When you lose who you are, the only thing that helps you keep it together is holding on to your past, however distant and intangible it seems at the time. It is what you were, and still believe yourself to be. I’ve now been in hospital a handful of times. All I can say for myself is, when I’m manic, that’s not me. It can’t be. I don’t allow it to be.

It’s strange looking at people, looking at you – like they think you’re crazy. It’s almost inexplicably strange when it occurs to you that these people happen to be in the medical profession. You would think that they’d be used to this. You would think that they’d at the very least, accept that you’re ill. They do, after all, see this sort of thing every day. But no, that was not the impression I got when I found myself surrounded by several hesitant looks from frightened psychiatric nurses. What was worse was that they weren’t just exuding fear, but also embarrassment. It was as if I were no longer seen as human, but as an animal to be caged and tranquilised – exactly what they wanted to do with me. What I disliked even more was that once I became more myself, I could tell that certain nurses were still uncomfortable around me. I got the unnerving suspicion that my manic self had formed permanent impressions of who I was. I was fortunate enough that this was only the case with new nurses who had seen me for the first time. The only thing that alleviated the weight of shame was the nurses who’d known me from my previous stint in hospital knew my ‘better’, self and treated me as such. They knew I was a much more intelligible, articulate, sentient being, and did what I was told in my ‘normal state’. I took my meds. I ate my meals. I didn’t try to hit the nurses. I didn’t resist the security guards.

Most of what happens when I’m manic is a total blank. Feeling like an animal to be caged in the hospital lobby is just one moment: a blip in my story. I don’t know what led up to it, or what events came after it. Using such memories to piece together the bipolar experience is like using mere, intermittent flickers of light to guide you down a dark tunnel. As few and rare as these moments may be, what I do remember is the intensity of it all. There are some indescribable sensations that seem to seem to transcend what I know to be the physical world. It is a heightened state – a “super-reality”. The rest is such a blur. It is as if the manic episodes permeate the mind, like a hurricane, then leave a cerebral wasteland in its wake. It’s like my memory, or lack thereof, tries to save me from the pain and embarrassment, but it doesn’t save those around me, nor does it save me from what they think of me afterwards. I lose face. I lose trust. I lose a part of who I am.