3 Reasons Bipolar is The Worst

I sit at home. From my desk that my parents set-up, after yet another manic episode and yet another hospitalization. Feeling the Sisyphean duty of managing my disorder and prioritizing it and it's many small details. At the age of 29, I feel like I'm 98 years old. What is it about bipolar that makes it feel so much like dementia?! I don't want to be young and enshrined in my 'shine on you crazy diamond' clothes. Nobody wants to be the town freak, or the bipolar babe ostracized. And it's not like I'm even ostracized. It's just that --- well that I can't stop rambling. I can't stop thinking. And I certainly can't stop thinking about this disorder and how to manage it. How could I think differently when I'm at home again for several months? It's like something in between provincial living in a Jane Austen novel, 29 and nothing to offer the family, and living on the edges of poverty for your entire life. And of course, the dramatization of it all. Afterall at 29, I'm not at the end of my life. 

                       

 1) Dating 

I don't really know if I can describe exactly what happens after you get a bipolar diagnosis or manage your first major manic episode that makes it impossible to date. There's some sort of major grief that occurs after your first manic episode. There's sort of this mythology around love that makes it seem as though, you fall in love and all your problems get solved. After your first major manic episode, at least for me, this kind of mythology (for better or for worse) gets thrown out the window. You realize that your problems are magnified to an extent that they really can't be solved by even you yourself, let alone another person. It's like getting thrown down the hole of your own mind. It's not to say it's impossible and of course people with the disorder do fall in love all the time. But falling in love all the time, is not the same as dating. And of course, there's lot of mini-manic loves that pop up all over the place, as if magnetized by the disorder. Bipolars find bipolars all the time. And generally, it's like two fires being insta attached to one another. 

2) Sleep is a beast 

It's bizarre to realize that sleep itself is a beast that must be conquered. Or that the vast majority of people with bipolar, have an added sleep disorder on top of it.  When you haven't slept for weeks at a time, for no other reason then your own mind and bodies inability to let you, you realize that something that is so universal, sleep, is something you can only enjoy on horse tranquilizer's. And how do you ask someone to follow that on social? Twitter and Insta and Facebook @ the sleepless. Oftentimes the sleepless have nothing to say but the most inappropriate thing that could exist. There's reasons why I'm grateful to have to attack sleep like it is some sort of primordial beast, a monster that's trapped in between my sheets and refuses to grant me refuge unless I submit my body to multiple tranquilizing effects. I'm trying to think of the reasons why I'm grateful sleep is a beast. Oh wait, I can't. Sleep is merely a beast. At least now, I have the medication regimen I need, to keep it at bay. And close my eyes in gentle slumber to any number of popular NYT or Philosophizing podcasts on the market.  

3) The Family 

Goddamnit if I don't love my mom and dad and goddamnit if I didn't wish they didn't have to care for me so randomly and often as I try to manage this disorder. Everybody love/hates their family and I am lucky to have one that doesn't completely kick me out due to my delusions. When I'm manic, I might as well be like a talkative schizophrenic. Imagine everything a schizophrenic generally thinks, given out in speech. That's what it's like when I'm manic. My parents have cared for me through every delusion. But when they care for me, I have to find a way to care for them back. There's no independent journey through life for someone with severe SPMI, like there appears to be for everyone else. It seems as though, if I fall in love with someone, they'll be my caregiver just like my parents are, and that's not a happy place to be in. I'm not sunshine and roses in this post. I'm just out of a manic episode and right into the dark depths of a depressive episode. And I don't need to describe a major depressive episode to any bipolar babes. You know what it is and what it does and when and where and howish. All I have to say is, the family loves me but I beleaguer the family. And being an adult who has to be cared for like a child during manic episodes. Not fun. Not enjoyable. Unfun, unenjoyable, and any other uns I can add. 

Goddamnit I wish this could've been a happier post, but I'm just trucking along and posting daily to Bipolar Babes. Somedays there will be joy and information about how to manage. Like for example WRITING. WRITING helps like a motherfucker for dealing with this, at least for me. MEDITATION AND MEDICATION. Those two things help like crazy too. 

Follow me at this blog if you find these brain droppings interesting, or don't, up to you. Comment with any thoughts you might have. And DISCLAIMER: this is not a damsel in distress blog, these are just my honest thoughts about the disorder. How it affects and what to do about it.

P.S.  check out this tree.