Reasons Why

In 2010, when I began this blog, I never thought a soul would find it or read it. I never thought it would make a difference at all. I had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was simply seeking a way to understand and make sense of it all – the convoluted, sometimes fragile, tempestuous, existence I had thus lived.

I was extremely lost, and had been most of my life. I struggled with the ideas of “Who am I?” and “Am I normal?” ever since I was a young child. At times I believed I was. But at times I believed I was so far from normal that I was off the map.

Over the years I’ve been diagnosed with a lot of things – bipolar, depression, generalized anxiety (and I’m sure a few others that I don’t know about). Science is constantly changing and revising itself based on new information. I don’t believe the categories of mental illness are true separations, which would explain why the overlap between many of them is very common. Bipolar, BPD, anxiety, depression…whatever it gets called, it’s safe to say that the variances of my mood and intensity of experience are beyond what many people ever know. I suppose that is why there is such curiosity about mental illnesses – people who don’t have them WANT to know what they’re like, and the people living with them WANT to be understood.

My life has had a lot more shades than most. I’ve been soaring through the heavens in the boundless universe, completely euphoric and I’ve been in the blackest, deepest chasms, where no light penetrates, engulfed in a seemingly ceaseless void. I’ve had fantastic enlightened insights and darkened periods filled with self-harm, suicidal thoughts and one failed suicide attempt. I’ve held successful, well paying jobs and I’ve had anxiety and fear and stress so overwhelming that I could not leave my house for weeks. I’ve hated people and things so intensely that it literally made me sick to my stomach, and I’ve loved people and things so intensely that it made my heart feel as if it would explode. There are times when I am utterly satisfied in life and times when I wish that I had never been born at all. I’ve experienced life at every variance from negative infinity to positive infinity, and all the boring and mundane tick marks in between. It’s an extreme existence, to be sure.

Would I change it? It depends on what day you ask me. Some days it would be an unequivocal YES, when I cannot claw my way out of the abyss and wish for nothing more than the mercy of release from my own body and mind. Other days it would be a resounding NO, when I feel such love, joy and pleasure that I can actually sense God within me.

Am I destined to burn out, living this way, subject to the whims of my erratic brain? Or will my star shine bright long after I’m gone?

Only time will tell.