A severe manic episode leaves a residue of shame that no magic formula can resolve or wash away. Your behaviour, actions, words and deeds – no matter how out of character – are remembered by others while you, yourself, have only the foggiest sense of a hellish few days or weeks.
As the weeks pass I find myself unable to shake thoughts of my workplace, the environment in which my manic drama played out. I don’t think about returning to work and I know that at this point I could not even mentally or emotionally entertain that notion even if they would accept me. I realized today that it is the unbearable shame I feel for actions and words I could not control and can never properly apologize for that is eating me up inside.
A post on a blog I follow inadvertently put me in mind of a poem I discovered in the wreckage of my first manic psychosis many years ago. The poem, “Deceptions”, by Philip Larkin was inspired by an account from Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor of a young girl who was drugged and raped by her master.
The poem is exacting in its depiction of her grief and the poet admits, unapologetically, that there is no consolation he can give her; recognizing that both victim and perpetrator were deceived in the violent act. I think it is this very measured recognition that there is nothing that he can offer to absolve grief and shame in the sufferer whether the event is recent or buried by the sands of time that gives the poem its power. The following lines struck me when I first encountered them and this time around, perhaps because my manic episode was a much more public event, they clearly articulate the feelings with which I am currently trying to come to terms.
… light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
This too shall pass, I know, and I will ease the drawer closed and the emotional scars will fade with time.
Absolution is not the issue. Mental illness is not a sin.
roughghosts 
HUGS! Those lines are wonderful. And you are also having a hard time because you’re sensitive and intelligent and see things from all sides. If you could take a stupid-pill you’d feel better faster – but then you wouldn’t be you.
LikeLike
The most important sentence you wrote, that I wish could be pasted all over everyone’s blogs, is “Mental Illness is not a sin.” That is going to stay with me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks. Unfortunately I have encountered too many people who believe it is…
LikeLike
Well they are fools!
LikeLike