My Bipolar Story: The Crack in the Wall - Physical Abuse

Written by Marlene Margot

Gary and I eventually moved back to Durban. Things between us progressively became worse and worse. The physical abuse had now extended to my children as well. Gary and I divorced in April 1983 I was 24 yrs old.

On the 3rd of May 1983, I met Bruce. Bruce was and is a wonderful person. We married on the 2nd September 1983. He adopted Ryan and Carmen. Our son Myles was born the following year on the 16th June 1984.

When I was pregnant with Myles, I went into depression. I couldn't understand why. I had a wonderful husband who loved me, my children had a loving father and we had a nice home. As I was pregnant, I couldn't take any tablets so I went to see a psychologist. His theory was that I was depressed because I was pregnant. This might sound stupid, but it isn't. You see, every time that I became pregnant; my subconscious mind would revert back to all the stress and trauma that I had experienced with my first pregnancy. Bruce was very understanding and supportive and once I understood everything the rest of the pregnancy went off well. We were advised not to have any more children.

In 1987, we moved to Colenso, so that our children could grow up in a small town environment. We all thoroughly enjoyed Colenso. The kids had so much freedom. I became the local dance teacher. I staged two variety shows to raise money for various charities. It was a very good time of our lives.

In June 1991, we bought a house in Ladysmith. It was not a very good move. Buying the house put us into a lot of financial difficulty. In March 1991, we agreed to look after two Taiwanese children, they were little girls, one was five years old and the other was a one-month-old baby. We agreed, as we desperately needed the money. They lived with us from Monday - Friday and they went home on weekends. My niece Carly also came to live with us. We now had six children in the house, three teenagers and three little ones. As you can imagine it was rather hectic. In March and April 1992, my mother and Bruce's mom and dad came to live with us as well; this took our household up to eleven!! Five adults and six children. I did everything for everyone. I did the washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking and looking after the baby and the bigger ones as well. I think I would drop dead if I had to do all of that now. We got through it all and everyone seemed happy enough. The only down side was that I started getting chronic headaches and I was battling to sleep. Maybe I should have looked at those symptoms more closely, but I didn't, I was too busy looking after everyone else to worry about my problems.

PART FOUR

My rollercoaster ride began in May 1992. I went from being a self-sufficient, contented, happy person to an emotional wreck. I was utterly miserable and I couldn't make out why. Bruce's theory was that I was doing too much and that there were too many people in the house. He was probably right, but when our parents left, nothing changed. I just seemed to get worse. The headaches got worse. I was only sleeping for about 2 hours a night and all I wanted to do was cry and cry and cry some more. I remember thinking to myself that I must 'pull myself together' but the more I tried the worse it got. I really thought that I had put depression behind me. I know my family meant well but they couldn't understand why I should be so depressed. I had everything that I had ever wanted. I needed to know how to rise above the depression. I needed to know how to feel good about myself again. No-one could give me the answers I so desperately needed.

Eventually, I went to hospital in Ladysmith. My doctor tried everything. He gave me five sleeping tablets every night, still no sleep. I just could not sleep. After two weeks of all this, armed with Prozac and sleeping tablets I went home. The Prozac had an adverse effect on me and my family suffered. I wasn't sleeping and neither was any one else. I was vacuuming and washing carpets at two in the morning, cooking the next days' dinner, you name it, I did it. Poor Bruce, sitting in the lounge just being there for me, telling me that he wasn't tired; meanwhile he must have been exhausted. THANK YOU is not a big enough word for the gratitude I feel for the support that he gave me.

Obviously it couldn't continue. The whole family would have been on Prozac. I was referred to a psychiatrist in Durban. I knew that I had to go but I didn't want to go as my youngest son Myles would be celebrating his eighth in the time that I would be away. I felt very awful about leaving Myles; we had never been apart from each other. When I had been in the Ladysmith hospital, I had seen my whole family twice sometimes three times a day. It was too far for them to come and see me in Durban. I felt as though my whole world was coming to and end. Bruce eventually called our family doctor in and between him, Bruce and the kids; they managed to convince me that two weeks wasn't forever.

By the evening of the first day, I was ready to go home. I didn't feel so bad. I had already phoned Bruce and told him that he must come and fetch me the next day. He must have thought to himself 'please God, keep her there, the kids and I need to get some sleep.' The doctor arrived later and once again, I went through my life story. He never said too much, psychiatrists never do. However, he did say that I was having a massive nervous breakdown. He explained to me that a girl of fifteen does not have the emotional maturity to cope with the kind of trauma that I had experienced. After having the baby when I was so young I had not received any sort of counseling. But, as we all know in that day and age, young girls were not counseled. They were expected to forget the whole miserable experience completely and get on with their lives. Many years later, I found out that Dr. L had not been too optimistic about my recovery. In fact, he said to Bruce that if I made ten more years it would be a lot.

That evening I was given an injection to put me to sleep. It didn't work. The nurses could not believe that I was still awake. Eventually at about 2am the nurse decided to phone Dr. L to find out if there was something else, they could give me. He could not believe that I was still awake. The nurse told him I was very much awake in fact, I was standing opposite her drinking a cup of tea. I was given another injection and when Dr. L arrived at 6am, I was still wide-awake. Years later when we spoke about that night, he told me that he could not believe it when he got that call, because one of those injections would put a six-foot, one hundred and eighty pound man to sleep very quickly.

It was established that I was suffering from Bipolar Disorder; this is when the Lithium levels in the body go out of sync. The Lithium Level in the body either becomes excessively high, which causes a person to become unusually energetic requiring little or no sleep whatsoever, or they drop too low which then causes severe depression. Lithium is a type of salt that all human beings have in their bodies. In the person who suffers from Bipolar Disorder, their body makes either too much or not enough. When someone who suffers from Bipolar goes into severe depression, the person cannot physically and mentally 'snap out of it.' Once that person hits the bottom unless treatment is administered they will more than likely commit suicide. It is like any other disease in the body. For example; if a person suffers from Diabetes, they need Insulin to regulate their sugar levels and if they do not receive the Insulin, they will go into Diabetic Shock, then a Coma and they can die. It is the same with any chronic illness. The difference between Bipolar and other chronic diseases is that Bipolar deals with the emotions. When I tell people that I suffer from Bipolar, they look at me as though I come from outer space. As intelligent as people claim to be these days you would think that they would understand a bit better. It is still a socially unacceptable disease to have, even now.