tw: suicide, mental illness
The screams started in grade 8 when I was sitting on the bus.
My journals were full of dark thoughts from age 10, but grade 8 is when I first heard and felt the screams. From that point on, they would become a regular part of my life when getting upset. Sometimes it would be so loud I felt like they were drowning everything else out. As I got older, they got louder. But so did everything else. And other things started making noise.
As I described it in a recent instagram post— I started identifying all the noise as the Girl in the Rattling Cage. I never talked about her, but was always aware of her existence. I knew that people would call me crazy if they knew about her— thus the reason why I felt like she was in a cage. When I was younger I had less control of her. Sometimes she would slip out— One of the most noticeable times was in a fight with my father where someone was a witness. I almost felt like I blacked out and had an out of body experience as I screamed. Other times she would appear at the wharf in Pictou where I would let her out. And then there were the experiences when I was in my teens. My sister was a witness, and to this day I tell her I don’t want to talk about it.
But the Girl in the Rattling Cage had lots of different phases. She would lay down when I was depressed and constantly talk about wanting to die— constantly going on about different ways to do it and telling me to get in bed and never get out. In the depressive stages she still rattled away even though my movements would feel heavier and slower.
She would cloud my mind— setting a fog throughout my brain much thicker than the one Newfoundlanders and Labradorians love to complain about in the spring months. Except with this fog, I had no idea when it would move.
Some people have long periods of stability with bipolar. I tend to rapid cycle which would later explain why I felt so scared all the time of the Girl in the Rattling Cage.
In between phases, I was still acutely aware that she was there. That at any moment she could turn the noise up unbearably loud. I would be scared as we battled that she would win and send me spiraling into any direction she felt like.
Sometimes she would be paranoid— constantly whispering about bugs crawling on me, making me avoid cushions in any public spaces because I was afraid of them. Sometimes that people could read my thoughts— taunting me that they hated me because they knew who I really was. When I was younger she made up a lie about how distance was a made up construct and all the adults were lying about how long it took to get from one place to another.
Almost every time I drove to town she would make me feel unsafe in the car. Screaming at me to end things on on the empty road. I would try to drown her out, but she loved to torture me from the end of the 50 speed limit sign to the top of Shea Heights.
Sometimes she would dial up my words— making me speak in rushed tones over people. At night she would put words up all over the cage and make them spiral round and round until I couldn’t keep up.
This is just some of the things the Girl in the Rattling Cage would do. Of course she wasn’t real, but I needed a way to keep her locked up as much as possible. That’s how I grew up to know it— a girl trapped in a cage who needed to be kept under control. She was me. She was a part of me all the time.
When the lamotrigine was working at its best, she stopped talking as loudly and she did briefly stop talking about suicide. But I was ALWAYS in battle with her. I was always fighting her. For that brief time she would listen to me and my quality of life sky rocketed. I thought that was normal. I thought that was the goal. Sometimes she would be quiet but I could always feel her smirking and reminding me she could start again at any time. I spent all of 2017 learning and going over my past to identify triggers so the Girl in the Rattling Cage would only be smirking instead of rattling away.
But it 2018 when it stopped working— the Girl in the Rattling Cage got stronger and consumed me. We still fought, but she was powerful and wore me down.
In 2019 I continued to fight her, but I became less and less optimistic about a long term stability being possible as she pushed rapid cycling button to rattle the cage in different directions more often.
In 2020 we went into an all out war, but I decided to invest in fighting her with help each Wednesday in therapy.
In 2021, she won a battle we fought every day. I knew it was a matter of time before I’d let her win again and that I might not survive that round. I didn’t feel I had the energy to try to fight anymore.
It was then I knew I had to try lithium for the sake of my caretakers. Just as every medication before it, I was terrified.
Lithium hates my body. It’s made me throw up, itch to the point I feel like crawling out of my skin, added pounds to my body, swollen my lips twice their size and made them ooze. It’s made me SO dehydrated.
But it’s also done something I didn’t even know was possible. It’s quieted the Girl in the Rattling Cage. I don’t mean the laying down quietly with the smirk. I mean dead quiet. A calm quiet. It’s like she’s gone in another room to sleep and left space for me to concentrate and think.
I want to live.
When my car broke down and cost me $1600 after one of the most expensive months of my life, I was upset and sad— but it wasn’t the end of the world. I didn’t plan to end my life. I didn’t feel like a complete failure. I didn’t assume this was the beginning of losing everything.
When I came across photos of a dark time in my past— I didn’t plan to end my life. I didn’t even cry. Again I felt a deep sadness, but I kept control and wasn’t riddled with nightmares for weeks on end.
When I read about a shooting, I didn’t ask anyone to stay here. The screaming didn’t start. I didn’t huddle in a ball or feel the urge to drink all the upset away.
When my friends came over, I didn’t feel extreme paranoia that they hated me and were judging every corner of the shoe. I didn’t try to detect resentment of people or think that others secretly hated each other. I didn’t fear an argument to break out. When they left I didn’t cry or ask Calvin over and over about how bad I did at seeming normal.
When there is silence, it’s not consumed with screams and rattling metal of someone trying to get out. It’s just the sound of peaceful and safe silence.
I cannot begin to explain what this feels like. I can try all I want, but how do you explain what it feels like to no longer be at war in your head? How can you explain what it’s like to trust your emotional response?
For the first time in memory, I feel quiet. When I’m watching something, I don’t hear the Girl in the Rattling Cage. When I’m working, I don’t hear the Girl in the Rattling Cage. When I’m reading I don’t hear the Girl in the Rattling Cage. In my limited interaction with small groups (because of covid) I don’t hear the Girl in the Rattling Cage. When I’m looking out at the ocean, I don’t hear the Girl in the Rattling Cage.
I hear the ocean, I hear the silence. There is extra space and room in my brain. My body isn’t tense. When i talk to people I keep pausing and waiting for the rattle, but there is only room to process the conversation.
This is all good and I cannot begin to explain how wild it is. But I also feel something I didn’t expect. A deep grief. A grief for 20 years spent in with the rattling cage.
I think back to times when I would hide in bathroom stalls, hotel rooms, and in my family van, when I was overwhelmed in crowds and at events. I think back to the outbursts, tears, and rage that made me tremble. I think back to when I slept until mid afternoon as I tried to pass the time. My mind goes back to standing in the bathroom during church services as I tried to quiet the the Girl in the Rattling Cage. I think of trying so hard to suppress the cage that I got dizzy and scratched my legs raw. I think of the money I cost my parents when I became paranoid about bugs and they would call an exterminator in just to make my brain calm down even though they’d say there was nothing. I think back to the hyper sexual episodes when I’d beg for it to go away and feel so ashamed. I think about the failed relationships and broken friendships.
20 years of wanting to die with the brief break in 2017. Roughly 16 years of knowing the Girl in the Rattling Cage was a part of me. I lived with the noise thinking it was a part of my life and would never go away.
Now it looks like the rattling and noise is in the middle of leaving. I had a brief spell of the quiet. The noise came back, but softer, so they upped the dose of lithium. Now it’s quiet again.
The space in my brain is unsettling, the grief is overpowering, and the quiet baffling.
What will this world be like? Will it last?
I don’t know. I know that it’s not a cure, but that it’s working. For now it’s still early stages and I can’t tie it up with a bow.
All I know is that I’m adjusting, grieving, working toward hopeful for the long-term sleepy quiet of the Girl in the Rattling Cage.
If you are struggling, or in a crisis, I would recommend calling 1-866-585-0445. They will be there for you in a crisis and also offer free counselling sessions