Last night I was watching Stephen Fry's two-part documentary entitled "The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive", which explores the reality of living with bipolar disorder. It was a fascinating programme in which Stephen, a long-time sufferer of the disorder, met celebrities and members of the public and invited them to speak very frankly about their disorder and about the impact it has had on their lives.
One part of the programme struck me as being particularly poignant. During each interview, Stephen asked the person "Do you regret having this disorder? Do you wish you had been born without it?" And, with the exception of one lady who suffered very badly from it, the people all said "No. I don't regret it." Not even the guy who had a total nervous breakdown and started having hallucinations in which the Devil was trying to get him; not even he regretted having this disorder.
This got me thinking: aren't human beings amazing? Isn't it astounding what humans can put up with and what they can get through? I know that's a bit cheesy (I have visions of Bill Hicks saying: "I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are.") but it's true!
Anyway, even though I'm still relatively young (compared to some of you old farts) in my lifetime I've seen people struggle through some extraordinary stuff including deaths, huge upheavals in their personal lives, etc. And yet, when you ask most people, or at least the people I know, if they regret any of it, or, would they do things differently if they could go back in time, I think the overall answer would be "no".
Not to equate my trivial personal problems with bipolar disorder or depression (although my problems weren't trivial to me and so still count!), but I've had some shitty times in the past, and yet I don't regret a single one of them. I suppose the biggest upheaval I've had was my marriage and subsequent divorce. Without going into too much detail, the man turned out to be a bit of an asshole, and, after (unwittingly) letting him systematically destroy my self-confidence and turn me against my friends, my family, even my country, I then found out that he was cheating on me for a couple of months while I was back in Ireland waiting to get my visa to move to his damn country. So, I dumped him.
Over the next year I slid into what I realise now was a pretty dark depression. I was deeply ashamed that I had married this idiot and that I had allowed him to walk all over me. I was ashamed of the hurt that I had caused my family and friends. I was even, perversely, ashamed that I hadn't been able to make the marriage work. I had made my bed but I was unable to lie in it. I felt like a complete failure.
I moved back home and got a job and, unfortunately, started drinking heavily in an attempt to regain some of the confidence that he had knocked out of me. It took a long time for me to get my divorce because for some fucked up reason, he didn't want to give me one. I had to resort to threatening to take half his inheritance (his dad was quite wealthy and, had I followed through on my threat I wouldn't have to work for the rest of my life - but I'm no gold-digger, so a threat was all it was) in order to get him to go to his bloody lawyer.
However, despite all the pain and hurt that it caused, I don't regret it. I don't regret meeting him, marrying him or divorcing him. The experience of that made me who I am today, and I think I'm alright! I might be a little bitter and cynical around the edges, but overall I think I've come up trumps.
I do regret the pain that I've caused my family and my close friends. Especially since they did their best to warn about this guy, but I chose to ignore them. I regret the fact that I had to tell my dad what happened and had to watch as his heart visibly broke in front of me. I regret my mum being so upset with me that she couldn't speak to me for a couple of weeks afterwards.
But, if I had to do it all again, I would. If I hadn't gone through that, I wouldn't be the person that I am now. I'd probably still be a doormat, letting people walk all over me. There's no way I would have had the confidence to go back to university and do a PhD.
So I can understand to some degree when these people with bipolar disorder say that they don't regret having it. After all, it's a fundamental part of who they are.
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