"On The Edge of Insanity"

      I can feel it sometimes…when the sadness drifts too deep, when the anxiety robs me of all my breath, when the darkness fills behind my eyes…I can feel it. A hidden knowing. A gentle tug. A pulsating fear. I don’t know where it is, but I can feel it. I wander into the rolling meadow. The dew droplets on the early morning grass are cool beneath my feet. A gentle mist bathes me in morning’s lustrous glow. But the darkness lingers. I can feel its closeness. The ground before me falls away crashing into the turbulent ocean down below. The skies burst open upon me, raining lighting down on the wave crests, illuminating the ocean in gruesome light. The clouds violently collide sending sound waves across the tranquil land. I can feel it growing closer, throbbing just before me. My foot slips, just over the edge. Air rushes up my leg, winding up my body until it reaches my head. Terrifying wails pierce my mind. How could I have not heard them before? They are too loud to bear. Demented, tortuous screams flooding every cell in my body. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. The world is spinning, everything spinning. Spinning. Screaming. Tugging. Pulling me downward, but to where I do not know. To the sea. To the murky cliffs. To the darkness. To the absence. Always spinning. To the emptiness. I thrust my body backward, falling hard upon the nascent grass. But I can still feel it; the echo of it is still near. The boundary has been breached. The boundary between real and unreal, between light and dark, between sanity and insanity. It has been breached. I scramble to my feet. My legs tremble. I stand alone, transfixed, teetering on the edge of insanity.

INTRODUCTION

“'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

     I began suffering from OCD when I was eighteen years old. A few years later, I developed bipolar disorder. Fighting these disorders has been the greatest battle of my life. I decided to document my struggles in order to help people better understand these oft misunderstood disorders. I wanted to help those who suffer from them by sharing my own experiences. I wanted to help friends and family of those who suffer better understand what their loved ones are going through. I wanted to challenge the long-held stigma that mental disorders are merely a sign of mental weakness. So I put pen to paper. This book was written at two different times in my life. Parts I through V were written when I was twenty-six years old during a manic phase in my bipolar cycle and at a time when I thought my OCD was cured. Parts VI through X were written when I was twenty-nine years old during the worst of my OCD and bipolar symptoms.

Falling Off the Wagon and Being Dragged Four Miles

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Henry David Thoreau

     I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of lying to those around me about what is really going on. I’m tired of pretending to be fine when I am anything but. If people are going to know me, then they are going to need to know all of me, even the flaws. My name is Emily M. Watson. I am a thirty-two-year-old aspiring author, makeup artist, and photographer, and I have been suffering from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar disorder for the past ten years. 

     I was once a normal girl. I led a small but meaningful life. I grew up in small-town America, second star to the right and straight on past Cracker Barrel. My dad had his own business as a computer programmer, and my mother was a historical reenactor. Me, well, I was the shy girl in school, clever but socially awkward. I graduated fourth in my high school class and went on to receive a BS in physics. But, I fancied myself a jack-of-all-trades, conversant in all major fields of study. I had a large group of friends that regularly met for nights on the town…dinner, movie, and shopping—lots of shopping. And I had a promising future to look forward to with an infinite number of doors open to me. I was poised to enter adulthood, ready to set off on my own and follow my dreams, but all that changed in a week…in a day…in an hour…in a minute, and I would never be the same again.

     In 2001, I began showing visible signs of a mental illness, though I wouldn’t be diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) until 2004. With the exception of my parents, I kept my disorders from everyone, only recently revealing that there was a problem. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t believe in bipolar disorder, OCD, and other mental disorders. I thought they were imaginary illnesses, and those who claimed to have them were merely weak-minded. I don’t know whether my belief came from television, movies, or perhaps the fact that I had never been really sick in my life. My brain had always functioned perfectly. In my thinking, if you're sad, get over it. There are people out there with far worse problems than you. If you're anxious, just calm yourself down or do something relaxing, like listening to music or getting a massage. If you have OCD…well, that is just absurd. How can anyone helplessly feel compelled to engage in such senseless habits as washing your hands for fifteen minutes or repetitively turning a light on and off? We are each in control of our own actions; we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to. Even after the doctors explained to me that these disorders were real medical problems resulting from miscommunications in the brain, I still felt hesitant to tell others. However much we may have learned about these conditions in the past few years, there is still a stigma attached to their names—the stigma that they are not real illnesses. With all the new research coming in, people who suffer from these disorders should be able to come out from the shadows to faces filled with understanding and compassion. However, society as a whole is not that enlightened. After all, we have celebrities gracing every medium from the newspapers to the Internet, preaching that these disorders should not be treated with medication as any genuine or proper illness would be, but rather treated using meditation, diet, and faith in religion. These are all good things to help the mind and soul, but there comes a point with real medical illnesses when your symptoms are so severe that modern medicine is needed. 

     By 2006, after having suffered from OCD for five years, I was a mere shadow of my former self. The spark of light that exists in all humans had faded from me. I may have been alive, but I wasn’t living. OCD had become my life, consuming every part of me. Obsessive, anxious, and paranoid thoughts flooded my mind every second of every day. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I was locked in a mental prison from which I couldn’t escape. I was on the edge of insanity, and if someone didn’t help me soon, I was bound to fall into its dark, bottomless depths. What do I do when everything that I liked about myself is gone? I was often told what great potential I had. Everyone who knew me expected me to do great things. What a disappointment I must be. I am nothing now, just a broken machine. Worthless. I wanted to die.

     When 2008 rolled around, I was delivered another severe blow. Not only did I suffer from OCD, but it turns out I also suffered from bipolar disorder, an unsettling revelation made apparent only after I started on an SSRI, a class of drugs for treating OCD. Up to that point, my alternating periods of anxiety and depression were seen merely as a reaction to my OCD. But after my breakdown one dark Thanksgiving, it was evident I was suffering from a severe bipolar disorder. How could I not have seen it before? How could it have taken this long to be diagnosed? By the dawn of 2010, there was little left of my former self; years of OCD and bipolar disorder had stripped away at my body and soul. I was nothing now, just a waste of space unable to contribute to society, unable to lead a normal life.

     The horrible thing about fighting these disorders is no one can see it. To the outside world, I am normal. Even in the performance of my absurd rituals, no one can see any wounds. No one truly knows the battle that is waged within me every minute. Every day I am withstanding a brutal attack on my mind. Inside I am bleeding and broken, crawling through land mines to find my way out, out of the hell I am in and back home. But no one can see that, so no one knows how gut-wrenching these disorders are. But those who live it know.

     It is scary to openly reveal one’s flaws when it is common nature to conceal them. But I have decided to write my experiences down, however embarrassing that they may be, with the hopes that it will comfort those who suffer and educate those who do not understand. I figured I could write this book one of two ways. I could tell the cleaned-up version, the one where I withhold some of the darkest details and keep myself looking good, or I could tell the truth, the true horror of it all, where you get to see what the disorders are really like, but where I come off not looking so good. I chose the latter. If I am going to do this, then I am going to do this all the way. I won’t do anyone any good by telling the cleaned-up version. Now, I am not a medical doctor or a psychiatrist. I have not spent years studying mental disorders or counseling the troubled. However, I have spent the past ten years suffering from severe OCD and bipolar disorder, and in my opinion that makes me more than qualified to write this book.