I’ve struggled with thoughts of suicide since I was thirteen or fourteen, five or six years before finding out I was bipolar. I distinctly remember being home alone in middle school and feeling reckless and despondent—a terrible combination. I know I’m in trouble when I feel those things simultaneously. Our game room has a bannister …
Bipolar birthday
This week marks the seventh anniversary of my bipolar diagnosis. I consider August 21st my bipolar birthday because it is the first night I went without sleep, which caused the storm that followed. (You can find a more detailed account of that story here.) Some people find it odd that I celebrate my bipolar birthday, …
The hills are alive
If you are cool, you already know what this post is going to be about. I read this fascinating book a few years ago by Oliver Sacks called Musicophilia. It’s a sizable book full of odd-ball stories revolving around people’s love for music. -philia means “love for” in Latin. I read it well after I …
Hypomania is where it is at!
For a person with bipolar disorder, hypomania is the place to be! Hypomania is a wonderful area on the mood spectrum. As one of my favorite authors says, it’s three-quarters manic. With hypomania, a person has all the good things about mania, sans the dangerous disregard for consequences. For me, I am my best self …
My take on exercise (Part II)
On Fridays I will choose a topic on which to give my take. Take being a nice word for opinion. I will simply share my thoughts on whatever random topic comes to mind. I look forward to seeing where this section leads us. Last week I wrote about how exercise likely kept me from having …
Patients and therapists and hospitals…Oh my!
As much as I talked at home with my parents, I didn’t talk nearly as much at the out-patient facility. Part of that was my shyness, but I also think I knew I’d give myself away as cuckoo if I talked too much. The other patients talked too much anyways. I picked up on this …
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My take on exercise (Part I)
I believe I wasn’t diagnosed as bipolar until I was 19 due to my daily, rigorous exercise routines in middle school and high school. I played sports year around, and I never gave myself off days; often doing extra running after games. Even in the summers I would exercise daily. I was addicted to exercise, …
High school mania
After I was diagnosed and came to accept my diagnosis, a certain day in high school suddenly made much more sense to me. It was a Friday morning of my senior year. It was the beginning of volleyball season, and we had a tournament. We all had to wake up at an un-Godly hour because …
Dear Medicine, thanks for stabilizing me…
When I was first diagnosed, my doctors did not have to go through the entire pharmacy to find what medication worked for me. I am taking the same medicine I took when I was diagnosed in 2011. Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder. It’s characterized by extreme moods. People with bipolar disorder have mania up …
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I am not bipolar, or am I?
To save time and energy, when I tell people I have bipolar disorder, I actually phrase it, “I am bipolar.” I’m all about mincing words, so describing it as “I am bipolar” cuts out an entire word. Winning! Some people have tried to convince me that saying I am bipolar is demeaning towards myself. They …
Between Two Poles 