Salon.com > Jowita Bydlowska

My bipolar awakening

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:59:00 +0000

When I left the hospital building that morning, I had a thought: I walked in there quirky; an hour later, I walked out officially crazy. My assessment of it – “crazy” – perhaps illustrates how I felt about it then. I thought I just have a peculiar personality; my psychiatrist said I’m bipolar. This wasn’t the first time that bipolar was suggested, but it was the first time I got this diagnosis while completely sober or not in the middle of a psychiatric crisis. Still, I struggled because of my skepticism about trigger-happy labeling and the social stigma surrounding mental illness. For example, when I went to get my new medication for the first time, I told the nice and completely uninterested pharmacist that I had epilepsy. The drug I was prescribed is an anti-convulsive, and I was clearly more comfortable with pretending to suffer from seizures than being seen as “crazy.” Besides, I was already admitting left, right and center that I was an alcoholic. I needed another label like I need an elephant.

My agnostic AA

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 06:28:00 +0000

My sponsor fired me—for, essentially, not believing in God. For those of you who don’t speak 12-step, this means that the person who was there to guide me through my recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous decided that she no longer wanted to do that. This is not the first sponsor I’ve parted ways with but it is not uncommon for people in AA to go through more than one sponsor. The reasons for these relationships ending are as varied and as many as for any relationship ending—different goals, personality clashes, “cheating” (with a bottle, with another sponsor). In my case, it was irreconcilable differences: I'd started to attend the agnostic group of AA and my sponsor didn't recognize this group as part of AA. I was happy in my new group for the first time in my seven years in AA, no longer dragging myself to meetings but rather looking forward to them. My sponsor told me that if I was happy, she was happy for me and we parted ways. She was a good sponsor but our vision of AA was not the same.

I was a drunk mom

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

It’s winter 2009. I’m in a liquor store. My 6-month-old son scans the rows of bottles with his big eyes. He says, Tat-tat-tha-tha under his breath. It feels like I’m holding mine, but I let myself relax since I haven’t been in this particular location before, a wonderland of color and crystal. Usually, I make this errand run a quick in-and-out. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I think people tend to notice the stroller.

Five months ago, I started drinking again after being sober for three years. Since then, I’ve developed so much paranoia. I feel watched all the time, even in the dark. Walking home, I stay behind buildings, in alleyways, like a criminal, pushing the stroller as I take my discreet sips from a bottle of wine I've stored on the bottom of the diaper bag. I know I’m the worst of all villains: a mother who drinks. A mother who endangers her child. Part of me drinks to forget this.

How I stopped numbing out

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:01:00 +0000

One of my favorite memories is me at 21, wandering some city in Europe, in a blue dress, unwashed, drunk on vodka, hair full of sun and cigarettes, laughing with close friends who at night would turn into accidental lovers. We were going to live forever, of course, and we were always going to be drunk and it was always going to be summer. Then came the deadly winters that no one talked about; when you got too anxious and couldn't take it anymore, you went to the bar and you'd find a way to make it to the next warm season.

I first came to terms with being an alcoholic at 27. But even when I quit drinking, recklessness beckoned: I still did too much of everything -- staying up late, speeding on my bike, being careless with my body and my health. Even my pregnancy didn't slow down me down. I was the woman with the hugely swollen belly dragging buggies filled with grocery bags and potted plants balanced precariously on top of them. I would not rest; I had a beautiful garden that year.

I choose sanity over sex

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:01:00 +0000

I'm a fan of Sasha Grey. She's inspired a lot of my photographic work. I also like her because she seems to have a great sense of humor (in one of her movies she has sex with a man in a bear-mascot costume). I must have some, too, to deal with my peculiar dilemma. So I'm a fan. And I'm also a fan of pornography in general, but lately I don't watch smut that much, period.

I'm on antidepressants.

I've been on them for some time and they're more effective than the Net Nanny when it comes to limiting the time you spend seeking adult content online. Incidentally, I don't seek sex all that much either. I mean, I have it and it's good but if I stopped having it, I'd probably forget about it.

In a recent piece for Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory interviewed people about how antidepressants affected their sex lives. I worry about the 25-year-old photographer who stopped taking his happy pills because, he said, it wasn't worth the side effects. But I'm envious that he has the balls (pun intended) to forgo his sanity to satisfy the urge to frolic and fornicate.

I’m glad I didn’t get my tubes tied

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:52:00 +0000

Every week or so, my partner and I sit in a shrink's office trying to get over our bafflement. We've been baffled for some time now. About 17 months. We never planned to have kids and now we have one. And while we love this kid very much, and we can no longer imagine the world without him, and he's a beautiful golden-haired boy full of personality, his presence stumps us. We never meant to be parents. We're totally non-parentals. (What is the opposite of "parental"? The word doesn't even exist, which goes to show how ridiculous the notion must be to the world, no?)

When I grew up, I played with Legos. I never dreamed of baking or tea parties. I had dolls, but I didn't think they had feelings or needed to have their diapers changed. Then, when I was 9, my mother had my sister and I experienced all the hellish joys of raising an infant. My sister was a great kid, but by the time I was 25, I was quite sure that she was the only child I was ever going to have.

I was tricked into eating meat (and I liked it)

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:01:00 +0000

He said, "You should try this," as a plate of mysterious golden morsels landed on the table.

"But what is it?"

He smirked. "Just try it. You'll like it."

I reached and grabbed the delicate-looking thing and plopped it in my mouth. My taste buds exploded. I hope it's not meat, I kept thinking, though I said nothing. My mouth was busy having an orgasm.

"It's foie gras," he said, and I nodded. I don't know French, but he knew I was vegetarian.

"Goose liver," someone at the glossy black table added, helpfully.

"Sorry," he said, and 13 years of denial crumbled as I shrugged and told myself that I was ready for it anyway. I liked it. I was not uptight. I was having the best sex of my life with this man. I was wearing a new dress.

I became vegetarian after watching a PETA film about pigs going to the slaughter. The soundtrack was "Carmina Burana." I remember sitting cross-legged in our living room in Warsaw, Poland, in tears, arms and brain going numb from what I was seeing on our dinky black-and-white TV. By the time the film was over, I had made the decision that I was never going to eat meat again. Shortly after that I almost died from a form of anemia. My panicked family members reworked my menu, and I started putting on weight. We moved to a small town in Canada where I developed two ambitions: to be liked and to be skinny. I refused to eat with my family.