Living with Bipolar Disorder at CAMH

I debated about publishing this – I didn’t want it to sound too patronizing or too awkward, and unrealistic – too Girl Interrupted. But for the longest time, I felt that this part of me has been hidden and denied from the public. Staying at the Women’s Inpatient Unit at CAMH has made me realize, as heartbreaking and as lonely as it can be – that my illness is part of who I am. It doesn’t go away, nor sleep, it’s always awake, and no substance or distraction can break it – nor cure it. So today, I decided that I won’t sleep the day away in my room at CAMH tomorrow – I will go to group therapy and meet other people who have experienced trauma in their lives so that I can learn to live with my disorder, instead of running away from it.

Obviously, writing this post has been the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. I can only hope that it can help others acccept themselves fully, as daunting as that task may be.

Bipolar Disorder is present your whole life, however, many of the symptoms of bipolar disorder simply look like high-enery normal behaviour in its early stages. This is why most of you know me as energetic, enthusiastic and motivated, even creative at my most manic of stages.

However, my symptoms worsened as the following occured since the beginning of September: I entered full-time at OISE while working everyday as  a program coordinator for a not-for-profit organization and then going home to tutor Korean kids from 6 pm to midnight. That left me after midnight to attend to homework and other pieces of creative writing my job entailed me to do. Within these months, especially during practicum, I ran on a 3 hour sleep schedule every day, feeling very energetic, motivated and driven, despite not having slept for an entire week. Along with juggling social events, paying bills for my house, running a house with 3 roomates and taking care of a psychotic cat, I didn’t realize how much stress this was doing to me until I stopped completely.

Enter the holidays. No school. I also took vacation days from both of my jobs. For the first time, I was doing literally nothing for a week – and it felt great. I’m not going into full detail about what went on during this week, but some of you have already been introduced into the new set of friends I discovered, which allowed me to be “excessively involved in pleasurable activities that had high potential for painful consequences” – another symptom of mania.

The next three months have been a blur of panic attacks, staying in bed all day yet not sleeping at night, watching  movies to keep myself distracted from the fact that school and work is now slowly falling apart – as well as my relationships with other people – partying recklessly, abusing alcohol and other substances excessively – anything to keep myself from myself. I became unsually violent, irritable and socializing with people who knew me became very much like cutting through thin skin – each conversation was a battle; each response from me was forced, full of denial and guilt for not being able to be more truthful to others, and shame for not being able to accept myself.

What finally set my commitment to CAMH in stone was a nervous breakdown I had at my dear friend’s condo. It was an unbelievably happy day – we went for Chinese, went to buy board games and played Little World at Castle Cloud, and then went back to Etobicoke to be together for the night. Immediately after our sharing circle I started feeling awry, so they set a bubble bath for me which made me feel calmer. However, the next thing I knew, I had snapped at a friend of mine when he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and when my other friends tried to soothe me by explaining that he didn’t mean  what I thought he meant, the breakdown began and I started hearing voices that told me that they hated me, and that they wanted me to leave. The next thing I remember is that I was in a room with black, angry faces trying to control me, and that all I wanted was to go home. When I came to, I was at the back of my friend’s car, my face buried on my friend’s shoulder, too embarrased to look up, as I held on to his thumb for dear life while he spoke to kill the incredible silence. I know I have great friends. I know they did all they could for me out of love. But all I can think of is how much of an inconvenience I was to their day, and how much they’re willing to cope with this crazy behaviour.

And so here I am, at the Woman’s Inpatient Unit, 9th floor at CAMH. I am on form for 72 hours which means I cannot leave, and my pschiatrist and social worker has informed me that they may extend this form to 3 weeks. Hopefully, in that time, I can try to see who I am, how I can deal with who I am, and how I can take care of those around me knowing the responsibility of loving me entails.

To end this post on a cheerful note, I met a wonderful girl here that we’ll call Jane. My first conversation with Jane involved her having a panic attack trying to find Rexall all within the 15 minutes she’s allowed to go outside. When she got back to the CAMH building, there was a shift change with the conceirges, and so for a full 10 minutes, she tried to find CAMH, not knowing she was already at the building the whole time.

