CHAPTER ONE

There is a need to fulfil a dream, a dream, though intense as it always was, has, over the years, shifted in its content. The dream was honest and straightforward in its requirements, to be rid of this illness I must endure, to have it be gone from me forever. The dream was to have my life back, to be the way I was before the illness manifested itself and devastated me so.  The dream was to be me again, with all my faults, with all my attributes and with everything else that made me who and what I was.

As time passed by and the dream was not fulfilled I still hung on as tightly as I could. Even in the darkest hours when living no longer seemed an option a part of me clung to this tiny island in the huge ocean, this final link to reality, this small salvation among the many sins. It was the only hope I had of staying alive, of somehow, some way being me again. 

 Something happened to my dream one day, I became aware that its content had shifted, not changed but shifted.  The goal of the dream was still exactly the same but it was now made up of more than one constituent, there was now more than one part to my dream.  This was a very frightening experience for me and I refused to believe it when the mental health professionals told me this was a step in accepting that I indeed had this incurable mental illness. I didnt want to hear this, it was contrary to my dream and it placed grey areas in my black and white world.  I hated anyone who told me I had this illness and that it was incurable, even though they told me it was manageable, to varying degrees, with medications.  This wasnt life, this wasnt living, for me this was an existence in an alien world from where I could never get back to mine.  I asked my own mind why it had betrayed me, why it had shifted the content of my dream and seemingly destroyed any hope I had of being rid of this illness.  I tried to see some kind of logic in this, after all if my mind is part of me then through the process of elimination I was ultimately responsible for what happened to my dream. I feared I was losing my mind that I was losing control, that I was betraying my self and forsaking my long held dream.  I have since discovered why the content of my dream has shifted, not only once, but several times over the past few years and I am now inviting you to travel with me to see why my dream has shifted and to experience, in some small way, what I must experience every day of my life as I cope with Bi-Polar Affective Disorder.

   Before you decide to undertake this journey with me I am compelled to inform you how important it is that you realise the profound impact it may have on your life.  This journey impacts my life every day, for me it is a journey with no stopping points, a journey with no destination, a journey with no ending and a journey with, at times, no hope. It is a Roller Coaster ride, which never stops, I can only sit and hold on tightly as it carries me through the emotional ups and downs I must endure. I never know how high it will take me into the white pit of mania or how low it will take me into the black pit of depression.  What I do know is its inevitability.   Sometimes the Roller Coaster slows and seduces me with its false promise of stopping, but it never slows enough to let me off, not even for a little while. This journey will never end for me unless God or I choose to end it, the choice is mine to make for thats the way it is, the way it is destined to be.  I am a passenger on this Roller Coaster a traveller on The Journey of Incubus.

As you travel with me on this journey you must attempt to look into my world from yours as I look into yours from mine. For though they are parallel universes they are intrinsically different places and may well be so until the end of time.  I have no right to expect you to undertake this journey and I will understand if you choose not to do so.  But I must hold true to my belief that people from your world will one day shift their paradigms and come to acknowledge that my world exists, and know and accept the reasons why.   

We must form a bond between us on this journey as together we travel wherever these words may take us. It is important that within these words you try to find that intrinsic something which allows you to discover a part of me, to try to feel in your soul a little of what I must feel in mine.  We must attempt the impossible and become two parts of the same person, for only then can you hope to touch who I am and accept what I must endure every day of my life. You must summon significant emotional strength as we go forth and you must attempt to understand why some of the things I write will seem contrary to your perception of what should be, in the normal world in which you live. My mind will write the words, which fit at that particular time as they swerve and digress from one subject to another. This is my mind; this is how it works, how it thinks as it is continually raped by this Bi-Polar Affective disorder, which guarantees me for the rest of my life, free tickets to travel on The Journey of Incubus.

 There will be occasions, during my undertaking to complete this journey when I will walk away from my computer convinced that what I am doing is nothing but an utter waste of time, effort and emotional energy. As I sink deeper into the black pit of depression, paranoia and negative thoughts, growing ever more intense, will bombard my mind.  They will push me to the brink of despair urging me to stop the journey, to reach the final destination now.  They will tell me it is the only way to be free of this thing that so destroys the soul of man and all those he loves. All I have to do is make the choice, for it is mine to make by right.  The futility of this life will bombard me as I attempt to fight off the catastrophic thinking in my head. The energy quickly drains from me as my resistance, my will to fight on; my desire to destroy the enemy grows weaker by the minute.  And when I finally succumb to the bombardment of negative thoughts that so overwhelm me, I will walk away, not knowing when, or if, I will ever return.

