Bipolar Disorder / Mental Health

KILLING CREATIVITY

I used to be a creative soul. It was something I treasured. Something that made me inherently who I am. I had words and I had music. I crafted them and inspiration would often flow through me and materialise at my fingertips. I could create something out of nothing. It felt a little bit like magic.  

I also had emotional dysregulation

Of course I didn’t have that kind of language back then. I just thought I felt intensely. When I was sad I was knee deep in misery. When I was joyous I could literally wet my pants. When I was anxious the world was crumbling. And when I loved I did so with every fibre of my being, until my heart was practically bursting. 

It was never peaceful

I had many things in my life. Many beautiful and wonderful things. But I never felt at ease with myself. I was uncomfortable in my skin and always searching for a place that felt like home. Not in a literal sense. I’ve always had a home. Something for which I will always be grateful. But I wasn’t at home in my body or in my life. I was always searching to be elsewhere. Because when you don’t like who you are, you always go searching for something you can only but hope will feel more comfortable. 

Then of course I became extremely unwell. For five long years. All my years of burying feelings and looking outside myself – of clinging to unhealthy emotions and endless catastrophising. And then life events occurred and I had no emotional tools to deal with what was happening. And I crumbled in a very public fashion. 

I fell from grace

I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I lost all the things that had been me. All my music. All my carefully crafted words. And instead I gained diagnoses. Very clinical and extremely life altering. 

One of the things that accompanies a diagnosis is treatments. And because one of my diagnoses is Bipolar 2 Disorder, my treatment includes medication. I had previously been medicated for depression and anxiety but that medication ended up causing more problems than it ever solved. That medication is contraindicated for Bipolar Disorder and I ended up even more unwell. Culminating in a nine week hospital stay. 

When I walked out of that hospital I was stable

I was put on mood stabilisers and they do exactly what they sound like. They stabilise moods. But you know what another word for stable moods is?

Flat

That’s what mood stability feels like. There is no pant-peeing joy. There is no cloak of misery weighing you down. It’s all just even keel. And while a cloak of misery may not sound like something to miss, it is also a place where great creativity can blossom. There is nothing quite like a well of despair that bursts into a cascading head full of ideas. And there is nothing quite like a rampant week-long burst of electric energy, with barely a whisper of sleep and an irrepressible urge to finish a task. It is that deep well of emotions tied in with the driven focus that is hypermania, that creates something out of nothing. 

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m no Michelangelo. I have never created anything earth shattering. But I always felt like a creative soul. I had beautiful musicality. I could craft words. I felt like I had something to contribute in the creative sphere and that felt inherently beautiful and valuable. 

And now it is all gone 

I barely have a creative bone left in my body. I don’t have periods of boundless energy. My head is still full of ideas but they’re muted. They’re not bubbling out of me and flowing onto the paper. They’re not colourful. Now my ideas are grey and shadowy.  

That is what mood stabilisers do. I am of course, very grateful for them. For a while I was very keen to get off them and for some time I was working with my psychiatrist to lower doses. But then different events happened at different times and the doses were tweaked and increased again. 

I would love to write another book one day. It is half written now. I don’t want to write it for other people. I just want to do it for myself. But every time I try and work on it, it feels like pulling teeth. There is no great emotional well inside me to tap into. It all feels forced and the words don’t flow. And it is really tempting to want to reduce those medication doses, just so I can feel again. 

I would love to feel again

I would love to laugh with joyous abandon. To cry great wracking sobs. I would love to dance all night until my feet were aching and my cheeks flushed red. To feel my heart burst and to have ideas oozing from my pores. For the thoughts to flow faster than my fingers can type. But alas. It is not to be. 

I can fully empathise with the people who choose to go on and off their medications all the time. It is understandable when you know what the price of those medications are. When they are effectively dulling the edge of the blade of our lives. 

When you’re a creative soul – whether it’s with music or art or words or engineering or design or wherever your original ideas burst forth – it is very hard to lose that essential part of who you are. 

Once upon a time I was a musician. Now I work in debt collection. It is not something I could have ever imagined in my life. My creative vision did not ever picture me spending eight hours a day checking emails. And yet that is now what I do. 

My creativity was killed

It is the price I pay for a calm and peaceful life. And yes – my life is very peaceful. And for the most part I feel very calm. But I do have periods of time where I miss my former life a most overwhelming amount. When I would spend day in and day out on a project until it was completed and something was made out of nothing and I would feel momentary pride in something I had achieved. 

Now I have stable moods instead. When life is difficult I can navigate the hurdles in a smoother fashion. I have a quiet peaceful little life and I can sit quietly to reminisce about the past. Knowing full well it is not as rose coloured as my glasses may make it seem. 

Medication is not magic

It is a scoreboard. And within every battle there is a price to be paid. Something to be won and something to be lost. I lost my creativity, but I won a peaceful life.