My second conversation with her involved me asking why she was dressed so nicely. She said that she had tried to go out of the building, but upon going outside, began to have a panic attack, called the ambulance only to find out that she was still in the building she was supposed to be in anyway.

Tonight I caught her brushing her teeth and she asked me about my tattoo. All of a sudden, as I was explaining it to her, a whole new meaning began to take form. My tatoo is of a quill with a writing that says, “Find the others”. This was a quote from Timothy Leary who encouraged people to go beyond the social convention, the platitudes, and ask people who they really are, what they truly love, what scares them at night – create a conversation that is both awkward and depressing because that is how you can evolve an everyday conversation into something beautiful, into truly knowing someone for who they are. So find the “others” who are willing to participate in this kind of conversation with you, so that you may feel like you belong.

As I was telling her this, she began to get more and more excited about the concept, especially because living in a pscyh ward forces you into platitudes, while at the same time, necessecarily breaking those platitudes in order to reach out and make your stay, as well a the other person’s stay, more meaningful and enjoyable for both of you.

She said, “The other is you! And it’s also me!”

Which made me realize, in a moment of such euphoria, that I have found the others, after giving up my battle to become “normal”, and surrendering to who I truly was, disordered and bipolar, but HONEST – and that’s what makes me beautiful.

Welcome to the Uncanny

internet addiction by namirenn

Something strange just happened.

In fact, I would go ahead and label this experience as downright uncanny – yes, in all its Freudian glory – I just experienced the uncanny.

I was happily scouring the internet during my lunch break when I happened to stumble upon a website my friend used to swear upon. Much like Plenty of Fish, she met a ton of men through this site and is now happily dating one of her catches.

And so, after realizing I was now on the site my friend used to meet her boyfriend — damn my curiosity, I decided to look for her profile.

BIG.

MISTAKE.

I boast to my boyfriend that he doesn’t know the internet like I know the internet, and he would retort in defiance: “Well, I don’t want to know the internet like you know the internet!” And yes, I admit, I have visited some very dark parts of the internet that I would be far too ashamed to admit, but that comes with my overly curious nature. But today, of all days, I may have touched a part of the internet I wish I had never touched.

I typed in her old high school email and got a hit instantly. It actually scared me how careless she was with these sort of things, as she didn’t even use an alternate email to register for a site I’m sure she wouldn’t want to be found in. But I confess – as soon as I saw that this profile was undeniably hers – I felt the old rush of adrenaline – as if I had just discovered something precious.

A part of being a writer, I believe, is that titillating rush you get when you discover a side to a person you would never have predicted. To us, you’re all characters — waiting to be explored, waiting to be written. So when we’re afforded little glimpses of personalities you would otherwise have preferred to remain hidden, it gives us a feeling of superiority. Superiority because as a writer, I am quite aware that people are extremely careful of the kind of persona they convey to different members of their social circle.

We all filter. We all selectively show parts of ourselves to other people, and hide parts from others.

This is why the internet is a treasure trove of secrets. People don masks in the internet thinking they would never be discovered, so they have usernames and aliases that they use on sites they don’t want to be discovered in. But most people don’t think twice — most people use the same username they have on their old high school emails, on their old xbox live membership. And yes, most people aren’t as morbidly curious as I am, but on the off chance that you do decide to sign up for a website you wouldn’t want to be discovered in? Pro-tip? Use an alias.

I guess you can tell where I’m going with this.

I did find my friend’s profile, but it didn’t afford me the same satisfaction I would usually get when I dig up some dirt from a person I don’t like to begin with. For one, she’s a very dear friend of mine so stumbling on this profile felt a lot more like a betrayal, than it did discovery. Second –  and you probably saw this one coming – she posted photos I know for a DAMN FACT she wouldn’t want any of her friends seeing — she was in provocative poses I have never seen her in and after seeing it, I immediately felt ashamed, bewildered and deeply troubled.

