This is the first half of the essay on what happened to my friendships when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The second half follows immediately.
For me bipolar disorder has been all about loss. Certainly having to stop work well before retirement age was a dreadful loss for me to bear: so much of my identity, of my feelings of self-worth and purpose, of the meaningfulness of my life, were rooted in my work. As Alice, the main character in the novel Still Alice, so succinctly says:
“[Alice] felt like the biggest part of her self, the part she’d praised and polished regularly on its mighty pedestal, had died.” Lisa Genova, Still Alice, pp. 187-188
But leaving work early also resulted in another significant loss, that of friendships, because virtually all of my friendships were developed through the workplace. Again Alice expresses my feelings when she describes what she felt when all collegial relationships/friendships seemed to cease.
“ . . . ignored, alienated.” Lisa Genova, Still Alice, p. 198
Alice is a female university professor who loves teaching as much as research; who loves the intellectual challenge of her work; who loves the variety of interactions with her Faculty colleagues and with colleagues at other universities; who actually thinks of her Faculty colleagues as family; and who is diagnosed when she is 50 years old with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease–and whose life is then turned upside down. Much of this portrayal could describe me, except that I have never thought of my colleagues as family and that I was 52 when I was diagnosed with treatment-resistant bipolar disorder type II. Early on-set Alzheimer’s and bipolar disorder are very different conditions, yet I saw myself reflected in many of the fictional Alice’s experiences, as the two examples above demonstrate.
There are few people in whose friendship I am confident. With all those whom I call friends–both those who live locally and those who live at a distance–the burden of maintaining the relationship has fallen on my shoulders. If I did not periodically initiate communication, I do not know, I really do not know, if I ever would hear from these friends, if, in fact, we are still, or ever were, friends. What does it mean, that I must initiate all communications? What does that say about the state of our friendship, if our relationship can still so be called? Do these people wish, in some hidden place, that I would stop getting in touch? Have I, god forbid, become a nuisance?
For years now I have tried to puzzle out the answers to these questions. (I know the simplest thing to do would be to ask them, but I do not have the fortitude for that, nor would I wish to put them on the spot that way.) All my efforts to comprehend the situation, a most painful endeavour, have led to five possible explanations. The first I reject. The next two I believe may very well play some role in explaining the changed communication patterns between me and my friends; the fourth and fifth, a large role, the main role.
My friends are afraid of disturbing me when I am unwell (not a viable explanation).
Since 2005 I have been obviously high-functioning and quite capable of interacting with individuals and groups for considerable periods of time. All my local friends have observed this. Besides, e-mail–available to both local and long-distance friends–circumvents this fear, by allowing me to respond in my own time, whenever I am able to. A wish not to disturb me when I am unwell may be offered as a rationale for leaving initiation of contact to me, but it does not seem a very credible one.
I am invisible in the lives of my friends (fair explanation). In the case of friends who live locally, I no longer am physically present to them as I once was–we do not see each other in the hallways, at coffee, in Faculty and committee meetings, during our shared projects. Thus I am invisible to them and consequently not considered when social plans are being made. I want and need to be visible again; the only route open to me is the initiation of contacts, because no one else will do it.
My friends have experienced changes in personal and professional circumstances (fair explanation). A few of my friends have had their duties and responsibilities at work considerably increased, and three have had major occurrences in their personal lives. Perhaps others have experienced something similar that I do not yet know about. Such happenings could easily have an effect on the frequency of our communications, and perhaps on who initiates them. So, again I am the one who must make the effort to maintain the friendship if it is to be maintained.
The second half of this essay follows immediately.
Confronting Bipolar Disorder 