Secrets in the Open: The Undisclosed Life of a Bipolar Man

By Finn Dualmann

Something was wrong. Author Finn Dualmann could feel it. Ever since childhood, he was different from others, but he had no idea why. His moods quickly swung from happy to sad, from compassionate to aggressive, alienating people along the way. He spent most of his time alone, with only his sometimes outlandish and never-ending thoughts to keep him company.

In Dualmanns mid-fifties, he was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder with rapid cycling. By then, everything near and dear to him was gone. In Secrets in the Open, he shares stories of his life and reflects on how his bipolar disorder has changed and affected his interactions with the world. He recalls his childhood, his teenage years, and each decade of his adulthood, including tales of his military career and later work, his family and eventual divorce, and his struggle with various addictions.

A collection of hypomanic episodes that make up the story of Dualmanns life as he recalls it, Secrets in the Open narrates what its been like for him as a bipolar man and how it has affected his relationships and the experiences hes had along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480826212

Finn Dualmann

Finn Dualmann was born in Germany in December of 1955 was and raised in a military environment throughout Germany and parts of the United States. Finn currently lives in Long Praire, Minnesota.

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Copyright © 2016 Finn Dualmann.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-2620-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-2619-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-2621-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901685

Archway Publishing rev. date: 1/29/2016

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Childhood Lessons

The Teenage Years Or An Introduction to Bart

Sex versus Love

The Twenties Or Keep Your Knickers Buttoned

The Thirties Or Bart Takes an Active Role

The Forties Or Bart On the Loose

The Fifties Or Bart Gets Exposed

Getting On With Life

The Latest Years

An Emotional and Musical Roller Coaster Ride

And Finally, the Epilogue

Some Words from My Heart

My Death Song

Bibliography

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my ex-wife, who spent twenty three years with me and my disorder, never knowing what it really was that made her life difficult.

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Preface

I want to mention that much of what I’ve written in this book has never, never been told to anyone before, not my ex-wife or my closest friends. I decided to write this book because I feel and hope that it may be beneficial to those of you who have a bipolar person in your life and struggle to understand them and the troubles they get themselves into.

This book contains many references to sex, not that I’m obsessed with it, but because it is a trigger or conduit for my mania. I ask that you not judge me, or others involved, as most of this happened so long ago there would be no point. And besides, you’re reading this, hopefully, to gain a better insight about a friend or loved one that has bipolar disorder, and to understand, not judge or criticize them.

This book is more of a collection of hypomanic episodes that make up the story of my life as I recall it. It may not read like most books you are accustomed to as I write the way my mind thinks and often switch topics as I’m going along to make a point, or provide more information that’s relative to what I’m writing about; or simply just adding something that just came to mind. Think of it as reading my memories as I tell you about my life.

Introduction

Human emotions are a complicated and tender thing. We all have them and express them in different ways. I’ve noticed that there’s usually more than one emotion going on at a time, for me anyway, and that most people pick the emotion that’s easiest to express or which puts them in the least vulnerable position. Self-preservation I suppose, but it does affect our ability to communicate.

For a bipolar person like me emotions can become confusing real fast. Something will happen and I may see you reacting in a hostile way, yet my senses are telling me that you’re hurt. I can feel it, but you won’t let me address it. I have to deal with the anger which is harder to diffuse or move through. My compassion is not allowed to be expressed and I am pushed aside and that stays with me.

Often I think about emotions as being happy or sad. I think about anger and frustration. Most people seem to dwell on these feelings for a short while and then they pass, or they work through them and the feelings pass.

What I want to show you through my stories is how for some people, like me, those feelings are so powerful that I get caught up in them and can’t move on, at least not right away. I want to tell you what it’s been like for me as a bipolar man and how it has affected my life, my relationships, and the experiences that I’ve had along the way.

I don’t know if it’s true for all bipolar people but my emotions are very intense and I don’t just move through them; I get consumed by them and the mood often lingers for days, sometimes weeks.

When I think about being happy I think about elation, power and unlimited energy. For me happiness is when I’m in control of my world and nothing gets in my way. And if it does get in my way, I bulldoze over, around or through it to get what I want. I can be very aggressive at times.

They call that being manic. I call it being happy or being in a good mood. I know that there are different levels of happiness but I’m not able to get there smoothly. I can jump from normal to happy to sad in a heartbeat, and then can’t figure out why others can’t follow.

The same is true of sadness. It appears to me that when most people seem to be down or sad they work out of it fairly quickly. For me it’s a giant fast slide downward to the black depths of sadness, sorrow and despair. It doesn’t take long to get to the bottom of the pit but it sure takes a long time to climb out of it.

