I am 37 years old and several months ago I was diagnosed as having Cyclothymia, a "milder" form of rapid-cycling manic-depression. A previous diagnosis of unipolar depression several years ago had started me on a journey of much research and reflection, culminating in a realisation that my moods had been swinging both up and down for 20 years.
I have never been hospitalised, my symptoms not being severe enough for such treatment. Unfortunately, the downside of this was to keep me in an ignorant limbo, my problems never really coming to the attention of anybody around me and my own attitude being that I was 'just a moody so and so'. My rollercoaster moods resulted in various spasmodic attempts to seek help, but this was always thwarted when a good mood would convince me that I didn't need help at all.
Not knowing what my mood, my attitudes, my motivations will be from one day to the next has been a lonely and silent torture and it is impossible for me to look back over the last 20 years without seeing two completely different people. As a management professional, with all its macho pretences, work was a permanent struggle as my confident self drove me to ever harder challenges and my depressive self fought to keep me in a safe cocoon. Constant job changing and career analysis paralysis has been my ruin. Even before diagnosis, I always had an intuitive sense that a decision point would have to come in my life.
As I sit here today, I have no idea what the future holds as I am 'unemployed' and battling with my demons about a 'proper job' and its connotations for me. However I am back on medication and am looking to engage in some form of counselling. Slowly but surely, I am discovering my own voice for the first time since childhood. I have started to write a memoir of my illness and its connection with events in my family history, as well as making music and designing - all things I have never had the time to do before (unemployment isn't all bad).
I don't have any quick fixes or revelations to offer because I think it is different for every individual. What I hold onto more than anything is a stubborn belief that like everybody, I have gifts and insights from my experience which I want to share and build on. We live in a world obsessed with very limited definitions of normality, success and so on. Personally, I'm not going to be a part of it anymore and its unhealthy demands on me, and if you are reading this then that world needs to hear your voice too.
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