A Collection of Dramatic (Manic-Depressive) Moments
(HYPO)MANIC EPISODES
Depressive episodes
- Love Yourself First Before Loving Others
- Another Dramatic Depressive Episode
- A Dramatically Depressive February
the states iN between
ABOUT NABILA AYU AVIANI
Despite being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I refuse to label myself as bipolar and instead, give this ‘thing’ a space to rest in my heart. Struggling with a chemical imbalance in my brain made me drawn to humanity’s imperfections, such as the raw and absurd moments we rarely articulate.
This site is my visual diary entries, they are
reflections of love, loss, nostalgia and closure.
PORTFOLIO
Love Yourself First Before Loving Others
After all, how can I learn to love others properly and to the full of my capability if I cannot even show the slightest bit of love and kindness towards myself?31 March 2025
If there is a deadline that sets out when you are going to die, how are you going to live the rest of your life?
If that was the case for me, I would much prefer to live as though I am not dying and live my life to the fullest until the end. A few days ago, I had a conversation with my therapist about euthanasia and the possibilities of medically assisted death.
“If you had the pill to end your life now, would you take it right now?”, she asked.
”One hundred percent,” I answered promptly, “if it was offered to me yesterday, two days ago, a month ago or even in the future, I would take it.”
I have been in psychiatric care for almost a decade now, and no matter the amount of therapy I do or how much medication I take, the suffering does not ease for me. The severity of my symptoms persists, and my suffering is even worse by age. There is no doubt—I am much better at being self-aware and even masking my symptoms to the point of making myself seemingly “normal” and functioning in society—I am a high functioning individual with bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and PTSD but the burden of it still weighs me down. I find it difficult to execute day to day functions. Whilst on the outside, I might seem perfectly fine and normal, even joyful at times; however, at the core, I am constantly suffering, and this scorching feeling of emptiness and thoughts of wanting to die never left my side.
I am haunted by them every day; there is no end to them, and it exhausts me.
Yet the thing I feared most happened once again. Two days ago, deep in my depressive episode and during a desperate moment, I made another attempt to end my life. One thing led to another, I was unconscious for a whole day and I found myself the next morning awakened at the intensive care unit at the hospital. My memory is foggy but I recall bits and pieces such as when the police arrived, the ambulance strapping me up on the bed, my best friend's face full of tears and my husband sitting on the chair, waiting for me to wake up.
I woke up in shock of realising I’m at the intensive care unit, barely remembering what happened. I rushed to look to my left and right and saw both my arms were infused with an intravenous line. It hit me then, I had another suicide attempt.
My biggest fear has occurred—the thought of euthanasia does not scare me, what scares me is when I’m blanked out and make an impulsive attempt to end my life. With euthanasia, I have the time to find closure and say my last goodbyes, but with an impulsive attempt, I don’t.
When I did remember of my suicide attempt, a wave of disappointment washed over my body. Feeling a mixture of defeat and despair, I sighed and I was angry at myself for failing yet another one. I should have been grateful to be alive, but I wasn’t, I wanted to die and that feeling did not change since my attempt. I called my parents, who were not aware of the incident, who were shocked to find that I was lying in a hospital bed on the day of Eid-Al Fitr, a day meant for joy and celebration. Almost everyone close to me cried at certain moments and I started to ponder to myself—genuinely and sincerely, I have a great support system of people who love and cherish me yet I’m still self-destructive and think the opposite.
Why is that? A lot of people, yet I cannot feel their love and neither can I love myself—why?
It is because I don’t love myself.
I don’t love and respect myself enough to allow myself to feel the love others have for me. I treat myself as though I am a piece of trash meant to be kicked over and I am filled with a great feeling of rage and hatred towards myself that I closed off other people’s love and kindness. Maybe they are right, that love starts with you—love starts with me. Perhaps the phrase, “Love yourself first before loving others.” is quite the accurate one. After all, how can I learn to love others properly and to the full of my capability if I cannot even show the slightest bit of love and kindness towards myself?
I need to learn to enjoy the journey of life instead of stressing over how to complete the line.
Perhaps another reason leading to my attempt is the fact that I am burnt out from being too career driven, I am far too ambitious towards reaching an unrealistic goal within my artistic career. For instance, I yearned to become the perfect artist and create the perfect paintings, to get recognition from galleries and more. I wanted to be financially independent through my artistic practice. Little did I know is that art is more than a career—it is a journey of a lifetime that I need to fulfill. Being an artist is art in itself. An artist’s journey of constantly making creation, failing, experimenting, making mistakes and starting all over again is part of the art.
Whilst, I am the artist who creates the art, but what hides beneath the eyes is the fact that the art is already manifested within the artist’s mind. Therefore, the art shapes the artist and the artwork—making the art; the creator, the artist; the worker and the artwork; the physical material.
Another Dramatic Depressive Episode
For sure, my thoughts are parasites that are eating away at my brain.27 March 2025
I am starting to feel hopeless once again; for sure, the crash from mania is finally hitting me. Thoughts of death swarm over me, draining and exhausting me. For certain, I am not living, rather, I am surviving in my suffering. My shoulders and chest feel heavy and the world is more grey and dull. There is no doubt that feelings of emptiness consume my being. I am depleted of reason, and life feels meaningless.
