Wow. Sometimes I'm very lucky and my bipolar doesn't always affect me much. But no such luck lately. I'm worried that I might have to retake my modern lit course because I was so late with many of my assignments. I've been mentally messed up more or less with a mixed mood episode since last September. I'm currently on the line of passing and not passing the class (granted there are a few ungraded assignments, including my final so it's still possible that I'm overreacting). I'm usually a good student too so it's a point of pride for me. I went from the honor roll to this all due to me fighting with an illness... :/ (It is my fault for not managing things better so I'm not looking for pity here- just talking).
I cannot imagine how horrible this disorder is for people who didn't have the option of medication (I am medicated, believe it or not). I think about that about that a lot since I study history and look into many writer's and artist's biographies in my spare time. I feel very bad for them since they basically had to live with this disorder without the fixes I have simply because I was born late enough for treatments to exist.
Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath both haunt me. Other people too. Yes, Lord Byron was extremely shocking but consider- we don't actually know what he would have been like if he could have been treated. He wouldn't have died at 36, I'm almost certain of that. I am highly aware of what this disorder has done to people before me. It doesn't make it better. But I keep looking back any way, to see that many of them did incredible things, in spite of it all.
I just keep thinking that if they could do so much without any treatment- that I should be able to function with treatment??? I know: don't compare yourself to other people but I'm desperate to know that I can be successful even with this illness. That it's not going to force me to leave school (the one thing I have been historically good at) and waste my life toiling away for nothing.
So if it seems as if I have been hitting my head against something lately, you aren't wrong. The fall is not generally my friend, pretty as the leaves are. I have not been having a good time of it but we must go on any way because what other option is there? None, I tell you.
22 notes
·
View notes