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    Memoirs of a Bipolar Soul
    Memoirs of a Bipolar Soul
    Memoirs of a Bipolar Soul
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Memoirs of a Bipolar Soul

    By John Frederick Zurn

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    About this ebook

    John chronicles many of his bipolar episode experiences, both in-patient and outpatient, in a raw honesty.  He paints his experiences in several institutions, some good and some not so good.  He provides insights into how he survived and was eventually discharged from each of them.  He covers many of his inner subjective states while having an "episode" showing how they can be both exciting and destructive at the same time.  He talks about his experiences in seeking work and stresses the importance of appropriate medication and meditation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Zurn
    Release dateJan 26, 2023
    ISBN9798215105047
    Memoirs of a Bipolar Soul
    Author

    John Frederick Zurn

    John Frederick Zurn is a published author of novels, short stories, plays and poetry. He spent his career as an English teacher at traditional schools and as an instructor at developmental training centers, teaching employment readiness skills to mentally challenged teenagers and adults. Now retired, John continues writing and publishing. As an artist and spiritual seeker, he explores the varied promptings of the human spirit. John lives in Illinois with his wife, Donna.

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      Book preview

      Memoirs of a Bipolar Soul - John Frederick Zurn

      Ridgeway Hospital

      In some ways, this isn’t a story about me at all.  Instead, it’s the story of an old friend of mine, who has stayed with me like a half-forgotten memory over the years.  He’s a good companion in a lot of ways, and he has helped me through some very difficult times.  But if the truth be told, he has a little of the rebel in him.  He’s unpredictable, sometimes surly, and generally has a knack for making people feel uncomfortable.  Whether he has changed over the last few years and turned some corner in his life, I can’t say.  But fond memories often drift through my mind whenever I remember our time together.

      Despite our friendship, I’ve often tried to ditch him because he continually seems to get me into some kind of trouble.  After awhile, he crosses some line or breaks some rule, and inevitably, some crisis erupts.  So, eventually, I always desert him and find my own way.  By moving around and leaving no forwarding address, my deepest hope has been for him to leave me alone.

      But no matter how often I try to deceive him, he almost always appears at my front door complaining bitterly about my lack of gratitude for his many years of loyal friendship.  So, after a few moments of awkward silence, I have always ended up apologizing, and the we usually rummage through the past and slug down martinis. 

      But now you see, once again I’ve ditched him, and he seems to be gone for good.  His name is Robert Porter, but I just call him Bob.  My name is John.

      Of course, there is really no way of telling Bob’s story without telling my own because we often worked, played, and struggled as one.  Over the years, whenever we were together, we worked at a lot of minimum wage jobs that were often nasty and tedious.  Perhaps that was one of the reasons we got into so much trouble during those years.  The drudgery of factory work and the constant demands of fast food restaurant customers made it hard to stay sober for long.

      Still, there was one kind of trouble that Bob and I just couldn’t seem to avoid.  Any time we hung out together, Bob almost always ended up with mental health issues.  Throughout our relationship, I watched him become ill repeatedly, and he often dragged me down with him.  Because of this unstable situation, we were often forced to live in temporary placements as we coped with the day to day problems of living.

      In these same unconventional circumstances, Bob and I often learned about the thoughts and feelings of others as well as our own.  Whenever we were with other patients and residents, we usually learned something about life.

      So, in some ways, Bob was also a kind of blessing for me as well.  He led me to the people and places I would never have found without him.  So this story is not just about Bob and me, it is also a story about those fellow sojourners who often crossed our path.

      The triggering event setting my whole story in motion was an acute appendicitis attack that occurred when I was twenty.  By the time I had surgery, I was in serious trouble.  I woke up in the recovery room with no complications, but the fear of death soon became an obsession.   

      Over the next few years, this fear of death began to spread through my consciousness and poison my relationships.  Every day brought only meaningless work and boredom.  At night, the loneliness and despair were as palpable as a foul breeze.  Before long I was severely depressed. 

