Republished from January 2007.

Please allow me to introduce myself…

Leah was generous enough to let me come and play. Here’s a slightly revised version of one of my first posts as the blogger BipolarLawyerCook. Without revealing any names (to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent), here’s a hopefully somewhat concise description of my learning that I had Bipolar II, and the beginning of a new chapter in my short life.

I’d been depressed since November of 2005, with no particularly good reason. Work was going well– I enjoyed working with my clients and colleagues, even if my cases weren’t always what I would want, either for facts or for sheer excitement. My marriage was going well, as my Better Half was finally employed again after a long period of unemployment, and the money situation was starting to be stable again. And there were no particular Larger Family Issues, since my family and the BH’s family were doing well. My depression and energy levels continued to sag– I gave up yoga, stopped cooking, was exhausted when I came home from work, and I became more anxious about tasks at work that normally wouldn’t have bothered me. I began wasting more time at work, taking longer than I’d like to do routine work, and avoiding doing tasks I did not want to do but which were necessary steps to moving my cases along. One case in particular began to gnaw at me; the facts were stupid, and my client simply wasn’t liable, in my opinion. But opposing counsel was the most stubborn, obstinate, WRONG lawyer I’d ever come up against. I began to doubt that I was seeing the case aright, at which time I started to fall apart, and let the entire case go straight to hell.

At the same time, I was having other health problems, none in and of themselves ultimately life-threatening. Each one contributed to my distress, distraction, and physical and mental discomfort. I couldn’t sleep at night for waking up in a cold sweat thinking about The Problem Case, and yet I was utterly paralyzed from doing anything about it when I got to work.

On the outside, I still put up a pretty good show to my colleagues, who were occupied with their own worries and some pretty large cases our office was handling. This all continued through April 2006, when the prozac my PCP had prescribed stopped working after 6 weeks and I was feeling Worse Than Ever. I made an appointment with Massachusetts’ Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (www.lclma.org), and after an intake session with a sympathetic but unsentimental social worker, I got a referral to a therapist, who ended our first session with these life-saving words– “You know, I think you might be Bipolar.”

Before this appointment, however, things had come to a head at work, and the opposing lawyer on The Problem Case had finally given up on me and called both the client and my boss. He called me on the carpet, I broke down, and I spilled my guts about my depression and other physical problems. I threw myself on the sword, admitted everything, and offered my resignation. My bosses were shocked, I think, at the way I fell apart, because I was and am now again the Hard Charging But Not Masculine Female Associate. To their credit, they didn’t fire me on the spot, and the conversation turned immediately from the discussion of The Problem Case to my own health. When I told them I had made some thrashing overtures toward help, because I’d been to LCL and had the appointment to see the therapist, the conversation shifted again– to getting me through this.

I have never been more embarrassed, grateful, humiliated, relieved, and as conscious of Grace as in those first few weeks after The Problem Case went to hell. I don’t know what I would have done if my bosses in particular had not been so supportive of me, and I couldn’t believe for a long time (and still sometimes don’t) that I actually deserved the friendship and support they have shown me. Once my therapist nudged me toward the bipolar diagnosis, it was all uphill. My health insurance paid for therapy without a fight. I found, after some initial few weeks trying to locate a shrink who would accept my HMO, a wonderful psychiatrist who treated me with the humor, respect, and criticism I need to keep perspective, and who recommended, on the first try, a combination of medications that have allowed me to feel energetic, happy, normal, and serene in varying combinations. I still get mood swings, I still have a hard time with the wintertime lack of sunlight, and I still have a hard time when I don’t get enough sleep– but they don’t push me too close to the edge, like they used to.

I still have lots of work to do with my therapist. I have lots of bad mental habits, formed both before and after my bipolar likely emerged in my late teens, that I need to root out. I have lots of mood triggers that I need to recognize, so that I don’t let things get my goat the way they did in The Problem Case.

After a probationary period at work, I feel like I am back on my game and better– my energy levels are more consistently high than they used to be, and I am less irritable and more easily amused on a regular basis. The medication and the therapy have allowed me to finally start to become the person I always felt was under the mood swings, but I know I’m going to have to keep an internal eye out to make sure I don’t go down the dark road alone again. I did have one minor freak-out, related to a case, a few months into my new treatment, but I recognized it in time (albeit the Nick Of Time) and together with my boss, were able to come to a resolution that embarrassed no one and which preserved the client’s interests.

So now I am working to build on the person I can be, and to recapture and maintain the creativity and self-expression I lost toward the end of high school. (Although this time, hopefully the poems won’t be as bad, and I will restrain myself from drawings of unicorns in the margins.) It’s going to be a journey, and like any journey, there will be bumps, potholes, sinkholes and exhilarating views– but I feel like my backpack is full of the tools that I need to cope with whatever the road throws at me.

I started the blog as an outlet for my inner devil(s), a way of cutting myself some slack, and having some sympathy for myself. But it’s quickly turned into a tool for maintaining my sanity. Even if I don’t get any comments, and I’ve only got 2 lurkers, total, I can feel like I’ve productively put the stress out there, rather than bottling it up– which helps me deal better at work, at home, and with my friends and family. And which allows me to post occasionally about the ham sandwiches I ate for lunch and the random things I saw during the day, rather than my inner agonies.