Note: Possible Trigger Warning
Maybe she’s born with it, or maybe it’s manic depression. (Hint, she was born with it and it’s manic depression, and get this… it’s hereditary.)
Manic depression is a crippling mental illness that is more commonly known as bipolar disorder.
Living with manic depression is a living hell, day in and day out. Either I’m super high energy, running around with seemingly superhuman energy and strength, but with no money because I uncontrollably and compulsively spend it all buying things I don’t nor will ever need. Or, I’m depressed, can’t get out of bed, the very thought of moving makes me tired, and I still have no money because I spent it in the mania stage (which caused me to be consumed with guilt over my inability to control myself). This is usually coupled with waves of stress coming from trying to figure out how I am going to pay my bills, and where in the world I am going to put a giant antique globe in my already cluttered room. I never know when I go to sleep at night what I will wake up feeling like and that, aside from all the other symptoms I experience over the course of the day, is the scariest thing.
I’m not crazy though. I’m mentally ill, and sometimes I can’t control my emotions, but I am not crazy. In today’s society we tend to call things we can’t understand or things that make us uncomfortable as “crazy”. I think the hardest thing to deal with when I got my diagnosis was wondering what my cousins, people I considered my closest and best friends would say. They had a nasty track record of poking fun at people they knew who were mentally ill. Calling them things like “crazy”, “lunatic”, and “mental”. I was terrified that when they found out I was bipolar, they wouldn’t look at me the same and I’d be one of the crazy people they whispered and giggled about behind their backs. For the first few weeks I couldn’t even say the word bipolar because it made me feel dirty, like if I said it, everyone would know and I’d be an outcast. I was paranoid that everywhere I went people could see that I was different or flawed in an extreme way that made me lesser than them.
I was eventually prescribed two different medicines for my illness that did nothing but make me feel like a hollow shell of a person, give me headaches, and cause me to be drowsy. Then, whenever I forgot to take them for a day or two, my mood swings would get profoundly worse, and my depression would be so bad that I could physically feel it weighing down my limbs. I try to find the good in my illness though, like how when I’m depressed the things I do creatively are at their best, and are so raw that they can better touch the heart of others that interact with it. So yeah, it’s incredibly hard living with this disorder, and yes life always feels like it’s too hard and I’m tempted to throw myself off a bridge or run my car off the road, but I haven’t yet. And if you’re reading this that means you haven’t either, and do you know what that means? We’ve made it this far, so there’s hope. We can make it again and again until maybe, one day (hopefully) some genius scientist comes up with a cure and we can be better forever. But for right now, we can fight this day in and day out battle, surviving each day, waking up in the morning knowing that we can win.
IMPORTANT: (This article may have included some trigger warnings that may have put you in a bad situation, and if so I deeply apologize.)
I know you have heard it a thousand times before, but if you are struggling with any mental health issues at all, please go get help, it may not be enough to just talk to a friend because they may not understand, so please try your hardest to get to a mental health professional, or at the very least, a school counselor. (Most colleges have onsite counseling services, if you attend Winthrop University the information for our counseling services are right here.) You as an individual are majorly important, and you deserve to get help no matter your situation.
Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255