Essay: Living with a parent who suffers from Bipolar Disorder (personal essay)

Here we go again… the Cycle of Bipolar. Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes sporadic mood changes. Lack of energy versus having an excess of energy. No motivation to carry out day to day tasks efficiently. Living with a parent who suffers from Bipolar Disorder can be extremely difficult as it challenges all aspects of your relationship with them. The upside of living with someone suffering from this illness gives you a deeper understanding of mental illness and certainly makes you a more compassionate person.
My Dad suffers from Bipolar 2, the less severe of the two types but can still be as debilitating. Sometimes it seems as though my dad has two personalities – like Jekyll and Hyde. Growing up living in such a mentally unstable environment was really confusing and upsetting as a child, as I didn’t know which dad I would be waking up to in the morning. One side of him is the most loving, caring, thoughtful father you could ever ask for. Just his smile and bright blue eyes could light up a room and could instantly fill you with love and happiness. The other side of him carries a black cloud above him, his eyes go grey with sadness and his heart goes black with depression and self-loathing. His moods are erratic and he could spend days or weeks in his room without any contact with my mum and I. During these episodes it felt best for him not to be present although the lack of my Dads presence really took a toll on myself and the family.
During manic episodes, my Dad’s animated behaviour was sometimes fun, yet other times just obnoxious. I can remember laughing uncontrollably for what felt like hours, at his jokes and stories about his past, leaving me in stitches. Shopping was another activity we enjoyed together – although my Mum would repeatedly suffer the shock and disbelief of the resulting credit card bills. My Dad’s Mania meant he suffered from Insomnia which often meant I did also. Unpredictability was the ‘norm’ in my routine. I would regularly awaken with me getting dragged out of my bed for a ‘night time adventure’ which usually just consisted of driving about meaningless places for hours. Dosing was impossible as my Dad’s train of thought was translating into a racing speech which was hard to compete with. This left me feeling drained and mentally exhausted. On the other hand, my Dad’s insensitive comments would cut through me like knife, leaving me feeling insecure and unloved. His antagonistic behaviour often resembled a school bully; unfortunately my school bully lived under the same roof as me, unable to escape the verbal abuse I endured daily. My first reaction would be to run to my room and isolate myself, like any victim of bullying would. However, the habitual insults eventually took its toll and my response slowly turned to confrontation.
My Dad missed birthdays and Christmases due to his extreme mood swings. By the time I reached 10 I was used to this and it became the normal routine. Sometimes I wouldn’t see my Dad for weeks, although he would be under the same roof. At times I could be talking to him, but it would be like talking to an empty shell, with no emotion or attachment. This caused me to put up a wall between him and I and this resulted in our relationship deteriorating. As long as I can remember my Dad suffered from this illness. From a young age I tried to understand what it was like for him to feel manic then depressive. When he was manic, he had endless reserves of energy requiring little or no sleep. Unrealistic goals and ideas, not to mention the countless promises he made but couldn’t keep. However, what goes up must come down and when the emotion, money and energy was spent everything would crash to the floor and he would disappear into a pit of depression that could last up to a couple of weeks.
As a young child, having a bipolar parent left me feeling insecure. Never being able to navigate the emotional parameters I would face daily. It could also be a day of unpredictability, irrational behaviour, or verbal abuse. As a teen, having a bipolar parent made me angry and detached. I was angry at the times he couldn’t be there for my birthdays and Christmases. I was angry at the total disrespect he had for my mum and I and I was angry that he could never take responsibility for his actions. I learned at a young age to emotionally detach myself from the unstable and chaotic environment. Living with a bipolar parent for 16 years has been extremely painful. There were a lot of sad times. I had to work hard to accept my Dad for who he is- I know he loved me through the good and the bad periods I have worked hard to understand people who suffer from mental illness, they are not in control of their brain processes and don’t choose to be that way. I have also developed a deep interest in psychology which I hope to pursue as a career. My relationship with my Dad has got exceedingly better due to educating myself about his illness and both of us communicating with one another about the impact that it has on us as a family.
I often wonder what effect or impact that this will have on my future intimate relationships. Statistically, people who have had an emotionally inconstant parent can have trust and intimacy issues later in life. Not feeling safe enough to trust or get close to people for fear that they then withdraw their affections can have a devastating effect on your self-worth. Maybe it would become easy and safer not to put myself in those positions of intimacy in order not to revisit those painful feelings and emotions. Do I really want to experience my relationships like that?
So my aim is to try to understand how the disorder impacts my dad and ultimately all of us and what effect it has on the way we relate to each other. To work on healing the broken bits of our relationship. I know the scars will always be there, but with education and understanding and lots of love they might fade and stop being so angry and sore.
I love my dad and I know he loves me with all his heart. It would be too easy just to blame him, but I don’t want to face a future of then blaming my dad for all the problems that might arise in my future relationships. This has been our experience and I am determined to take responsibility at this point to make sure that it doesn’t stop me living I deserve.