Swelltide.

It has been a while since the big bipolar diagnosis. Four months, or five. I have school coming up. A major change at work, being that I go part-time-- or not at all, depending on how they react to me not being available all hours of the day. I am planning a discussion about the diagnosis with my family, though I don't think this talk will come any time soon.

It is something that I've brought up in therapy and keep coming back to. When to tell people and who to tell. I am not afraid of any kind of stigma, but more like a reaction to my emotions. I don't care if people know that I am crazy. Ha. Anyone who knows me really well knows that I am. I don't want to have people downplaying how I feel or what I think because they know that I am bipolar. I don't want to be in an argument and have someone dismiss what I say because I am 'unstable', or 'manic.' People are dismissive of how I feel already. It would just be an excuse to accuse me of overreacting. Or being down.

A quick appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow, and then therapy in the afternoon. I may ask for something to ease anxiety. Which, I know will be a problem when school starts and I am sitting in a shoebox of a room with no one that I know. I have been anxious lately under normal circumstances.

I have not been sleeping well, but am still reluctant to take on more medication than is good for me. I do not need to be taking something for mania, something for depression, something for anxiety and something to help me sleep. I don't want all of those meds. I have had a hard enough time taking the one pill, every day, like I am supposed to.

I wish there were one other person with bipolar, that I knew personally and could talk to. Someone who has lived with it for a while. It would make everything so much easier for me, because I do feel like nobody really understands what it is like. I do feel like I don't know enough about what I am going through, myself. And knowing is everything for me. I have to know what to expect. I must know what I'm dealing with. What is around the corner.

Because I haven't been taking my meds like I should, my mood has been somewhat unstable. I wake up feeling one way and come home feeling another. I have been somewhat irritable. Mostly, I've been feeling detached from people, without any real explanation. Lonely, but mostly separated from everyone around me. I've even gone so far as to Google this feeling. An emotion that there really isn't a word for. Depression.

I hate that word. Depression. Like an old friend who had sex with your wife. The attitudes of my family and friends to this word, is equally patronizing and pitiful. I don't even openly talk about it with anyone anymore. Maybe, I am depressed. If I am though, it is different for me now than when I have experienced it before. I am still productive. Still about to get myself out of bed and to work, though not always on time. I don't have the desire to pull the shades down on all the windows and not talk for a few days.

If I talked to my psychiatrist about it, or my therapist, drugs would be the answer. I just don't want anymore medication. So, what do you do?