Carrie C.
Neha Kinariwalla
“She has blue eyes.” That was the first thing my dad said when I was born. He had blue eyes. It saddens me now to think he was looking for something we had in common from the first moment he saw me. All babies are born with blue eyes, but mine turned hazel. As long as he lived, he never knew we actually did have something in common. We both had bipolar disorder.
In 1991, my mom told me my dad had “manic depression.” To me, that called to mind a pot of boiling water, lid vibrating, steam escaping, about to explode at any moment. He’d spend thousands of dollars on Rolex watches and high-end stereo equipment, then he’d lock himself in his bedroom for days. One day, he’d affectionately tease me until I giggled, the next day, he’d angrily snap at me for no reason. His outbursts terrified me. I exhausted myself trying to make sense of his actions, always taking them personally. He missed my ballet, piano and chorus recitals, and he was absent from most of my birthday dinners. I was the girl with daddy issues, which undiagnosed bipolar disorder made more complicated.
I’m an only child, and my mom is a psychotherapist. Our family dynamic was—to say the least—unusual. Although my mom is a warm, caring person, she was forced to spend much of her energy taking care of my dad as well as raising me essentially by herself. When I was a little girl, my mom and I were close. We’d come together in solidarity when my dad was in one of his moods, and that was most of the time.
Growing up, I craved attention. In elementary school, I was the hyperactive loud kid, always getting in trouble for talking too much in class. In high school, I filled my schedule with extracurricular activities and social events, leaving barely enough time to do homework. In college, not only did I have a full schedule of classes and a job, but I also threw myself into activist groups, partied every night of the week, and slept with more people than I could count. I got angry at my dad once I was in college and I’d moved away from home. I impulsively got married at twenty, and I refused to let my dad walk me down the aisle, telling him he’d never been a father to me. I swung back and forth at the mercy of my impulses, and my bipolar disorder was in full force. I jumped between relationships, apartments, jobs, even sexual identities. I shoplifted and got arrested. I slept very little and developed an eating disorder.
My senior year of college, my mom left my dad. He’d been buying guns and shooting holes into the ground. He’d driven hours away to cheap motels and called her threatening suicide. He’d taken pills and had his stomach pumped. He washed and dried my mom’s work suits in the washing machine, shrinking them and hanging them back up on the same hangers. I imagined little doll-sized suits wrinkled and mangled beyond recognition, and my dad—a deranged lunatic—standing over them.
I was restocking neon green lipstick at the punk clothing store where I worked when my mom showed up to tell me that my dad had just killed himself. It was 1998. I was numb for 4 years after his death, until I finally crashed. In 2002, I suffered my first major depressive episode. I felt like I was encased in a black slimy ooze that slowed my mind and body. I cried constantly. Completely unable to function, I went on disability from work for two months. I stayed with my mom while I recovered, and she took care of me like I was her little girl again. Even through my fuzzy fog of depression, I could tell she recognized in me what she’d lived through with my dad, and it scared her. Despite her professional training as a psychotherapist, I knew it was impossible for her not to be frightened seeing her own daughter suffering the same mental illness that killed her husband.
My mom sent me for a psychological evaluation and after six hours of testing, I was given a nine-page document. “Diagnostically, Ms. C’s atypical mood swings seem best accounted for as stemming from a rapid cycling Bipolar II Disorder. The Bipolar II diagnosis well fits her genetic vulnerability around a mood disorder (i.e., her father’s Bipolar diagnosis).” I was horrified to learn I had the same disease that killed my dad. Would I end up dying by suicide too? At that moment, a bipolar diagnosis felt like a death sentence. I started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. I tried antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants and mood stabilizers. The struggle for chemical equilibrium in my brain was grueling, but I finally found a cocktail of medications that helped even out the intensity of my moods.
