Bipolar disorder

[matilda36]

I had a dream this morning. My mother was cooking and  ignoring me. I had to wrestle her to the floor to get her to talk to me and she said that she had given up on me and that she didn't love me anymore. I then went to my father and wrapped around him on the floor while e told me that he still loved me but that I didn't make things easy for myself because of my illness.

I made a lot of mistakes in my life, mistakes that have left me at 41 working in a betting shop, my basic abilities (like counting) affected by the medications that keep me numb enough not to swing madly between moods. I was once upon a time tagged for a quick series of promotions in the Civil service. I had once upon a time a large group of friends. More than once. I lost all that.

I live alone with a goldfish and the few plants that have survived my self hatred, I struggle to keep in touch with the  few friends remaining. I smile very little and I hate myself deply. I am shy, so shy that I have to hate people a little bit to be able to deal with them.

Because I hate myself. I hate my illness and I hate what it has done to me. I hate the lost chances, the lost friends, the lost smile. I hate the constant fear of people, fear that they will see my mental illness. I hate my medication and what it does to me. I hate the loss of coordination that makes me fall from my bike. I hate the fact that it makes me slow. I hate the fact that makes me numb to social interaction. I hate that I need to sleep so much.

I keep telling myself to stop hiding behind the illness, that the one I really hate is myself, but what I really hate is having bipolar disorder. I end up hating myself with it because it has become so entwined with my personality that I have problems seeing where the illness ends and where I begin, but what I hate is the illness.

It's true what I said, that my diagnosis was freeing. Now I know why. I tried to embrace my illness, to live with it. I have bipolar disorder, I know it's effects, symptoms and side effects, I just need to live with it. It's part of me. I have no right to hate it. I have no right to fight it.

I'll just sit there in front of my PC, my shoulders slumped, getting fatter and fatter, being thankful that I have a job, being afraid that my illness will make me loose said job, with good days becoming rarer and rarer, usually the ones where I have a new challenge to tackle. because every single thing becomes a challenge, from driving to cleaning the house.

I know that this should be the point in which I conclude this post with some rallying cry of battle, in which I promise not to let my illness stop me anymore. In which at least I promise to try. The truth is that I don't even know how to try.

 I am changing the bed today: it's a sign of a good day or just that it's getting too cold even for me? I am going to work today. I know it's gonna be a very busy day. Should I try to be cheerful? I know it would be me faking it. Because I don't feel cheerful.  The dream has helped me see a little bit clearer into myself, but has left me shaken. I know that my mother giving up on me, was me giving up on me and my father still loving me was me loving myself.

Hold on: me loving myself. That's something new and weird. For sure I spend an hell of a lot of time protecting myself. My inactivity is a way of protecting myself from the promises my illness broke. My disdain towards people is a way of protecting myself from the bonds my illness broke. I craddle myself in a cocoon of dreams. I do it because I love myself and i don't want to see myself scared, broken, hurt.

I tried everything to dull the pain, from career to witchcraft. Now medication dulls it, but it has its price. But what it matters is that i love myself. I love the little girl inside. I take care of her. I don't help her to grow up, that's true.But I love her. I love myself.

I don't need a rousing call to battle with my illness. Because i fight it everyday already, running like an headless chiken to contain the damage. That often doesn't exist, but become true by force of fear.

Paranoia is knowing the truth said William Burroughs. Paranoia makes the truth, I say.

I need more inspirational dreams. But in the meantime a quote from Alda Merini an Italian poet who struggled all her life with bipolar disorder:
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The soul doesn't fee pain. The only pain that can affect the soul it's its exile, its unwilling non-fulfilment. The one feeling the pain is the mind, the mind and the heart.

Comments

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

I understand what you are saying; much of it could have been written by my youngest daughter, roughly half your age; she's back in her first week of college, and is struggling today with her illness.

Loving yourself is a key. Try to find positives everyday, and savor them against the blackness of the night.

I can't guarantee that we can always be there for you at the moment you may need us the most - but know that you have friends, online or otherwise, who do understand, care, and will do what we can.