A real nice day for suicide? Bipolar (Manic depression)

To those, that would like to read this Blog. Do so when you have the time as to tell the story, it became longer than I had in mind.

I was fifteen years old. It was four o’clock on a sunny afternoon late September in 1985.
I was practising my music lessons when mum walked in from her afternoon food shop. She looked concerned and a little confused. ‘What’s up mum?’ I asked. Mum put her bags down. ‘The neighbour’s kids cry so loud it is truly soul piercing’ she replied.
‘Which neighbours?’
‘The people in the corner house across the road’, she puffed.

Immediately an image sprang to mind. A tall slim lady, a bit evangelical looking. She had dark curly hair and glasses. I often saw her walking her two children to school, a little boy of around seven years old and a girl no older than five with the syndrome of Down.
I never paid that much attention to her, the occasional hello when walking by. Sometimes I would get a ‘hello’ in return but most often she would look down to the ground and push her little girl behind her as if embarrassed.
‘Is it still going on?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know’, she said.
With no further words we both walked to the front door to have a listen. Blue skies, birds singing but no screaming or crying. ‘Who knows, I said, ‘maybe one of them has hurt themselves. It is quiet now’.

My mother looked thoughtful. We closed the door and I helped her with unpacking the shopping. It was probably less than two hours later that we heard sirens. I’m never good in hearing the difference between the sound of an ambulance or a police siren but curious as ever, I ran to the front window to have a peak. I never expected to see two ambulances and the police stopping in front of that neighbour’s house. Mum was already outside, quickly followed by myself. We were not the only ones out on the street. A group of neighbours were comforting a man with a beard. The husband that lived in the corner house.

Quite some time later, three trolley beds were rolled out of the house. The neighbour’s wife and her two children. They were covered up. By the time they were removed from the house, we’d heard from some of the other neighbours what had happened. The mother had drowned both her children in the bath and stabbed herself to death.
I will never forget my mother’s face with the ‘If I only...’ expression.

We all attended the funeral, and this is where we learned that the mother had been battling manic depression for some time but even her own husband would have never expected that it lead to the death of her and their two children.

A happening you’ll never forget. I judged this woman as ‘evil’ but what did I know as a fifteen year old?


When I was twenty-two, I moved to London, Belsize Park. I rented a room in a shared house. The landlady owned two houses next to each other. ‘Rooms for girls’ she advertised. There were around eight or nine rooms in each house and were rented out to mainly foreign students. This is where I met my Jewish friend Galit. She was a student in Art and in her spare time she took courses in philosophy. We had rooms next door to each other and on many an occasion Galit would knock on my door for a chat, advice or my opinion on some of her philosophical projects or even her pieces of art.
In short, we saw each other almost every day. At times she would have been on the phone to a friend or returned from visiting one of them. Often she’d had discussions with these friends that turned into debates and resulted with her feeling very depressed.
One of those days, she’d been visiting one of her Jewish friends and when she was back in our house, she knocked on my door. ‘Come in!’ I called.
Galit poked her head around the door. ‘Can I talk to you..., I feel really depressed.’
Her face was a picture of misery. She looked so pale that it made her gingery hair and freckles stand out.
‘What happened?’ I asked, not in the least surprised that she would come in depressed. It was most of the time a daily routine. I listen to her tale of woe and try to make her snap out of it.

‘I’ve been so stupid’, she continued. ‘I have been arguing with one of my best friends and I think I may have ruined our friendship’.
‘Surely it can’t have been that bad Galit, what was the argument about?’
She slumped down on my bed and unzipped her black and red chequered woolly jacket with a deep sigh.
‘My friend Nuphar moved in with her boyfriend. She lost her job a couple of weeks ago and he is looking after her. I asked her if she was looking for another job and she said no. She is living off him and I told her that this wasn’t fair on him and that she also should pay her way’.
‘And was your friend angry with you for having said that?’ I asked.
‘Not sure’, Galit shrugged, ‘she said that her boyfriend doesn’t mind’.
Galit was looking at the floor, shoulders drooping downwards and so now and then she would glance up checking out my facial expressions for any signs of ‘judgement’.
‘Galit, I don’t think you’ve lost a friend. You just had a difference of opinion. At this moment I differ with your opinion that doesn’t mean that I’m no longer your friend. Besides it isn’t the first time you thought you lost your friend Nuphar because of some kind of conversation.’
‘Her boyfriend, doesn’t mind, Nuphar wasn’t angry with you for your opinion. In my opinion, she is still your friend. Why don’t you phone her?’
‘I’ll phone her later’.

