What’s Left when you are Bipolar?

“What’s left?” She would ask of me, her eyes sometimes holding tears and other times her face a blank stare. Her medications did not keep the demons from visiting. They would arrive sometimes with a knock of manic, sometimes with a sad mumble of depression. Her demons possessed her, changed her physically. She had super powers and could do more — staying up all day and night to create a new project — or — she was worthless. She would sleep all day and night in her attempt to silence the pain. All or nothing is how she lived. Those demons made her all or nothing.

So she would ask me “what’s left?” That two word question held all our conversations about life and the meaning of it. What is left to live for when the money gets spent wildly and bills cannot be paid? When spouses are cheated on and marriages end? When children get neglected, abused, and then taken away? When depression consumes all dignity and time until it seems life is worthless, and there is nothing left?

What is left to live for when she is manic depressive and years of cocktails, electroshock, and a whole mosaic of therapies have proved to be as bad as when the symptoms first appeared?

“What’s left?”

She would ask me over our years together. After 27 agonizing roller coaster years, I gave up trying to find the correct answer to her question. In fact, I gave up on her, and then a few months and one episode later she gave up on life.

Her note read, “there is nothing left to live for.”

It has been 10 years since her overdose. I know the answer to her question now, but I cannot share it with her because she is gone. So I am going to share it here.

Maybe someone who is asking the same question will see it and understand this answer. Maybe I will see it in black and white, and make sense of why she did it.

So she could ask and now I could answer —

“What’s left?”

“Mom? Me. I am still here.”