My recent post - you know the one in which I complained that NHS staff need to be more accepting of people with mental illnesses? - has got me thinking (I can't type that without an annoying Carrie Bradshaw voiceover in my head. Gah!).
Has this illness always affected me? Is the 'illness' just the way I am? Should my condition excuse my flaws? Do I look for reason in every negative experience because I'm bipolar? Do I use too many question marks?
Earlier today, walking home from a children's party (yes, a children's fucking party people, I am that lame), trying my very hardest not to cry like a teenage girl who's just been dumped in front of all her mates, I wondered whether I'd be helped out by wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan 'I'm not rude, I'm just bipolar!'. See, during the course of said under 5s shindig I was entirely unable to communicate with the people around me. Partly because I didn't know many of them, partly because some of those I did know I have little in common with aside from having children of similar ages, but mostly because social situations are very much not my bag.
I imagine much of this discomfort, along with the shaking hands, racing heart and slight sweats, comes from what has been coined by my local friendly psych as Social Phobia (and possibly the result of one bottle too many last night). But, I wondered on my little meander, hiding my face behind my hair, whether that meant that I'd always been phobic. See, I've never in my life, even as a child, found it easy to speak to people, to make small talk and deal with people that I don't know or don't like. Can you be born with a social phobia or is it something that develops? And if it's something that develops over time does that mean that I'm not in the least phobic, just rude and uncommunicative?
One of my abiding memories of sixth form college is of a girl who I'd got to know over a period of time telling me that she was scared of me when we first met. I was sarcastic and grumpy and she thought I didn't like her. Wrong! The fact was that I seemed grumpy because, well, that's how my face is, and my extreme reliance on sarcasm is something that provides an effective cover for nerves. Ever since that conversation I've realised that I give off this air - I'm unapproachable and aloof, even if I don't mean to be. Thing is I can't switch it off no matter how much I want to, no matter how much I like you and would actually love to be your friend.
Ok, so there I am, trying not to seem rude at this party and I look at my kids. While everybody else under five foot is screaming around like gremlins on e-numbers *my* offspring are sticking together, not really talking to the other kids, not really joining in with anything. They're me.
As any parent can probably well imagine, on realising this my heart breaks in to a thousand little pieces like somebody just punched it really hard and, wouldn't you know it, it's made of paper thin glass. My beautiful, intelligent, kind and loving and loyal and funny kids, who will make the most incredible friends for any other person with an iota of sense, are afflicted with this same pathetic inability as I am. And whether it's nature or it's nurture it's all my bloody fault.
Is my phobia or otherwise hereditary or have they seen me behaving in my bizarrely aloof way - despite all my best efforts to put on an air of confidence in their presence, to make friends and to encourage them to do the same - and imitated me?
Perhaps that t-shirt would come in handy after all, at least my excuse for being so weird would be out there. And folk might be less inclined to judge me and more inclined to take pity on my situation. At least the whole 'waiting at the school gates' (the perennial highlight of the day for the middle class mum, the equivalent of having my fingernails plucked out one by one for me) would be less agonising. And then of course I could leave it to the kids in my will too.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hide behind my bipolar or my social phobia, I don't use it as an excuse to be anti-social or inadvertently rude, at least not to others - it's a fail safe excuse I make to myself, 'I can't help it, it's an illness'. And I have never found myself with a lack of friends, I want to be absolutely clear on that, I have been lucky enough to have a group of friends, incredibly supportive, incredibly faithful friends, who have been with me through thick and thin since I was at school, some of them from age five. And indeed since my bipolar diagnosis I've found myself with a whole new group of wonderful women around me who have been very understanding and non-judgmental, not to mention ridiculous fun even on those days when I can't see a reason to get out of bed (you know who you are). So I know that my kids will find their place in a group or in groups. But I still can't help but wish that they could do what I can't, that they could have that thing that makes it simple to be everybody's mate, to have those meaningless conversations or simply smile and say hi without feeling as though they might collapse with a heart attack, to speak confidently without turning a shade of red more normally seen on a pillar box.
I hope that whatever friends my children do have as they get older will be able to do for them what those select few who, whether they really understand my issues or not, do for me - help by introducing me to their friends or by sticking with me when I'm alone in a crowd. Because in those moments, when my heart is about to pound out of my chest, when I'm faced with the social situation firing squad (currently those braying mummies who pretend class doesn't matter when it so clearly does - proof that they have none), those friends are as valuable as diamonds and as brave as any superhero to me. And knowing that somewhere out there those people will exist for my children provides just a little bit of superglue for my splintered glass heart.
Read more about Social Phobia/Social Anxiety here
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