Whilst I am aware that there is an end to this depression, I know there is not an end to this suffering. It is normal for me to feel chronic emptiness and thoughts of wanting death every day; as far as I remember, I grew up with these little demons. Whether I am in a manic episode with my skyrocketing energy and upbeat mood, in a depressive state of low motivation and energy or in between, I will always be haunted by feelings of death and emptiness. For me, life is meaningless and despite my attempts at trying to find a meaning for my life, I can never hold onto one concrete meaning, and everything tends to fall apart, steadily slipping away from my hands.
People tend to ask, “Why aren’t you happy in life? Don’t you want me to be happy?”
To which I reply, “If I had a choice to be happy or to suffer, do you think suffering would be my choice?”
If there were a magic pill to happiness, I would for sure take it.
What is happiness?
Now, I am starting to think that perhaps I have a deranged view of happiness. Perhaps for me, I view happiness as my manic episodes, where everything is amplified, my positive emotions are bursting out of my chest, my energy is divine and out of the world, and I’m unstoppable. In manic episodes, I can do anything I want, and there is no such thing as a stop button when I am manic.
Once again, how can you describe stability and happiness to me? It is such a strange concept—it is similar to how one can describe colours to a blind person? How can one describe stability and happiness to one who has never experienced it?
For sure, my thoughts are parasites that are eating away at my brain.
I am starting to feel hopeless once again; for sure, the crash from mania is finally hitting me. Thoughts of death swarm over me, draining and exhausting me. For certain, I am not living, rather, I am surviving in my suffering. My shoulders and chest feel heavy and the world is more grey and dull. There is no doubt that feelings of emptiness consume my being. I am depleted of reason, and life feels meaningless.
Whilst I am aware that there is an end to this depression, I know there is not an end to this suffering. It is normal for me to feel chronic emptiness and thoughts of wanting death every day; as far as I remember, I grew up with these little demons. Whether I am in a manic episode with my skyrocketing energy and upbeat mood, in a depressive state of low motivation and energy or in between, I will always be haunted by feelings of death and emptiness. For me, life is meaningless and despite my attempts at trying to find a meaning for my life, I can never hold onto one concrete meaning, and everything tends to fall apart, steadily slipping away from my hands.
People tend to ask, “Why aren’t you happy in life? Don’t you want me to be happy?”
To which I reply, “If I had a choice to be happy or to suffer, do you think suffering would be my choice?”
If there were a magic pill to happiness, I would for sure take it.
What is happiness?
Now, I am starting to think that perhaps I have a deranged view of happiness. Perhaps for me, I view happiness as my manic episodes, where everything is amplified, my positive emotions are bursting out of my chest, my energy is divine and out of the world, and I’m unstoppable. In manic episodes, I can do anything I want, and there is no such thing as a stop button when I am manic.
Once again, how can you describe stability and happiness to me? It is such a strange concept—it is similar to how one can describe colours to a blind person? How can one describe stability and happiness to one who has never experienced it?
For sure, my thoughts are parasites that are eating away at my brain.
A Dramatically Depressive February
I have become addicted to the thrill that comes with being emotionally unstable.13 February 2025
I started EMDR, a form of trauma therapy about a month ago.
As I started to process, unpack and understand my traumas in therapy, I realised I my emotions have become quite stagnant and perhaps even more numb.
I expected more yet I am left with this constant feeling of numbness and boredom that lingers deep within my soul. I cannot quite grasp or comprehend this feeling. Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, safe to say, that I am used to the emotional turbulence and dysregulation that come along with the baggage of these disorders. I am not going to lie, I have become addicted to the thrill that comes with being emotionally unstable — the intense emotional mood swings from borderline and the weeks-long (hypo)mania that crash down into a deep scorching depression. I’m starting to think I’m a lost cause.
After I started the trauma therapy, I noticed a drop in the intensity of my emotions, quite so much that I felt nothing at all. The emptiness and the halt in my constant emotional rollercoaster are a bore. Is this how people without my mental conditions feel? Do they just experience this flatness in emotions when something happens to them and they do not need to immediately break down and self-destruct when someone does them wrong? Is this what stability feels like? Why do I not like this feeling of stability? I feel somewhat guilty for saying this, but I hate it. I know it is for the better but being self-destructive, having an identity crisis and being dysfunctional emotionally is all I ever knew my whole life.
I am a time ticking bomb and it is a matter of time before I explode again.
14 February 2025
Exactly one day later I finally exploded.
What seemed like an insignificant moment was quite significant. I was painting a seemingly normal painting of my husband when a big part of me was feeling unsatisfied with the painting. One thing led to me inherently destroying the painting with a piece of razor. What seemed like a harmless act was, in fact, a moment of self-destruction. In truth, the painting was not perfect but it was not bad, it needed fixing but, for certain, it did not deserve to be destroyed by its maker the way it did.
The moment the painting ripped was the same moment that my heart shattered.
“Not again,” I thought.
I destroyed yet another artwork of mine, an artwork that was a piece of my soul. To destroy art is to destroy the soul who created it.
“You destroyed me and I hate myself for it,” is what I assume the painting was saying to me when I destroyed it. Yet, I also hate myself for destroying that painting. My self-destructive nature is all I can think about blaming for this scenario happening. Perhaps if I look deep within, the reason why I destroy my precious artworks is because I hate myself and because my artworks are a reflection of myself, I tend to feel compelled to self-destruct and destroy anything that reflects my being. However, it is unfair to me and my art. I should care for my art and treat it like it is a precious gem.
I feel as though I am not enough, not good enough. I hate myself so I destroy everything in my path and I believe that everything is my fault even when it is not. I am scared that my life amounts to nothing and that everything I do is meaningless, amounting to nothing. Perhaps I am getting depressed.