Bipolar Support Group

Statement: I cannot stand the stigma. I am in no way ashamed of my illness and I hope in time soon we can put a real face to it. Many people have only know Hollywood’s exaggerated example…and the word is thrown about a lot more like “Man she’s Bipolar”-----referring to a moody person or like a new word for crazy for those who have no proper simile for the word.I am in no way ashamed of my illness. One issue I have endure my how life it being so misunderstood and it hurt me so badly and mad me feel alone. I have discovered that it was the illness itself not being understood not me. I am no a word. I am not an Illness. I am someone living with one every hour of every day, but I am living. I wrote this sometime ago wanting to shed light on the utter substance of Bipolar. So I summarized some of the places this illness has taken me in hopes of expressing it with some friends and again I wanted to share it with new friend..

I was diagnosed when I was 19 -------I have been on meds the entire time with the exception of when I was pregnant. I have extremes that most people never feel-----I have been very high with out a drug, unstill, manic, out of control, it can be this: unmatched, intense, Surreal, exhilarating feeling where I have such self-belief and feel like I almost have power…I would go and go not sleep talk to fast to much and worry about nothing…this how ever is far and in between the lows the depressive end of the pole things would stay much longer…there is process where if lets say I was depressed for two months then If the mania kicked in after the two day high you bottom out and it is something that can almost be physically felt as you hit the earth. It feels like diving into a pool of broken glass.

My medication has been very affective for about 4 years until like five months ago when you find the perfect combination of meds it takes care of 80% of the illnesses. …And you do the other 20%…this is soooooo easy I can go to school, work, be a single mother deal with lives stressors and rarely notice that I am sick at all. With medications different factors can cause what was working to stop and adjustments where made on me and they not only knocked me down to coping with the entire disease ------It made things worse….sooooo much worse. At this point I saw no remedy for relief.

My life was some thing I had no control over sadness came in first as it always does…feeling like a whisper letting you know what is about to unfold…very quickly I was taken from sad to depressed to hopeless to having this pain this ache that would not abate.then I would get manic then crash…then after a few months of this my nervous system because of the mental stress went in to fight or flight mode which means the normal nervous system shuts down letting the one used only for extreme stress kicks in…. this nervous system is meant only for emergency’s and when over worked it makes. You physically sick…. I went into panic mode…. I would wake up with my heart beating so fast and hard that I could not breathe and My hands would shake were I could not use eating utensils…. I would get frustrated and just not eat. These tremors and pulse racing…restlessness…I then got an ulcer and began to vomit all of the time this lasted a month I got so taken in and made delicate and broken…and the hopelessness joined with madness   I got suicidal this was the first time I was put into the hospital

It is amazing really how God has our bodies set up that mental illnesses that are not be treated.start to make ones body sick telling people to seek help that they would not have with just lets say depression…. but it your back start hurting or you develop an ulcer or get head aches your blood pressure get high you go seek help…. when I studied anatomy in school and I was I think just sitting there as we where going over the skeletal system or maybe the nervous system and …I had never had such respect for our bodies God thought of all the details some are still not understood as to how they work by any one in the medical field------- that God the greatest artist had created a masterpiece that will never be surpassed by anything man could ever dream up, paint, discover, invent or create or build…….that we  are art! I had seen his brush strokes in the views from the cliffs I had hiked to and felt the life of the ocean as she breathes in and out. I have always found the beauty in all he created for us from a blade of grass to a spiders web as the sunlight hits and you can see it glisten I find myself often over whelmed at times with the gift of a day so blue and green or a moon slowly becoming whole…. but oddly looked over myself and how he thought of every singlething …when he created us…I have gotten way off subject….lol

 I have been in the hospital 11 times in the last two years…. I have felt: alone so very misunderstood that it hurt, angry, empty, scared, sick and had this hurt that I had no idea where it was coming from it was not environmental or from a loss of someone or something it was a sadness that came from nothing around me only inside me…it is better to have such a raw burning…. sorrow for a reason than from the core of you when I could look around and see all I was blessed with…so then it adds a guilt and a sense off no control. It has been so long since I felt like me…. and I have fought with everything I have in me. I am very educated on my illness; I know almost anything about medications that are for mood stability or depression, insomnia, I have learnt coping skills…. they are running out of meds to try me on because I have already been on them…I am weary yet, I know my strength and I know that God will make me a path. I know this is happening for a reason…but still part of me wonders…. Why Me???? Why Is this Mine to do???? I have tried to be who I should be since I was a little girl…I have been though so much death and grief and this illness has always burdened me.yet now it feels as if it trying to break me down to nothing and then when I get small enough I will disappear all together. I feel as if I loosing pieces of myself everyday small fragment of my heart just fall away like skin cells and no one mourns their passing. I hurt so bad still I have a great will that can not be lost in all of the madness…and A God that loves and teaches…and allows person to obtain growth and understanding through trials and that this war when It ceases I will be able to help many with what walking through all of this pain taught me. ……That I can look a someone and say I felt that way lets pray and let talk and let me hold you hand through this…then I do believe it will make since and be worth this if I can educate and give hope and understanding to others.  …Because of all the levels of pain and sadness I have felt different shades and depths to each ache ……layers of pain that also change their hues and intenseness throughout a day. That I have felt and I am determined for this war to have a reason…and   to gain knowledge from all of the ways my heart has hurt and make some thing beautiful out of the pain as a poet would with their words from the place and rooms in their mind that bleed from injury.