When i was initially diagnosed almost 10 yrs ago with Bipolar 1 I didn’t know how to capture the news.
At first I thought it a sick joke. My times of mania didn’t attend those conclusions and the feeling that i was completely fine. I hadn’t slept for a week because i was stressed,i rationalized. These racing thoughts were merely a result of not sleeping. My titanic spending spree was only one of each flavor of hand sanitizers from Bath and Body Works and who can have too many of those? They told me i was fortunate because i came in manic so I was easy to diagnose. Also I was told that bipolar was “one of the better” mental illnesses. I must be highly clever. Yippee. Not quite my initial response. Between the hospitalizations where the treatment left me feeling alone and like a monster and the times of depression I sometimes felt like i was on a roller coaster left hanging and all my insides clamoring to find their right area. I remember my first hospitalization loooking over and seeing a man with a rope mark still visible on his neck. A successful commerce woman silenced by illness. A schizophrenic roommate who spoke to herself throughout the night. The truth: We’re all broken. We all need hope. My mental illness in fact has been a blessing for me. Opening my eyes so I dont live in denial of my own messiness but also for others. There is hope. My journey has been twisty. titanic ups and titanic downs but there is an end. There is that final destination of hope. This is not where i thought I’d be…well that’s trusty. But it is where I am supposed to be. And I dont have to panic the future, because I have and when it finally did arrive I saw that it safely drew into the landing.
Source: nami.org