Bipolar Bytes...What this is.

Remember your life before?

Before you were hit with the big bipolar diagnosis?  The realization you have not just a mental disorder but what is considered also, a serious mental illness?  I bet you remember life after.

Well, unless you were jacked up on a bunch of meds trying to find the ones worthy of keeping to help you get through this (more on the getting through in a minute.. cause you can’t, but bear with me a moment) If so the immediate time following the big B news may have been a little bit of a blur.  I get it.

So the first couple weeks may be hazy and if you are in the first couple weeks at this moment, stick with me kid, it gets better.  I promise.

Those of you who are beyond the hazy or were blessed with instant clarity to begin with, there was some point I am willing to bet you went through the feeling your life changed, everything changed, you changed. Why can’t you go back to life before?

You know what the only difference was before?  You didn’t know.  You were doing this crazy shit on your own. You didn;t have help.

That’s it Lizzie?  Yup.

Take a minute and think back to before.  In my case, 27 years of before.  Sure I can sit here and say, well the stuff I’ve read, the statistics, the meds, the issues, and yes, the fear suck. After.  Whatever got you to this point, was the same before.  Get it?

After, I can look back on those 27 years and suddenly, instead of being confused and feeling like the biggest screw up in the world you know what?  It all fell into place and my life makes sense.

Well as much as it can for after.  You get what I am saying?

You are no different because of a stupid diagnosis than you were before.  Except you have help.  You have tools. You have resources which, if you didn’t know, how could you think to look?

You could have hope.

That’s a choice you will eventually have to come to on your own. Hate your life and yourself for something you did not in any way cause, or deserve.

Or find hope.

When I first was diagnosed I was happy.  Then I learned the truth about what it meant.  Then I cried and was depressed and hid it from anybody but my family. I was scared by what I read and miserable. I was 38.

I hated that it happened. I hated that.

Bipolar is not curable but apparently it is manageable.  So now getting through, you never will to the other side of it, but you can decide how to get through the living with it.

Being scared is understandable, I was.

You may want your life back. Many of us do. Many of us miss the highs, although not the lows of our illness.

But the only real difference between before and after, is knowledge. Knowledge is power.

You still are who you were.  Just not so alone.