Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

I Travelled The World During a Manic Episode, But Could I Make It Home?

by Heather Bradford

There is a higher being looking after me. I cannot go on—this impulsive whirlwind of a journey has taken me over 8000 miles from home. I am exhausted and yet there is the sign right before my eyes, telling me to keep going.

I fixate on the angel tattoo that stares back at me as a train rushes by, barely slowing as it passes my station, and a gasp of air blows my skirt and carries a wisp of loose hair in front of my eyes.

I sweep it aside distractedly and gaze at the angel that snakes its way up the burly man’s calf. He looks bored waiting for a commuter to take him somewhere that I’m not going.

I had to face the journey alone.

From the station to the airport, I struggled with my baggage. Two suitcases with memories of home that I was taking for my children to enjoy in another country.

I found the queue for my flight and unabashed tears wet my cheeks. I have been an airline employee for four years and staff travel should be easy. Unexpectedly, I’m acutely aware of the added stress of flying staff standby and the need to appear professional, have my documents in order, and not cause any disruption to the airport operations.

Approaching the check-in desk, I became confused trying to find my reservation code. The desperate effort to appear functional reduced me to tears again. There was no guarantee I would be given a seat on the flight…  and what then?

I hoped they mistakenly thought I was flying for bereavement—tear-streaked, sleep-deprived, and disheveled, it seemed one of the only tangible excuses for my erratic journey and behavior.

“I’m very tired, I’m sorry, it’s been a rushed trip…” The manager looked at me sympathetically.

In reality, I was flying for a mania-induced assertion even I didn’t understand. I needed to go home and see my father before he died; an unfulfilled belief to this day, many years later.

The efficient shift manager scoured through my emails for me until she found the boarding pass I hadn’t printed and couldn’t locate. Was I just tired? I hadn’t slept more than an hour since Thursday and it was now Saturday morning. I just felt an overwhelming relief and gratitude that somebody else was taking control of the situation.

What was it like being inside my head in these moments? I knew where I was. I knew what I had to achieve, but I wasn’t clearheaded enough to really consider what I could and couldn’t do.

Actioning anything, even a conversation, took a huge amount of focus and effort. Decision making did not come easily and while problems (such as “I’m tired and hungry”) were tangible, the solution (go there and get food) was not. If someone had questioned me I would have blamed jetlag.

There came a point days later when everything became about what must or must not happen. I hadn’t deteriorated to that point yet at the airport. Thank goodness, or they would have called security.

At this point, I became hyper-focused on doing what was asked of me. With a standby seat confirmed, I rushed through security screening and to the boarding gate with minutes to spare.

It was one of the last seats on the flight and as I squeezed myself into the back row, the relief of heading home was palpable.

Unlike my confusion of an hour before, I was now hypervigilant and focused. It became apparent to me very quickly that I was seated between a man and a woman who were the devil and an angel of light. I knew this because I was wide awake, in tune with the universe and so I told these random strangers very sincerely who I perceived them to be in a verbal stream of enlightenment.

The man disappeared to the back of the plane and the lady left upon landing without a backward glance.

In LA, I needed to claim my baggage and check in for another flight north to Canada. While I surprisingly managed that, I called my husband in confusion. “I can’t find my gate,” I fretted.

“They’re doing renovations?” he suggested in puzzlement. We were both frequent travellers and my confusion made no sense.

Finally boarding my onward flight, I was beyond tired and distressed. I frantically declared I couldn’t be seated in the emergency exit row (as was standard procedure for an employee such as myself).

“It’s OK,” she reassured both me and her coworker soothingly, “I have a seat saved for you up here.” Her attentive demeanor, as she settled me in a premium seat and brought me food,  indicated she was assessing my suitability to fly.

These moments of compassion during my manic episodes serve as a salve for the wounds on my soul. Sometimes I don’t even recall these moments of compassion happening. They blur with memories of waking up on a cold floor of a psych ward with bruises on my arms and legs and sore fingers, bent backwards as well-meaning staff struggled to contain me. Memories like that are painful. I felt abused by the staff and ashamed by my actions.

So in moments like these, the flight attendant who gently helped me feels like an earth angel.  I still tear up at the memory of her kindnesses during my time of immense need and distress.

We may forget the words, like “I understand,” “You’re safe,” or conversely, “If you don’t swallow this we’ll forcibly inject you,” but we never forget how we are made to feel in the acutely-conscious, if a little addled, recesses of our mind.

During the final flight I knew to stay quiet and not bother the tourist beside me more than brief niceties. This took tremendous self-control, because in my mind, the airline was a medi-vac that had been sent just for me. They had come to take me home.

Arriving in Canada, I had slept little more than an hour in days. Wired would be an understatement. At customs, I stood staring blankly at the screen before me, disheveled and pale, my mind a fog of disorientation.

I tried in vain to pull my wandering thoughts back to the glowing console before me. Although I clutched it in my sweaty hand, I couldn’t scan my own passport. I continued to stare blankly, puzzled and numb. Someone appeared who looked official and kindly did it for me. I teetered out into the aisle. “I made it home…” I gasped in delirium and collapsed.

