When you are bipolar, some mornings are harder than others to find a reason to get out of bed, especially when you are older and the children are long since grown and on their own.
Each day is a struggle to find a reason to motivate yourself to find a purpose, a solid reason for you to exist and continue to plod through the daily ritual of medications that may or may not keep you from cycling through a deep depression all the while costing $1300 a month and that is with insurance.
You have two choices, wallow or try hard to see the humor where ever you can and laugh as much as possible at life and at yourself or you won't make it trough the day.
Mental illness is not a joke, it is devastating, life threatening, and carries a horrible stigma that those of us with even the most mild forms of it are afraid to speak up because we don't want to be lumped in with the true "crazies" IE: the street people you see talking to themselves or people that only they can see.
The schizophrenics, paranoid personalities, borderline personalities, the list can go on and on.
The more severe types of manias make it difficult for anyone with any emotional or mental health issues to want to admit it to your own family let alone to the public (work, friends) due to the fear of how this will be perceived.
Will you be applauded for your honesty or will they condemn you as a crazy person? Will you be given the benefit of the doubt and just let it go that it is a health issue the same as if you had asthma or diabetes? Or will you be expected to give a detailed explanation of exactly how bad off you are? Are you serial killer material or are you just strip down naked and howl at the moon crazy? I'm one of the luckier ones, I'm what is know as: Cyclothymic Personality .
People with cyclothymic personality alternate between high-spirited buoyancy and gloomy pessimism.
Each mood lasts weeks or longer.
Mood changes occur regularly and without any identifiable external cause.
Many gifted and creative people have this personality type as it can go undetected in it's mildest forms and just be seen as a personality "quirk.
"My cycles tend to run approximately every twelve weeks with the depressive cycle lasting three to six weeks on average.
I am also lucky that I have always been able to work during my cycles even though a few have been difficult.
I am very high functioning and was not diagnosed until I was in my forties and finally suffered a major depressive cycle.
My mother was, what was referred to in the day as "manic-depressive with schizophrenic tendencies" and she was in bad shape with multiple nervous breakdowns, hospitalizations, various attacks on people (including me) had to have electric shock therapy numerous times and was heavily drugged.
It is scary to know that unfortunately mental illness is hereditary.
I am just thankful that I did not wind up at the degree that my mother was.
My biggest fear is that my children will have inherited our family curse.
Every year I watch and pray that they are fine and that I remain the only one with this stigma, this thing that no one can see but that I fight with every day, that I have to remind myself that it isn't my fault...
it is a medial condition even if no one wants to admit to having it.