I used to miss my younger carefree days before everything changed and I wound up a hostage to trauma so overwhelming that my conscious mind hid all of the memories from me. This inability to recall anything I now see started out as a defence mechanism, and so those invisible walls went up. They stayed there for close to a decade, because you can’t take down what you don’t know is there. What that meant I was left trying to cope with shit I couldn’t understand or identify. My emotional stability and perception of who I was began to disintegrate beneath me. But on the outside I appeared to be fine. Now appearances, of course, can be deceptive, and to an extent, this feisty, energetic persona was a very well-crafted and convincing one.

A diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder came next. In effect, a vicious cycle of fear, avoidance, mistrust and misunderstanding had been established, and this was a battle in which I felt powerless and incapable of establishing any kind of peace or reconciliation.

Now looking back on the wreckage and despair of those years, it seems to me now as if someone died in that place, and yet, someone else was saved. A broken and haunted person began that journey, but the person who emerged was a survivor and would ultimately grow into the person I was destined to be. Many people have harmed me in my life, and I remember them all, but the memories grow pale and faint in comparison with the people who've helped me.

The fellow survivors, the comrades and collaborators; the grandmother who never gave up on me, who knew that one day I would come back to her and was willing to wait for me for as long as it took; the doctor who only worked with me for a brief time but who reinforced his belief that recovery was not only possible but inevitable, and during a devastating period of relapsetold my terrified family, "Don't give up hope. I believe that he can get through this.” Sometimes, you know, it snows as late as October, but summer always comes eventually. 

This post is not enough to fully credit those good and generous people who fought with me and for me and who waited to welcome me back from that agonized, lonely place.

But together, they forged a blend of courage, creativity, integrity, and an unshakeable belief that my shattered self could become healed and whole. I used to say that these people saved me, but what I now know is they did something even more important in that they empowered me to save myself, and crucially, they helped me to understand something which I'd always suspected: that my rapid mood changes were a meaningful response to traumatic life events, particularly childhood events, and as such were not my enemies but a source of insight into solvable emotional problems. 

And I remember the most moving and extraordinary moment when supporting another young man who was terrorized by his mental illness, and becoming fully aware, for the very first time, that I no longer felt that way myself but was finally able to help someone else who was.

In this respect, for members of society, there is no greater honor or privilege than facilitating that process of healing for someone, to bear witness, to reach out a hand, to share the burden of someone's suffering, and to hold the hope for their recovery. And likewise, for survivors of distress and adversity, that we remember we don't have to live our lives forever defined by the damaging things that have happened to us. We are unique. We are irreplaceable. What lies within us can never be truly colonized, contorted, or taken away. The light never goes out.