***

The problem with a mental health crisis is that it’s likely nobody knows what’s happening.

The week before my departure to Australia, my husband and I walked hand in hand up the gravel road by our house, and he had no questions about my fervor to go. He knew I was close with my father and knew me as a grounded, stable person with a sense of humor in most situations.

Packing for my journey to Australia, I snapped pictures of amazing synchronicities: a coffee mug that held some secret meaning to me, my whiteboard on which I’d scrawled, “Your purpose is my plan!” There was another photo of my necklace, arranged on my bed, which I texted to my sister with some great explanation that I no longer remember.

It was no coincidence to me that I was directed to the Nexus Express Pre-Clearance Line at immigration where I ran into strangers who needed unsolicited wisdom from the universe. I chatted for at least an hour with one lady in LAX. It’s probable people maybe saw me as a little eccentric but certainly not a danger to myself or them. We simply passed in the night. I was moving serenely through the world, carried by a universal connectedness, which I deemed the “energy of love.”

Arriving in Sydney, my sister, knowing my interest in natural health, had arranged an “energy treatment” for me. The practitioner told my sister later that she found me so ungrounded, she didn’t know what to do for me other than give me a crystal. I loved all things esoteric and dabbled in essential oils, flower essences, and gems, so thought nothing of being given such a gorgeous gift. I happily accepted it and continued on my way.

My family in Australia noticed something was off. How could they not? I was disappearing into meditative trances so deep that I would struggle to return from a space of dark amnesia, gasping that I was back and all was okay. My parents hovered over me with worried expressions and I concealed the fear that fluttered in my chest.

Unperturbed, I expounded the existence of “God’s Jukebox” to speak to us through song. I had listened to one such song on repeat all the way from my sister’s house to my parents as I drove through the inky night. The King Singers crooned “Lullabye,” and to me, on my frantic mission to see my father, it was the words of God.

Goodnight, my angel

Time to close your eyes

And save these questions for another day

I think I know what you’ve been asking me

I think you know what I’ve been trying to say

I promised I would never leave you

And you should always know

Wherever you may go

No matter where you are

I never will be far away

At night, I’d pace the floors of my parent’s home, swearing I could hear a different song, tangible and real, coming from my parents room. I stared down at my father as he gently slept and the next morning before breakfast insisted he listen to the song I’d imagined for its wisdom from God. He listened dutifully while watching me from across the room with quiet concern.

Surely there were other out of character behaviors as I moved among friends and relatives with intensity, showing love and interest as could only be expressed when the mind believes you may never see these souls again in this lifetime. Through it all, my family just loved me, worried a little, and bid me safe travels home again.

***

The airline staff just assumed I was an emotionally disturbed woman who was tired and overwhelmed. I’m sure I wasn’t the first passenger to present themselves teary or anxious.

But in my head, I was living at an epicentre of a journey more traumatic than I had ever experienced and certainly hadn’t witnessed in anyone else in my life. The “realities” in my mind were vivid and divine. I was functioning with determination and focus, while expecting others to toe the line in my altered reality of the world.

“I’m fine,” I asserted from within the cocoon of a privacy screen which had been hastily drawn around me at the airport. “No, I don’t need medical help.” I was just tired and relieved to be home. “Maybe a wheelchair from the airline and an employee to assist me through security to where my husband is waiting?”

We all smiled and nodded. This was decided to be the best course of action and I made everyone laugh with my quick wit and alert demeanor. What a great way to sidestep customs.

My husband escorted me to the car, relieved to have me home.

I can’t recall anything after that, though I know I collapsed again in the car park. I sunk back on the cold brick wall. It was a blur of confusion. Was my husband gone just a few seconds? Five minutes?  He quickly went to retrieve the car, pulled me safely aboard, and we headed out of the city for a 45-minute drive home.

My kids were excited to see me… or was it my overflowing suitcases of treats? Somewhere in my memory hides the sounds of happy laughter and the warmth of delighted hugs. My kids questioned if I had remembered the foods they were most excited about. Five people, wrestling the unyielding suitcases up the stairs and squeezing into the house together.

In a movie, the dialogue would be garbled and float away elusively, an odd sense of gaiety juxtaposed by the mother’s blank and disconnected expression. Her heart beat, the discordant music that echoes in your ears long after the moment reaches its climax. Amongst it all, to everyone’s startled surprise, I collapsed in the kitchen.

Just tired, hungry, needing a shower, needing sleep.

“Eat your food,” my husband encouraged watching me with concern as I sat unmoving at the dining table. “Eat your food…”

Physical functioning shutting down can be explained away. At least in my case. Who isn’t a little exhausted after an international flight of so many hours that was preceded by both car and train journeys?

“Heather, take a shower,” my husband instructed, helping me into the tub under the steaming spray. Peering in to check on me I remember the repeated message, “Heather, take a shower… take a shower… take a shower…”

What does it mean to go manic? At that moment in time, having a mental condition in our family was as remote as having an explorer who had trekked to the North Pole on foot. What is a diagnosis of bipolar disorder when you don’t believe in labels and especially not ones you don’t have a definition for? At this point we didn’t even know there was such a thing. Of course, we had heard the terms but not in our world. Not in our house. Not amongst our family in the place we called home.

