The Bipolar expectation

on everyone expecting you to act sane when you're on your meds, and to be insane when you're not.

I used to self-arm from age 15 to 17, and when I went to the school nurse, I was terrified of being judged, because I wanted to stop; he gave me a sugar cube.

Now I’m almost 25 and my day starts with apple cider and ends with beer. I know I’m an alcoholic, but I don’t see a way out of the path I’m on. I’m alone every single day, applying to jobs that don’t respond, writing, getting a lot of rejection letters for my novel, and I don’t know what to do with this second life I’ve been given if not to write.

I’m taking my meds, but now I’m in a depressive episode and don’t want to get out of bed, even to pee. I’m taking my meds, but I’ve started shaking so bad that I can hardly type anymore.

What am I doing all of this for? What is all of this therapy and medication for if I don’t feel any better? Some days I’m doing great and can do so many things at once, but other days I can hardly get out of bed to pee, it’s just me and my shitty hand-rolled cigarettes against the world.

The truth about being bipolar is this, even with medication, you’re gonna fuck up. You’re not gonna be able to maintain a perfect image online (hence why it’s dangerous for me to even have a platform to begin with) you’re going to hurt people because when you were in a rush of adrenaline, you didn’t proofread what you wrote and just hit publish without adding any nuance to your dialogue.

The truth about being bipolar is that you’re going to hurt your loved ones because you didn’t check inside your head that what you were about to say was okay. You’re going to hurt a whole bunch of people and not know how to say sorry because the truth was, it wasn’t really you, it was the disease talking.

The truth is that even medicated, you’re going to feel that rush to do 200 things at once, then stay in bed the next day watching a medical show with too many seasons (not Grey’s Anatomy).

And when you have those days, you’re not going to feel like writing, you’re not going to feel like doing much of anything, to be honest. And yet now there are expectations put on you to behave a certain way and to know how to be sensitive around sensitive topics (it has never been my strong suit, I’m much more like a bull) so now there are subjects you simply won’t approach anymore and it sucks because you care about them, you just don’t know how to do it with the sensitivity it requires, even though you, yourself, are very sensitive.

You’re sensitive to the point of exhaustion, a single mean comment can ruin your day when you’re already having a bad day, and yet you still hit publish three times a week. But sometimes mean comments are fuel, fuel to be better, to act better, to write better. Sometimes, mean comments also just make you laugh, but that’s all on a good day.

I was raised in a house where mean comments were more common than a hug, and I’m used to it. But sometimes the knife twists and it bleeds even more, and I don’t know what to do with all this pain but wallow in bed, amorphous.

The truth is that even though I’m medicated, I’m still not normal, and I never will be. I’ll still be a hothead, a bull with no finesse. I’m still going to have too much energy for my friends. I’m still going to be insensitive at times because I speak before I think, and I write before I think, too.

I haven’t told my family that I’m bipolar, only my mom knows, and she didn’t take the diagnosis too well ‘Are you sure?’ ‘How can you trust their opinion?’ She was shocked, and my friends were too, because I was so good at masking, and I was already so heavily medicated that my UP moments were not noticeable, only my DOWN moments were.

My grandma will take this as a death sentence, after all, the life expectancy of those with bipolar disorder isn’t that great, and she knows it. She’ll say it comes from my dad (very likely), but I don’t know how to break the news. When she sees the amount of meds I have to take every day, she turns her head and shakes it lightly ‘You’re going to get addicted to opioids’ How can I tell her that I already am? That I’ve been taking valium for 2 years?

I’ve always been an abnormal child, getting into fights and getting kicked out of class was normal for me. Fights at home were violent too, but no one ever thought there was something different about me. They just thought it was because I was raised by a single mom who had me at 20, and because my dad is well, that’s a whole other topic.

And now, just because I’m medicated to the right dose, I’m supposed to be normal? There is no normal when you’re bipolar; medication minimizes your ups and downs, but they don’t stop them completely. There will always be that sense of urgency, or that need to stay in bed all day. It’ll stay there.

There’s no cure for it, only taming it, like a racehorse. But racehorses still fight back, and so do bipolar people.

From Marseille with Love,

*vapes away*