There will also be occasions when I will slam shut the keyboard draw and storm out of my office filled with such intense anger that I will be unable to control it.  I will have to explode, to vent this terrible thing that totally consumes me. This is not an anger that can be dissipated by expending physical energy such as punching a bag. It is a beast with an insatiable appetite that can only be fed by berating or provoking others until their return of anger or their tears of hurt and sorrow feeds the beast within me who then grows stronger and more intense.  It is an anger that feeds off the hurt I inflict on other people, hurt so intense that I have alienated myself, maybe forever, from those who used to be my friends. This anger and frustration is generated by excessive energy and psychosis that is prevalent in the manic phase of this illness. It is generated by the confusion I experience in mania, which affects my ability to find every day words or names in my brains memory banks. It is generated by the fact I change my clothes five or six times because I cannot make decisions. It is generated by the tremendous sexual drive I experience which makes me desire women I have never even met before. It is generated by the spaced out feelings I get and my voice becoming someone elses when I speak. It is generated by hallucinations I have when I see the black bugs, some as minuscule as little ants which move across the floor or the furniture and some as large as a cat which sits on my shoulder as I try to knock it off in great panic.  It is generated by my brain, which is working at three hundred miles an hour so I am unable to speak without falling over my own words.  And it is generated when I read a sentence I have written and I have to read it over and over because I cannot absorb what it says. 

To those people who I thought were my friends, who I thought I knew so very well just a few short years ago I say this; I understand that apologies will never erase the terrible things I have said to you in my anger nor will they change the way you feel. I cannot ask you to understand why these things happened because without going where I must go you never can.  Its important to me to tell you how very sorry I am, that I never meant to say the things I said that hurt you so very badly.  Your friendship meant a great deal to me and I mourn the loss of that friendship as I would mourn the loss of anything that was so important in my life.  I will attempt to restore the friendship we had, but I understand that this will only happen if it is something we both want.  I will attempt to wait quietly for that time to come, but above all I will understand if it never does.  I am all too well aware of the stigmas attached to mental illness and I do not judge or hate anyone who has difficulty coming to terms with this. Go on with your life, for you owe me absolutely nothing. I only hope for a little acceptance of me for who I am, if only from a distance.  God speed and god bless.

When I am in the white pit of mania where rage ensues I become my own nemesis.  I ask no quarter and I give no quarter as I berate people in the street, other drivers on the road or sales clerks in stores. Anyone and everyone is a prospective target for my anger to consume, but dear God forgive me, for the one person who is most often the recipient of my anger is my darling wife, Trish. With every fibre of my being I loathe that part of me which allows me to say such terrible, vile things to her, to unload on her all the uncontrollable feelings of rage that overwhelm me.  And yet at the time it happens it empowers me to hurt her and others with words that I would never use at any other time for any other reason. It is an awesome power that consumes me, that I so desperately want to hold onto when it comes because it makes me feel in control of everything and everyone, when in reality the exact opposite is true. 

To this wonderful woman who has supported me with her undying love through every minute of every hour of every day since we met I say this; you are my wife, my lover, my best friend and the mother of my child. I have tried to run away from this illness on many occasions only to discover it came with me. You never knew where I had gone or if I was ever coming back, yet you always waited with open arms for me to return. I have inflicted terrible psychological hurt upon you from the white pit of mania and I have cried out to you from the black pit of depression when I wanted to die, only to find that you were already by my side.  It is by gods will we are husband and wife, each destined to find the other, to bring together what god meant to be together.  I know of no way to ever repay you for your never failing love and for always being there for me, save to tell you this; I will always love you, and when you can no longer carry your burdens I will carry them for you as you have carried mine. And should the need arise, I will take you in my arms and carry you with me through all eternity.  There is no other love for me but you; I am so very proud of you in everything you do. I love you darling.

         CHAPTER TWO

The Journey of Incubus is the most difficult of journeys to undertake for it is fraught with many dangers that normal people in their normal world can never understand and I pray god they will never have to. On many occasions I have tried to prepare myself that I may survive the journey by determining what weapons to carry with me, how many I will need and how and when to use them.  I know not how far the journey will be or how long it will take, for there are no milestones on this journey and no directions to guide me back. At times I give up for just a little while as I attempt to regain the emotional fortitude for a new offensive. There are times when the new offensive is successful and I am able to survive the dark and tangled tunnels and return to my world.  And there are times when I want to give up forever, to accept defeat and so fall upon the battlefield of Incubus and be gone forever from this illness that has made me someone and something other than myself.  I know fellow travellers who have fallen on the battlefield of Incubus yet I judge them not and nor should you, for that is not our right.  I weep for them and I weep with them, for truly I know the pain and anguish and utter despair they have endured in the terrible black pit of depression. And I know full well that the next traveller to fall on the battlefield of Incubus could well be me, for like them, if it is my destiny to survive the journey this time, it is also my destiny to make that self same journey time and again in the future. 

