Out of the Darkness

Religion, Masculinity, and Mental Illness

Photo by Snowscat on Unsplash

For the past several months I have endured a private nightmare. While I’ve alluded to these struggles here and there in my writing, I have deliberately drawn the veil of privacy across this part of my life. I do my best to write from scars, not open wounds. But I think it’s time to tell the story and disclose the mental illness with which I have been diagnosed.

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In December, I felt alienated from the religious community I had given my life to for over half a decade. I won’t go into details – it is enough for me to say that I lost friends and community, and stepped down from my leadership position. The rending of my life was immediate and merciless.

First came the insomnia. So many of my rhythms were inextricably bound to this community, and they were all ripped out root and stem. The result was dislocated sleep and routines cut adrift.

Then came the crippling anxiety that reduced me to a shadow, to a weeping mess in my car, alone. Ruminating, catastrophic thoughts would strike without warning and rack me with such anxiety that I was dry-heaving over the toilet at work.

The anxiety turned into an endless, obsessive life review of everything I ever did wrong. It was like being judged by the Egyptian god Osiris in the afterlife, except Osiris was a terrifying, shrieking neurotic. I’d be crippled by feelings of self-recrimination and hatred for how I might have hurt or wronged people from over a decade ago. I believed I was a fundamentally bad person, and I was electrified from the inside out by the anxiety.

Most of the time, in the aftermath of my departure from my beloved religious community, I would have a weird distance from my feelings. “I feel angry,” I would tell myself, and I knew it was true, but I couldn’t feel the emotion I knew was there. I had no access to these feelings until they melted down like a nuclear reactor, poisoning everything in their proximity.

I was pulled apart by the centrifugal force of wild dichotomies: insane highs — being up till five AM and not at all bothered by how good I felt at such an unconventional time. My writing was also excelling, and entire paragraphs would appear fully formed in my head. I would have to rush to my phone or pen and paper to scribble them all down. And then, other times, devastating lows. I felt overwhelming urges to hurt myself, and I became consumed with fantasies of my death. I’d be overcome by urges to punch myself, cut myself, and destroy myself. I never wanted to act these fantasies out, not really. It was a passive rumination, and more fantasy for the pain to end than anything else. But gradually, I realized that these casual fantasies should be taken seriously – that I shouldn’t have such a blasé attitude towards my well-being.

And there was the weird loneliness of it all. I’d get up, go to work, carry on a conversation, feed myself, and I could tell no one around me recognized my anguish. This was both reassuring and intolerably lonely. I didn’t know how to express to anyone the deep anguish I was feeling, and I still don’t. I could only communicate, with a straight face and direct tone, that I was going through a hard time. Those were the only words I had, and they were completely insufficient.

I couldn’t even describe my anguish to myself. The ferocity of the pain disoriented me. I would plummet down a black hole so dark, so crushing, so horrific, that every thought burned. In the same way mystical transcendence defies description, this emotional pain also does. If I felt this much physical pain I’d be in the hospital for the next 6 months. In the throes of an episode, curled up in the fetal position in bed, I’d think that this was it, I was broken. No one could experience this much suffering and not be broken by it.

And yet, somehow, I would still wake up the next day and be ok enough to get to work, write, and go about my day. I would carry on with my life. And that deeply confused me. How was it possible to go through so much torture and just carry on?

This is a pattern I know all too well. It was my perpetual life cycle for a decade, starting at the age of 16, until I got some medication in my 20s. But it seemed the cycle was back, reignited by the loss of community and status.

I spent 3 months consistently wanting to cut myself and kill myself, and, after the pain became so debilitating I could no longer function, I realized that I needed help. I found a therapist and, after an initial battery of assessments, she told me, bluntly, that I was on the edge of being “high risk” to myself.

Then the darkest day came. I woke up in the morning with a persistent voice in my head: “You suck, you’re a piece of shit, you have no future.” I tried working out to burn off the pain and stifle the feelings. I did dozens of crunches and pushups until I simply collapsed in tears.

I don’t cry easily. I know people who cry gracefully and easily, and they make it look elegant and sweet. I cry as if I am giving birth or being exorcized of a demon — rarely, brutally, with enormous pain and extreme distress. Every crying fit is a battle — with myself, the emotions, the tears themselves.

I realized to my core that I was deeply confused. I didn’t know how to live outside the community I had fallen away from. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I didn’t know how to make new friends. I didn’t know how to function. I felt lost in a big, dark forest.

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I can’t help but feel that this suffering was of a particularly masculine kind. I have all the embarrassing symptoms of a toxically masculine approach to mental health: shame over losing control, a near pathological level of masking my suffering, and a general mortification of tears. Somewhere along the way, I got a notion of what it means to be a man, and nowhere in that vision of manhood is being balled up in the corner crying included or accommodated.

