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    A Crucified Mind
    A Crucified Mind
    A Crucified Mind
    Ebook103 pages2 hours

    A Crucified Mind

    By Susan Billington

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    About this ebook

    A Crucified Mind is a poignant account of the memoirs of Susan Billington, who wrote this book in her last twelve months before taking her own life. In her emotionally charged writings, she describes her many suicide attempts and struggles with Bipolar Mood and Anxiety Disorder.
    There are funny, light moments in the book, as well as excruciatingly sad and painful moments, as the reader gets to take the same merry-go-round of emotional impulsivity and suicidal behaviour.

    By presenting her writings in the form of personal memoirs, the reader gets to experience Susan’s life directly from her perspective. She shares her depressions and anxiety, followed by feelings of emptiness and perceived abandonment. She shares her lost hopes and abandoned dreams, unable to see any future for herself, that led ultimately to her suicide.

    This book was published after Susan died. I hope that her writings will touch those who read it, and help provide insight into what it is like to live with mental illness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJudith Brindley
    Release dateJan 7, 2017
    ISBN9781370333462
    A Crucified Mind
    Author

    Susan Billington

    Susan was 47 years old when she took her own life. Susan was born in England and the youngest of three children. Her family immigrated to South Africa when she was 4 years old. Susan graduated with a Diploma in Architectural Technology at Cape town Technicon in her early twenties and enjoyed drawing. When Susan was well, she also loved gardening and growing herbs. I hope her soul is now in a place of healing, like a broken flower, learning how to bloom again.

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      Book preview

      A Crucified Mind - Susan Billington

      Chapter 1

      It’s a slow painful death living with bipolar mood disorder, previously called manic depression. It crucifies your soul and takes every living breath out of you. It’s hidden, deep and murky sitting quietly and insidiously in the corners of your mind. It feels like a devastating secret that is so truly shameful, so cutting that it never leaves you. It stays locked inside, demonic and angry. The madness that you feel is pure torture. The darkest depression, the anxiety and constant mood swings are truly indescribable. There is no ‘coming out’ with bipolar. ‘Coming out’ means letting the world know that you are mentally unstable and a freak of nature, not far from being diagnosed as a schizophrenic. There is still immense stigma associated with the disease that one feels less than a person, just an empty being. Admitting one has depression is easy as most people have experienced some form of depression during their lifetime and since the introduction of Prozac many years ago it, anti-depressants are one of the most scripted drugs today. Approximately 2-4% of people have bipolar, in the spectrum of mood and personality disorders. Some say more. There is no cure, only constant juggling of medications, visits to psychiatrists, psychotherapy, hospitalizations and in my case, multiple suicide attempts.

      Many people who suffer with bipolar disorder lose everything that is dear to them, not just materialistically, but their dreams and mostly their sense of self and purpose. I know this because I had lost everything that was important and meaningful to me. A wonderful husband, a beautiful home, a cottage in the country, a career, children and later in my life, the will to live. I had no fight left in me. I begged, sobbed and prayed for God to take me, but he never listened. He thought differently. The guilt of bipolar is that many of us want to end our lives so that we can find peace, whilst others who are sick are hanging on with every ounce of their being to live. I have been confronted with this question many times. All I can say is that the emotional pain becomes too much to bear. In my earlier years I had some really good days known as hypo mania. It feels like pure bliss. Nothing can touch you. The skies are endless, the trees abound, life is full of joy, and the happiness in your soul is too much to bear. Then one morning you wake up and it has disappeared like a shadow in the dark and you feel an enormous sense of loss and confusion. The restlessness, anxiety and depression start all over again and you know you are in for another tough ride. You are stuck with the disappointment of life, the mundane existence. The excitement is over. One day passes into the next. You look around and believe that most people are the living dead. They go about their chores day to day, week to week, month to month and you think Is this life? I used to pray to God often to cure me, to wake up and feel at peace with the world I lived in. I believed in my earlier years and still to this day that I am a rapid cycler, hence the hypo mania for a number of days, and the despair for many days to follow. I fought bipolar with every ounce of my being. I didn’t want these feelings. I tried to dissociate. If I fought it hard and long enough, it would disappear as maybe, just maybe it was all in my mind. It was psychosomatic, it would eventually leave me for good. The paradox is the more you fight it, the stronger it becomes and eventually it took over my life and defined who I was. I was not Sue any more, I was the illness.