“Go to sleep,” my husband said, rubbing my back and spooning in behind me to offer comfort and security.

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t sleep for another three days.

As the days passed, I began doing things such as opening the car door and threatening to jump out. I was angry and frustrated that my confused husband didn’t realize we were to stop before reaching our driveway and walk in. I believed he should understand these obvious instructions telepathically and, without question, obey.

What was “mental health” other than some misunderstood buzzword in corporate marketing campaigns or tales of middle-aged women who went to psych wards never to be seen again in bizarre tales of disturbing horror on the screen?

I was a middle-aged, Christian mother who held down a full-time job and ran a household, had friends and interests, was funny and witty. How could I become a shell of myself in some mental breakdown that took years to recover from?

Is there a benefit to telling the story of spiraling out of control? Yelling and screaming at my husband who I’d locked out of the house? Acting out bizarre scenarios that plagued my mind, threatening to jump from the car, orchestrating an imaginary choir, or insisting my son hold my hand while I counted down the seconds until I die?

This story is the tip of the iceberg. The traumatic decision to get professional help in the face of stereotypical images of the psychiatric system, was born out of desperation. Sending my children away to a place of safety with relatives, when perhaps the damage was already done, was not enough. “I would prefer to be locked away forever than to affect them more,” I sobbed, in a seemingly sane and logical moment one afternoon.

I watched my husband out the front window as he paced at the end of the driveway, his phone to his ear and his expression worried and earnest. This kind and loving man stood beside me and advocated when I couldn’t do it for myself, while wondering if he would ever get his wife back again.

As I spiraled further out of control, a police car stood sentinel and an ambulance arrived in the driveway. In a moment of gregarious goodwill I happily climbed aboard and chatted with the paramedic on the way into the local hospital. I have no recollection of being transferred to the city.

I woke up in the psychiatric ward on the floor, bruised from the fight, after three times the normal dose of medication had taken me down.

Then there was PTSD. Trying to come home, adjust, and deal with the fallout after five weeks in a psych ward left me seemingly recovered but a fragile shell of myself.

I have another 1000 words in me to talk about those long five weeks. Of course that would inspire me then to talk about the long five years that followed. There is no magic pill. Mental health is not a skip down the garden path for a picnic, during which time you swat at an annoying mosquito and then return up the path to the safety of your home again.

It is an arduous journey full of tribulation and misadventure. In the retelling, we remember the moments of overcoming and triumph and sometimes wallow in the pain where we consider we were lucky to get out alive.

And yet here I am. Seemingly against all odds. Alive, well, ready to take on the world. For me, the catalyst to healing was the decision to come off certain medications. My husband and I were noticing increasing problems that seemed to be side effects that increased the longer I took them. It appeared the medications had left me shrouded in a depressive, tired, nervous and unresponsive state. I gained weight, was too scared to leave the house, shut myself off from everyone including my husband, fell into a depressive state, had no energy to even walk up the stairs in our house and could not hold a conversation with anyone. We made the decision to come off the meds a year ago to reclaim my brain and my life.

I was lucky that my doctor supported my endeavour during the weeks my body struggled to emerge from the grasp of these addictive substances. Even with her guidance, I spent weeks shaking and pacing and terrified when I couldn’t sleep. My husband watched me suspiciously and we both questioned if my happy laughter meant I was going manic again or if I just used to have this fun, outgoing personality.

Insecure to leave the house and unable to hold down a regular job, I started writing online. Surprisingly, I found I was surrounded by people who accepted me and who I appreciated in deeper ways than I could previously have imagined.

I’m blessed with children who love me and joke about their “crazy mum” and, through my writing, an extended family who never stopped loving me but finally understands a little more about my journey. I also came to understand a little of their memories and the trauma my experience still holds for them.

My doctor told me not to talk about it, as people don’t understand, particularly in the workplace. I carried this advice close to my heart, but privately I felt embarrassed and stupid. Well-meaning comments like this one lure us into a trap of feeling shame and stigma for an illness that can strike anyone unexpectedly at any time.

Perhaps the reason people don’t understand is that it’s seldom spoken about. Like many societal taboos, exposing them to the light removes the darkness and brings hope to those afflicted.

Mental health in its various forms is not a life sentence but rather a path to growth and understanding of the human condition. I found there is strength and compassion in others sharing and being heard. Getting to this point, however, has taken years and was very scary in itself.

Many people have similar journeys and hide in the backwaters of society, although none of their experiences are exactly the same.

You and I are unique, but not unalike. Isolated, but on a parallel path to growth and understanding. We float with the current on a river that flows with deeper waters. We have been gifted with wisdom, compassion and understanding. After a journey into the abyss of struggling mental health, we perhaps have more clarity than many others and, ironically, know the meaning of grace and peace.

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Gabriel Nathan | EDITOR: Evan Bowen-Gaddy | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman

See Related Recovery Stories: Bipolar Disorder, Mental Health First Person Essays, Trauma