      When I first met Bob, we were both patients at a private hospital called Ridgeway.  I was there for depression, and Bob was there for being completely incoherent.  When I first saw him, he was tied in a hospital bed with his thoughts racing so fast that his speech was wild and unintelligible.  But slowly, as I watched him over the next few days and nights, I heard him slow down his speech although the words were still crooked and broken.  After about a week, as my depression began to lift, I noticed Bob pacing around the unit.  I decided to follow him, but I also decided to take a good look around.

      Ridgeway Hospital was a modern facility with clean, bright hallways honeycombed with double occupancy rooms.  There was a dayroom that doubled as a dining room, several psychiatrists’ offices and rooms for art therapy and group therapy.  Adjoining the day room was the prominent nurses’ station - the central hub of the entire hospital unit.  Patients wandered up to the chest high counter to take medications, find out about relatives, and often just to get attention.  Most of the patients at Ridgeway were a mix of alcoholics, the seriously mentally ill, and drug addicts. The atmosphere was sometimes frightening with an odd combination of staff cheerfulness and patient despair.

      Bob did get better by degrees at the hospital, and we soon became friends.  Whenever we could, we met for meals and chatted during the day.  We talked about finances and discussed the possibility of sharing an apartment.  It wasn’t long before I trusted him as a loyal companion.  Since I didn’t make friends easily anymore, I felt really encouraged.

      Since we were newly admitted, we observed as much as we participated; but as Bob became more lucid, he also seemed more self-confident.  He was more eager than I was to get involved and before long, he was giving advice.  For example, at a morning group therapy session, he listened intently to a woman who was almost catatonic. 

      Somewhere, lodged within her struggling mind, she had come to believe that she had committed the Bible’s unforgivable sin.  The tangled rollers in her hair and her food stained nightgown painted a portrait of fear and despair.  She really seemed to believe that she was going to hell.  Sadly, Bob couldn’t resist the temptation to talk to her about other relevant Bible passages suggesting that the woman could be helped.  Unfortunately, Bob’s enthusiasm sounded more like anger than compassion, so the group moved on.

      Later, in the same group, Bob engaged a heroin dealer in a heated discussion about the man’s future.  The man, who was taking methadone, told the group that he had decided to stop taking heroin himself, but would still sell it to others.  Bob responded with a kind of mini-lecture that nearly deteriorated into a fist fight.  For a time after that, Bob kept his opinions to himself.

      Knife Fight

      After the incidents in group, Bob was assigned many alternate activities that allowed him more freedom of expression.  Bob participated in art therapy, wrote stories on typing paper, and went on community outings.  As he became more coherent, we were both allowed more chances to become independent, and Bob seemed somewhat less argumentative.

      But, at times, Bob was still sometimes quarrelsome with other patients and even staff.  In fact, whenever a challenging situation developed, he was usually right in the middle of it.  He didn’t seem to mind the unpredictability of the other patients and the intensity of chaotic situations.  So, while I spent much of my time reading through hospital magazines and comforting withdrawn patients who tried to hide in their rooms, Bob kept busy settling arguments, some of his own making.

      Whenever a patient needed to be escorted to his room for throwing a chair or pushing over a table, it was Bob who often witnessed the event.  If a patient tried to escape through the unit door when a staff member was leaving, Bob might suggest to him to follow the rules.  His assertive personality and careful attention to the behavior of others made him an unpredictable character, who was unable to see his own faults at times.

      Not surprisingly, Bob often became energized by these tense, often unpredictable, situations.  He appeared to be genuinely inspired and exhilarated by participating in all kinds of intense situations.  If Bob was overzealous sometimes, he usually had good intentions.  On balance, he probably did no real harm either.   

      As for me, because I wasn’t very ill, I was more intimidated and overwhelmed by these aggressive episodes.  The unexpected slamming of doors and frequent screaming matches, jangled my nerves and drained my strength.  The day-to-day struggle to remain focused and balanced was often very

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