Sometimes it feels like a slow moving cloud that just descends upon me and slowly envelops my mind and heart. I can feel myself being dropped deeper and deeper as the sadness surrounds me and takes over my being, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s a very dark place that I know all too well.

I can sometimes tell when a depressive episode is coming on. Often it is preceded by periods of deep and serious thinking. I will get lost in my thoughts for days at a time and have little desire for companionship or food. My thoughts speed through my mind like an unbridled locomotive, giving me no chance to get off. They are all consuming and leave me no energy for anything else.

I’d like to convey just how powerful and influencing my emotions are and how quickly they can change and lead me into situations I never intended to be in or a part of. My emotions and my disorder rule me and make it difficult for the people in my life to deal with me, let alone love me.

When people like me love you, it’s not that we love you more, but that we love you more intensely. It’s probably one of the things that attracted you to us in the first place, only you saw it as passion, which it might have been. By the same token, when the feelings are negative they are also more pronounced and can easily hurt people especially when I get sarcastic. Sarcasm is mostly a defense mechanism that I use to protect my feelings.

I want to show you through my stories how the mind and thinking of this bipolar person works. I think I see things differently than most and that facilitates my winding up in situations that normal people seem to avoid. I also seem to be more sensitive to the emotional effects of events and comments that others make, either to me directly or to someone else nearby.

I’ve also noticed that when non-bipolar people interact or try to have a conversation with me about something specific they often get frustrated. That frustration then turns to anger and communications shut down; or they just get too tired to keep on trying.

I want you to try to imagine what the bipolar person is going through. The same issues that bother you cause me frustration too. I know it’s hard for you to see that because I seem to have a hard time working through it with you; often bringing up things that you don’t think are related, but to me they are. In my mind they are all connected.

You see, some of us are not dealing with just one thought going through our minds, we have multiple thoughts all going on at once and it can be very difficult to sort out the thoughts that are relative to the conversation. I’m told these are called Racing Thoughts.

During a conversation, in addition to talking to you I will be trying to figure out just what went wrong and why, and what emotion triggered what we are feeling; plus other thoughts that have no relevance to the topic. That’s a pretty full plate for one person whose mind is going really, really fast.

Most conversations my ex-wife and I had were never finished or resolved. I kept asking too many questions, trying to get to the root of the issue, and to understand what she was trying to tell me and how she felt. She usually gave up, the conversation was dropped and the issue left unresolved. She always said I wanted to talk about things too much, or that I would talk the subject to death.

The problem was twofold; for me it was that the issue was still alive and swimming around in my mind and it would take a long time to shut it down; for her it was partly because she came from a background where you didn’t talk about things, you just moved on. Not a good combination for us.

I wasn’t diagnosed with bipolar disorder until later in life but I’ve always known something was different about me compared to other kids or people. I’ve always seen things from a different perspective, more open to new experiences, and more importantly I felt things more intensely than others seemed to.

I’ve been called names and people have told me to be a man or man up and not to be so sensitive. The names didn’t bother me as much as the wondering why people did what they did and how they felt about it. Even as a young boy I wondered if they were afraid of something that I wasn’t aware of. I believe now that it was their own feelings, but unlike me they could quickly move on or deny them.

I’m really a very compassionate and loving man. A few people have seen that side of me. In my story, you will read how my disorder destroys so much, gets in the way and doesn’t allow people to see or know the real me.

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Childhood Lessons

All through my life my mom has told me not to be so sensitive, don’t let things get to you like they do.

Here’s where I believe that my awareness of that sensitivity began.

When I was about five or six we were living in Europe. Dad was in the Army and we moved around a lot. This time we lived in a beautiful place surrounded by forests with trails that would wander for miles through the tall pine trees.

There was a little boy maybe a year younger than me and he had a slight speech impediment. He was struggling with the word hospital. He would always say hostipil and all the other kids just laughed and made fun of him. I thought I could help him. I sensed his vulnerability and his desire to get better at speech, you could see it in his eyes. So I worked with him for a little while. We stood out among the trees and we would say hospital over and over and over. Starting with Hos-pit-al, hos-pit-al, hos-pit-al, finally putting it all together he said ‘hospital. We said it over and over, faster and faster and he had it, until I slipped the word hostipil" back in and of course it messed him all up again.

Several things hit me at that moment and it must have made quite an impact on me if I still remember it to this day. First of all, I’m sorry little guy, I didn’t mean to mess you up. What I learned that day though was just how powerful my words and my influence on someone else can be and how easily I can hurt them if I’m not careful.

I felt such pride in helping that kid and I could feel the pride he felt in himself that day as he mastered the word. Then I felt the shame that overcame me as I messed him up. And I felt the disappointment he felt in himself as the word tripped him up again. You can’t use people for your own amusement, someone will get hurt.