Obviously the next thing I did was confront her about it – and she was absolutely mortified that her profile was still up. I teased her a bit and said, “No wonder you got all those guys messaging you!” to which I received a 10 minute lecture about how I should mind my own beeswax, which made me laugh even harder. But this doesn’t mask the feeling I got when I first saw her profile — it was definitely uncanny, because she’s so familiar, but I was discovering her in an environment that was so public, and yet at the same time, was intended to be intensely private.

Which then made me wonder about the personas we create when we’re on the internet.

The internet affords us anonymity because of its great expanse. It is much like entering a foreign country and starting anew – and within its enormity, we convince ourselves that we can be lost in it, and that our identities will never be exposed amongst the countless nameless profiles. We don’t call each other by name – we call each other by numbers and aliases – lilyflower23, or hyperactive_freak44, and it somehow adds to the security of anonymity.

We distance ourselves from our identities by creating usernames, and it makes us forget how easy it is to be discovered.

With the internet we are led to believe that we are free to be whoever we want to be, and find other people with the same interests and quirks as we do. And because we find comfort in its vastness, we become careless in what we do hide.

I believe the internet has given birth to a new kind of uncanny: and that is discovering friends we have in real life, in websites they don’t tell us they visit. Whether it’s discovering them in an Irritable Bowel Syndrome forum, or a hidden Tumblr blog, our lives have been mapped in the internet in one form or another. And even if you are a decided hermit, who refuses to sign up for Facebook or any other social media platform, it’s pretty much guaranteed that there’s a trace of you somewhere — your information is still out there, from photos people have of you, to your name being mentioned in someone else’s blog.

This may seem insignificant to you – but think about the show Catfish. Catfish started out as a documentary about a photographer, Nev Schulman, who fell in love with a woman he met online. The documentary then takes an unexpected turn when it becomes about Nev trying to figure out who the woman really was – whether or not she was the woman in the pictures he had sent her, and how much of what she told him was true.

Due to its popularity, MTV decided to do a reality show based on the documentary and it now chronicles the adventures of Nev and Max as they scour America to help people in online relationships determine the truth behind the person they’ve been communicating with. More often than not, it turns out they were hiding something – and that they have comfortably donned  the masks of other beautiful people they found online and assumed their personalities. The reasons they give for doing this, varies – and its authenticity and simplicity is what makes their stories so relatable, and yet so saddening. The whole premise of the show wouldn’t have existed twenty years ago – who would’ve thought that the first instinct of humankind, upon gaining access to the world – is to pretend to be someone else entirely?

The internet has assumed multiple roles in our modern society, but the role it has become for most of us, is a means of escape. Whether or not it’s escaping from others, or escaping from ourselves,  the internet has definitely made it easier for us to alter our reality.

When George Orwell wrote “1984”, the biggest threat to our livelihood was  Big Brother eyeing our every move. Unbeknownst to Orwell, a mere 64 years later, us as a society, have created our own version of Big Brother, by voluntarily giving away our information (and those of our friends and family, albeit indirectly)  in websites like Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and Instagram.

Your privacy and identity – as you know it – is about to change in the next few years.  Welcome to the uncanny.

Defending Jon Finkel: A Response to “My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player”

Photo from Digital Trends

First off, let me start by laying out my biases: I love Magic: The Gathering and everything related to it.

So if you have an unusual hatred of this hobby, you might want to stop reading. Don’t blame me: I started you off with a disclaimer.

And so, let the rant begin.

I’ve forgotten what I was googling when I came upon this article: “My Brief OkCupid Affair with a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player” by Alyssa Bereznak. Nevertheless, it happened. The title aptly sums the main premise of her article: she was on OkCupid after a drunken night, encountered countless creepy messages from illiterate men, found one normal-looking one, Jon Finkel, and after two dates, (one of which involved a one-man show based on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer), intensive googling and discovering Jon Finkel’s career, Alyssa decided to drop the romance and cautions her readers against “filtered” profiles, or the things people decide to leave out.

