Background - I am clinically diagnosed Bipolar Disorder patient from India who has been suffering from this disease for the past 3-4 years. Quick background history about me - It is genetical. My maternal grandma committed suicide due to schizophrenia in 1998, my maternal uncle is homeless in his 50s due to schizophrenia, my dad lost his job due to schizophrenia and my maternal aunt had bipolar and she died of cancer in 2017.
Let's first talk about what bipolar is. It is a mood disorder where a person experiences Mania and depression. Depressed and depression is not the same. In depression you don't have the energy to get out of bed, you don't feel like doing anything. You lose interest in all your hobbies. Nothing makes sense anymore. Personal hygiene goes out of the window. Even taking small steps seem like climbing Mount Everest. In the summer of 2018, I hadn't showered for 3 months in that hot humid weather of Kolkata. I used to stay alone and I didn't even have the energy to go out and have food. Sometimes I would go without eating for 4-5 days. During my manic phase I couldn't sleep for 2-3 days at a stretch.
I had 22 backlogs. I studied all semester and attended all classes but for the love of God I couldn't clear a single exam. I used to have 12, 3 hour exams in a week. Sometimes my body would give up and I wouldn't even go to my university to give exams. I would just fall asleep. I couldn't find a way out. I thought all hope was lost. Watch People Die became my favorite subreddit. I used to study various techniques of how people can die and what are the best and worst ways. Which are painless and which are not and which is the quickest way to die. I tried Benadryl, plastic bag even thought about buying a helium gas tank. Killing yourself is not that easy. When you are in that situation you would shit your pants. Trust me you would. Killing yourself is one of the toughest things you will ever have to face in life. Death doesn't come that easy.
Depression has two aspects - physiological and psychological. I always had high hopes and dreams. I was a super ambitious person. Hence I never learnt how to deal with failure. When I finally realized that I have to quit JU there was no other option left. I was clueless about what I have to do with my life next. I am a very emotional person but strongly logical too. I came to my senses and realized that if I live in this country with just high school graduation degree I would have to beg in the streets for the rest of my life. I would never get more than 10-20k salary for the rest of my life. My parents invested in me to support them in their old age, I was their backup plan because being the eldest child of the family I have huge responsibilities. But here I was a total failure, couldn't even take care of myself and stand on my own feet then how am I supposed to take care of others? And if I continued this way, my retirement plan during my old age would be just to produce kids and hope they make something out of their lives and save my loser ass.
When I returned back to my hometown, the society was toxic af! They kept on asking me,"what I was doing?" , "why I am not doing a job already?", "how many more years would I be taking to complete my studies and getting a job?" and many other questions which made me feel like a total failure. For 1 month, I thought about killing myself again. There was a pond nearby my house and everyday I would stare at it and think that this is my destiny and this is where my body would end. Drowning is a very painful process. Each day I would take little steps towards my next suicide attempt. I would stand near the ledge and look into the water and think about taking a leap. But simply my brain and body wouldn't allow it. Human body is anti-suicidal to some extent and the brain prevents you from creating self harm. So a person in a suicidal state has to override that defense mechanism and fight against that instinct while simultaneously trying to kill themselves. It is not that easy. People who commit suicide are not cowards. Finally one day I overcame the defense mechanism and jumped into the water. To my surprise, my survival instinct kicked in and I swam the fuck out of there ASAP.
I realized how tough killing yourself is and realized that I will not succeed in it. But that did not cure the psychological aspect of my depression. It made it only worse. I imagined myself driving auto rickshaws. I did not even have the energy to walk my Bipolar was so bad. I would call my best friends at JU and ask them to keep me as a servant in their homes for the rest of the my life because I did not want to be homeless and poor after my parents died and beg in the streets. I had many foreign friends and I even asked guys to marry me just to get the fuck out of this country so that I could have a new shot at life. I was so desperate to get out of this misery.
My closest friends helped me a lot. They arranged interviews for me. But I was in such a mental state I couldn't even articulate words properly. Sometimes I would travel 40 kms to go to a job interview for a data entry operator job for 5000 rupees a month. I saw a lot of high school dropouts in their 40s and 50s on facebook job search groups who were begging for 7-8k rupees monthly salary jobs. I was shocked. I even applied to jobs of security guards, call centers and what not. I tried my best to get out of this misery. But there was no way out.
Finally in January of 2019, I came to know about a guy who took Chemical Engineering in IIT Delhi and fucked up his life and then again started a bachelor's degree in Electrical engineering and completed it and yet he was unemployed and then finally got a shitty job and then cracked CAT and was studying in NITIE at the age of 30+. That gave me hope. He was my inspiration and I embarked on a new journey and today here I am working remotely with two companies from USA in 2020.
Suicide is not a crime. You don't know what a person has to go through each day, each moment of their lives when they are suicidal. I have rapidly cycling bipolar and every now and then I feel suicidal. But I have learnt to deal with it. I just treat it as an emotion and completely ignore it and don't act on my urges and impulses. I would never commit suicide in my life unless I become a liability on others and can't take care of myself anymore.
Depressed and depression are not the same. Stop throwing the world mental health casually. Stop giving lectures on suicide and depression when you have no fucking clue about what that is. Yes, you are the part of the problem. Suicide seems like a permanent solution to all the problems when they are in that suicidal state. Stop being so fake, trashy and toxic. Stop showing fake empathy for people when you are part of the society and the reason which mentally crushed that person. Suicide should not be idealized. But then again who are you to give lectures about whether it is right or wrong. Ask yourself, if the person had not committed suicide but was still in a suicidal state and if you came to know about it. How could you have helped him/her to change their life? Be the change that you want to see in the world and in others.
Depression is a physiological illness not a mental state! It is a illness of the brain. It can't be cured just by not being "depressed" and trying to be happy.
Take a look at this graph to understand bipolar - https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/3mTNGgKEcNsAjTRG8Eho8CimRgMilmTSG8sr7FJl4ekgKPffjnp3i-QWonhgCjXJqYzMr-1bBhEdIR_begKltBCUMOqoC30cIee2YWKSmpnCqzEksv_t0QeacE4e0Q
\^ See the difference between the highs and lows a normal person suffers and a Bipolar person suffers from.
Advice to people suffering from depression/suicidal tendencies : Learn to override your emotions with logic. Don't act on your impulses. It is a very difficult battle but stay strong. Nobody would understand you or your mental state but then again life is a lonely journey. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Life is a struggle, it is an endless fight which you have to deal with everyday. You choose whether you want to fight it or not. But I would say, give life a second chance.
Thanks,
Mentally ill loner abandoned my society and treated like trash.
