Mania and working don’t always mix

After I finished my A Levels, I chose not to go on to university. I wanted to get out there in the world and work, earn some money, do something with my life. Actually, I don’t think I really knew what I wanted to do, or even if I really wanted to do anything. But anyway, I found myself a full-time job, working as an office junior with a firm of solicitors. My days consisted of opening mail, sorting mail, distributing mail, photocopying, making coffee, more photocopying, fetching sandwiches, more photocopying, faxing, shredding, more photocopying, folding letters into envelopes, making more coffee, taking post to the post office and loading the dishwasher  (not to mention often forgetting to switch on said dishwasher).

I started with great enthusiasm, but it wasn’t all that long before my enthusiasm completely waned, and died, and shrivelled up. I was left feeling disillusioned and depressed after the first few weeks of hypomanic  excitement. I felt trapped by the monotony, and it actually felt as though my mind was shrivelling and dying from lack of stimulation. I actually got excited when the photocopier jammed, because it meant a break from monotony and I could play around with it trying to fix it. I found myself searching for something, anything, that could lift my gloom. I found it, ironically, at the bottom of a brandy bottle – though I wouldn’t advocate alcohol as a coping mechanism. In actuality, it made things worse, not better. The glimmering light at the end of the tunnel it gave me was just a mirage (or perhaps the oncoming train).

I tipped suddenly into mania at the beginning of December, with a surge of recklessness that took me places I’d never been before. I lost my virginity, practiced the art of deception to secure myself a weekend away with my boyfriend, who turned out to be just a flash in the pan, and got ridiculously and dangerously drunk to the extent that I could well have choked on my own vomit – and all within three weeks. And that was just the beginning of it all.

My new Millennium dawned with a cloud of black mania hanging over me. Imagine all the dark thoughts and imaginings of depression coupled with the racing thoughts, restlessness and agitation of mania, and that’s a pretty close approximation of what it was like. I was paranoid, to an extent. I hated the job. I couldn’t stand my colleagues, the solicitors; I could barely stand myself. The first week back at work in January, I threw the Christmas tree I was supposed to be disposing of, down the stairs, with its fairy lights still attached, because I felt sure that the little tiny lights were trying to take all the thoughts from my head.

From then on, things just got worse. By the end of March, I’d reached the point of no return. In the week running up to the Friday my contract was terminated, I threw batches of photocopying at the secretaries who’d requested it, locked myself in the deeds room in “protest”, and, as the coup de résistance, covered the walls and surfaces in General Office with slogans photocopied from WWE star The Rock’s autobiography, predominantly “Know your role and shut your mouth”.

I wasn’t sorry to lose that job. I was glad, in fact, though at the time I was outraged that they could dare to sack me. My parting words to the senior partners were something along the lines of a cocky sneer, ‘You don’t even know who I am. You’ll be sorry.’ I doubt they were sorry. I rather think they were glad to be rid of me.

The next job I had wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but I managed to hold it down, and left on my own steam, not virtually chased out of the door. I left it to go into what felt at the time like the job of my dreams, working once more in a bookshop. From the start, I loved it. It felt like coming home, like it was the place I was meant to be. I was sometimes a little bit hypomanic, and occasionally depressed during the first eight or so months of the job, but it was okay. It stayed feeling like I was in control. And then in April 2002, my supervisor was deported back to Canada, and I started on an eighteen-month long rollercoaster ride that nearly ended in disaster.

It started with a manic swing. I reacted with great enthusiasm to Sam’s departure, accepting willingly the challenges that my assistant manager gave me. I took on the staff planning, helped with recruitment, took on the store layout planning for Christmas, and embarked on the training program that would award me Senior Sales status. I also applied, unofficially, for the supervisor’s job. By October, I was filled with such energy and enthusiasm, I didn’t need to sleep. I was writing a novel when I should have been sleeping. For the Christmas layout changes, I worked a 12 hour shift and drove home, not the slightest bit tired, at 4:30 am, having done most of the work myself because I was too impatient to stand by while the others who were there to help me moved so slowly. I felt as though everyone was too slow, too stupid, almost like they were going backwards.

A brief crash into depression and paranoia followed – and from then on, that seemed the pattern. Spells of mania followed by depressions of varying lengths, followed again by mania. In that whole eighteen months, I don’t think I had a single day when I had what could be described as a normal mood.

From June to November 2003 it was Mania with a capital M. Mania that was often black, often left me physically shaking with rage, that drove me to the edge. I almost jumped from a third storey window into the river the night I worked 14 hours to supervise the Christmas layout again. I still thought I was being efficient, but I wasn’t. I still thought I could do everything, that no one else was capable. I thought I could open a bookshop on the moon. But I was making mistakes, being careless. Being reckless. Causing more chaos than solving anything.

In the end, I lost it all. The job I loved just fell away from under me. I was shot down, but not in a blaze of glory. And that was when I had to accept I had a problem.