I picked up the kettle and asked, ‘tea?’ Galit nodded yes and I went to the bathroom to fill the kettle with water. When I came back, she was still sitting in thought with a look of worry on her face. ‘Come on, Snap out of it Galit!’
‘I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about it’.
‘Well, try to think of something else, something nice’, I replied.
‘Nice? Something nice? What can I think about that is nice?’
‘Uhm, think of something beautiful or funny.’ I’d put the teabags in the mugs.
‘I don’t know anything beautiful or funny...’
‘I do’, I said. ‘What then?’ asked Galit.
‘Think of me’, I replied.
‘You!’ she shouted incredulously.
Her green eyes were big with astonishment that I could describe myself blatantly as beautiful, nice and funny. I made a modelling pose and Galit started to laugh and she didn’t stop laughing. She’d finally snapped out of it.

It was just one of many occasions. A couple of months later, I found myself a better paying job and moved out of this house to a bedsit in Gospel Oak. It wasn’t too far away from Belsize Park but I didn’t see Galit every day anymore. Instead she’d phone me every day and it became more difficult to ‘snap’ her out of those depressive moments.
I often visited her, or she me and on one of my visits, she showed me a finished painting.
It was a huge canvas depicting the inside of a pub. If you stood to close to the painting you could see tiny splotches of paint. Like thousand islands in blue, yellow and red.
When you’d step back, you could see the bar with a person sitting on a stool. In the background you saw some tables and some other figures sitting at separate tables.
What was odd, that none of the people she’d painted was looking at each other? They either, like Galit herself stared at the floor or looked away.

One of those days, Galit confided in me in the presence of one of her fellow philosophy students that she had tried a couple of years ago to commit suicide. She was found on time somewhere along a roadside and the hospital pumped her stomach out. Since then she was attending a psychologist. When I asked her if the psychology was helping her, she’d said the following:
‘The woman is making all the right faces and shows concern about me but it isn’t real. She gets paid good money for it and I think she truly doesn’t care’.

When Galit spoke about her suicide, she would speak with regret that she was unsuccessful. We probably gave her the reaction that most of us would have done and somehow convinced ourselves that we convinced her with our moral, ethics and claims of the correct understanding about love and life.

She couldn’t see why anyone would love her or care about her. She could see the beauty in others be it physical, mental or emotional but was never able to apply it to herself. She could not see that the people she classified as having these positive traits were able to see that in her.

‘I think you are my only true friend Yvonne’ she told me one night. I’d had dinner with her that evening in her room. She’d made ‘garlic bread’ ala ‘Galit’. It was a slice of brown bread with butter and tons of garlic powder. You could smell us a mile away and we certainly had no concern about vampires.
It was a Friday evening in a mild October month. She had walked me almost all the way home from Belsize Park to Gospel Oak. Something she usually wouldn’t do. I was wearing her black and red chequered woolly jacket. She insisted of me wearing it as she found my own jacket too cold for the night and lent me hers. ‘It isn’t far to my house’, I said taking her jacket off. ‘No, keep it on’, she replied. ‘Do you like that jacket?’
‘Yeah, nice and warm’ I said. I’ll bring it round Sunday as I am going to the cinema with Cat.’
Cat was our Portuguese friend who also rented a room in that Belsize park house. ‘If you like it, why don’t you borrow it a little longer?’ she asked.
‘Alrighty’ I gave her a big hug. ‘See you probably Sunday when I pick up Cat’, we waved our goodbyes.

