my story

hello! so, let's get right into it, shall we? like i said, i'm 26 (27 in march, yay!) and i was diagnosed a couple weeks after i turned 20. it was my second year of college and i had gone through an insane amount of episodes since i'd first moved. i was an hour and a half from home living in the dorms. it was awful. my roommate was homophobic as fuck and refused to even talk to me, my other suitemates were alright. i got along with them and became best friends with one of them (there were 6 of us total in 3 rooms with 2 bathrooms), but the other four--not counting myself and the one who became my bestie--were complete SLOBS. like absolutely disgusting, they didn't clean shit and i hated it. anyways, i went through a bad breakup with my girlfriend at the time a couple months into my first semester and got depressed for the rest of the semester. then i became a dance major my second semester. i've done ballet all my life up until a couple years ago, along with modern, jazz, and tap, so being a dance major was so much fun. i LOVED it. but then my first major manic episode struck. i was sitting outside of class waiting for ballet to start and i was listening to the soundtrack for the phantom of the opera on my ipod. sudden inspiration hit me and i decided i HAD to be on broadway asap. so i ditched ballet and went downstairs and switched my major to musical theatre right then and there. i spent my second year of college as a musical theatre major, frantically trying to make it to broadway and literally skipping across campus to and from class. i was always energized and ecstatic, i barely slept, i barely ate, i danced several hours a day and then worked out some more when i got home. i was in 7 or 8 classes that semester; four of them were dance classes, along with history of theatre, voice and movement, acting, english, and this class where you had to work on multiple theatre or dance productions as ushers or prop managers or whatever for credits. i literally went to class from 8 in the morning until around 11pm, and i was not tired a single day. i didn't understand why my friends felt the need to sleep or rest. i took more dance classes on the weekends and spent my spare time writing songs and playing guitar, looking up auditions and making vision boards that predicted my many tony awards i would get within the next 2 years. my entire career would start tomorrow. and then one day, months later, i crashed. i woke up crying. i couldn't eat or sleep for an entirely different reason: i was depressed. i didn't wanna live. i would go to classes and then slump on the floor outside against a wall and sob instead of going inside. i stopped wearing makeup, i stopped combing my hair, i didn't care what i looked like. i didn't talk to my friends very much. i stopped even going on campus after a while. and i stopped dancing, all my songs i wrote now were pessimistic and daunting instead of upbeat and cheerful. i only connected with minor chords when i played guitar (musicians will get what that means) and i eventually stopped leaving my bed. i went out to eat with my two best friends for my 20th birthday and i felt okay for a couple hours, and then i came home and broke down sobbing. they asked me so many times what was wrong and i couldn't answer--not only because i was sobbing too hard to form words, but also because i didn't know. i didn't know what was wrong with me. why was i sad? why didn't i want to live? i had been so happy before, but now i couldn't even remember what happiness felt like. i was confused. i was lost. i had no one to talk to and no way to explain why my constant joy had left me. the next week i went home for spring break and my mom was gone one night, i don't remember where she went, but i spent an hour writing a new song on guitar. i played and sang for a while. i eventually stopped crying, because somehow i had gone numb. i called my best friends and left voicemails saying how much i loved them; it was the last time they were going to hear from me. and then i put my guitar away and got up and stared in the mirror. and in that moment i knew it was time. i had to go. i had to kill myself, that was the only way. i didn't have a plan yet--i just knew it was the only way to fix this. and then luckily, thank god, my mom happened to come home right before i left. she asked what was wrong and i said nothing. i always said nothing. but she saw the mascara and eyeliner running down my face, and the moment she pointed that out i lost it. i broke down crying and i told her everything: i couldn't eat, i couldn't sleep, i couldn't feel anything but the overwhelming fact that i was still alive and i didn't know why. and then came the terrifying thought of what if i killed myself but my consciousness still existed somewhere, someway, and i was always stuck with myself? there was no way to escape. i LOST it. my chest hurt from being torn apart, all my walls were caving in, i felt so hot, my heart ached, my body shook, i couldn't stop falling apart. and for some reason she still didn't believe me. i showed her my journal that was full of declarations of becoming a rockstar or going on broadway, followed by inquiries of why my mind felt so weird sometimes, followed by thoughts of wanting to die, back to being shamelessly conceited about my abilities in life and my inevitable success and fame, back to depression and not understanding what was wrong with me. it was a cycle and i hadn't even realized until that moment. finally, she believed me. she started to cry and wouldn't let me out of her sight for the remainder of the night or the entirety of the next day. she took me to see a psychiatrist and after several questionnaires and hours of talking and probing the inner workings of my mind, i was diagnosed with bipolar type 1. i was given medication and sent home. i still felt numb. i had cried myself out of tears and i couldn't feel a damn thing. i didn't know what to think. my mind was mush. from that day i've understood what goes on in my head more. now i know there's a reason for these episodes and the overwhelming mood swings, a science behind my hallucinations and an explanation for the voices i hear. but i still hate it. i feel like i'll never be normal. but i do know that i'm not alone. i'm not broken. i'm not unlovable. i'm not the typical person, persay. i don't have a perfect brain. but really, who does? and do i worry about ever finding a woman who will love me unconditionally despite my "crazy" and mental condition and everything that comes with it? because it's so much more than the stereotype would have you think. we don't go straight from happy to mad to sad--there are levels to this. there are symptoms you can't see. there's a constant inner struggle to feel okay and act okay when we're not okay just so we can live in this world without being controlled by our mental illness. do i worry about this stuff? hell yeah. but will i work through it? of course. and i wanna help others, too. so yeah. that's the story of my diagnosis. i'll talk more about other aspects of my life next time. friendships, relationships, family, jobs, school. it truly affects every single aspect of my life. but i'll get into that next time! this is long enough. see you all soon!

#bipolar #bipolardisorder #bipolartype1 #bipolar1 #mentalhealth #health #mentalillness #loveyourself #medication #therapy #bipolardepression #depression #bipolarmanie #mania #manic #depressed #hypomania #manicepisode #hypomanic