Years ago, a friend of mine had a pet rabbit. The rabbit seemed fine, hopping about, eating rabbit food, when one day, out of the blue, the rabbit was suddenly deathly ill. My friend explained to me that because rabbits are prey animals, they mask their physical suffering and illness so as not to attract predators. This makes it incredibly hard to get veterinary help on time.

Men are rabbits. We demonstrate strength because, like rabbits, we know we are intensely vulnerable. To reveal our weakness means the threat of losing everything – connection, respect, and intimacy with the people we love most. No one likes a whiny man. People – especially in the southern Christian culture in which I was raised – love a strong, self-sacrificing, heroic man. A man complaining about his feelings and the systemic wrongs perpetrated against men gives everyone a gross feeling.

I know this is all stupid and unenlightened, but it feels so deeply ingrained that, when I’m in a state of real suffering, I don’t know how to undo it. Saying “It’s ok to cry” doesn’t remove the certainty that I will lose all trust and connection if I do.

I was also hit hardest in the way many men are hit hardest – the loss of career and status. I stepped away from a leadership position because I was no longer up for the job. This act of self-preservation inflicted an injury that I couldn’t get over. I had tried and failed at a particular career, as a leader, and I was gravely wounded by that admission.

Ultimately – and I’m somewhat embarrassed by this, but it’s true – it was the ministrations of other men that helped me reframe my pain. Gareth, an older gay man and mentor, took me on walks and fielded desperate, sobbing phone calls. He was emotionally rock solid and unfazed by my tears – simultaneously comforting, unabashed, and solidly certain that I would get better; a reassuring combination of nurturing, confident, and strong. He would hold me in a long embrace at the end of every meeting, as if to communicate he wasn’t ashamed of me the way I was ashamed of myself. “I am convinced that this moment is not your forever,” he told me over and over again. 

I eventually confided in my male peers the depths of my suffering, and they received it with grace. (Matt, David, Cody, and Dante, thank you.) I know this all might sound strange to those outside of cultures like the one I was raised in, but men accepting me at my lowest was a significant part of reframing my notion of masculinity around my suffering – a sort of medicine that only other men could provide.

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Slowly - ever so slowly - life started to coalesce into a new equilibrium. This only began when I accepted that my old life was gone and that I had to build a new world outside my old community.

My therapist gently, delicately talked me through emotional hoops, as if she was the dog trainer and I the emotionally mangy, feral dog. She taught me how to experience my feelings, with helpful aids that looked like they came out of a middle-school art class. She helped me accept my present conditions, the uncertainty of change, and the ability to enjoy life right now.

Perhaps most of all, she helped me understand that it’s ok to feel pain over the difficult things that had happened in my life: the brutal rejection I experienced for being gay, the horrible violence and death I witnessed as a teenager, and the ex-gay therapy I had endured. She taught me that I could say more than “It’s ok, I got over it.”

I wish I could say it was all over, but it wasn’t. Despite all the dust settling, I unexpectedly experienced the worst type of day: an abyss day. Emily Dickenson wrote of this abyss:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down –

And hit a World, at every plunge

I cannot imagine a better description: I dropped down and down and hit a world at every plunge. It is a psychedelic trip that hurdles you away from divine light and into the deepest reaches of hell. I was paralyzed by psychic pain, curled in the fetal position in bed, leaking tears. Every thought hurt, like putting weight on a stress fracture in my soul. I did everything I knew to do – went on walks, talked to friends, and forced myself to not be alone. It was all for naught.

I was finally desperate enough, and I went to the doctor to get my meds adjusted. I did abysmally on the mental health screening, and she referred me for a psych evaluation, which I had somehow avoided for many long years.

The results of the evaluation were simultaneously revelatory and unsurprising: I have Bipolar II with psychotic features.

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Bipolar II is the sinister little brother of Bipolar I. It is typified by intense shifts in mood between major depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes. Hypomania is a more moderate form of mania that can be easily masked as merely feeling good or high productivity. The plummets into the abyss, however, are extreme.

Bipolar II is a permanent condition and debilitating if not treated. The disruption posed by the episodes results in a significant loss of time, relationships, focus, and productivity. It is a serious condition.

The “psychotic features” part needs unpacking.

I exist on the border of madness. Most of the time, I am sober. But, put me under too much stress, or dip me too far into sleeplessness, and I start to become paranoid and delusional. In one memorable moment years ago, I was convinced the ceiling fan was a monster that wished me bodily harm. When the lows become incredibly low, people’s faces become hideous and distorted. I have, at times, been paralyzed in bed convinced I would die if I allowed myself to fall asleep. When I moved to a small town, I was racked by the conviction that the town would shut down and I would be trapped in an Appalachian Mad Max. Other times, I’ve become paranoid that the FBI or some shadowy agency was spying on me.

