I know an obscene amount about murderers, cults, and cryptids that live in bodies of water. I can still remember the words and tune to "Carrot Stew", one of the songs that my class learned from our music teacher in elementary school (get a pot and a carrot or two! and we'll cook up a carrot stew). I can analyze historical documents spread in front of me and write a brilliant research paper (my advisor's words, not mine) or fight through stage fright and anxiety when my whole body is telling me not to and make a crowd laugh at dumb jokes about religion and sexuality.
I can explain bipolar disorder to my friends and family.
I have divulged the condition to people I have just met, to friends I have had long before I had the diagnosis, and walked them through how it made sense, given my record of behavior. It was like a friend or a sidekick, along for the ride while I had drinking benders, ruined relationships, got into screaming matches with family members, or laid in bed and slept for days when I should have been in my classes. I explained to my current partner, while I was stable, that she would not be prepared for the bad days. That even I didn't know how bad I could get. That I am not the one driving the Morgan-shaped flesh vessel, and sometimes the bad days last for weeks or months.We knew we wanted to get married already. She looked up the divorce statistics for bipolar patients and abruptly put her phone away.
It's 90 percent.
I've been accused of talking about mental illness for attention. Some guy I met on Tinder sent me a string of vitriolic messages in 2017 telling me that I only posted about reducing the stigma so I could feel good about myself, but that I didn't actually care about other people, I only cared about myself. I internalized that a lot. I questioned my intentions. Maybe I just didn't want to feel alone. There is a lot of loneliness when you're diagnosed with bipolar disorder and realize that 1 in 5 bipolar patients eventually complete suicide. It can take years off of your life or take your life completely, and then you're seen as weak. Since I was diagnosed, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I can't do. What I shouldn't do. I've been told there are certain professions that I just can't do because I have bipolar disorder. At first, I was so angry with that person for telling me that. But I think he's probably right.
My saint of a partner told me last week that she doesn't blame me for what I'm going through and she's working on understanding it. "I can tell that it's something that torments you", or something very similar, is what she said. It's probably the best description of it that I've ever heard. When it's bad, it's like an out of body experience. I can't control my thoughts, and they control my body. I'm still on medication, so I might have good hours in the bad days, but it is a constant war for control. The crisis medication makes me too tired to function. If I take it too long, I'm too depressed to get out of bed. If I'm alone too long, I think about all of the things I've done that have hurt people, just in this round of being ill. One of my close friends was the first person to refer to my bad weeks as my being "sick", and it gave me so much comfort. To have it called what it is.
But when I have an endometriosis flare up, I don't slam doors five times in a row just to release kinetic energy, pain, and fear. I don't have thought loops about how my friends hate me and resent me for needing reassurance that they don't hate me. I don't throw full water bottles at the kitchen wall. I don't wonder if I deserve to live at all. I don't convince myself that my friends and family are better off without me. Sometimes I wonder how I peel myself out of bed and do anything.
I do wonder if I'm saying too much by putting this out into the world. Is it saying too much? Does it help people? Does it make people pity me? Where is the line between raising awareness and saying too much? Telling people that I'm okay and know how to handle these times, but knowing that they're concerned for my safety and the safety of others? Was that guy in 2017 right? Who am I really serving writing things like this?
I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm close. You don't get better from the bad days in just a few days. But it's important for me to remember that the bad days are only about 10-15% of my life now. Before, they were 90% of my life, and I was exhausted all of the time. I used to call out of work just to lay in bed and let silent tears stream down my face, wondering what was wrong with me, wondering why I was alive, why I hadn't just died in the womb, why a car couldn't just hit me driving down the road. I was in a constant cycle of feeling euphoric and then breaking and wanting to die. In the immortal words of Elle Woods "This is SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT!"
I know I'll never be completely out of the woods. You never can be when the woods are Fangorn Forest, and they can follow you. This disease is like a dance.
Into the woods, then out of the woods. And home before dark.
I know that I can manage. It's important for me to keep talking about it. Talking about it helps me process. It helps me deal. Maybe it helps other people. Maybe I share this, and someone I don't even know I'm Facebook friends with has just been diagnosed, or is thinking they're about to be diagnosed, and they can see how hard it is, but that its manageable.
I can explain it. I can't fix it.
But strong is fighting. It's hard. And it's painful, and it's every day.
And it's what I have to do.
Love,
Your chronic illness, bipolar disorder, ptsd Slayer
