My Late Bipolar Diagnosis: Missed Signs and People Who Cared

Editor’s note: In this personal account, poet and advocate Jose M. Yrizarry describes his own path to a bipolar disorder diagnosis, including some difficult moments. We’ve kept his story in his own voice. Everyone’s experience is different. If you or someone you love is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.

The Day Everything Changed

It slowly came to surface when one day, bipolar disorder caught me like a hungry lion hunting its prey. I felt its teeth and claws sink into all I thought was the brick and mortar of my defensive wall. A wall that protected me against whatever tried to trespass what, until that day, was my pride, strength, and courage. But suddenly, I felt helpless, hopeless, and full of fears way beyond my experiences with street gangs and military foxholes. I was simply overcome with a confusion I couldn’t understand or resolve.

I was on my usual train ride from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Suddenly, I was anxious, nervous, sweating, and unable to stay still. It got so bad that I couldn’t keep going without getting off at every stop to compose myself. Keep going! That was the one thing I still had intact. But again, when I finally got there, I was still facing the same dilemma. How was I going to make it through the streets from the train home? Thank God there was a park only one block away. I thought, if I could make it that far, I could sit, calm down, and sort things out. Wrong!

Now, trying to enjoy the warm, sunny day full of chirping birds, children laughing and chasing each other without worry, everything would be alright. I heard the balls bouncing at the basketball and handball courts where I so often worked up a sweat. Yet this time, just sitting there, I was working up a sweat. That freaked me out. It really made me feel out of control. I couldn’t slow things down. I couldn’t focus on anything. One minute I was smiling and wanting to get on the courts to play, and the next minute I was annoyed by all the overwhelming noise. By then I was on the brink of crying without understanding why. I remember closing my eyes, covering my ears, and begging God to make it stop. But then I realized: it wasn’t the noise outside but the noise inside my head. At that moment I literally wanted to walk up to a tree and bang my head until the noise was put to rest. Thank God I wasn’t on a bridge imagining myself a bird ready to fly.

Suddenly, the crisis counselor in me recognized what was happening: some kind of anxiety or panic attack. I needed help, or I felt I might die. Swallowing my pride, I reached out to a fellow counselor who somehow felt the urgency and not only came, but as we spoke, assessed the situation and suggested the possibility of something I had never considered: bipolar disorder! He got me home, and once again I was alright. Within days, he called to say he had set me up with an experienced person who put me through three days of discussions and tests that finally concluded I had experienced a rapid cycling manifestation of bipolar disorder. That pulled the rug right from under my feet, triggered anger for not having had an early diagnosis, and filled me with fear of not knowing what to do next. That’s a story worth a chapter all its own. Yet there are things I’ll probably never forget or get over.

Years of Missed Signs Before a Late Bipolar Diagnosis

First! In grammar school, the history teacher said I was always daydreaming and sent me to the principal’s office. There they decided to tell my mother I needed therapy. She complied until they started talking about medications. It turned out that while the teacher was talking about George Washington crossing the Delaware River during a fog, I was imagining him crossing in a banana boat with Jamaicans smoking a lot of pot. She then blurted, “That’s how he learns and gets straight A’s.” That was the end of that one.

In high school, they said I was always too volatile, always challenging, testing boundaries, and in need of discipline in another school. But again, always having good grades, my aunt, with better English than my mom, stepped in and stated, “If education is supposed to enhance thinking, he’s done nothing wrong! That was the end of that one too.

The military discharged me with “Other Than Honorable” for challenging the mottos “Leave no one behind” and “Ours is not to question why but to do or die.” Having had a good record but wanting out, I needed at least three bad-boy hearings. So, I went “AWOL” a few times and had a difference of opinion with civil court. But in truth, I blew that one. Oh! And this one cost me the big paycheck and my marriage.

After my daughter was born, feeling I had to get involved in social issues, I quit the corporate world and started volunteering in community centers and taking classes in social psychology, delinquency, counseling, and teaching. I wanted to learn what I wanted and never cared about the prerequisites. But I finally did start working in the field of social service and launched a bunch of pilot projects that became programs in quite a few well-known institutions. Not interested in titles, I bounced around from project to project. It was the thrill of the challenging adventures I needed and sought. Can you sense and relate? Good! Let’s move on.

The Pull of Mania, and the People Who Cared

Second! Through it all, I was having bouts with the reckless, irresponsible, and defiant grandiosities associated with “MANIA!” And without it, I was sad, depressed, and lonely. Mania was my fix, my high, my drug, even though it was often followed by a crash. But I didn’t understand it or know how to control it. And that’s another story worth a chapter all its own. What is important is the two people who cared enough not only to spot and identify the problem but to point me in the right direction at the near cost of losing their jobs. They overstepped their boundaries and broke protocol. No matter what you may be going through, we must believe that there are people out there who really care and go beyond titles, degrees, and imposed limits. Seek and find the help you need.

The Stigma That Still Hurts

Third! And perhaps the most painful. It’s easy to get compassion from friends and family when you break a bone or are sick in the hospital. But mental illness – that’s a taboo few people want to understand and be a part of. And that, my friends, is yet another story worth a chapter all its own. But for now – forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Labels are but limiting stigmas to ignore

There was this person made a client stat!

Dismissed by standards and put out to face life’s rivers

In a leaky boat full of issues left unresolved.

An overwhelming Fight Flight full of experiences left untold

While Now Left All Alone

without a paddle to steer toward nearby safer shores

or compass to navigate the open seas ahead

Where lurking in the surrounding waters,

a pack of small piranhas waiting to nip one’s dangling limbs,

swarming sharks awaiting one’s daring leap of faith

and whales able to make one’s essence completely disappear

when this person made a client stat finally comes to say

Enough! Time to just throw in the towel

And to hell let it all simply go.

Say what? Just like that?

Filled with doubt and void of hope for chance

To turn things round by round around

Throw in the towel and say to hell with it all.

Wow! Here comes one more person made a client stat

predestined to go underground

Till came that angel from who knows where

To break that mental ball and chain

where then that person no longer client stat but freed

to steer with paddle/compass now well in hand

Toward horizons new where a victory feast does wait

For those that simply just believe … And So!

Till the fat lady sings! Till that last bell brung and rung!

Keep Getting Up and simply just believe

YOU’RE MORE THAN WHAT’S AT HAND

Cause labels are but limiting stigmas to ignore

When new horizons still wait to be explored

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About the Author: Jose M. Yrizarry is a Puerto Rican poet, activist, environmentalist, entrepreneur, advocate, and former teacher/counselor. Seeking to illuminate the experiences of those exploited by systems driven by profit. Thus, for the voiceless to be heard.

For truth. For justice. For tomorrow’s children. Jose M. Yrizarry dares to take a stand.

Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-wooden-boat-on-lake-4078070/

The opinions and views expressed in any guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of www.rtor.org or its sponsor, Laurel House, Inc. The author and www.rtor.org have no affiliations with any products or services mentioned in the article or linked to therein. Guest Authors may have affiliations to products mentioned or linked to in their author bios.