Growing Up In the Shadow Of My Father’s Bipolar Disorder

I have been blessed through my writing to meet some amazing, talented, brave and incredibly beautiful people. When I started blogging, I have to be honest and say I had never read one single blog post. I didn’t even know blogging existed until around 6 months ago. I was busy working on my novel and met up with a friend for coffee. She gave me the push I needed to take my writing public. I was ready to jump, but needed that support.

She is just the first in a series of strengthening friendships I have developed through this blogging experience, and I have to say that women are amazing. We are strong, we are brave, we are funny and we are resilient. We face some terrible things, we get mistreated, and often we mistreat ourselves too. So through my writing I champion the rights of women, I stand up for us, and I support us! Don’t get me wrong I support men too, but today this blog is about the amazing strength and resilience of an incredible woman who has risen above a hard childhood to grow into an inspirational woman!

The amazing women I talk of is Julia. Julia is not only a friend, but she is a role model. She is proof that we are capable of amazing things, that our past does not define us, nor does it have to affect our future. She encompasses what living in the present is all about. She shows us that we are not victims, that we can choose to rise above our past. One of the things I admire most is her ability to realise when something is toxic in our lives and remove ourselves from a cycle of danger and abuse.

This is Julia’s story.

As a project manager, I remember being in charge of delivering new trains to open a tube line. The multi-billion project was more than two years late, and brand new trains were waiting in the factory, already starting to rust. I had just joined the team, and got the job because nobody wanted it. I didn’t mind the personal attacks, the huge financial claims that kept being submitted and the daily conflicts. I just got the job done. I was often asked how I did it. I never gave a straight answer. In fact, the truth was simple: absolutely nothing could deter me from being successful, because I grew up with a bipolar dad. This meant that I had already seen and heard it all.

My dad is a bipolar. It sounds like a simple sentence, doesn’t it? Just five words, and everybody thinks that they have got the picture. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it took the best part of 20 years, and a particularly gruesome suicide attempt for my father to be adequately diagnosed. This means that I grew up sensing that something wasn’t quite right, without being able to put my finger on what it was. The other sad reality is that often, when a person suffers from such a disorder, a dysfunctional modus vivendi is established amongst family members. In our case, my dad’s behaviour was always excused, and often encouraged. Nobody came to my rescue, ever. To be fair, in our small village, we were a picture of respectability.

My Dad could be the sweetest guy – taking good care of his family, playing with us. But from time to time, he was a different person. He could start shouting at me, explaining that I wasn’t worth anything and would never go anywhere in life. The abuse was mostly verbal, and it could be about anything – my haircut, my intelligence, my homework, the way I dressed. As a result, he wanted to ‘toughen me up’. This would result in him giving me stupid challenges such as finding a way to catch at least five butterflies before being allowed to have something to eat, or sending me to Germany on my own, in a German-speaking family, when I was 10 and could barely ask for directions. Sometimes, he was also hitting me on top of the usual insults. We had no friends, so all of this happened behind closed doors. Still today, the emotional and sometimes physical abuse is played down when I dare to talk about it. I don’t really care, I have my own life now, and I don’t think that getting excuses from the very people who should have protected me would make any difference whatsoever.

How did I make it? Well, at around 10, I started writing pages after pages in my diary, detailing my dad’s latest outbursts. And I made two decisions. They proved to be lifesavers.

The first one was to always be honest with myself, even if it meant saying stuff like “I hate my dad”, or ‘I would like him to be dead’, which I wrote at the time.

The second one was to escape from home as soon as possible. I worked hard and in spite of everything, I passed my exams with flying colours. I managed to escape to university at 16 – or two years in advance compared to the usual age, far away from home. I successfully rebuilt a life in London far from this toxic familial atmosphere.

Eventually I learned to accept that my Dad was ill, and that it was not his fault. He was in pain. That being said, I still resent the fact that he doesn’t accept his illness, and, still today, we can’t talk about bipolar disorder – he blames the eventual break-up of his relationship with my Mum for what he calls his “breakdown”. In short, I don’t resent him for being sick, but for not acknowledging that he is sick, and as a result for not getting the best possible care to get better. I sometimes wonder whether he wants to get better. Don’t get me wrong, his medication stabilises his moods, but he always tries to find ways of not taking it. I learned that there is nothing I can do to help him, apart for living my life to the full as far as possible from him, and being in contact with his medical team when things go awry and he needs to be sectioned. That said, my priority is my husband and my own children now, not him.

On the bright side, this experience has made me less judgmental and more human. I believe that people who have had a tough time and somehow got over it change for the better. My upbringing has also given me my work ethic. I have always worked hard, and always will. And I have kept this harsh honesty that has become my trademark. For instance, what still drives me mad are condescending comments such as “you know bipolar depression is genetic, don’t you?”

Well, here is a newsflash for you: I am fine, thank you very much. And indeed very happy. There is a genetic element to bipolar depression as there is for addictions or depression but, out of two identical twins, one can be bipolar and not the other. It is amazing how some seemingly educated people are willing to put you down.

I like the fact that mental illnesses are less taboo nowadays. That said, every time I read an article about a bipolar person, I have a thought for his/her family, and especially the children. How are they getting on? Will they be resilient enough to escape unscathed, as I did? I know that I was incredibly lucky. In fact, I sometimes feel a bit like a survivor. I am, however, happier because of my past. It is as if life is more colourful and interesting now, because I know how bleak it can be.

Thanks for joining me, love Mackenzie xx

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