There I was , going through life wondering why I experienced such intense ups and downs.
I thought I was a nutcase and I lived each and still do feeling "not good enough" , "never good enough". I began hating myself , destroying any sense of self esteem.
I couldnt understand myself and my family couldnt and wouldnt either , so I made my own way from the age of 19. I lived alone , supported myself and began to feel how it felt living alone with these feelings , not wanting people to get to know the real me , because i was ashamed of the "me".
Years later , I was tested and diagnosed as being bipolar , the pieces of the puzzle now fall into place , it makes sense , its not an excuse for my behaviour but now I a least know why when and how .
Its hard , each day is a struggle to get through it without breaking down in some way or another , I wish I could make it go away in the blink of an eye and jts be NORMAL.
Hey Nad....Welcome to the nuthouse,
What you wrote could have been written by so many of us here having the illness starting in our late teens and for me being captured in my late twenties when it cycled to high. For those in between years of depression one minute and then cycling high the next was taking its toll.
No one could understand why I just didn't snap out of it. People tending to think I was just a bit moody and nothing more. I hid it well taking advantage of the higher times to get ahead, because I knew the lows would basically have a disabling effect on me of just trying with so much effort just to survive just one more second sometimes.
I found as I got older, the swings increased in frequency in that the lows got lower of having suicidal thoughts to actually trying to follow through with them. Maybe it was the fact that as I got older, my mind and body were taking it's toll from the earlier years.
When I finally got the diagnoses, I had mixed feelings of a relief of why I was having those thoughts and feelings to trying to except that I was one of those crazy people that had a mental illness. For me acceptance of having the illness was one of the hardest things to overcome.
You sound like you have a good grasp on things and pretty much through the acceptance stage. It did take me a number of years and combing through psychiatrists and umpteen medications with their side effects until I finally found the right one that actually treated the symptoms and not the generic treatment for bipolarism.
I wish you well on getting the right concoction and bringing you back to somewhere in the middle...maybe even normal. Personally looking back and even today, I guess I wouldn't want to be aka normal because I am who I am today because of being bipolar. Their are also a lot of good traits that seem to follow us that have the illness. Intelligence, witty and of course good looking