It Gets Better for Us Too

I have so much admiration for the It Gets Better Project. If for some reason you’ve been living under a rock and have missed it, this is the viral video-turned-movement from Dan Savage meant to educate LGBT youth on all they have to look forward to beyond any bullying, questioning, or suffering they may be experiencing now.

When you have a mental health condition like bipolar disorder, this issues are different, but the mantra still applies.

As I think back tonight on the hospitalizations and the shifting medication regimen and all of the pain and uncertainty in my life and compare to now–I have to say that it does get better. Or, I’ll qualify that statement to say: with the right resources and support, it gets better. Of course, statistics still reveal difficult truths about how more than 25 percent of us will try to commit suicide in our lifetimes; about how it reduces the lifespan by 9 years.

But you are more than a statistic. And so am I. Today, and for over a decade, I have been a healthy person who manages moods. And with that, I can without hesitation tell anyone who is suffering right now as I once did:

it gets better.

Do You Feel Like a Version of Yourself?

I turn to this blog when I am feeling lonely. I wish I could nurture it at other times. But so often, when life is motoring along a steady course, I don’t exactly feel bipolar. I take my medication; I get enough sleep every night; I live my life. And so I forget about this blog.

I oftentimes log on with the intention of deleting the blog altogether: but then–in the same way I can’t ever destroy a journal or a letter that once meant anything to me–I leave it alone.

It’s without warning (don’t you hate that it oftentimes feels like it just hits you?), that my depression sets in. I mean, if I’m being honest, the depression I’m feeling right now was probably triggered by the terrible break up I went through a few months ago. Still, for a while, I was handling my life with a kind of grace that made friends say to me, “Wow–you are doing so well.”

But now I’m not.

Now, with my depressive brain, I am thinking all of the things I always think when I get depressed: you are a failure; you are stupid; you must have driven your ex-boyfriend away; you have a terrible job.  The only nice thing about these thoughts is that I’m experienced in living this life of a medicated yet still moody manic-depressive, and I know that they’re fleeting. I know that I will feel better soon. If I didn’t have that to hold on to, it would be hard to get through the day.

And so that’s how I live. Always a version of myself, not quite sure when this person I am is going to disappear into something happier, sadder, angrier, more energetic. And for this reason, I’m never exactly sure who I ever was in the first place.

Finding the Courage to Continue the Blog

Tonight, all of a sudden, I started to freak out about this blog. It seemed like such a good idea a few days ago. But, as had happened to me before, I was feeling immensely paranoid that blogging about bipolar disorder could be somehow detrimental to my life, so instead of keeping the fear bottled up inside me, I thought, hey, why not write about it? The thing is that to actually blog really and truly “anonymously,” you have to go through all sorts of crazy technical hoops that I started to read about online. So I started to second guess things, partially because I’m doing this stealthily in my apartment.

As of tonight, I haven’t told anyone that I’m doing this. Most notably, not even my boyfriend, who’s sitting across the room and, I think, wondering why I am all of a sudden so much more prolific with my writing  … lately I have been trying to write creative nonfiction, and that process is much more slow and painful for me than this has been.

What I’m realizing as I write this, though, is that maybe my fear is not just about blogging about bipolar disorder specifically, but about all the things I’m always afraid of: being judged, not being good enough, failing. Maybe my doubts about this blog are something I need to push through. I need to listen to my own advice from earlier today and adapt the growth mindset. God, I wrote that post a few hours ago and still need reminding to think that way!

I need to remind myself that I know I will make mistakes along the way here, but the reason why I want to blog about my life and about bipolar disorder is not to convey anything perfectly. It’s to connect with others who can share my experiences. It’s to illuminate some of the things I’ve learned about managing this disease for others who may be just starting out on the journey of managing. And then I hope that we can, as a community, begin to alleviate the stigma we all feel.

And so I have to say that with the commencement of this blog (again), I feel as if I am crossing over some imaginary line. This time, I hope to stay on this side of that line and not go back to my old ways of not expressing what I want to say about myself and the illness because of, well, fear.

Finding Solace in a Blog Post

I neglect this blog. I forget about it. Sometimes for a few months. Sometimes for close to a year. I wish I maintained it, and I’m at a point once again where I really want to begin posting on here regularly. Because every few months, without fail, there’s something that happens to make me feel so deeply trapped inside myself that there is nowhere else to turn other than this blog. I know that no one is actively “listening” to me, but there’s some small chance that someone will hear me and understand, and that’s solace. My diary, well, that’s something that my boyfriend might find so it’s somehow less private than the internet.  He’s as loving as they come, but he doesn’t have the strength to deal with the negativity that seeps into my psyche when I get like this. Part of what makes living with bipolar disorder so hard, even if I have it mostly under control, is that it’s not really OK to talk about it.

And I know, I know. I sound self-serious and dramatic. I can step outside myself, for a moment, and know that in a few days I will probably feel better. But that doesn’t make right now feel much better. I’m at work, sitting at my desk, and I know I’m lucky to have this job and this relatively stable life. But today, I can barely keep it together. Everything and everyone is making me angry. I didn’t sleep well last night. I didn’t eat enough for lunch today.

My boyfriend reminds me when I’m home that I need to take a walk, to do some yoga, to get outside of my head. And he is right. Beyond the medication, the secret to this disease is taking care of yourself. It’s sleep and food and exercise. All of the things you don’t want to do when you’re feeling like you’ve fallen into some deep, dark cavern of your brain and don’t quite know how to find your way out.