Today is World Bipolar Day!
Let me tell you my story.
When I was 13, I had just had the best year of my life. I was killing it in school, the boy I liked liked me back, I had so many friends come to my birthday party (a decided win as many of my elementary school birthday parties were skipped by my friends).
But a huge thing happened just a year or so prior. My dad finally abandoned us. No more uncomfortable visits. Not a word exchanged.
I felt fucking free. I was thriving without him. Without that abuse. Or so I thought.
I really retain the end of 7th grade with the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I knew Hogwarts was fake but deep down I thought/hoped/dreamed I could be a Slayer. Buffy kept me strong for so long but I was ready for breaking.
Eighth grade was a hell scape. I still did well in school but that boy I liked turned against me (or rather I turned him against me but that’s another post). I found I couldn’t push through it all as well.
I joined a bunch of extracurricular activities including journalism. That’s where I went head to head with my middle school bully. He hated me and I was inadvertently insulting him in direct and indirect ways but the degree to which he set his sights on me was bizarrely cruel.
He openly attacked me on Xanga. Remember Xanga? It was an online journal where you could add a music overlay and bare your soul. Only it wasn’t private. Anyone could see it. So I could see this angry white boy verbally attack me for anything from musical choices (for which he called me the R slur and on another occasion told the world I was playing Beyoncé’s “Me, Myself, and I” to get attention), to the way I sat, to the friends I had. I had no recourse. I watched this asshole replace my position as photo editor on the school paper, as voted by my peers, and I couldn’t say a thing. I could only internalize this hate until it consumed me.
I remember I was in the passenger seat of my mom’s car when I asked her if I could go to therapy. I had finally decided to choose me instead of my career because even then I knew I could kiss my dream of being president goodbye. The stigma around mental illness is still so real.
The first month was fine but soon I started remembering the trauma of my childhood and I couldn’t break out of my thoughts. I would go week at a time not sleeping, my thoughts, my memories going a mile a minute and plaguing me. I started missing school. Weeks, maybe a month and a half. And a month before graduation. My teachers all gave me A’s. I had the reputation and the privilege being white/white passing while going through a huge mental health crisis.
When I came back to school, I had started seeing a psychiatrist in addition to the therapist I visited twice a week. By the morning of my middle school graduation, I had tried my first dose of lithium and I haven’t looked back.
I am so happy and proud I found help and that treatment started working so quickly for me. I’m truly a lucky one.
Bipolar disorder is not a joke. We are not a joke. We are a group of people struggling like you are to get by in this difficult world. See us as you would like to be seen. Human, imperfections and all.
Happy World Bipolar Day! It’s Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday because he was undiagnosed bipolar. We’re in good company with him and Carrie Fisher. Maybe someday someone will think the same of me. Not a princess, but always trying.
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