Waking Up With Bipolar Disorder

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Did I tell you about the time I got lost at sea?

What about the time I left myself at the hospital?

What about the time I got lost in space?

Once I woke up, newly single, hardly breathing and with a hope to see Austin, Texas or find god, maybe even myself along the way and maybe even get to OKC to see my mother and brothers.

If I was being honest I was going there to kill myself. If I would’ve succeeded, this story would end today but either I made it or hell looks just like a hospital still. It even smells the same.

This time I actually left the hospital with the doctor’s permission. And I didn’t crash the car again, I know how that ends. I’ve been playing this game for over a decade now. I have yet to win. Whatever that means.

I’m in over my head in the hospital again. This year I missed my birthday, christmas, new years– all of it. Fuck yeah… time to celebrate my social death, yeah that one again.

Where do I go from here?

What choices did I leave myself with that aren’t dying…

So,

To Paris?

To hell?

To the supermarket?

Home to dads?

I don’t feel bad for losing myself for the holidays,

I feel bad for my son not having me. How could I get so very lost?

I have Bipolar Disorder.

That’s how.

Now how do I tell people that?

Stop trivializing it, if you haven’t lived it or with it don’t call anyone Bipolar.

At what point in what conversation do I mention that I have been struggling with my mental health since I was 11. I honestly think that it’s been a lot longer than that but that’s a different story.

I must be real still, or a ghost, or a fallen angel. You can pick, it changes sometimes daily when I am not properly treated.

Yes I have triggers, no they are none of your business.Your business is to stop treating every person with a mental illness differently than anyone else.

I don’t want or need your kid gloves, safe words or help with activities of daily living. I need the world to educate themselves on serious mental illness and the affects it has on the people who battle with it every day.