In my late teens, I felt invincible, and smarter than I really was. Rather than face and work through challenges to mental health, I repeatedly tried to stuff all my fear, denial and shame under a rug.

I was 17 when I was first admitted to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) after an acute bipolar mixed episode.  My major triggers were relationship stress and, I suspect, sleep deprivation due to examination preparations.

I felt a deep resentment at being warded. I firmly believed that I didn’t belong on the ward, and that admission was a major inconvenience to my life.

I was in junior college at that time, and I had family, classmates and teachers visiting me. I received them differently. With my teachers, I put on a front that I was doing all right. With my classmates, I ranted about how this whole experience of being warded was just a joke. With my family, I just shut down for the most part.

I was discharged a week later, on World Mental Health Day. “Good riddance IMH!” I remembered snickering to myself as I made my way home.

That same afternoon I met up with my schoolmates who were curious to know what my experience at “Woodbridge Hospital” was like.  I told them about the food, the daily routines, interactions with the other patients, and visits from the teachers at school and how glad I was to “get out of jail”.

I didn’t fully realise it at the time, but I made light of my week at IMH because, deep down, I was terrified of being seen as weak. At 17, my friends, social life and reputation were so important to me. It was also a time in my life where I was figuring out my place in the world and my identity. To have a taboo topic mental illness colouring people’s perceptions of me was the equivalent of the end of the world.

I went back to school the next day and pretended nothing had happened. That the facts that I had almost killed myself, that I missed my year-end examinations and caused my family such worry, had never occurred. When fear and denial come together like a mango swirl soft serve ice cream at Maccas, it’s anything but sweet and tasty.

The only repercussion I could think at that time was that I had to sit for the supplementary papers for the exams I missed out on in order to be promoted to JC 2. No biggie, I told myself.

Looking back, I now realise the repercussions of my denial ran deep.

My family had to deal with the trauma of seeing me in such a distressed state. My teachers were more vigilant about my behavior. My friends at school also paid more attention to what they said and how they said it, despite my best efforts to downplay my stay at IMH.

All I wanted to do, in contrast was to see this admission as a blip in my life, something to push under the carpet and never to think about ever again. I viewed the whole ordeal as a joke. Yet, although I didn’t realise it at the time, like the lyrics from the Bee Gees song  – “the joke was on me.”

The second serving of this fear-denial mango swirl soft serve was during National Service when I was 19. Up to this point, I had experienced unknowingly and without the vocabulary to describe them, symptoms of hypomania, mixed episodes and depression. But the beast I was to encounter next was unlike any other that came before.

I remember I was watching the movie “The Butterfly Effect” and felt really affected by it. Coupled with the alcohol I was drinking, I felt a crushing sorrow in my heart that stemmed from adverse childhood experiences that made me feel really sad about my parent’s separation and how I felt emotionally neglected growing up. I had never felt safe sharing my true emotions to anyone even when I suffered sexual abuse by a neighbor when I was nine years old. And so I began to dissociate and become detached from reality. I may have carried “bipolar genes” which, had my life been different, might never have been “switched on” but these adverse childhood experiences certainly activated them.

I only have a blurry recollection of what ensued before I became psychotic. I smashed the television our living room together with all the framed paintings. Then everything was a blur before I heard my brother and sister pleading with me to open the door to the room I had locked myself in. The next thing I remember was seeing the police and civil defence force personnel attempting to enter my room via the window, just before I finally decided to open the door. I remember being surprised to see everyone outside the door: the men in uniform and my siblings.

This episode resulted in my second admission to IMH, but again I tended to deny what had happened. I was warded for a week, and when I returned to camp and was furious at a guy who told everyone that I’d been on MC because I’d been in IMH. I didn’t want to let anyone know that I was suffering from undiagnosed bipolar. Fear and denial were now mixed up with a new ingredient: shame. Deep down, I felt there was something inherently wrong with me.  The mango swirl had now become a mango-strawberry swirl soft serve.

I adopted the same approach as I had when I was 17. I laughed it off. I threw away the medication I was prescribed because I thought it would “zombify” me, muting my emotions taking away my creativity and zest for life. I accused that pao toh kia or snitch of lying that I was admitted to IMH. I was not ready to admit to myself that I needed help. Why dwell on those “unsavoury” and complicated and messy parts of myself when I should be thinking of making my mark on the world?

It took me another seven years from that point in National Service to admit to myself and others that I needed help to start reclaiming a life of stability and wellness.

I was sick and tired of feeling depressed. I was sick of living in fear that my life could be upended in a blink of an eye during an episode, leaving in its wake the things precious to me such as my career and relationships which I spent much time and energy cultivating. 

After a third admission to and discharge from IMH, I read up a lot on what I could do to alter my lifestyle and manage stress levels to support my wellbeing. This meant a shift in nature of my work, my exercise regime, and my sleeping habits. I also opened up to other forms of help such as therapy sessions and being medication compliant. 

Perhaps what helped me the most was the gradual acknowledgement that I live with a mental health condition, and I need to do things differently to stay well. 

I had always belittled my stays at IMH as doing nothing much for me other than to provide a safe place to eat, sleep and kill time. On hindsight, if it weren't for that safe and rather boring ward that kept me alive, all the efforts I made after discharge would not have occurred, and these contributed to my growth as a person in recovery to tell my tale today.

In meantime, I reckon I’ll be heading to Maccas for a nice mango swirl soft serve; it tastes great, but I’m not mixed up like the ice cream anymore.

Julius is a biomedical technician with the same company for the past three years and counting: a huge personal achievement, he reckons.  He is a huge anime otaku, a Hololive fan, and loves reading novels and manga. When he is not aspiring to write his memoir , he is brought back to a rather simple yet profound aspiration -- to stay well so his loved ones can go about their day to day lives without worrying about him.

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Image by Hans from Pixabay