Rolling Up a Hill

How many times have I started writing with the same word on my mind: again?

Here I am again, thinking that I had beaten every obstacle in my life only to get struck down immediately. This may have been the longest manic episode I have been on, for two and a half months I bounced between fully manic, hypomanic, and a little bit about normal. Up until the last few days of this period of pure bliss, I felt invincible, which yeah is the entire definition of mania, but I thought that I had figured out how to tell.

I thought that I had a grasp on how to gauge when I was slipping into one or the other. For God’s sake I have a fucking calendar that I color in each day to track. I keep forgetting that it’s barely been a year, that I’m not supposed to have a firm grasp on it yet, but how am I supposed to go through one of the biggest transition periods of life while trying to also keep myself from slipping away into my own mind?

How am I supposed to figure out how to live while also figuring out what I’m doing with my life?

I just spent two and a half days glued to my bed feeling lower than I have in so long. I had forgotten just how deep my depression can be, how lifeless I can feel. How am I supposed to keep living and keeping figuring things out when I lose myself into nothingness every three weeks?

I know it’s repetitive and I know it’s redundant and yet I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m going in a circle. The only thing that is grounding me and giving me some semblance of hope is that the circle is rolling forward. It’s rolling somewhere and that’s all I can hope I’m doing.

Humor and Human Nature

The cruel irony in my life is that I used to be so opposed to humor when I was deep in the trenches of my mental illnesses. I used to scream at my parents when they tried to make me laugh with a joke because I was so stuck on the idea that if I were to laugh or be happy at any capacity, then I would be diluting the very real and very intense emotions I was feeling in the moment. And god forbid I wasn't constantly in a state of personal reflection where I sulked and sat in my own misery.

Now I use humor as a wall for actually facing my internal self. I guess younger me was on to something in a sense.

Humor around my mental health and well-being is something I have become comfortable with to the point that jokes and quips escape my lips before I even think of them. I almost feel obligated to lighten the tone because I’m afraid that what I really am feeling and want to say is too heavy for any one else to carry with them. And in all honesty, I am probably not wrong to think that. When I have moments of true self-reflection without the constant distractions I have implemented in my life, I realize just how much I have neglected myself.

Sometimes I think what would be different if I was more open to humor when I was younger and more at ease with other’s help. Maybe I wouldn’t compensate for myself now by trying to make it all one joke.

It’s almost human nature to try and find the deeper meanings in life and look for every dot to connect in the end. Suffering makes us want to believe in a bigger plan. That’s probably why I was so opposed to humor, I thought it would hinder me from being able to “truly look within” or whatever the hell my 13-year-old self thought was provoking and influential.

Now I fear what’s at my core and what makes me up. I push aside any real semblance of what I’m feeling in order to maintain a fun and happy mood. I feel like I’ve gone full circle in my growth. Instead of trying to put on a facade of perfection to hide any problems from others, I have deferred to mitigating my own struggle from myself so I don’t have to come to terms with who I am.

Humor is a vast and incredible tool to help us cope, but somewhere there is a line between helpful and harmful and I’m afraid I’m too far gone down the harmful tract now.

Anhedonia

I haven’t cried in almost nine months.

If you’re my therapist, you see this as a good thing, cause it means there hasn’t been anything particularly stressing to cause me to cry. And this could be true and one hopes it could be true.

But, if you are me, you see it as a slight issue.

Almost a year ago I was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder and since then a lot of puzzle pieces have fallen into place in how I operate and function. However, the puzzle has grown a lot as well so the amount of unfinished puzzle hasn’t really changed and in fact might have increased. And within the unfitted mess of my life puzzle is the answer to why I cannot bring myself to cry.

I used to cry at least a few times a week, which isn’t necessarily healthier than where I am now, but I felt enough emotion to cry. There were times when I was overwhelmed with emotions whether good or bad and crying was the only form of release that could aid in dealing with said emotions. My fear now, is that I am void of emotion.

Every time I’ve spoken with my therapist, all I can say is I feel diet happiness. I do things that should promote a feeling of joy but I’m not entirely sure if I actually feel the joy or if I have just convinced myself that it’d be weird if I wasn’t happy so I should just be happy. It’s like I’m forcing myself to experience emotions and I’m doing it well.

Imagine after every time you laughed at something, you immediately questioned if it was forced because you don’t know if you remember how to genuinely laugh. That's not the most comfortable feeling in the world to say the least.

I did a quick Google search the other day, which is never a good idea when you’re worried about something and I’m not a big proponent on self-diagnosing based on 10 minutes of internet research, BUT something called Anhedonia almost sums up what I’m feeling.

To simplify the definition, it’s a common symptom of psychotic disorders and some depressive disorders, where the person no longer feels pleasure in anything. It’s like an extreme form of apathy. I don’t think I’m fully at that point, but I can feel myself getting there and I don’t really know what’s up with that. As much as I enjoy being a little more mentally stable now than I was a year ago, I miss being able to experience feelings.

That’s putting it bluntly but I miss feeling something and not constantly questioning if it’s real. I think this also plays into the new over dramatization of my life. Nothing feels relevant to my living unless I make it overly important and that is something I feel like I should probably unpack but that is neither here nor there.

New

I recently found out that I am bipolar. A little while ago, my therapist prompted the idea that I could be bipolar and from there my doctor confirmed it and now I am working towards a more specific diagnosis. Either way, I am bipolar.

This new explanation for why I think and act the way I do has knocked me off my feet more than anything else. Not just because it is something I will spend the rest of my life coping with, OCD has warmed me up to that idea already, but because it feels so much more intense. That’s definitely not the right explanation of it, and it might just be my own stigma that I need to confront, but bipolar makes me feel insane.

At least anxiety and panic and depression have mini “normal” counterparts. They aren’t the same. but there is a bit of them that is grounded in normal behavior and thinking. They’re just inflated versions of something that is already there, to an extent, and I think I’ve been holding on to that idea to avoid what I fear is now true. That I am crazy. I am broken beyond the romanticized version of my mind that is splayed out in the world. I think I’ve been using the false connotations of what I am as a crutch to avoid facing the fact that I am not normal, but now I have a new thing that’s wrong with me and I can’t distract myself from what is reality.

I think that with OCD I felt it a little bit, but I shoved it down in my subconscious to avoid it and bipolar has just released it from its cage. Having these more specific and less “normal” illnesses makes the gap between me and a normal life feel bigger and bigger, to the point where it is no longer attainable. I knew that OCD would be a forever thing but now I have more forever things and every day forever feels longer and longer.

I know I’m not alone in feeling this way, hopeless in the face of the truth, and yet I feel so detached and alone on this journey I am on forever. Support groups aren’t as easy to come across as I hoped they would be, no one really has an AA for the mentally ill, at least one that doesn’t come with a hospital stay or a heavy fee. No one really talks about the life of an 18-year-old who has to take 20 pills a day just to feel a fraction of what a normal person feels. My mental illnesses are who I am, they don’t define me, but they are me. I am them, and I just wish I could talk to one other person who understands what that really means.

So yeah, I am bipolar, and clearly am struggling to accept that and what it really means for me. I hope that if anyone else who feels as I do finds this and knows that there is someone else who understands. Healing and getting better isn’t easy and I know and understand that, I just wish that I didn’t have to.