That Sunday, indeed I saw Galit while I was having a cup of coffee with Cat. She looked pale and gaunt. ‘Will you join us for a coffee Galit?’
‘No’... she replied. ‘I’m not feeling too well. I had a late night last night and I think I may have eaten something wrong. I’m just going to have a sleep.’ I promised I would phone her the following day and she wished us a nice afternoon at the pictures. She was dressed in her night gown and went upstairs to her room.

On the way to the cinema, walking from Belsize Park to Swiss Cottage me and Cat were just having a general chit chat.
‘Why did you say that?’ Cat suddenly asked.
‘What?’
‘What you just said’ she replied.
‘What did I say, what do you mean?’ I truly couldn’t recall.
‘You said that it is a real nice day for suicide’ Cat answered. ‘Why did you say that?’
‘Did I?’ again I truly couldn’t recall that I had said such a thing. Therefore I replied that it was probably because of the leaves falling of the trees. Cat shook her head and remarked that I often came out with things that would give her the creeps.

The following day, when I came home from work I called Galit. It was Cat who picked up the phone. She was calling for Galit but there was no reply. After a usual chit chat, she said she would leave a message on Galit’s door to call me. Galit didn’t return my call. I phoned her again around the same time the following day. Another tenant picked up the phone and actually walked up the stairs to knock on Galit’s door. When she came back, she said that my message from the previous day was still hanging on her door. I asked if Cat was in but the answer was no. I left a message for Cat to call me back.
Cat phoned me the Wednesday at work. She was as concerned as I was and checked if Galit’s door was open. It was known that Galit only locked her room door when she was out and not when she was at home.
The door was locked. I told her to get hold of the landlady to open the door. She said she would. When she phoned back, the landlady had told Cat that if Galit wasn’t back by Thursday morning that she would open the door to Galit’s room to find contact details of family members and friends to find out where she was.

Thursday afternoon I phoned from work. Cat picked up the phone. She said that they had not opened the door yet and that she would call me back. It didn’t feel right.
That evening when I came home, the phone went and I got the news. Galit had committed suicide and this time she’d made sure she was successful. They found her in her bed still wearing the dressing gown she had on that Sunday.
One moment I was sad, the next moment I was furious. I was so angry. How could she, the coward! How could she give up so easily? I felt soooo angry.

But who am I? It was 14 October 1993; I was only twenty-three years old. What did I know?

It was late summer 1988; I was staring at my feet; eyes brimming with tears when another train thundered passed the platform. I didn’t dare to look up just in case somebody may see that I was crying. I felt so sorry... for myself. I had cycled four miles to get to this railway station. All the way I had been crying and I couldn’t stop. All the time thinking and thinking while I was hurting inside, I had had enough and I’d decided to go on a journey.
When the next train stopped, I moved out of the way so that the people that were getting off the train would not see me. I didn’t want to be seen. This train left; the next train would be the one for me. In the time that I was waiting for my train, I was pondering about how people would react when they’d found out that I was gone.
Would they miss me, will they cry? Will they realise why I left? No, they would not realise why I left as I didn’t leave a note. There was no point to leave a note as I have tried before to explain my feelings through a letter. The result was ridicule. I wasn’t taken serious.

In my mind I saw my family crying which made me cry even more as I wasn’t sure if they’d would. All of a sudden, it was as if somebody fast forwarded that scene for me. I was shown my family a year later after I’d left. They were laughing, having a good time, their life had moved on and there wasn’t any indication that they were missing me.

‘I’m already dead’ I whispered to myself, ‘I’m already dead’. My train was thundering towards the platform. The wind it produced while it rushed by, made me take a step back and another... and another. In a blink the train was gone; it had dried the tears on my cheeks.

Something in me had died and I didn’t need to jump in front of that train to make it happen. I was already dead inside. At that moment of realisation a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I no longer cared if people didn’t like or loved me. I didn’t have to go out of my way to please everybody. All that was left was this void in me that was a space that I could fill all by myself, for me and not for anybody else. Just me. I just stood there, searching inside for that pain but it had gone. It died, there and then.

