Another New Normal

How many times in life have you experienced a shift in circumstance so powerful that you adjust the parameters of what you consider "normal"? Most people have several of these: graduation, marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a parent. Some shifts are wonderful, and others devastating. Still others are just plain weird. In transition, I always think back to how things were and wonder how long it will be until things return to that state. It's usually then that I realize - they're never going to. 

Sometimes we expect the transition, and we have time to prepare. Other times, we are stunned to have our imaginations blown apart by the force of the unexpected. Whether the event is happy or tragic, our minds seem to process our surprise first, and we learn to cope from the vantage point of the shell-shocked. It's from that point that I write now. So I find myself almost at a loss of words attempting to describe how I feel about discovering that my first-born child, my only son, has a preliminary diagnosis of Bipolar I. If you aren't familiar with this condition, well, this isn't about just mood swings. Bipolar I includes psychosis. 

I know people generally agree that teenagers are crazy. However, when my son believed that the CIA had given him LSD, "crazy" understated his mental state. He also sincerely believed that his internal light was so strong that he needed sunglasses, lest he burn someone with his eyes. He was manic for several days, and slept a grand total of 13 hours in the course of a week. Finally, after heavy doses of antipsychotics, he began to come back to reality.

To be honest, some of the delusions were downright hilarious. For example, when asked to recount any addictions, he very seriously explained to a nurse that he was, "hooked on phonics." Despite a few laughs, I hated bearing witness to my son's struggle with the mania. The nine days of his hospitalization were the most draining of my entire life.    

Having him "back" is like a dream come true. Then again, he isn't "back" because we've never known who he is as an adult, because he hasn't yet become that. My hope for his future has been restored and even magnified now that I know how much he has already conquered. Before the episode, he had been a sulky, angry young man. I had worried for months, but his behavior was never outside the range of what seemed to be "normal" teenage angst.  I'm so happy to be reunited with a boy I haven't seen in a long time, and getting to watch him become the young man who we are actually yet to meet.

A few weeks before the manic episode, I had considered that he might need a psychological evaluation, but since he was 18, I wasn't sure how I was going to convince him to participate. Some people tried to tell me that I was over-protective. More than once I was told that I was the actual problem. I wasn't over-protective, and I wasn't the problem. Had I known what I know now, I would have trusted my instincts. Yet I can't regret the sequence of events, because without the manic episode, the scope and magnitude of his illness might not have been adequately assessed. Without the psychosis, diagnosis could have been murky, and he might have battled for years without even knowing what he was fighting or why. I am so thankful that we discovered his condition so early in his life.

I can't describe the details of the experience (so far) in one post. Suffice it to say that we are once again expanding our definition of "normal."