I've been really good about taking my meds, and feel mostly stable, which is a huge accomplishment for me. It's easy for me to kind of forget I even have bipolar when things are going so well.
But the other day, a thought occurred to me: what if it wasn't doing okay?
There have been times that were extremely difficult with this disease, things from my past that I can look at and be pretty sure were related to my mood disorder. There was my depressive crash in 2016. There was my breakdown in 2017. The ups and downs will always be there, I know that. It can be easy, though, to forgot how serious this disease is when things are going so well.
There's a possibility that, at some time in my life, I might suffer a psychotic break. That is absolutely terrifying. Like I said, my illness is well-managed and I'm technically bipolar II so it would be unlikely. But the chance is there. One of the things that delineates between type I and type II is hospitalization.
It scares me, to know I might lose control, that it might happen to me, to my family. They would be impacted, too. I've read several memoirs and case studies about people with bipolar needing to be hospitalized and it's frightening to say the least.
That's the severity of it. It might get worse as I get older. The meds could stop working and I could relapse. The thing I dread could happen, and there might not be any way for me to stop it.
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Well, I wrote the first part of that way earlier in the month. Now we're at the end, and things haven't been as stable. Last night, I suffered a mixed manic episode. Not being in school, not having a schedule, is throwing my routine in a blender. I keep staying up later, sleeping in. I feel aimless and worthless.
This culminated in me going hypomanic last night. It's a feeling that's hard to describe, really. But it's something I can see in my eyes. I even told myself last night that I looked crazy. Can you see it? My husband could, he said I had the look in my eyes. I denied it. I didn't want to be stopped.
If you're wondering why I take photos in these moments, I can't really answer that. Maybe as proof? Maybe because hypomania makes me feel invincible and inflates my ego beyond belief? I'm not sure.
As usual, things ended in a crash and burn where I started to hate myself. Luckily, I forced myself to sleep at 3am and remembered to take my pills. But this just touches on my previous point - relapse. I got a not so subtle reminder that I have a chronic illness, that my moods easily go out of whack. As much as I'd like to pretend that I'm normal, the truth is that I'm not. I take strides every day to be as close to that as I can.
Writing this makes me feel vulnerable, makes me worried that people will recoil when they see the dark side. But this blog, it was started to remove that stigma, to show people that even though I struggle, I will keep working towards taking care of my mental health, like we all should. Today that included a three hour nap to catch up on the sleep I missed last night, something that my therapist and I agreed to this morning when I saw her.
Today was not the best day, and I can never be sure about tomorrow. All I can do is try to do the right things to keep me stable. Try to keep my mental health a priority and take care of myself, and generally just care about myself. There's no shame in taking that step, doing what you need to do to, getting the help you need. I'm grateful for the support I receive, both professionally and personally from my family and friends.
I don't want to fight my bipolar. That would be an exercise in futility. Instead, I feel like I should befriend it. Learn about it all the time. See what makes it better, what makes it worse, and work with it, not against it. After all, it'll be with me always. And even though that might not be fair, that's my burden, and all I can do is my best to live with it.
