Colored Girl in a Black and White World

By Leisl Algeo

Leisl was living a fairly happy and successful life when a twist in her mental health derailed her. After months of no sleep, her behavior became increasingly aggressive and she landed up making a random, spur-of-the-moment trip to Havana, Cuba. On her return, her husband forced her into a hospital where she was diagnosed with bipolar type one.<

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889269892

Book preview

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Colored Girl in a Black and White World

Colored Girl in a Black and White World

Leisl Algeo

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2023 Leisl Algeo

All rights reserved.

Colored Girl in a Black and White World

ISBN

979-8-88926-946-5 Paperback

979-8-88926-989-2 Ebook

For Cole and Gabriel who, despite my failings, have turned into two magnificent human beings. And for my mom, the glue that often held me together.

Contents

Author’s Note

Part 1.

A Life Sentence

Chapter 1.

From Helsinki to Havana

Chapter 2.

Against My Will

Chapter 3.

Waking Up to a New Me

Part 2.

A Brief History

Chapter 4.

Turning Thirteen

Chapter 5.

Colored Girl

Chapter 6.

Failed Relationships

Part 3.

Beginnings and Endings

Chapter 7.

My First Mental Health Hospitalization

Chapter 8.

My Suicide Attempt

Chapter 9.

The Psychiatrist with Nine Lives

Chapter 10.

My Children

Part 4.

Fighting for Survival

Chapter 11.

Unemployed

Chapter 12.

Salvation

Chapter 13.

Body and Soul

Part 5.

A New Normal

Chapter 14.

Mania... Again

Chapter 15.

A Place to Call Home

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Author’s Note

Writing a book has been the goal of a lifetime for me. I’ve had a passionate, at times torrid, relationship with reading and books, staying up well into the early hours of the morning in an attempt to fill my voracious appetite for literature. This is, in fact, where my battle with insomnia started and continues to play out.

Writing a book has no simple formula. My publishing team has been nothing short of phenomenal over this period, using their well-honed skills to create just that—some sort of formulaic approach to this thing of book creation. And yes, the rituals of writing have been immensely useful. The reality is you cannot produce a book in your head, and so the more opportunities you have to engage with the physical act of sitting down and writing, the more likely you are to succeed. And for this, I am so very grateful to the team at The Creator Institute.

But I don’t discount how hard it is to find the right words, choose the right setting, and even make calls about what you will and won’t include in your tell-all memoir. This is where the formulaic approach becomes vague. Instead, I had to turn to my gut instinct. In the interest of full disclosure, I chose to keep parts of my story out of the pages of this book, largely because it didn’t serve a purpose beyond creating drama. We all have enough drama in our lives. And so, while this book feels like it’s steeped in the dramatic, there is also hopefully a feeling of it going somewhere and teaching some lesson that was hard-earned in my own life.

People ask two questions of me quite a lot, so I’ll address those here just in case you’re wondering about them, too. The first is how people, as family or friends of someone living with a mental illness, could do better to support us.

I want to say this in response: managing a person with a disorder that is largely invisible and often looks like a personality trait or perhaps even a bad choice by the other person is hard. Think about all the times you’ve wanted to call said person an asshole and leave it at that. I have had to wade through these choices with my sister (who has borderline personality disorder), and I’ve watched her manipulate, lie, and derail the best of intentions, but still ultimately be loved and forgiven. At times, this behavior cycle sent me into a tailspin. I had to learn, as much as I could, to separate the person from the personality flaws inherent in their mental condition.

Once you’ve got that minor detail covered, ask yourself how you’d want to be treated as a human being. Very few people want someone to take over their healthcare choices for them. It is, quintessentially, giving your agency away. It’s not having authority over what happens to you, and it is the fastest way to get most people’s backs up. That is very true for me as a self-confessed rebel girl and a human rights activist. Freedom was hard fought for in my home of South Africa, and I value this human right above all else. Freedom is life.

This means it is not okay for you to force me into a hospital. It is not okay to get police or court authorities in to make the decision for me. And it is definitely not okay to claim sanctuary behind a psychiatrist’s choices to indulge you. You took the steps to get us to this impossible situation, so own it.

Whilst I would have thought the above to be an obvious point of departure, it apparently is not. My takeaway lesson would instead be this: Write up a plan with your healthcare team and your close family and friends. Make decisions about how to deal with an episode while you are sober and sound of mind. Then share this plan with whomever it needs to be shared with because they need to have the authority to step in when necessary. I have already done this at my place of employment and have had some really good feedback about approaching it so openly.

The basic message is this: don’t disintermediate the very person this is about by going above their heads. The exquisite feelings of anger and betrayal will, on their very own, take a lifetime to heal. Don’t do it. I am honestly not sure there’s ever any complete recovery from so drastic an act.

The second question (finally!) I get asked is how much of what I write is true and where the story blurs into fiction. Believe me when I say I wished I had such well-honed creative writing abilities to bring this option to life. Truth-telling has always been my game. I very rarely keep things on the down low unless I’ve specifically been asked to do so. So, when I say this story is true, it’s true.

Where some creative license has come in is with the reconstruction of some of the scenes word for word. Obviously, I didn’t record conversations as they were happening. I simply remembered the gist of the incident and reconstructed the narrative when I sat down with my writing.

I have loved having the opportunity to bring this book to life and to tell this story in a way that is respectful of boundaries, but also willing to go completely nuclear on shame. Shame has no positive role to play in the mental health continuum of our lives. It needs to be put to rest.

We also desperately need to be able to have these conversations with those in our close circles. They are suffering immensely to see someone they love go through such major upsets and battles. It’s hard because even as I write this, I am avoiding one of my family members because I cannot face the honest conversation that will ensue. But for my own peace of mind, I will ultimately choose to have that discussion, no matter how much I want to avoid it.

I look forward to seeing you in the pages of another book, in the audiences of a speaking platform, and in the hearts of those who most need you. Until then...

Part 1:

A Life Sentence

Chapter 1:

From Helsinki to Havana

December 2016

Where the hell am I? These words passed through my head as I woke up to bright, pulsing sunlight streaming from the window. I rubbed my eyes as I looked around the tiny room I was in. It’s decent. Thank God for that. I was ensconced on a small double bed with a pretty white and black duvet cover. It seemed like there was a door to a little bathroom on the left and another door with the hint of a staircase at the other end of the room.

This should be interesting to figure out. I drew my knees to my chin and sat up awkwardly. My body felt tired. I felt tired. Maybe it’s because of the travel? I came from Johannesburg to Helsinki the week before for a conference—education and technology. The time difference wasn’t big, but I’d been sleeping an average of four hours a night for a while, so this just pushed me further into overdrive.

The problem was that this room couldn’t possibly be Scandinavian. They were all about clean lines and solid colors. Wood and timber, minimalist.

But this was not that. Although maybe in a different way. More of a poor way. This didn’t look like the first world to me.

I swung my legs around to the side of the bed and gingerly raised myself. This should be a treat to unravel. I padded my way across the cold, tiled floor toward the door that housed the staircase and made my way up it. Bells went off. Not literal bells (although at that point, who knew anymore?), but I thought I was getting my memory back.

Flashes of a trip across the ocean from Europe to wherever the hell this was came back to me. I’d reached the top of the staircase, which had been pretty challenging to navigate. The stairs were rickety and skewed with big steps followed by little ones. No real order.

Before I go on, take a minute to imagine the absolute terror that must go through your mind