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If you are contemplating for me to say how much I hate my life with bipolar disorder, you will not find it in this post. It does not define me, but it is a significant part of who I am. If you erase bipolar, you erase me as a whole. I am never going to live without it, and I want to give others a taste of my reality. I do not place pressure on myself to be perfect. I am honest and I am compassionate. This is my mind; this is my journey. Here is a little bit of what it is like to live in the mind of a 25-year-old diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
IT IS A CONSTANT GRUELING OF THE MIND.
You are drifting along a straight path, then you struggle to get up that hill. The pain is practically a high. One moment you have no energy, another too much. You feel like you are about to break, but you can't stop, you have to keep running.
"[We're not] crazy or insane. We are just people living with a condition."
My mind is like a constant story, that pauses when I go to sleep, and instantaneously starts again when my eyes open. You never know where the story will go or what emotions it will bring out of you. It’s exciting and terrorizing all at the same time. There are moments when your mind is running so fast it is almost painful. It never stops and is both draining and exhilarating.
You are never satisfied.
I will spend my life shooting for the moon and the minute I land on it... I will be disappointed because I didn’t make it to the stars. The day I graduated from college, all I could think about was “You can do better!” When you live with bipolar, you can always do more, be more and extend higher. It is the reason I am successful but also the reason I constantly question myself... In my world satisfied is when everything stops, and standing still is my worst fear.
Emotions run DEEP.
I hear a song and feel the emotion inside the singers voice. I'm empathetic in a way that is almost magical. I can sense other people's pain to the point it keeps me awake. I do not behave based on what I know; I behave based on what I feel. I laugh as hard as I cry, I hurt as hard as I love. When I can't feel emotions, I feel as though I cannot breathe, I cannot write and cannot think. My emotions run deep.
You sometimes feel as though you are constantly treading water.
Everyday my eyes open, and I have to tell myself to do everything I can to keep my head above water. I live my life on the edge, which only means I am that much closer to rock bottom. You are constantly self-conscious about feeling too much or feeling too little. Society is screaming at you and trying to persuade you to believe you are wrong. Some days are harder than others, but I refuse to drown.
Hereis what I am sure of......
I was born with this mind, and I would never choose to live without it, I have no choice, I will always have bipolar illness...I do not known what it is like to live without it. In my life, what we deem as "normal" mind is something I am petrified of. It is so unfamiliar to me. I have worked towards finding constant treatments that allows me to thrive as an individual with bipolar disorder, and the first step was being bold about the life I wanted. I took control back into my hands and stopped allowing society to define my mind. It is a challenge , but it allows me to see the world in a way others cannot. I stopped fighting against bipolar a long time ago. I work with it as its my own companion.
I did not ask for this, any more than a person asks for cancer. I fight it everyday. I am stronger than you know. Having bipolar disorder does not mean I am broken. It means I am strong and brave for battling your own mind every single damn day while others undermine my disease. We do not need pity. We just need you to understand we are different.
I remember someone once told me, "if you fight against it you will drown because it is much more powerful than you. You have to ride with it, that is how you survive." You are not your illness. You have a name, a history, a personality. Staying yourself is the most difficult battle.
We wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left us so tired the night before, and that, my friend, is bravery. I don't want someone to save me. I want those to stand by my side as I save myself.
4I constantly question myself. In my world being content is when everything stops and standing still is my worse fear.