In 2012, I was married to a controlling, verbally abusive man. My husband had convinced me that everything wrong with our marriage was my fault. It was my second marriage and I wrongly thought I’d be a failure if I got another divorce. My self-esteem was so low I felt worthless. We were renovating our condo, I wasn’t eating enough, and I was barely sleeping. All that stress triggered a manic episode. My racing mind catastrophized everything that went slightly awry. After a nasty argument with my husband, I took a bunch of pills and washed them down with red wine. Even though I knew how it felt to lose someone to suicide, there I was attempting to end my own life. I knew better, but because I was manic, I was driven by impulse alone.
I ended up in the emergency room, strapped to a gurney, and had seizures off and on for 24 hours. I was thrown into and out of consciousness, pulling and kicking against my restraints as reality confronted me. Late at night, I moved from there to an inpatient mental hospital, where the staff showed me to the room that I would be sharing with someone who was just out of jail. I lay awake over the next two nights, unable to sleep due to the many lights that were constantly on, and the lady with schizophrenia down the hall. During the day, she stole everyone's jeans and kept them in a pile in her closet. At night, she would pace up and down the echoing hallway, screaming both sides of an unintelligible argument with herself. I was terrified to be in there, but I held it together and proved I was well enough to be let out after three days. I promised myself I’d never go back.
I can’t forget the look on my mom’s face in the emergency room. I’d put her through what my dad had, and even though I knew better, I did it anyway. That’s what bipolar disorder does. It makes you lose insight, narrowing your focus to a needle point, and everything and everyone else gets lost in the periphery. It’s total self-absorption.
As I began my recovery, I finally understood the gravity of my illness. This mood disorder can be fatal, if not managed properly. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know what happens when I don’t take care of myself and give in to the voices that tell me to stay up a little later tonight or skip my meds. I need to be especially careful when something goes wrong in my life, because any little hiccup can awaken the whispering voice in my head that tells me I can escape by dying. My dad must have heard that same voice. And I don’t want to end up like he did.
It’s ironic that it took my dad’s death for me to finally understand him. It wasn’t until my reaction to his suicide that I was diagnosed bipolar. By accepting my bipolar diagnosis, I was able to make some sense of my dad’s actions, realizing they were neither my fault nor his. I can now see that shoplifting just for the high, sleeping with dozens of strangers, and attempting suicide with pills and wine were symptoms of my mental illness. My dad's outbursts, impulsive spending, impatience, isolation, and even suicide, were the exact same thing, just with a different face. Memory flashes of both his and my actions remind me of this ongoing epiphany, which led me to reconcile all the scary memories of my dad with my discoveries. My diagnosis taught me how to understand and forgive both my dad, and myself.
I have bipolar, but it doesn’t have me. I never knew what to expect with my dad, and I know that every day with this illness is different, but I’m a resilient person. I’ve made it through several major manic and depressive episodes. I’ve also captured a new confidence in myself—not the false, intoxicating delusions of a manic mind, but a real sense of being okay with who I am. I struggle all the time, especially with seductive hypomania, but I do my best to set healthy limits and avoid triggers.
Someone once asked me whether I would get rid of my bipolar disorder if I could. My answer is no. No matter how I’ve arrived at the point where I am now, my past has made me into someone I am proud to be today. I’ve obtained two bachelor's degrees in English and graphic design, NPR's "All Things Considered" broadcast an interview with me, and my artwork has been displayed in national and international art museum exhibits, and a college art school textbook. I’ve been working in the film industry for over 13 years, and I have more than 33 movie and television credits to my name, as well as two Emmy nominations and an Art Director's Guild Award. I’ve also published articles about my experiences in several media outlets. I have a strong support network of health care professionals, friends and family who support me in everything I do.
I’m both a survivor and an advocate. I believe that by telling my story, I can give hope to people whose lives have been affected by bipolar disorder and suicide. I also want to share what I’ve learned to help ease the pain for those who live on after losing someone to suicide, as well as those who’ve survived a suicide attempt. I’m living proof: bipolar diagnosis is not a death sentence.