Ally H.
Photography by Cat White
If you're reading this, you are in control and you are not alone.
Starting at 14, I knew something wasn’t right in my brain. Around this age, my parents sat me down and told me I “felt things more than other people.” Typical adolescent parts of life such as a breakup or a bad grade on a test would send me into intense depressive episodes, where I wouldn’t get out of bed, eat, or sometimes even speak for days or weeks at a time. My parents cared about me but they felt completely helpless. They sent me to a counselor for teenagers struggling with depression but I grappled so much with putting my feelings into words that sometimes we just sat there in silence.
As time passed, I knew my depression was dysfunctional. I struggled to be around some of my closest friends and family, convinced they all hated being around someone who could be such a drag. Finally, the summer before my second year at UVA, I decided to start taking an antidepressant. What followed can only be described as a whirlwind.
I felt that the medication had turned my life upside down in the best way possible. I barely needed to eat or sleep to be happy and energetic. I felt on top of the world. I was convinced that everyone around me was yearning just to be in my presence. I felt overly confident and beautiful every time I looked in the mirror—almost like something superhuman.
But there were dark behaviors lurking behind the scenes that many of my friends noticed and pointed out to me. I was rapidly losing weight. I had turned to risky behaviors which only amplified my manic tendencies. It was hard to follow my fragmented, messy, rapid train of thought when speaking to me. I realized I was experiencing a hypomanic episode.
When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I was paralyzed with fear. I shamefully told my family and close friends about the diagnosis, knowing the stigmas around bipolar that I had grown up consuming every day in the media. After all, when someone is acting in a way that is frustrating or “crazy” we might say, “She must be bipolar or something!” I was terrified of being seen in that way. I immediately became entrenched in a fantasy that everyone around me would say, “Wow, Ally is handling this so well.” But I couldn’t hide it– I felt like a big open wound.
I was so afraid of what the future held for me. The suicide rate in bipolar depression hovers between 15 and 20 percent. Was I going to spend the rest of my life fighting against these dark and horrible thoughts? Would I pass it along to my future children? Would I struggle to make new friends or even find a future partner?
I started trying to ignore the diagnosis and my symptoms. I even tried to convince myself that maybe my psychiatrist had made a mistake; I wanted so badly to be “normal.” When I told two of my alumni friends, they wrote me a letter that changed the trajectory of the way I view my mental illness. “People don’t know what you don’t tell them,” they wrote. “You are in control and you are not alone.”
I realized that I hadn’t “changed” or “lost control” – I finally had a name for the symptoms I had been experiencing since I was a preteen. Bipolar was something I had been living with for years. Even with my untreated mental illness, I managed to get into college, join and gain leadership positions in many CIOs, and cultivate a wonderful group of friends. Now that I was finally taking the right medications and seeing the right therapist, a whole new world had opened up to me. This diagnosis isn’t the end of my life – it’s only the beginning.
Fear of losing control is something that still haunts me every day. I fear becoming someone who isn’t my true self. Eventually, I realized suppressing my bipolar disorder would in turn be suppressing myself. This mental illness is and has always been a part of me. Today, I walk through life prepared to be vulnerable and honest with myself and others about the boundaries I need to feel OK. That is the truest version of myself that I can be.
If you’re reading this, you are in control and you are not alone.
Ally H., University of Virginia
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