There are times when I have all but surrendered myself totally, when my battlefield is hanging from the railing on the highway overpass or holding the knife to my wrist, when it is swallowing the first handful of pills or trying to crash the car.  Yet there is still a part of me that knows I do not want to give up the journey.  Something inside of me, maybe in that mysterious thing we call the soul reminds me of my love for my family and it knows that these actions are a cry from deep within for someone, something to make these terrible feelings go away. I do not want to die but I cannot continue to live with them as they devour me from inside out and destroy all hope time after time.  I dont have the strength or even the will to stem the onslaught anymore and I have not the means to stop the catastrophic thinking that beats me down so relentlessly. I am lost on this journey and I know not where to go or what to do in those dark and tangled tunnels. 

With all my heart and soul I want to cry out to god for help but I cannot. For in my mind, in the black pit, it is surely he who has wrought this terrible illness upon me and therefore must be punishing me for some terrible thing I have done.  I am left only to beg his forgiveness for whatever terrible sins I have committed and to promise him I will do anything he asks of me to atone for being such a bad and worthless person.  Oh dear god, please forgive me and take this terrible thing from me forever.

 I am now aware that Bipolar Affective Disorder has had a very profound impact on my life since the day I was born. Therefore this is not the story of my life, but rather the story of an illness, a mental illness and from whence it came and its impact upon me. It is the story of the feelings this illness forces me to experience and endure through every day of my life and how, for many years, I dealt with them as best I could in my ignorance.  It is the story of how I have come to deal with those same feelings since undergoing several years of cognitive therapy and implementing self-help methods to allow me to better understand this illness. It is the story of the time when this illness manifested itself with such tremendous severity and it is the story of what has transpired since that first time I was forced to take The Journey of Incubus.  

The time has come my fellow traveller; the gates of Incubus beckon us to go wherever they may take us. Oh how I envy that you have a choice to not be part of this terrible journey and to do that without taking the ultimate step.  But my destiny awaits me, once more it calls me to those dark and tangled tunnels of depression and those fog filled moors of mania. And so we must depart, not knowing the final destination or if we will ever return. Stay close brave traveller as we set forth on The Journey of Incubus.

CHAPTER THREE

It was July 11th 1949 when my father was killed in a tragic mining accident, two months before my third birthday. He was thirty-one years old and left behind my mother, my sister June and myself. I have absolutely no memory of my father, no memory of being held in his arms, no memory of him playing or walking with me, no memory of him speaking my name or kissing me as fathers do. I have asked god on many occasions to give me just one brief memory of my father and I will cherish it more than life itself.

He had served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War spending the majority of that time stationed in Canada and the USA as a parachute instructor.  Throughout his times and his travels in North America he meticulously put together a photograph album chronicling his travels.  Accompanying each picture on the black pages of the album was a short hand written notation in white ink.  These were to inform the reader exactly what, where and who the pictures showed and when the picture was taken. It always struck me how each picture on every page was so perfectly placed in relation to the other pictures. Even the hand written notations in white ink were written so neatly that on many occasions I had asked myself how anyone could write so perfectly all the time. The are many pictures I remember from that album, I remember distinctly the picture of a Blackfoot Indian chief dressed in full ceremonial dress carrying a feather bedecked lance and sitting astride a horse.  I also remember the picture taken from the rear section of a steam train as it snaked its way through a canyon and along side a river on its journey through the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada. But I think most of all I remember the pictures of my father taken with James Cagney and Alan Hale after these two renowned movie stars had finished shooting the movie Captain of the Clouds.  Mr. Cagney presented my father with a keepsake for teaching him to parachute for scenes he himself wanted to do in the movie rather than use a stunt man.  This was something I occasionally boasted about as a young boy growing up.

After the war my father was discharged from the RAF and he and my mother and sister rented a local council house in the beautiful village of Hazel Slade in the county of Staffordshire in central England. Hazel Slade was situated on the edge of what was, and still is, Cannock Chase.  A significant part of Cannock Chase is a forest, which consists of some six million trees, predominately pines and silver birch.  This area of England, like most others, is steeped in history and was a veritable haven for young boys whose fantasies carried them back to the days of knights, chivalry and the dark forces that sort to overthrow them.  The Earl of Anglesey, who once owned all of Cannock Chase and the surrounding areas, had a profile somewhat lesser than other members of British nobility, yet never the less played quite a significant role throughout much of British history.  The Earls ancestral home, Beaudesert Hall, which was now in ruins, was often visited by myself and others as we ventured deep into the forest without even the slightest fear of any of us being harmed in any way by another human being. Many is the time my cousin Bill and I have taken a bivouac tent and all the necessary items to allow us to camp in a clearing for a week at a time as we applied the skills we had learned with great eagerness as Boy Scouts. These were scary times for us as the rustle of animals and the hoot of the owl would make us slide a little deeper into our home made sleeping bags in the wee dark hours. But there was something much more overpowering than the fear we felt at night and that was the excitement we experienced all day long as we explored the forest and its hidden secrets. We knew how to lay trails so we wouldnt get lost and we carried tools and supplies with us. We held a great respect for Mother Nature and always followed the rules, as we had been taught, to preserve her natural beauty and her life giving properties.  This respect has stayed with me always and I taught my daughter to have the same respect for nature.  I now teach my beautiful grandchildren Brandon, Jordan and Riley.

