This was today's bible verse I was sent (Psalm 73:23-24) and I guess my faith is something that helps to give purpose to life. Without it there really would be no point to anything. It is not easy though and I still don't see the big picture (does anyone?) It does give a reason for why I'm here and I hope that there is something specific I'm supposed to achieve. Success has been something I've grappled with for a long time. From an early age I was compelled to succeed and do well. I managed to get good grades at school and do well in my extramural activities. I did well when I went to university and won scholarships and bursaries. My first major failure was when I crumbled under my work load from my PhD and had to quit. I had never failed like that before and I am still not 100% over it. My fellow student doing a PhD alongside mine has just graduated and it is a reminder that I too could have been graduating now with a PhD if I had not had my cataclysmic collapse. There is always in the back of my mind the "what if" and "why".
With a friend of mine who also has bipolar depression I often joke about being the "crazy" ones. It is now semi accepted that bipolar is a condition that more people than your realize have. What is not so easy is the acceptance of someone who also can experience psychosis, which is what I have had at times. Since my massive melt down in Switzerland and my first return to Zimbabwe, I haven't really had any further bouts of psychosis since my medication has changed. It still scares me though that there is a possibility it could happen again and I will be left without a grasp of reality once more and really be "mad". I joke about the bipolar but madness and being crazy is a slightly more sensitive area for me and is something I feel vulnerable to. I don't think people accept really "crazy" people as readily and I have not really told people about my psychotic states or that I experience them. I feel they would not know how to deal with that and might judge me if they thought I was really crazy.
My Mum often tries to down play my depression and I'm not sure she has fully accepted that I have bipolar depression and that it is a condition. She knew my Dad was a "manic" depressive but in my case she puts a lot of what happened in Switzerland down to stress from a skiing accident. The skiing accident whilst scary was not the main cause of what happened subsequently. I had had depression prior to that and had been suicidal even when in Cape Town but had never told anyone. I had seen a doctor in Cape Town who had intimated that perhaps I needed psychological help but that was as far as I had gone and had never been fully diagnosed. Although Switzerland was a nightmare it at least led me to finally being medicated and set me on the path towards a more "normal" life. I guess that is one success that did come out of what in other ways was a massive failure.
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