I have been keeping my moods (and tears) to myself since I was 11 and first started to show symptoms. Funny..having just been diagnosed as BP 1 at the age of 31, I think that some people in my family don't realise it's such a big deal, or don't really believe it, because I have spent do much energy over the last 20 years keeping all the agony and ups and downs well hidden. My facade was build stronger than the Berlin wall but even that monsterous construction built to divide had to come down eventually.

I don't do drugs or drink; have been married for 11 years, am still working but it is just so hard. I feel like I can't keep up the effort trying to keep it together anymore. I guess if I had to sum up my life in one word to date it would be "suffering". Don't get me wrong...I am quite happy some of the time. I am lucky to be married to a great guy who has been with me all the way. I have at times achieved greatness academically, in my career and in my creative pursuits. But sustaining anything has always alluded me. Nothing lasts because I cannot go the distance. things start to slip and spirial out of control. I start to worry about what I am doing, the self doubts creep in and take over, soon I am not answering the phone, then not leaving the hours, or the bed or sofa. I am worthless. I am nothing. I am pain absolute. I feel no pain just numbness that goes on forever.

 One day suddenly the sun will shine again, the birds will chirp and I will begin to see them again.  

Something awakens in me. I feel alive. I feel free. I feel happy. I feel such joy in life that my heart could burst with the enormity of it all. I push myself to make the most of every experience. I achieve again. I am great. I take on more and more and more because it is my destiny. I hear music and laugh at the strangest things. I cannot stop. I cannot sleep. It coarse through my veins like poison. Every muscle is tense and ready for action. My mind is a wide screen tv constantly playing and replaying the interactions of yesterday, today, and tommorrow. I talk too fast that no one can understand. I spend too much money. I spend out of control and love the power it gives me. I write elbourate business plans guaranteed to make my fortune. I stay up all night. I organise the house til 2am that has fallen into disorder during depressions past. Life is grand for me but no so grand for those around me. I start to stumble and fall. I cannot keep up with what I have started. Nothing gets finished. Projects and inspirations lie abandoned. I am confused. I am exhausted. I cannot get up. I crash again and wait for the day the sun started shining again.

I am just about to start medication for the first time so am not looking forward to the process of that. I am looking forward to hopefully the point in the future whether I have found something that works for me and doesn't take to much of me away with the rollarcoaster ride. Not that I really know who I am anymore. What is me? What is my illness? What is balance and what is normal? Too much time has been lost and can never be claimed back again. Time to start again. Time for a new beginning.

I'm not quite ready to go into the depth of my health challenges but I can say this I Am Not Broken.

I am by no means a blogger but I felt that this community is useful and neededin my life and a way to contradict aloneness that I have felt from time to time. I started my diary with a poem that I wrote a few weeks after my mother had told me about being suffocated as an infant and her reasons of why.

I grew up understanding that my mother was not well the depth of that was not understood until she told me of the suffocation on to me, when I got my mind and soul around that piece of information and working on my feeling of why I felt insignificance. A few weeks ago just when I thought my spirit couldn't be shook anymore then it had already. She called me again in a drunken stupor and most likely a blackout and informs me that she would shake me to get me too stop crying due to the withdrawals from amphetamines .

Yes I am angry! but not because of having to face racism in school and within the family's of my parents, or for realizing I like girls the way boys did, nor being raised as a JW, and having a learning challenge that I got held back in kindergarten then pasted on from grade to grade. What I am angry about is that I have been turning to my mother for support about my health challenges all these years while she was idle at doing the right thing. That is my proof of insignificance. More importantly she is dying due to alcoholism and prescription drugs, this leaves me with no recourse of reaction meaning that feels like. But i know this is not hopeless nor powerless. Yes I am grateful for the fortune of what health I do have but it dose not make the justifiable anger any less.

What an sad affair when the day came little more then two years when I had the revelation of awareness to my feeling of insignificance I had placed the blame at my fathers feet. He is an old man that has a blindness of what harm the mother of his children have endured. But he and I have been doing the best we can to regain a relationship thats been in waiting. I now know that when a child spirit is hurt so deeply to the point that her belief of her goodness and significance of self can cause questions of her humanity due to a parents drug/alcohol and mental illness.

What do I want out of all of this? Some how bring awareness to the public on the long terms effect that it has on survivors and the challenges that we live with.To help others who have survived by reminding them their not alone. How to live life with the relentless physical pain. And reclaim my belief to all goodness and significance as I AM.

With the hard work that I've have invested over 25 years on my mental and emotional life and the wisdom that has come that plus from 45 year on this planet along with the grace of the Great Spirit (GOD) maybe it wont have too take another 25 years.

 

Its been rough these past three years. Well to sum it up I got a job, my mother got sick, mother goes in for two surgeries, I'm re-diagnosed with a mental illness, my mother passes away, then we moveto Alabama. Things are different but not much other then I'm in a different state.

 Currently though I am doing pretty well with not being able to work. Since we moved here I have had less anxiety attacks but the attacks are still sever. I have sied in over two weeks which was my slip up. I'm trying to beat this but there is only so much I can do except for therapy and meds.

 My family is well complicated severly. I can't even explain it but if you ever listened to a song called "I'm my own grandpa" it fits my family. LOL! What can I say its fucked up.