortunate that I had the sense of mind to know that it is better to be one who is easily forgotten than to rest in people’s memory as someone to be avoided. For someone with impaired judgment, my goal of becoming average was actually very wise, because it was something attainable.
I decided to follow some daily rules in order to achieve this dream of becoming ordinary and average, so I wrote down 10 rules for myself. The first two and the last two items in the list below came from the minister’s sermons. The other 6 rules I carefully made up. My 10 rules were as follows:
1. I am made in the image of God; therefore, I am worthwhile.
2. What I think is what I will become.
3. I can visualize the person I want to be; and today I will think and behave like that person.
4. Just for today, I will love others and think of them before myself.
5. Just for today, I will do something for someone else.
6. Today, I will not think of things that scare me.
7. Today, I will not talk unnecessarily, so that what I do say will be important.
8. Today, I will do three things that need to be done.
9. Today, I will not worry about things I cannot change.
10. Today, I will not allow my environment to determine my happiness.
Years later, I learned that Alcoholics Anonymous teaches “today” thinking, because the task of self-discipline for just one day is not so overwhelming as the thought of changing one’s life forever.
I read my 10 rules many times every day, and thought about them as frequently as possible. As time passed, I learned to become selective in my thoughts and eventually discovered that I was able to choose what I thought about. For example, whenever I found my mind wandering toward unproductive thoughts, I immediately got out my 10 rules and read them from top to bottom. Sometimes I read them out loud if no one else was around. After a while, I had them memorized and discarded the paper list so that no one would ever find it. Each day, I mentally reviewed the list over and over until the rules were so much a part of my thinking that I even dreamt of them at night instead of having horrible nightmares.
Interestingly, another change took place in my life as an indirect result of my 10 daily goals. For years I had felt depressed and worthless for not having established an important goal for my life nor accomplishing anything important. After one year into my new way of thinking, I discovered that there is no room for depression and self-pity when one fills one’s days with productive thinking and productive behavior.
I no longer hated myself for being imperfect. I learned that perfection is a star that we reach for but never really touch.
Eventually, at 22, I became well enough to want to get out and find a job. I could not drive a car, nor could I afford the bus, so I applied for jobs at all locations to which I could walk. I had no special skills, and was so deeply discouraged with continual employment rejections that when I was rejected by a major department store, I burst into tears in their office.
Then one day I found out about a government-funded business school for the disadvantaged called the Adult Skills Training Center in my own town, Akron, Ohio. There was a one-year waiting list to get in. I signed up and phoned the school twice daily to check for any cancellations. They enrolled me after only two weeks.
This school provided a major turning point in my life. Within 5 ½ months, I learned business math, shorthand, electronic transcription, keypunch (precursor to modern-day computers), improved my typing skills, and learned how to work in an office environment. I had the highest grades in every class. This was the first time in my life that I felt proud of something. I had always thought that I was slower than others with a lesser ability to learn or excel at anything. Once, I had even asked my Girl Scout leader if she thought I was retarded. This school brought me to the realization that my ability to learn was definitely not less than others’.
I graduated from the business training school in 1976. After pouring through the Yellow Pages and booking job interviews, I obtained a job as a secretary. A requirement of the job was to have a driver’s license, so I practiced driving with friends, then passed the driver’s test on the first try. We only had one car, so my husband, an unemployed drunk, drove me to work and picked me up each day in a car that required ropes to tie the doors shut. Our household income rose from Welfare’s $120 per month to my new earnings of $460 per month.
In 1978 when I was 24, my husband finally became employed, but only worked 7 out of 12 months due to absenteeism caused by alcoholism. His drinking habit drained our money, and we received frequent threats of utility shutoffs because of unpaid bills. Somehow, he was able to keep his job in spite of his extremely high absenteeism. I was ignorant of the fact that he had chosen to work second shift so that he could drink while I was gone at work during the day. We rarely saw each other. Throughout these years, I continued to work on positive thinking and correcting my behavior; although by this time, my life was filled with many other constructive activities described in the next paragraph.
By the early 1980’s, I had grown in many ways beyond the “average” person I had struggled to become in the previous decade. I worked as a buyer in a medical supply company, exercised frequently at a fitness center, went bicycling and running with groups of friends, and dropped from 220 pounds down to 125. I had also learned how to square dance and joined a square dancing club called the Tiretown Treaders. We danced downtown at Akron, Ohio’s 4th of July celebration in 1983.
One night in 1983, when my aunt, sister, and their children came to visit us for a few days, my husband came home in a drunken rage, and chased us all out. I had bruises the next day where he had hit me several times. I never went back. I had become a fulltime housewife over the last two months in a futile attempt to save our marriage. A domestic violence shelter provided me with a place to stay while I rejoined the work force and started moving forward again with my life.
In 1984 I began taking college classes at night while continuing my full-time day job. That same year, a college professor introduced me to Brian, my future husband. I was not looking for a relationship at the time, but they say that’s when it happens. I was impressed that Brian had never had more than two alcoholic beverages in one day. He also played the piano, viola, and was very intelligent. But he was also very sad. His ex-wife had left with their three children and married the man she had been secretly dating on business trips during the last two years of her marriage to Brian. Fate drew us together.
For mentally balanced individuals, opportunities are more plentiful, and life falls into place easier. Falling in love with a wonderful, caring person like Brian would not have been possible many years earlier when I was a person that people avoided. Through years of hard work and consistent behavior modification, I had become a person with self-respect who had worked hard to achieve some constructive goals in life. I had been transformed from one who was consumed by self-pity and depression into a person with a strong work ethic and high capacity for caring about others. In 1990, I finished my bachelor degree with a 3.98 grade average and moved into a technical career involving computer programming, networking, and in the mid-1990’s internet-related work. Before I retired in 2007 at the age of 53, I had become one of the senior computer programmers at a company with nearly 5,000 employees, and was featured in trade magazines for solving major business problems with computer programming. One of my programs brought in an additional $13 million revenue the first year it was in place. However, I maintained a low profile at work, and no one ever knew of my troubled background.
Brian and I were married in September, 1985. These were the happiest days of my life. Hoping, planning, and dreaming about a future was something previously not possible in my life. Sharing a dream together with someone special was very new and exciting.
Today, I have love, peace of mind, and fulfillment. I remained childless to prevent my defect from being passed on, but my life has been full with three wonderful stepchildren and several beautiful grandchildren whom I enjoy immensely. I have learned that regardless of what has happened to us while growing up, there comes a point at which we are responsible for our own behavior. It is immature behavior to blame today’s faults on yesterday’s misfortunes.
In the late 1980’s, my mother gave me a beautiful piece of writing by an unknown author, which I still cherish to this day. I will close with it:
title: “Today”
“This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good; but what I do today is important, because I am exchanging a day of my life for it! When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something that I have traded for it. I want it to be gain and not loss; good and not evil; success and not failure; in order that I shall not regret the price I have paid for this day.”
