If I’m truly honest with myself the fear of happiness is something I’ve always lived with. Later I’ll get to why I feel it’s more pronounced, and nuanced, with a bipolar diagnosis. The fear of happiness. It sounds like some post-modern ailment of the rich and famous. I can assure you, dear reader, that while privileged I may be I am neither famous nor rich.
OK, so happiness: it’s that feeling of … I had to google it. Just be sure I wasn’t over-reaching or setting unrealistic expectations. The Cliff Notes from google tell me that it’s a mental or emotional state that range from contentment to intense joy. I would scratch out the ‘intense’ in that definitions for obvious reasons. The feeling is characterized by feeling a satisfaction in life, feeling ‘good’, being worry-free.
I think growing up in South Africa has had a profound effect on our national definition of happiness. We’re all scratching in the sand trying to find it. For a while we did. Our fingers are raw today from scratching trying to find that euphoria again. It’s a hard place to grow up in South Africa. It’s competitive. At every turn you’re trying to one up the next: in it’s most extreme it’s finding food for your family and on the other extreme you’re one-upping your friends – to be better. To be more successful. To have clever kids. To be better at everything.
I went to a Catholic private school. There was competition sure. There was this one wanting to be scrum-half, the other one pushing their limits to be chess mastermind. Others were content being off the sports field, but playing in their own field of intellectual prowess over their friends. It’s always among friends that competition thrives. It’s often the thing too that ends them.
I feel I had a somewhat different experience from most ‘competitors’. There was never one playing field. There were endless acres of playing fields where I would only find contentment, even happiness, if I could master and defeat all others. I had to excel everything did. And I did everything. I know today, when I’m not having a a bout of delusional grandeur, that this was an impossible endeavor.
Right, so back to happiness. In the context of my own life happiness was, and still is to a large extent, a myth. I can’t tell you one occasion where I went to bed truly happy. I mean, I am encouraged by a win, but never happy. Or at least not the happy google happy. When I aught to be happy, I am already disappointed I’ve not done as well in another pursuit, too.
The point of this trip down memory lane is to say I feel that many, if not all bipolar people have this innate need to be the best at anything and everything. Is it a product of environment, nurture? Yes of course, most emotional responses are! I find myself saying, again for the people in the back, that, as a guy who is trying to make sense of a bipolar diagnosis, the bipolar experience is, yet again, an extreme. The will to excel is far more pronounced than average Joe Soap.
Even in what should have been the happiest times, in my gut I’d already feel the dread of needing to jump to the next achievement. Through this constant need to succeed, over time, one becomes accustomed to forgetting exactly what happiness is. It becomes a distant memory. Or, in my case, no memories of google happiness but the feeling of dread knowing I’d have to be better, (happier?) next time.
Fast-forward a bit to the day you begin bipolar treatment. OK, not the actual day – the day the medication has saturated where ever it is supposed to saturate. One fine morning, you open the curtains and the sky is blue-er than it has ever looked. The grass more lush than it ever has been. The air crisp with possibility. The smell of Spring is in the air in the middle of Autumn.
Dude, you’re fucking HAPPY! This is it. This is the happiness you’ve been told exists.
It was soon after I has started bipolar treatment that I had this experience. It was an out of body experience. I called my pop from the car, “is this what people have felt their whole lives? Is this happiness?!”. He answered simply, “who cares what you call it, if you feel it in your heart, then don’t second guess it.”
And for a few days, I didn’t. I called it nothing and just enjoyed the ride.
It was either after a particular manic episode or a visit to the psychiatrist, I can’t recall, that I came back down to Earth. My Earth. My acre of playing field. And it was stark. It was a stark and barren place where I knew I’d seen happiness, I’d felt it, I’d near touched it; but here I was facing this desolation of thinking, in my own world, “You’re bipolar, chap. Don’t be mislead. Don’t be too happy.”
The happiness we feel, or at least I feel, is always a fleeting one. I fear it always will be. I can’t trust myself when I am indeed happy. And herein is the fear: the fear of the unknown. The feeling of not trusting yourself enough to feel.
Today marks one year of being sober for me. I should be happy. I’m not. I mean I am a little chuffed with myself for reaching a milestone, in itself rare. I’m not happy though. I can feel this dread in my stomach that it’s going to be a helluva ride to reach the next milestone. So, instead of actually being happy, I am here making sure to quell the happiness, be less happy, so as to try keeping it at a level where I am ‘realistic’ and aware that I have a long way to go. It’s pretty sad.
I’m tearing up writing this.
There’s loads of medical research in this field. Most of it starts out with ‘many people fear happiness’ but end up saying ‘people with a mental illness fear happiness the most’. And they’re right. I do fear it.
While I might be bad at being happy, I am not bad at rationality. So, rationally, I know it is possible to be happy. I mean, everyone else gets happy. I can be happy too. Obviously, I must be the best at that too. The real work that I’ll have to do to overcome this fear is to know myself better. This is fucking hard. For anyone.
I’ll have won his battle with myself when I can tell the difference between having feelings and, well, nothing. Those feelings exist. It’s the identifying them, taking them by the collar, and keeping them close for long enough to know the difference between happy and, I guess, scared.
I’ve written this off the cuff. This one was pretty raw for me to write. It’s been a good journey getting to this point though. I can see where I need to do the work. And I have seen happiness. I lied to myself and you earlier. I wake up most days content.
Feeling ‘normal’ does not mean devoid of feeling. Feelings can just, be.
