Is it over?

Everything has felt weird for the past few days. It was only a matter of time really, seeing as how I have been handling everything else so well. All it took was one night out to celebrate and everything came crashing down.

Now my chest hurts and my eyes sting and I can’t keep control of my own mind. All I dream of is death, and injury and blood. And the worst part is, it never feels out of the ordinary. My dream self accepts that my life is death and blood and misery, because what else should I expect?

I hate that I burden people with my disease. It isn’t fair to them. And I get scared because I know i won’t be able to cope if anything happened to them. It would be better if I wasn’t around, methinks. No more nightmares, no more burden, no more sorrow. No more good times, I suppose, but whatever. I never let myself enjoy them properly anyway.

Everything hurts and I won’t go back. I swear, I will not go back to that place, I would rather die.

Wreck of the day

There are many things I resent about my manic depression. There are some things I don’t really mind, and I’m not sure if there’s anything I actually like. But I hate that manic depression took away my sparkle.

Before my second year of university, I never really struggled with academics. I was one of those people who – GASP – actually liked Maths and read history books for fun. This was partially a way to shield myself from the Big Bad World, but it was mostly because I just loved knowing things. Hell, I still do. So not being able to function on the level I was used to was something that was really hard for me.

Let me give you an example. Last year, I had a lot of ups and downs with my meds and my moods and towards the end of the year, I just wasn’t going to lectures or tutorials. So when I wrote my final exams, I had to sit down and tell myself that my goal was to pass. Not to do well, or make the Dean’s List, or achieve any of the other (sometimes unrealistic) goals I usually set for myself. I thought it would be easy – after all, it was a matter of necessity, not just plain old laziness. It took me an hour to read two pages of notes, either because I would just gaze at the page listlessly or because the information just would not stay in my head. I literally felt like when I laid my head down to sleep, everything I had every known leaked onto my pillow in a big, sparkly, purple mess.

I had lost my sparkle, my knack for just getting it, my drive to study like a demon. The last loss was kind of ironic, since I had only just begun studying something I actually enjoyed. I defined myself by my ability to succeed academically, and when that was taken away, I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I was scared that I would begin to define myself as “that bipolar girl”. I’m not going to lie, for a while, I did. I connected most of my actions to the fact that I was unwell, whether the connection was legitimate or not.

I took my exams, and I just barely passed and the world did not end. That taught me a big lesson. I wasn’t perfect and the world did not end. So I thought I was over it! Silly me. But here I am again, possibly on the verge of a hypomanic episode, drowning in work I can’t do… And I still hate it. I never expected to be totally okay with it, but I didn’t expect to be this unhappy about it.

Alas, work beckons. So does sleep, but I will ignore that for as long as possible.

An introduction of sorts.

It is possible that this is my 3rd “My Life As A Bipolar Person” blog. It is possible that it won’t last very long. But I am beginning to think that writing about my experience might be the best way for me to actually deal with it.

I guess the best place to start is the beginning? I was born in 1988. I have an older sister. I was always the “special” one. The smart one, and the generous one, and the funny one. But also the weird one. I was relatively happy, I guess. I was, apparently, a very moody child (which might have been a sign), and I was also very sickly. In fact, I still am a very sickly 22 year-old. And I have come to realise that, the sicker I am, the more likely I am to slump into depression. But that’s a story for another day.

Moving on. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder at the end of my second year of university, and then I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder 6 months later in 2009. I was devastated. I honestly thought my life was over. And in a way, it was. Everything had to change, or at least that’s how it felt. I had to drop out of school while everyone else got to carry on being “normal”. I started to second-guess every emotion, always fearing a depressive episode as bad as the one that forced me to drop out of school. I felt like everybody knew that something was wrong with me, and all I wanted to do was hide. And I was ashamed of wanting to hide.

My year at home set me on my feet enough to go back to school in 2010. On the one hand, I was so tired of waiting for life to begin that I was literally chomping at the bit. On the other hand… well, what if I couldn’t do it anymore? Be a student and write essays and say intelligent things on demand? What if – gasp  – I dropped below an A average? It seems a bit silly when I think about it now. I really had better things to worry about, like where I would get my meds, and who my new psychologist was going to be. I did have to lower my academic standards though, because my meds made me a lot fuzzy (“mental dulling” is the official medical term, but I liked to refer to it as “cotton head” or – when I was in a bad mood – “going stupid”, and because getting out of bed and going to lectures just wasn’t worth it some days.

I owe a lot to my therapist from last year, and to one of my closest friends. Everytime I wanted to give up and go home (again), they would make me see how counterproductive that was. My therapist would remind me that I’d survived a lot, and that I this would be, if nothing so pleasant as a piece of cake, then at least a bowl of bran Flakes. And my friend, well, she would tell me that I was an idiot for wasting time worrying when I was so brilliant. And then she would roll her eyes. It seems harsh, but with 90% of the people around me handling me with kid gloves, it was a welcome relief. With those two, a lot of willpower and a completely useless stint in a psychiatric hospital near the end of last year, i managed to scrape through all my exams. Insert victory arms here. \o/

And so here we are, 2011. I have a crapload of work, no psychologist as of now, a hatred of the hospital, and a disinclination to take my meds when I’m supposed to. The last thing is kind of problematic. Going off lithium cold turkey is… well, a BAD BAD BAD idea. (Didn’t stop me though.) I might be back on the meds, but gosh! I just hate them so much. Who knew a little white pill and a little pink pill and a little peach pill could make me see red?

This entry… has no point, and for that I apologise. In my defence, it’s 1am, I’m tired, full of flu medication and perhaps just a tad unbalanced. Perhaps I will make more sense tomorrow…