It’s difficult to describe just how reasonable these delusions felt. I don’t remember them as aberrations of thought, but as entirely reasonable, if horrifying, emotional responses. I only know in retrospect, with a sober mind, that they were the demons of a man teetering on madness.

Mercifully, sleep and meds seem to control these deliriums, but they still strike if I’m not vigilant about my routines. These routines feel like they are under constant threat of breaking, especially when the hypomania makes me feel invincible and convinces me that 4 AM is a great time to be chasing sex or writing long essays.

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After the assessment, at the age of 35, my entire life suddenly clicked into place, like the end of a Sherlock Holmes story. For the first time, I have a word to describe what I’ve been living with for 2 decades. The relief is extreme.

I already knew that a demon had crept into my skull around the age of 16 when the highs and lows began. The highs were magnificent periods of grandiosity and creativity. The lows were periods of indescribable anguish. From 16 on, my life became a high-speed car chase of despair, recklessness, and broken relationships. I started cutting myself at 16 years old and kept it up for a decade straight. My upper arms and legs are now an intricate latticework of faded scars. I threatened suicide, terrifying my parents. I left my school because I cut myself deeply one day in the school bathroom. I failed my way through college, in part because I was constantly being disrupted by the extremes of my mood.

When I was 26, my doctor, wise to my condition before I was, prescribed antipsychotics that probably saved my life. There is a clear delineation in my life between pre-lamotrigine and post-lamotrigine. In the before-times, I burned every bridge, couldn’t hold down a job, and emotionally exhausted my long-suffering boyfriend. In the after-times, I can hold down work, have healthy relationships, and I now have a serious episode once a year or two instead of once a month.

I have judged myself horribly for symptoms that I didn’t know were symptoms. I have mercilessly beat myself up for the years lost to my illness, setting me back in ways that I could only assume were my fault. I have judged myself for my inability to control myself in the past – be it during hypomanic phases or depressive phases. While everyone else was passing their classes, finding jobs, getting married, landing internships, and building their careers, I was howling at the moon.

I cannot describe the relief of finally letting all of that go. I have a disability; that disability has a name. For the first time in my life, I can let all that shame fall away and commit myself to managing the symptoms. The bipolar II diagnosis is the year of Jubilee, finally erasing all the debts I have tormented myself with.

The other relief is that I now have a word that carries the gravitas of the hell I’ve lived with. The hell itself defies words. I don’t know how to articulate the anguish, in the moment or retrospect. I could only get on with my life in silence.

But now I have a word: bipolar. There is a cultural heaviness and fear around the word that communicates something of the nightmare I have lived with. I can’t describe an episode. Instead, I can just say, “I have bipolar” and people grasp the gravity of the situation.

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So, what now?

I’m in treatment, I’m doing better, and while I’m still cycling, the effects are slowly being mitigated. I’m still reeling from the loss of my religious community and struggling to find my place in the world, but the sting is diminishing with time. I’m also trying to mitigate the effects of stifling, frightened masculinity, and update my notions of manhood and strength to include Bipolar II.

I am also confronting the gravity of my situation. I am saddled with an illness for life. I already suspected this, but the weight has come home for me. This is for life.

After medication, the best treatments for bipolar are behavioral: healthy habits and consistent routines. I can’t smoke weed, take drugs, or drink alcohol. Bipolar forces me to live as a sort of lay monastic, and observe regular rhythms and routines. I must be hyper-vigilant about my sleep, maintain a strict schedule, and therefore can’t stay out late with friends. Working out and good diet help me feel better, and daily meditation is perhaps the most important skill I have ever learned for changing my relationship with suffering (shout out to Sam Harris’s Waking Up app, which is my daily companion.) I’m reducing how much I work to avoid the negative impacts of chronic stress.

Bipolar imposes constraints on my life, but there are constraints on everyone’s lives, and I find a strange solace in this fact. I fought against all constraints in my 20’s; now I am finally accepting them. I am reminded of a dialogue from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle:

‘In your language you have a form of poetry called a sonnet...It is a very strict form of poetry, is it not? ...There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?...And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?'

'No.'

'But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants, doesn't he?'

'Yes." Calvin nodded again.

'So,' said Mrs. Whatsit.

'So what?'

'Oh, do not be stupid, boy!' Mrs. Whatsit scolded. 'You know perfectly well what I am driving at!'

'You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but with freedom within it?'

'Yes,' Mrs. Whatsit said. "You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.”

Bipolar II has given me the form – a form more rigid and punishing than others, perhaps, but it is my responsibility to create a noble life within the form regardless – to write the sonnet to the best of my ability.

This is true of all of us: we are all given the form of our lives, and we must all accept it. In this way, I am no different from you. We all carry the burden of writing the sonnet.