      When I turned 40 this was a turning point for me. All the drugs, psychiatrists and psychologists couldn’t help me. I now had started to have suicidal thoughts for the first time. I wanted to end my life, I was doomed and knew it would never leave me. Over the next six years I attempted multiple suicides. All were close to death. I was adamant life wasn’t worth living, however through the grace of God, I am still here. It was not my time. The specialists and doctors are bemused that I am still alive. Maybe there is a reason, I certainly can’t understand it. We experience loss in so many ways. Looking back my biggest loss was the loss of my husband and not being able to have children, a family like everyone else. He was a wonderful man, gentle and kind, a man many would love to have shared their lives with. I got married late in life at the age of thirty-three. I met him aged twenty-nine by sheer coincidence in a bar. In retrospect it was hilarious as he never frequented bars. He was really a homebody.

      We got engaged in Thailand, December 2000, the year of the millennium. My friends from overseas were with us and I will never forget the wonderful times we shared. I then had what any woman would die for, a beautiful house, a country cottage, expensive car, a small architectural practice and was looking forward to having a child. I had the perfect life, but I was damaged inside. I was deeply unhappy and didn’t know why. I blamed him for everything and anything. I was not the problem, he was. He tried to understand my moods, but they were getting more and more out of control. He had a large business with lots of stress and I was not supportive enough. I could only think about myself getting through each and every day. He would leave in the early hours of the morning with our three border collies and return late at night shattered. My business was not going very well, as I was unable to concentrate and was having trouble sleeping. I would pace up and down the house, my thoughts spinning around and around, until I was mentally exhausted and then only then would I eventually go to sleep. The next day I couldn’t get out of bed, I was exhausted from doing nothing, my brain didn’t stop racing. Over and over and over. The only thing I managed to do was tidy the house when the cleaner was not there and cook a meal. My release was to spend. I would go to the shops and buy anything and everything. It gave me a high for a short period of time like a drug addict taking crack cocaine. I wasn’t doing much work at the time and was using credit cards, personal loans and signing checks, knowing I had no money in my bank account. Weekly phone calls from my bank manager was normal. I always lied and said that I was waiting for my clients to pay me. He knew me well and covered my back many times. One day my husband came home and I had bought a new couch and a painting. He asked me where I got the money, I replied I bought it on my credit card. He asked How are you going to pay for it? My response was I don’t know. He said Anyway I don’t like either, how could you have bought furniture for our house without showing me. I was angry and upset. I couldn’t see his side of the story that I was out of control and, it was getting slowly worse.

      The fighting started mainly over money. I was seeing a psychiatrist at the time and he diagnosed me with cyclothymic disorder. The difference between cyclothymic disorder and bipolar 2, are that the depressions are deemed not as severe. Bipolar 1 patients can become extremely manic, sometimes experiencing delusions and have psychotic episodes. Looking back, I realized I had full blown Bipolar 2 disorder, how could he not have known how deeply depressed I was? He prescribed me a drug called Effexor that made me feel even more jumpy. I felt like I had stuck my finger permanently in an electric socket. He kept on increasing my dose, which of course made me worse. We had now only been married for four months and I was on a downward spiral. My husband had difficulty understanding my illness and said to me ‘Sue you are not getting any better. To which I replied Of course I am! Many a times after a fight I would run into our bedroom, open the closets and start packing my suitcase. He would then run hastily after me and ask me where I was going. I replied To my mother! He would then run and hide my car keys and say just calm down, sit down and let’s talk. I used to scream Leave me alone!" and sometimes threw my expensive wedding ring against the lounge wall. This happened often.

      One morning I woke up with severe stomach cramps, much more painful than my normal menstrual cramps. Something was stirring inside. I went to the toilet and the pain rushed through my body. What was happening? I sat leaning over gripping my stomach tightly. I looked down in the toilet. It was a bloody mess, strange looking and shocking. Was this a foetus? I shook uncontrollably, tears running down my face. Had I miscarried? When I had first met the psychiatrist he warned me not to get pregnant as the medication had bad side effects and could affect the foetus. Besides, I was in no state to have a baby. I was to go on contraception immediately. I didn’t take much notice and never went on the pill. We weren’t having much

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