This month’s blog is a long time in the making. I commissioned my old friend,  Dolapo Ogedengbe, to write this piece after she relocated to the UK from Lagos for post-graduate education over a year ago. It was stalled by several relapses requiring long hospital admissions. However, she persisted and has written this deeply moving tribute to friendship and kindness, a soft therapy that has aided her journey towards remission and healing from psychosis.

–Dami Ajayi

I am bipolar. Diagnosed at age 18. Since I received my diagnosis of Bipolar Affective Disorder, I have relied on friends during my relapses when I am unable to look after myself and be responsible for my actions.

Good friends have shielded me from public breakdowns and meltdowns. Friendship is the greatest gift one person can give or get from another human. It fetches you out of the drowning misery of loneliness. Friendship is that confident and familiar voice saying, “I’m alone, you’re alone; let us be alone together. I’ve got your back.”

A friend once left his own affairs to contain my erratic and manic behaviour. They physically carried me back to my worried mother through dangerous Lagos traffic at nighttime. Yet another did everything to find me help, including dialling the police station when I was certain I would die in that Farringdon Underground Station in London.

At the heart of my experiences is a sense of loss: lost time, lost perspectives, lost relationships, lost progress. Every episode has been a vicious incision into my timeline by uncontrollable forces, cutting away at my present and future selves. Psychosis does not care for my competence at masquerading as a functional adult. It hacks at that facade, drilling through skin, tissue and bone, riddling them with imperfections.

After every episode, depressive or manic, I must rebuild myself, searching for what is truly mine amidst the wreckage. My affliction is ultimately a solitary one, excruciating in ways both unique and universal. In the sobriety of recovery, I am left to pick what is salvageable. Friendships help.

During my less disruptive depressive episodes, friendship saved my life. My circle on Twitter is the first to notice when my mood dips, when I am unlikely to leave my bed to face that frightening monster called reality. United by our differences, neurodivergents online rally together, scraping their dwindling resources to lend each other a kind thought and pull each other out of that murky void.

Although keeping company does not beget companionship, I have been fortunate to make friends with kind and understanding people. People I can only hope to cover someday as they have covered me. Someday, I may be in yet another country, needing to be covered in kindness, and I can only hope to continue to find others to be alone together with.

Oluwadolapo Ogedengbe is a 27-year-old CyberPsychology postgraduate and writer who lives with Bipolar Affective Disorder I. She writes a newsletter at https://manicmusings.substack.com/

Welcome to Muses – the arts blog from BJPsych International. Launched in March 2022, this new blog aims to highlight international art and artists, particularly from low-and-middle-income countries, with a focus on mental health. We welcome submissions for consideration, such as, comments on artwork, visual arts, literature, drama, films, podcasts, and videos. Do have a look at the instructions for blog authors for details on how to submit. General enquiries about the blog: BJPInternational@rcpsych.ac.uk

Professor David Skuse, Editor-in-Chief, BJPsych International