To give her credit, she does admit to the shallowness of the internet dating world.

She states:

“But there’s a larger point here: that judging people on shallow stuff is human nature; one person’s Magic is another person’s fingernail biting, or sports obsession, or verbal tic.

No online dating profile in the world is comprehensive enough to highlight every person’s peccadillo, or anticipate the inane biases that each of us lugs around.

There’s no snapshot in the world that can account for our snap judgments.”

But I don’t believe a single paragraph renouncing yourself of the responsibility that comes with snap judgements is enough to salvage the fact that her 3 “strikes” involved Jon Finkel continuing to play Magic, the rate at which he played, and  finding his best friends through Magic.

So first, let me tell you a little something about Jon Finkel.

According to the omniscient Wikipedia:

“Jon Finkel (born May 18, 1978^[4] in Brockport, New York) is an American Magic: The Gathering and poker player.^[1] Finkel is one of the most decorated players in the history of professional Magic: The Gathering play and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time.^[5][6] During his career he has won 3 Grand Prix events and made the Top 8 of a record 14 Pro Tour events, winning three of those. In the year 2000, he became the Magic: The Gathering World Champion, as well as playing for the United States National Team, which won the team portion of the competition.”

In fact, thanks to Alyssa’s intensive googling, I discovered that he has a playing card dedicated to him: the Shadowmage Infiltrator.

I’m going to admit that I don’t know much about Magic: The Gathering. My experience with it is, at the most, casual and, in all probability, of passing interest. But I have seen what dedicated players are like, and what they have to do to stay relevant in the game.

It takes a lot of passion and hard-work to become a professional Magic Player.

It takes intense knowledge of approximately 11,665 playing cards (and that was the estimate 2 years ago), ways in which to counter each one, and constantly keeping track of the new cards that do come out.

And that’s not the end of it.

You will then have to keep track of the decks other professional players play with. I said it before and I’ll say it again: With Magic: The Gathering, you are only as good as the people you play with.

This means in order for you to excel in the game, you are constantly forced to seek other opponents, discover what their strategies are, and then meticulously calculate how you can counter each one.

Magic: The Gathering isn’t just some mindless clicking that’s so prominent with so many modern video games, where losing doesn’t seem to have any real consequences because you can always just start on your last save point. PCgamer once came out with an article with the argument that Call of Duty has destroyed a generation of first-person shooters.

Tripwire president, John Gibson was quoted saying:

“I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players. I know that’s a bold statement, but I won’t just throw stones without backing it up. When I was developing Action Mode [for RO2], I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players (…).

And really, watching some of these guys play… one of the things that Call of Duty does (…) is they compress the skill gap. And the way you compress the skill gap as a designer is you add a whole bunch of randomness. A whole bunch of weaponry that doesn’t require any skill to get kills. Random spawns, massive cone fire on your weapons. Lots of devices that can get kills with zero skill at all, and you know, it’s kind of smart to compress your skill gap to a degree. You don’t want the elite players to destroy the new players so bad that new players can never get into the game and enjoy it.”

And that’s one thing that Magic: The Gathering doesn’t have–randomness. That means every card is worth something. Every creature is synergetic with an enchantment, or artifact, and with every new card released, you will need to refer back to your old collection and understand what this new card can do to your old ones: which ones are now playable? Which ones have become irrelevant?

It takes diligent and deliberate practice to excel at something and Magic: The Gathering isn’t an exemption.

It takes skill, fast-thinking and a thorough understanding of your opponent (think facial expressions, hand gestures, movements they can’t control such as twitching of their head or restless shuffling of  cards in their hand to give you an idea of how good of a hand they have). All these cues are skills you will have to develop to get an advantage in the game. 

Alina Tugend, writer for the New York Times, quoted Professor Ericsson, when describing what it takes to be the best in your field. He states, “It involves spending hours a day in a highly structured activities to improve performance and overcome weakness.”