Jobs were difficult to come by after the war and the main employers in the Cannock Chase area were predominately coalmines. There were fourteen mines in the area, the first one being opened in 1860 and the last one closing in 1982.  My father applied for a job in the mining industry and was employed at Cannock Chase Colliery number eight as a maintenance worker in the boiler house. This particular operation was situated above ground, as opposed to underground, which meant my fathers work was carried out without having to go down the mine. However, with another baby expected and knowing full well the expenses associated with this upcoming event he decided to ask for work underground because the pay was better and overtime was plentiful.

It was a beautiful summers day on that fateful July 11th in 1949, my father and mother and my sister and I all sat in the back yard having a picnic. He was working the afternoon shift that particular week and had almost convinced himself to skip work that day. He had been working significant amounts of overtime for quite a while and said it would be nice to skip work and stay right here with the family especially in the warm sunshine of that summers day.

It was 8:00 P.M. that night when my mother went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea and prepare an evening snack for the three of us. The houses on the side of the street where we lived were built below the level of the street and the sidewalk, which meant having to walk down four or five steps to reach the concrete walkway to the house.  My mother picked up the kettle from the stove and walked toward the kitchen sink to get water to make the tea. The walk from the stove to the kitchen sink meant my mother was looking directly through the big kitchen window, which allowed an unobstructed view of the concrete walkway, the steps the sidewalk and the road.

My mother never realised shed had the negative thoughts that generated the feelings that swept over her like a tidal wave on that hot July night. She only knew inside that something was wrong, something very bad had happened.  As she saw the police officer in his tall bobbys hat and the nurse in her crisp white and navy blue uniform standing at the top of the steps my mother was, in a split second, thrust into a totally alien world where the things we see, hear and feel take on a whole new meaning. This alien world causes us to see in colours that are unreal and it allows us to hear in volumes and tones that we have never experienced before. Time becomes totally distorted, movement, whilst seemingly normal, is sometimes sporadic, sometimes too quick, sometimes too slow, sometimes frozen. Our thoughts focus on things that are totally abstract and illogical to our normal thought patterns and we have no idea why this is so, even years after the terrible event. Maybe all of these things are symptomatic of shock, or maybe theyre a defence mechanism activated by the brain to lessen the effects of that shock. For whatever reason, my mothers thoughts at that time dwelled on how very tall the police officer was in comparison to the nurse. Perhaps, she thought, if he wasnt wearing his bobbys helmet, she may be taller than him.

They were right of course, those feelings that tore at my mothers soul and at her very existence as a wife and mother, her husband, the father of her children was dead.  There was no reason he should be dead, there was no expectation of his death due to illness or disease. There was no warning of any kind that this terrible thing was about to happen. God doesnt send E Mail or Faxes, he doesnt make phone calls and he doesnt call you on your pager or send you a letter, nor does god use a courier service. So if all, or any, of these means of communication had been available in 1949, god did not use them then either. Maybe its just better this way, which of us would like to receive an E Mail which says: Dear Jock, Today when you are carrying out maintenance work on a huge coal cutting machine in the mine, one of the men you work with will start up that machine prematurely, before you are finished doing your job.  As a result of that you will be dragged into that machine and be tragically cut to pieces by the hundreds of carbide steel teeth, which would normally rip into the coalface. I suggest you say your goodbyes to your wife and children before you leave for work.  Yours truly, God.

I have no idea what that devastating news and the ensuing funeral had on my mother for I was too young to remember anything before that dreadful day. It was absolutely inevitable that the impact of such a terrible, traumatic experience in a young womans life would be very significant. We hear of both the physical and also the psychological scars that people are left with after such traumatic experiences.  I believe the psychological damage incurred by my mother from that terrible episode on that sad day triggered the manifestation of the Bi-Polar Affective disorder that she had carried since birth. This is the same Bi-Polar disorder that I inherited genetically from her and which I carry today and for the rest of my life.  She never knew she had it before the tragic incident and she never knew afterwards.  She always thought it was a problem with her nerves and back then in the 1940s family doctors were somewhat ignorant of mental health issues and their impact.  This made them reluctant to refer patients to psychiatrists and patients reluctant to go even if one was available.  So my mother, like others of her time, was never diagnosed and so never received treatment for her mental illness.