Porcupine's wisdom

Everyday I get up and keep going, despite multiple psychoses behind. Everyday I overcome a terrible feeling of shame and show up to the world for the sake of my son. I can do it, I tell myself, and I fight for the space on earth – I still managed to create with my diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

The bipolar disorder is associated usually with mood swings. I don’t have it. I have the tendency to experience psychoses, with the first onset when I was 27 years old and working as a financial analyst and portfolio manager in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. I remember the doctor looking at me with concern in a psychiatric hospital, and telling me that he thinks I have schizophrenia, on my declaration that I was Buddha. He administered the medication which made me disabled and hinted to the fact that basically, I can give up on a successful, happy life.

My diagnosis changed during my next psychosis, when I was in England. It was decided that I had Bipolar One condition because of my tendency to experience psychosis – which, in my case, has been a beautiful experience. In my psychoses I feel connected to God, I see angels and magic everywhere, I feel wonderful and reborn, to wake up to it, usually in the hospital, and face again and again the fact that any experience with ‘mental illness’ is terribly stigmatized and leads to an awful feeling of shame. I wake up to the fact that I (yet again) tweeted that I am Jesus, or that I was Princess of Anastassia in my previous life.

The most absurd thing in all of it, is that it is possible that I indeed was Princess Anastasia in one of my previous lives (just difficult to prove it). I believe in reincarnation and all other ‘crazy’ stuff that is regarded in our society as insanity. I am insane in the current society where everyone should be normal, behave the same as everyone else, and keep quiet about one’s belief system. My declarations about my past lives are regarded as ‘heresy’, as a proof that I am indeed mad.

I walk with my diagnosis straight. I embraced it, despite the odds. I keep on fighting for a space on this earth, where I continue working, and working hard. I look after my son and my cat, I have friends around the world. I received a PhD bursary following my psychosis in England, and managed to become a Doctor of Philosophy. I also managed to relocate to the Netherlands with my son, because I was offered a wonderful job, and I keep on going. I wake up everyday and look after my loved ones, I work, and I write.

Psychosis is a very misunderstood phenomenon in our society. It makes those who are ‘normal’ to judge the mad one, as a proof of one’s own sanity. It is associated with shame, with the most severe mental illness. But in my daily life I am just as ‘normal’ as everyone else. I want to contribute to the society, I want to work, and I want a happy relationship one day. As everyone else, I want to be happy. As every other mother, I just want to raise my son, and see him happy. In my daily life I face the same challenges, as you, the ‘normal’. I struggle as a single mum, I struggle because of economic recession and the war in Ukraine. I struggle because of the death in the family, rising prices, and the covid pandemic that changed so much our world. We became very skeptical, sad and angry.

I struggle to continue life, where I have to balance the medication that wouldn’t zombify me, yet allow me not to have psychotic relapses, but in general, I have the same struggles as everyone else. It’s just tougher for me, because of my ‘bipolar’ disorder, but I wake up everyday and tell myself to keep going.

And I keep on going.