Greetings,
Swelltide asked for a companion to write along with him in
his blog, and I told him that I’d give it a try. It took me a while to get around to it though. I finally have. It’s partly due to my long-distance
girlfriend visiting, but it’s also partly not. I’m not exactly in the best shape currently. We can get to that later though.
DISCLAIMER: This will probably be a bit lengthy, and you’ll
know way more about me than you ever cared to know. I also will occasionally use swear words or
discuss/reference heavy subjects like suicide. Apologies in advance.
A “QUICK” ASIDE
Suicide isn’t a good idea. I know you hear the PSAs, etc. often, but if you’re even
thinking about suicide then you need to seek help immediately. That doesn’t mean that you need to seek
help once you’re walking to the bridge.
If you are feeling down in the dumps and even have suicide cross your
mind then you probably need to talk to someone, even a friend or relative. Ideally you would go to a counselor,
therapist, or other professional, but anything is better than sitting in a
hospital gown in the psychiatric ward (not to mention being dead).
There really isn’t any shame in reaching out before you even
get to the point of suicidal thoughts.
There will be people who don’t understand and think that you’re just
being dramatic or something like that.
Fuck them. Most of those
people wouldn’t have a different opinion after a suicide attempt. They just won’t get it. I don’t mean to say that they’re
necessarily bad people. They’re
usually older and come from a time that had even less understanding of the
brain and mental health than we do today.
Plus, you just can’t really see a mental health disorder, and someone
who hasn’t experienced one may not understand.
END LECTURE
I think a brief introduction would probably be useful
now. I have been diagnosed with a
mental health disorder for about three years now. I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 about two years ago. Prior to my mental health issues I had
been a 3.8 student at a major university with no physical or mental
ailments. I got a cold or the flu
every once in a while, but I was very healthy overall. I then failed all of my classes in the
first semester of my junior year.
I would shut myself in my room except for the bathroom and food for
days. Things were pretty
bleak. I had to call a friend in
late November while holding a bottle of pills.
That prompted me to get serious about finding professional
help. I was diagnosed with major
depression and began therapy and medicine. I still failed all but one of my classes during the second
semester. The hardest thing was
just getting out of bed and going to class. Writing papers was the second hardest thing. That combination isn’t a recipe for
success in college or really anywhere for that matter.
Nevertheless, I got a sweet job that summer and was having a
great time. I felt alive
again. I was around a lot of
intellectual people, having fun, and doing my job well. I was really thriving, but then on the
last day we all went out to celebrate.
Something like six or eight hours later, I don’t really know for sure,
some cops found me drunkenly stumbling down the street with my wrists
bleeding. I spent a few days in
inpatient care and then a week in outpatient care, where they diagnosed me with
bipolar 2. Apparently, I had
essentially been manic all summer, and that night it all came to a head.
My life has improved since then. Medicines to treat bipolar disorder and therapy have helped
immensely, and my amazing girlfriend, who stuck with me through the whole
ordeal, helped even more. I just
graduated with a bachelor’s degree this May for instance.
By no means has it been a smooth ride though. I can’t say that I haven’t ever had
thoughts of suicide since that awful night. I have lost touch with a lot of friends and have a
much-diminished social life.
Keeping obligations, even important ones like therapy, has not been
easy. Paying bills on time is
hard. I can’t seem to handle
everything in life at once, and that’s not even during the low points.
I’d say I’m somewhere in a down period right now. I have to find a new psychiatrist
because my current one will be leaving, and I have to contact her to get more
sleeping meds. Consequently, I
have been staying awake until 6 or 7 in the morning and sleeping until 4 or 5
in the afternoon. When I miss
appointments with my therapist I usually can’t get myself to reschedule for a
few weeks, and I missed an appointment almost a month ago. So I haven’t seen him in a while. I need to amend that.
Right now, I have been awake since 4:30 yesterday
afternoon. Videogames and TV have
occupied most of my waking hours.
It really isn’t very ideal for a recent college graduate, seeing as I
don’t have a job…
If you haven’t noticed already, I’m not the best
writer. I tend to ramble and have
a mixture of formal and informal sentences. Without frequent consultation of a thesaurus, I overuse
certain words. There is probably
more that I don’t even notice. And
since I’m pointing out flaws, I have always been an extremely negative,
critical person. Especially toward
myself. (I’m also not going to
always use complete sentences, proper grammar, nor proper structure.) This negativity paralyzes me sometimes.
I want to help with Swelltide’s blog because, as he has
pointed out, there isn’t a wealth of information for people with bipolar
disorder. More specifically, I
haven’t found anything like this blog.
Message boards can be helpful, but they don’t have running commentary
from someone. You can read about
other fucked up people’s problems and find some advice from other anonymous
sources. However, maybe this blog
will help someone, and that makes it more that worth it. Even if it doesn’t, it will still
probably be therapeutic for me.
So you’ll see posts from me now. They’ll probably be more infrequent than Swelltide’s, but
hopefully I’ll be helpful in adding a second perspective to bipolar
disorder. I will also try to keep
my posts shorter than this one in the future too. Congratulations on making it through my first one ever.
Cheers,
Sparta