So to close my argument: Alyssa, Jon Finkel is probably one of the most passionate and dedicated person you would ever have the pleasure to meet.

He has perfected determination and commitment to the nth degree. He has managed to turn one of his hobbies into a prolific career. He has decided that this is what he enjoyed, and went against all odds to make a living  out of it.

And not only that — he became so good at his field that he has been immortalized in a playing card. He has become part of the game he dedicated his life to.

While you were sitting next to him during a one-man show about a serial killer, unbeknownst to you, you were enjoying the company of the hero who inspired an entire generation of Magic players to continue enjoying what they do and striving to be the best person they could be. And most of all, he took the time he could be spending preparing for his tournament to get to know you, despite the fact that you had no idea, nor interest, on how to play what is conceivably the most important thing in his life.

That, in itself, wouldn’t have been enough to strike out with me.

Edit: Looks like I wasn’t the only one offended by Alyssa’s article. See the backlash and Jon Finkel’s reaction here.

A Final Embrace: The Most Haunting Photograph from Bangladesh

Article  from Time LightBox 

April 25, 2013. Two victims amid the rubble of a garment factory building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo taken by Taslima Akhter

Many powerful photographs have been made in the aftermath of the devastating collapse of a garment factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. But one photo, by Bangladeshi photographer Taslima Akhter, has emerged as the most heart wrenching, capturing an entire country’s grief in a single image.

Shahidul Alam, Bangladeshi photographer, writer and founder of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, said of the photo: “This image, while deeply disturbing, is also hauntingly beautiful. An embrace in death, its tenderness rises above the rubble to touch us where we are most vulnerable. By making it personal, it refuses to let go. This is a photograph that will torment us in our dreams. Quietly it tells us. Never again.”

Akhter writes for LightBox about the photograph, which appears in this week’s TIME International alongside an essay by David Von Drehle.

I have been asked many questions about the photograph of the couple embracing in the aftermath of the collapse. I have tried desperately, but have yet to find any clues about them. I don’t know who they are or what their relationship is with each other.

I spent the entire day the building collapsed on the scene, watching as injured garment workers were being rescued from the rubble. I remember the frightened eyes of relatives — I was exhausted both mentally and physically. Around 2 a.m., I found a couple embracing each other in the rubble. The lower parts of their bodies were buried under the concrete. The blood from the eyes of the man ran like a tear. When I saw the couple, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I knew them — they felt very close to me. I looked at who they were in their last moments as they stood together and tried to save each other — to save their beloved lives.

Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.

They are witnesses in this cruel history of workers being killed. The death toll is now more than 750. What a harsh situation we are in, where human beings are treated only as numbers.

This photo is haunting me all the time. If the people responsible don’t receive the highest level of punishment, we will see this type of tragedy again. There will be no relief from these horrific feelings. I’ve felt a tremendous pressure and pain over the past two weeks surrounded by dead bodies. As a witness to this cruelty, I feel the urge to share this pain with everyone. That’s why I want this photo to be seen.

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Taslima Akhter is a Bangladeshi photographer and activist.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/05/08/a-final-embrace-the-most-haunting-photograph-from-bangladesh/#ixzz2SoBxEhJM

The Inadequacy of the Social Network

Facebook addiction by gladiator656

So, I just did something drastic.

I downloaded the SelfControl app on my Mac to help me wean off Facebook — up until 5 pm anyway. I did this so that I can focus more on my work, writing and all the other things I tend to ignore when I’m mindlessly clicking through Facebook accounts.

But that’s not the only reason.

I read a recent study about how teenagers actually hate facebook, but can’t seem to quit it. The majority cited the following reasons: “an increasing adult presence, high-pressure or otherwise negative social interactions (‘drama’), or feeling overwhelmed by others who share too much.”

This morning, a friend of mine messaged me urgently: “I discovered something creepy on Facebook”.

She then panicked and told me how Facebook settings allow you to see who people stalk, ie. whose accounts you are always lingering on, interacting with, or searching for. Facebook does this by logging your searches: if you look at your timeline settings,  the very bottom of your left column is a “search history”. This means Facebook has been logging all your searches — yes, even your ex’s profile, that guy you did a one-night stand with, and that hot professor you secretly have the itchies for.

