High-pomania!

Keeping the wolf from the door.

I’m not sure yet if I will post this (*felt cute, may delete later).

I’m just exorcising this mini-demon. It’s not even really a demon. It’s more that I need to exercise this over-enthusiastic puppy, and if I do it right, he can even eventually be properly trained and made useful around the home.

Welcome to Hypomania!

I finished my last Medium post with a footnote about my possible bipolar diagnosis, which has now been made a little more solid by my current foray into hypomania.

Mind, the UK Mental Health Charity, has this definition: ‘Some people find hypomania and mania enjoyable, whereas for other people it is a very uncomfortable, distressing and unpleasant experience. Hypomania is a milder version of mania.”

For you guys, this is all good. I mean, I’m awake sometimes more than 20 hours a day and I need to use that time and my whirring brain somehow, and I’m at least back wanting to write again, because – Praise Jebus! – I actually am not feeling depressed.

I’m not sure how profound that looks from the outside, but if you’ve ever experienced prolonged periods of depression, to hit a genuine polar (hoho) opposite and get to ride it for a bit and use it creatively, maybe you can begin to see why people do find hypomania enjoyable, and even possibly seductive.

“Yeah, baby, you’ve got access to all your bank accounts and who gives a toss about tomorrow, right? Fuck that shit!”

It’s also why actual mania can be so horribly, appallingly destructive. Because it’s exactly the same feeling, only turned up to 11 with all the safety features removed, the brakes cut, your consideration for others bypassed, all the colours cranked up to eye-bleeding brilliance, and you’re on shitloads of cocaine. Yeah, baby, you’ve got access to all your bank accounts and who gives a toss about tomorrow, right? Fuck that shit!

People going through full manic episodes are sometimes sectioned under the Mental Health Act for their own safety. They can end up, if left untreated, in the midst of a full psychotic episode with little or no warning, where they may start to believe things that aren’t true, hear voices, see things that aren’t there, or even do things that are genuinely dangerous to themselves or others; from sexual promiscuity to drug taking, gambling and extreme spending, to walking out into traffic. They can hurt themselves and their families, and their relationships need to be exceptionally strong to survive what can be months of personality changes and extreme behaviour.

Or they can be where I am, right now, with it’s milder cousin, hypomania. Here in glorious technicolour, working with that slightly irritated, sleep deprived edginess that doesn’t quite understand why everyone else isn’t here with me too. Really keen to tell everyone all about it, as well - because it’s great, you know? Have you heard the Good News…?

And it is interesting. And I am mostly managing, and channeling all this energy into writing, and letting it burn itself through me this way.

Because I know what else could be out there, in the wild woods, and Jesus Christ I am very carefully avoiding going there.

A managed hypomania diagnosis means I should in theory be fine carry on like this. But even this brief coasting on exhilaration can’t mask the lurking fear I have of tipping over into true mania, and crossing over that line.

I have to be very strict with this puppy, or I’m not allowed to keep it, you see. I’ve seen what wolves can do.

So, anyway, I went to see my doctor about two weeks ago because I’d been so depressed I’d reached the point of barely eating and not getting out of bed, and being generally exhausted, along with everything that goes with that. We (I say ‘we’ because I simply didn’t have the agency to do stuff for myself at this point) had booked the appointment about a week before that. It was during the intervening period between making and attending the appointment, that a letter arrived from PIP saying, “Hey, by the way, you won’t have been expecting this but we’ve stopped giving you any money and you’re therefore not getting carers allowance any more either.”

It did literally say “you won’t have been expecting this”.

We’d recently been confused by a notification of a bounced Direct Debit, amongst a few other unexpected cashflow discrepancies. But we’d been focused on my illness and money was always tight, so we hadn’t panicked until now.

Yes, gentle reader, they had stopped my PIP payment and carers allowance, and notified me about it by letter – which of course got to us after they’d the date they stopped our payments.

The letter went on to detail exactly why they felt I no longer qualified for PIP following my most recent PIP consultation in December, and said that “there was no evidence clinical or otherwise of distress from an enduring mental health condition where the symptoms were so severe you were unable to function”.

I would say at this point that the report they had from said consultation included my most recent psychiatry report which mentioned my possible bipolar diagnosis and my ‘enduring and severe’ anxiety and depression which currently prevents me from working.

“My wife and I have been, in turn, bewildered, enraged, then bewildered again.”

I’m on Limited Capacity for Work following a Work Capability Assessment last year, but was unlucky enough to be assessed after the financial aspect of it was abolished, so don’t actually receive any remuneration for that. But Universal Credit understand that I have an ‘enduring and severe’ mental health condition that prevents me from working, and a nice young man even checks in with me to make sure it’s still there every month, and asks how things are going, if I’ve been to any new appointments or if anything exciting has happened.

He got a fun phone call this month.

Oh and kudos here for the employees at Universal Credit for going out of their way to try and be helpful in all this when it was neither their circus nor their monkeys.

As it is, I’m still trying to find the right balance of medication, which is a slow and careful process. But the actual aim of all this is to maybe at some point one day be well enough to work part time, or go back to college or volunteer or do something productive with my life.