I turned round and with this void inside me walked towards a telephone box. I phoned my best friend. She asked me where I was and when I replied that I was at the railways station, she invited me to come over to her house as it was halfway between this station and my home.

I went to see her.


I’m thirty eight years old now and looking back, no longer am I angry with Galit for going on her chosen ‘journey’. Galit was in her way a great teacher of life. I have realised that some time ago.
I don’t fear death because of a near death experience as a four year old child (but that is another story).
Ever since there have been moments that I shocked myself with the fact that it is so easy ‘to let go’.
It is belief in reincarnation that became one of the main reasons that made me stay here.
I would like to finish what I am supposed to teach or learn in this life and not having to start the same ‘tour of duty’ all over again in another life.

With this belief as a foundation I learned through many experiences to see the beauty and blessings in the smallest of things. From enjoying the warm rays of the sun to the smell of rain. A very good reason to live.

I stopped seeking for my happiness in others. I have found this within myself. What is given and shared with me through the people that share my life is a bonus. Every obstacle that I’ve come across, I actively deal with to the best of my capabilities and if I can’t, I ask for help. No longer will I brood and get frustrated with my short comings.

Feeling sorry for myself, died when I was eighteen years old. What died is something that I now understand as ‘Ego’. It is unfortunate that ‘Ego’ at times get confused with ‘confidence’. They may come across the same but are worlds apart from one another.
Ego is certainly not the same as the ‘self’. Ego is what comes forth and shines through when confronted with your own insecurity.
Confidence is what comes forth from accepting your weaknesses alongside your strengths.

Am I bipolar? No... I’m not and in my opinion never have been. But my neighbour was and so was Galit. What happened that day in 1988 was the result of hardship that many children still face today. Bullying, communication problems, low self-esteem just to mention a few.
But by having been confronted by those that have been diagnosed with bipolar, mixed with my own feelings; I can no longer see the deeds of my neighbour’s wife as ‘evil.’

I have come to an understanding that we all are like a pendulum. Some of us swing a little further in the negative then into the positive and others swing more into the positive then into the negative. Some pendulums swing slow, others steady and again others very fast. And those with bipolar? Who knows, maybe their pendulum sometimes gets stuck.
Both sides of the arc the pendulum swings between will reveal realisations of ‘truth’.

In the eyes of the mother that sees life as a continuous road through hell, the only option is to end it. Good mother’s want the best for their children. They decide when the children are young what is good for them and what is not.
The mother that took her own life, didn’t want to leave her children behind to suffer in the same way that she did.
Her frame of mind could not see any beauty, love or joy in it and therefore could not understand that her children were enjoying their lives. She may well have thought that she was doing them a favour. An act of pure extreme love with as much of a devastating effect as an act of pure extreme evil.
Which one it was, we’ll never know for sure as she is not here to tell her side of the story.

There are a remote few that have learned to control the swing of their pendulum. They don’t fear life and they don’t fear death. Of course they can still hurt and still can get angry but they have learned that it is a part of that swinging pendulum and seek that equilibrium in order to search for truth and therefore won’t judge or act randomly.

Both sides of the coins can be explained and reasoned with. And who can say for sure that our life here is heaven or hell?

One side will fear death and see death as the ultimate punishment and life as a blessing.
The other side fear life and see life as the ultimate punishment and death as a blessing.
Who of the two is right or wrong?

My path took me the esoteric way and therefore I’ll leave you with a quote from David Ovason:

“An esotericist cannot write or speak of the light without also thinking of the darkness, for he or she knows that the flame and the shadow are one and the same thing. A wise esoteric conceit holds that one may learn more from one’s enemies than from one’s friends. However, the very fact that an enemy can help implies that any encounter with an enemy is a potential gift of knowledge. From this we must assume that everyone we have met in life, for howsoever a brief moment, is worthy of our thanks.”

If you know of somebody facing depression and you think this Blog may be helpful. Don't hesitate to make use of it.