Photo from Tech N Techie

She misunderstood the implication of this search thing, however, and thought that every time she visited someone’s page, the people they stalk are the first ones on their friend list. Immediately, I panicked — because this means that every time someone visits my profile, they can see who I stalk frequently.

Of course this is not the case — this will violate one of Facebook’s privacy rules after all, which prevents us from seeing who views our profile the most (isn’t that the single, most eternal essential question?). Instead, every time you visit someone’s page, you see who YOU stalk the most, meaning each page is personalized according to your most frequent searches.

But this is besides the point.

My friend thought that her boyfriend searched for these “hot” girls frequently, since they kept popping up on his friends list. Of course, the case really was that it was my friend stalking these girls. And this brought out her self-esteem issues, feelings of inadequacy and incompetency that is mainly the reason why I detest Facebook in the first place.

It’s that filtered version of people’s lives that Facebook advocates. Instead of the face-to-face conversation we used to have with friends to catch up on their lives, we get Facebook statuses, whose truth we can only suffice from periods, commas and capitalizations.

At least with face-to-face conversations, we can trace their hesitations within the words they aren’t saying — we get that from tone and body language. We have these factors that help us to interpret meaning, which essentially is what connects human beings to each other. Arguably, Facebook does the opposite thing — all of a sudden, we are getting a barrage of information that has been filtered down to create a caricature of the person someone wants us to see — a controlled personality, to cut it short. This prevents us from deducing our own conclusions about another person’s character, because we are so influenced by what they write and what pictures they choose for us to see.

And then there’s that extraordinary amount of social pressure for something so intangible. For example: a friend recently posted about a significant event in her life. Within an hour, she got 27 likes. She didn’t get one from me — not because I didn’t want to give her one, but because I had already congratulated her in real life and it seemed redundant to click “Like” on Facebook to show my support (which, by the way, is literally an action that requires the least amount of effort to show your support). Immediately, I got a text from another friend asking why I didn’t “Like” her status — was I jealous of her achievement? Did I not see her status?

HOLD ON —

when did clicking “Like” on Facebook, something SO elusive, amount to such priority, meaning and pressure?! Why did we allow that to happen?!

And not only that — an extensive amount of friends on Facebook means we get an extensive amount of information about people’s lives. And while this is a good thing for let’s say, marketing and/or exposure, this also reduces the meaning of these events — they become disposable — only relevant until the next big status update.

And this upsets me because our lives are slowly becoming fragmentized — instead of seeing our lives in one, continuous flow, where our past correlates with the present and creates possibilities for the future, we are suddenly fractioned into status updates: Today, Ellise graduated. Tomorrow, Ellise will get a job. And if I don’t update my status, or try to de-active Facebook, the status in everyone’s mind would be: Today, Ellise went full-fledged emo.

The fact that I haven’t even de-activated my account says a lot about the social pressure Facebook has on us — I hate it, but I can’t quit it. Seeing microscopic versions of my friends’ lives have become such a daily routine that I’ve stopped realizing how reductive and limiting it is. I cringe to myself every time I see a picture and realize how awesome it would be as a Facebook profile picture — because it’s a selfie I happen to look good in, as if this angle is enough to show others who I am.

I don’t want this to be the case! I want you to know that I am mad in more ways than one, have insecurities sharpened to the point of  insanity, but that I can be kind and endearing when the time calls for it. I am loyal and overbearing, creative and delusional. I want to encourage people to get to know each other beyond their Facebook profiles and sit down for a cup of tea from 4 pm to 1 in the morning and talk about everything and anything, from the kind of person you want to become, to the fears that keep you up at night.

Facebook has become a cliquey high school entourage gone international — people are reduced to either being a Facebook friend or not.

Expand your horizon, explore your world. I think people will surprise you — you just have to let them.

And don’t get me started on Twitter.