God, that looks odd written down. But that is what I would like, one day. But it’s been a while since we did anything but live in the now. Huh.

The PIP letter also went on to say some other stuff that was more bollocks. Including that I had a full range of motion in my left leg when I was actually on crutches with a ruptured tendon in that ankle at the time, which is still healing now. So, there’s that, too.

My wife and I have been, in turn, bewildered, enraged, then bewildered again.

So, I wrote a tightly worded letter back, and now we wait for them to do a Mandatory Reconsideration. However, whilst it may be Mandatory it doesn’t actually have a time frame it’s Mandatorily within, and in the meantime we are receiving £500+ per month less than we were. Which is two thirds of our Government Mandated income.

In better news, having had this letter, and realised that this was why we suddenly had SO much less money than we should have, and having taken a breath after reading it, gone WTAF? and then written back, I was suddenly still running on all that adrenalin, and it wasn’t running out. At all.

Nope.

Still running.

Still running.

And now, writing.

It’s probably been two years since I’ve felt anything close to this, and I’m so much more self aware and better informed now than I ever have been previously, which is very handy. Hence us making a same day doctor’s appointment a couple of days ago, and my explaining how I was feeling to the on call doctor; which is a bit odd when a lot of your symptoms are ‘positive’ things.

But this was a very nice on-call doctor who even picked up the phone during my appointment to consult with what turned out to be a somewhat less on-the-ball colleague. I could hear her obviously trying to avoid mentioning what she thought my diagnosis was before discussing it with him, and him not letting her:

“Hi, Useless Man, can I pop in to see you quickly to discuss my patient? I just need to ask a couple of questions about some symptoms…”

[…]

“There are just one or two things I need to clarify…”

[…]

“I’m just Not Very Certain about some Symptoms that this patient Seems to have, who is In My Office Right Now…”

[…]

“I just think this patient is hypomanic so can I please talk to you about them now please? Thank you.”

She was talking to That Doctor at my surgery. I think every Group Practice has one, where people ring up for appointments, ask who it’s with and then go “Oh actually, I’d rather…”

He’s not that old, per se, but his attitudes are. He’s brusque and patronising and everyone I know who’s seen him has A Story.

Back to the plot, anyway.

Luckily for me and my “non-enduring” mental health conditions, I now had energy to spare, which was very handy for formulating plans on how exactly not to starve and stuff like that.

“then we hug and touch wood and turn around three times widdershins, spit and throw in a Hail Mary or Hail Satan or seitan or whatever is most appropriate”

Exhaustion, depression and general mental health awfulness have been a bastard to both of us over the last three years or so, (my physical health hasn’t exactly been wonderful, but this year at least I have been able to walk unaided) but things have, at last, very slowly been starting to move forward. We even had a Christmas this year! Our first proper Christmas in three years.

My wife has very sensibly taken a Facebook break (what is it about that hellscape that triggers so much rage and insecurity, and brings out the right wing tendencies in so many relations?) so I didn’t feel too bad about posting quite honestly on there to let people know that we’d basically been screwed over by the government, ask for advice and let people know where we were up to and that we were mostly ok. And then, the option popped up to create a fundraiser for a cause… or for yourself.

Almost as if it had been listening to us.

*side-eye to camera*

It had been a while since I interacted on Facebook but, even so, I’d never seen that before, and it felt more like fate than Mark Zuckerberg needing yet another new jet car.

So I did.

I know we have an amazing support network. We must have said countless times, to many different people, how grateful and lucky we are to live where we do, with the friends we have, and then we hug and touch wood and turn around three times widdershins, spit and throw in a Hail Mary or Hail Satan or seitan or whatever is most appropriate, just in case.

We’ve done several bits of crying since then. We’ve had unexpected cards turn up with money in. People have given us things that we know they can barely spare – because who can, right now? Life is all about these small increments at the moment…

We’re not out of the woods yet by any means, but we have gas and electric and food for us and the dogs and cat. The things that initially bounced are paid and the hole in the bank is temporarily filled. We should hopefully make it to next month, even with the spectre of extra charges. Then what? I don’t know. I don’t know how long this will take. There’s no way of knowing.

Our letter will undoubtedly be in a pile with all the Other Letters, and a lot of those letters will be from people with no loving support network, no bounce-back hypomania, no letter writing skills, no electric, no gas, no food…

We are the privileged ones, here, right now.

That’s the true injustice.

However, that’s not where this ends.

I got another brown envelope from PIP. a few days ago. ‘Bloody hell, they’re actually efficient’, I thought. Like a fool. And then I looked at it for a little bit. Then I took it outside with me and just opened the damn thing, because I’m quite good at opening post these days

Then I read it.

I went through several stages of reading it, a bit like with grief. There was one stage where I briefly thought they’d re-awarded me my PIP again, and an even briefer one where I thought I’d got the enhanced rate.

Then I went back to thinking I’d still got my PIP again, until I reread it some more, more carefully, and again once more for unluck.