Such a small story but such big lessons. Do all five or six year olds learn things like that with such intensity that they remember it all their lives? It bothered me for days until I saw that he did eventually get the word right, but those feelings have been with me ever since.

The point of the story is that my feelings towards this situation were so strong that I have never forgotten my lesson, or that little boy. I try now to be more empathetic with others as they have feelings too, maybe not as intense as mine, but just as fragile.

I wasn’t a troubled or problem child and I didn’t do things that were outrageous, but I did run away from home once when I was in Kindergarten. Well, I didn’t really run away, I just left. We had gotten a new sitter/maid and I didn’t like her so I left the apartment. It made sense to me. I was going to go see my dad at his office on the military base. I knew where he worked and started walking.

I never made it to his office and my parents eventually found me at the military police station, watching TV. We got a new sitter. I never knew what made me walk away that day until much later. There was a part of me, even way back then, that just wouldn’t tolerate things that I considered unacceptable.

I hid under my kindergarten teacher’s desk once after placing a wind up mouse in her center drawer. When she opened the drawer and the mouse moved around I grabbed her ankles and she shrieked, then I crawled out of my hiding place under her desk. I’ll admit, for a five or six year old it was rather a mischievous trick. She didn’t think it was funny but I did and all the other kids laughed.

My mom told me that she never needed to tell me to clean my room. My things were always neatly put away. Apparently I couldn’t stand it if things were messy. She said I used to clean my sisters room too; she used to make such a mess playing with her dolls and things, and never picked up after herself so I would. Everything had to be in its rightful place before I could go to sleep. I’m still that way, a place for everything and everything in its place.

Sometime during that same timeframe I was playing alone under the clotheslines. We lived in a four story apartment building and the clotheslines were off to the sides of the building. There was a fine red gravel that filled in the area much like the sand in a baseball field.

While I was playing with my Matchbox cars in the gravel, another little boy picked up a handful of the gravel in each hand and yelled my name. As I turned around he threw a handful of that fine red gravel in my eyes. My parents took me to the doctor and I wore bandages on my eyes for a week. I’m told they weren’t sure if I would see again; thankfully I did. I’m nearsighted now but glasses fix that.

I don’t recall ever being angry at the kid but I do remember thinking, Why did he do that? and how does he feel about what he’d done? I barely knew him and had never done anything bad to him. I wonder, does he still remember, and did it affect his life as much as it did mine?

I think I felt sorrier for him than anything. What could possess a person, even a kid, to do such a thing? I think that ever since then I have always tried to see things from another person’s point of view; to understand what motivates them to do the things they do. Especially when what they do is so destructive or inconsiderate of others. Don’t other people feel compassion towards each other the way I feel it? I guess not.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve felt compassion for someone as I’ve observed their situation but had no means with which to help them. For some reason I seem to feel what they feel and understand their struggle. It’s more than just empathy. It has often made me sad which for me is a tough situation because I don’t just get sad, I get very, very sad, very, very fast. Psychiatrists have told me that my sadness is actually depression.

If you’re with me and we see something very sad, especially if it involves harm to innocent animals, don’t be surprised if all of a sudden I get very quiet and begin to cry. Why? Because my heart is aching and I feel their pain.

Don’t’ be so sensitive… How can I not be?

I need to tell you about my academic reports from elementary school. What’s worth noticing is that although I did what was required, I wasn’t very timely about it and it appears I was not always present, mentally. Here are a few of the comments and observations that my teachers made:

Kindergarten – Finn’s work habits have shown improvement. The daydreaming and playing at his seat have not completely stopped so he still does not always finish in the time allowed.

1st Grade – Finn has had difficulty keeping his mind on his work. As a result he misses directions and doesn’t know what to do.

2nd Grade – Finn must learn to produce neater work. Often he doesn’t begin his work promptly and this causes him to rush in order to finish. This, no doubt, is partially the problem. Finn is capable of much better work. Finn tends to daydream, he is capable of work of a superior quality.

3rd Grade – Finn is so wiggly in class he often distracts other class members. He still doesn’t finish his seat work.

6th Grade – Finn spends too much of his time daydreaming. He should devote more time to his school work and take a more active part in class. Finn still spends too much time daydreaming when he should be listening.

As I got older, the same comments were repeated over and over again to my parents. It didn’t matter how much I tried, the results were always the same. Something would always get me off track. My mind was already spinning with other ideas and with influences from elsewhere.

There seems to be a trend here wouldn’t you say? I don’t know how to diagnose bipolar disorder in kids, but I’d say there were some interesting clues as to what was going on in my head, even way back then.

As I moved up through school things came easy to me, if I was interested in the topic that is. Otherwise I just didn’t care and would give them just enough to pass me with an average grade. It didn’t seem to matter to me and it never got in my way as far as moving