That wasn’t it at all, darlings.

The purpose of this letter was to tell me that in fact, they were very kindly not taking any money off me for the previous three years up until they’d stopped my claim.

I’m sorry, you what now?

Basic PIP is awarded if your scores on the doors are between 8 and 11. Enhanced PIP is for scores of 12 and above. My original PIP had been for 8 points for dealing with Daily Living. Back in 2015, they scored me a big fat zero for Mobility. It was ridiculous, as I attended that first PIP consultation walking with a stick, in some pain, and we made how this impacted my daily living at home and limited ability to move around outside my home independently abundantly clear. There may have been crying. It was awful. The woman who assessed me obviously had no idea about my conditions and no interest in them either.

We didn’t query their nil point decision, however, because there were far too many stories of Reconsiderations that ended with less points, not more, and at the time we were pitifully grateful to have been awarded anything at all.

This letter, apparently restating my 2015 PIP scores, and now magically awarding me a 4 for mobility (woop!), was to tell me that PIP assessment criteria had recently changed (read “got more bastard cruel”), but those changes didn’t affect my current (though not actually current anymore) claim.

Bear in mind, it took me several readings of this bizarre, non-sequitur of a letter to actually understand that was what it was telling me. I’m not stupid in the ways of words, but I had to sit and re-read this at least five times to work out what an earth it was on about.

So, yada yada. Big fat nothing. If you don’t like it, you can always Mandatorily Reconsideration at us, again, of course, but–

Record scratch.

Well, bitches. Let me tell you about the last three years and my mobility, and that fact that your sneaking 4 points in there is not going to cover your arses. Not when I ended up with Occupational Health fitting handrails so I could get around my own goddamned home – as I told you at the time – and that this condition only got worse until I ended up essentially housebound. That I couldn’t walk 20 metres aided or unaided, and by the time of my operation they were the good days. And then after that the long and painstaking rehabilitation process, which is still ongoing.

All of which obviously impacted hugely on my mental health, as any of the mental health team I see and that you could and should have contacted would have told you, if you had wanted to check on my ‘enduring mental health conditions with severe symptoms’.

So yes. We wrote another letter. Or I got my wife to write it, because I was barely fit for it, and we said so in the letter.

We used words like “undignified” and “shameful”.

My wife does a lot of editing on these, too, by the way.

We have A Process, now.

There’s a lot of word vomit to start with. Then I reread and rewrite, and rewrite and rewrite, then I edit, and then – then she helps me kill my darlings.

I love her very much. I have to, because editing for someone with my traits is very difficult.

I’ve grown better at it over the years. Like dealing with both praise and criticism. I am better at it than I used to be.

“this puppy wasn’t a whippet or a labrador but a terrier, and just would not stop”

At the moment it’s even worse, because hypomania knocks into my usual placid nature and makes me less patient and more irritable. We’ve developed a system where I just say yes or no to what she says and we move swiftly on, and try to keep it light.

Although my energy is high, too much of anything is also exhausting due to lack of sleep. And everything is taking so much energy, including the fizzing under my skin and the extra volume on my bastard tinnitus, which just seems cruel and unnecessary.

Right now, every three days or so I will do a Very Big Sleep, and have a bit of a flat day, which is great, and means I can keep going like this for a little while.

If I stop doing that, however, then no, I can’t keep going because I know there’s that wolf lurking just beneath my skin, and I have to train my puppy properly or lose it. There are No Other Options here, for me.

I feel a little bit like a toddler, full of beans but quickly worn out. My attention and focus wander really easily so I’m writing in bursts, but hurrah for the internet. It’s almost like it was designed to be a nice safe chill-out space for times like this, filled with kittens and cakewrecks and other people’s idiocy.

And I have had times like this before, too. I even tried to exorcise this demon through writing once before; when I stopped enjoying it, when this puppy wasn’t a gentle whippet or a cuddly labrador but a terrier, and just would not stop. When the brightness got turned up a bit too high after going more than three days without sleeping properly, and thinking I should save the world but ultimately knowing I couldn’t, and then this was no puppy any more…

I found that stray bit of writing, still saved, because I never really knew why I wrote it, just that I had to:

“Nothing here is good. Everything feels sharpened by the constant expectation of pain that hangs on to the harsh, cold edges of the deliberately slightly uneven tiles in a municipal swimming pool, and the insidious, inescapable discomfort that imbues waiting rooms in the worst places. The light is the hard fluorescent glow of an autumn morning classroom, or a supermarket meat counter, and nothing here will ever look pretty, or comforting or soft. The air smells like regret and sourness and something you wish you could remember but doesn’t matter any more and probably never did, and crept off to die a long time ago.”

After I wrote that, I must have found an enchanted spindle to prick my finger on, because I fell asleep for a hundred years and didn’t awake until true love’s kiss found me.

Or something very like that, at least. There may also have been frogs involved. Or possibly gingerbread. But definitely sleeping…

I’m going to sleep now I’ve finished this tale, too. It might be just a quick puppy nap, but it helps in keeping the wolf from the door.

Night night x