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concept22 · 5 years

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Today I got a bipolar diagnosis

edit: btw, nobody was injured when i crashed. it was into a light post and nobody was around.

There is confetti everywhere around my room. And I am confused why there is such a mess and why it’s so pretty to me and also why despite seeing beauty in the mess I feel uncomfortable with my space having little shit all over it and I want it to be clean. Today shit hit the fan and the shit was a balloon and when it hit the fan it erupted and confetti flew everywhere. I got a bipolar diagnosis today. After nearly 10 years of clinical diagnoses from major depression, generalized anxiety, ocd tendency, mania, psychosis, to a literal thought disorder called delusional disorder, as well as PTSD, today I heard something that felt like it contains all of me and there is room for me to be me and not feel so confused and like my identity is all over the place depending which disorder is showing it’s face most. I am Cassidy Jean Gardner, and I am bipolar with PTSD. I feel terrified and so confused and Im crying while I write this but the tears feel like a relief a sweet rush of acceptance from and for myself that I have been yearning for for a long, long time. My therapist believes I have mixed manic-depressive bipolar called cyclothymic bipolar, not to be confused with a less “emotionally intense” cyclothymia diagnosis. With my understanding so far, I understand that Bipolar 1 is characterized by more manic tendencies with depressive stints. Bipolar 2 is characterized by more depressive tendencies with hypomanic bursts. The difference between these types of bipolar and the one have been experiencing the spectrum of for the last 2 and a half years years for sure is that BP 1&2 symptoms of mania or depression last several days, weeks, or months. Cyclothymic bipolar experiences of mania and depression can last hours. I have been so confused by my own mind for so long, and like my emotional responses to things were never valid, true, natural, and in my manic times, not even human. I can go from being manic to then coming across something that doesn’t fit my manic ideology and having an extremely depressed, hopeless response, to, sometimes it feels like minutes later, come up with a new “solution” that helps me feel better and relieved of the shame i feel about my manic beliefs and world view that I go right back up there again, and the cycle repeats. Thinking myself in and out of mania it can feel like. The days when I am not crippled or at best, so far, consistently hindered, by the accompanying anxiety of not having much of a sense of emotional normalcy or “neutral” perspective on things are my best days. The days when I am hypomanic, and I decide to scrap everything I’ve been working toward and stop identifying with these things in the name of authenticity libration and creativity, are my favorite right now, and that is hard. because it’s not super helpful to be this way- so passionate and “righteous”- that i throw out the window regard for any sort of routine i have worked hard to establish myself in the name of having “figured out something better”. It’a hard to feel so happy I can’t listen to my rational self because I feel so intoxicated by the feeling of happiness motivation and productivity I so crave. I am not sure what is harder. Being so manic that I become psychotic, completely delusional to the point that I literally believe I am Satan or Lucifer herself and that everything around me is confirming this horrible burden yet somehow “karmic blessing” that I never asked for, the the times when my depression is so bad I sleep for 16 hours of the day, have no motivation to even fathom life becoming better ever, and prefer to dream than live waking, walking life. I have lived in ambivalence for years, and as a coping mechanism I convinced myself I thrived in this arena. I see myself in front of the pendulum that is my mind. Every day it swings and I try to control it. It doesn’t stop swinging. It swings so roughly and rapidly that it flys out of the bars holding it up often. It’s like there is a wind pushing it that is the devil itself tricking me by being “invisible” aka not existing. When it’s on the manic side, I try to grab it and in the process get picked up off the ground and everything around the pendulum gets knocked over in my efforts to hold the pendulum and keep it on the “happy” side. Like the things around me are my life that I’ve built and they will fall as easily as bowling pins. There is no weight to keep them stable when I hit them. The foundation is slippery. On the depressive side, I rush over angry that I wasn’t strong enough to hold things on the manic side and desperately try to push it back toward my “happy” side, but it is so so fucking heavy. and I don’t remember it being that heavy and I cannot believe I ever fathomed loving the pendulum I was clinging to sometimes minutes earlier. Shame guilt self loathing. compared to my visions of grandiosity, of the world revolving around me, of having a sense of self worth and confidence and the courage to claim it and say hey i deserve to feel good about myself. to god how dare I ever think that. I am the most selfish person on the planet the sheer vain and foolishness to believe everything even anything really could possible be about or for me. I like to believe that I am somewhere in the middle. I prefer the hypomanic side, and this is a detriment as well, because i can easily get too high. but the hypomanic can be so... fun. The bits of excessive energy, the slightly inflated sense of self worth, the belief that I can follow my dreams and the ability to use my mind to direct my thoughts toward ways to create strategy to get where I want and build stepping stones. The fear of fallibility. the anxiety that comes with ever feeling good about myself from the ptsd of that abusive relationship and that night especially. I shouldn’t plan, because they will be foiled, if not by me by a man most likely. nowhere is safe, especially not my own mind. thats’s where I perceived love, and oh hasn’t god shown me how powerful that is. being so manic that I confuse the feeling with someone being my soulmate, twin flame, my destiny. telling that person and responding to the rejection emotionally by going psychotic and fully delusional. How afraid I have been to love, of my own love, being truly loved that i don’t feel the need to constantly prove myself, and certainly the idea of ever loving myself for being who I am. In 2016 when I got PTSD and no longer was the “high functioning” “mentally ill” girl I was before, many people treated me like I had fallen from grace and it was my fault. Thank fucking god for the people who have been here for me. So many people took this as an opportunity it felt to slander me. “ha, I knew she wasn’t so wonderful, look how crazy she is. She intentionally crashed her car. who does that?” a person who is so confused with their undiagnosed bipolar and the fact they are going through a manic episode as a response to intense trauma therapy does that. I was told my whole life I was wonderful for being pretty and intelligent, and what a special combination. what a bitch of a “gift”. The two things I was naturally both with and did not earn, my intelligence and my body and my face. What about my humor? What about my ability to be a good friend? What about how hard I work? I was told I should never dare praise myself for these things because I was already “lucky enough” to be praised for the things I never asked for but was given by either genetics or fate- god knows. I have so many feelings. and I’m so grateful to know that I am impulsive. Sure, I’m “spiritually gifted”, but not necessarily everything has to be a blaring call from god or synchronicity that I must act on immediately if I want to see the “right things”, see the world the “right way”, and “be where I am to be”. My perfectionism has nearly killed me. Seeking to be spiritually perfect because I sure has hell was not physically or mentally perfect, I mean, look at those guys and girls more “beautiful”, look at those men and women more “accomplished”. And the brainwashed peers (not their fault) for idolizing me, giving me a sense of power I never fucking sought. Sure. Maybe you can make the argument that my “soul wanted this”, but suffering was never in the deal. and I have suffered. I have been so miserable I didn’t even know how to fathom the energy to put together a plan to kill myself. and thank god for that level of depression, because I didn’t die. because I’m supposed to be here and finally I feel I can make some peace with my singular identity as Me, Cassie. someone who is fun, funny, smart, relatable, bipolar, and so much more. I feel terrified of stigmatization even though I know it’s fucked up that it even exists. At least, I think, with the delusional disorder diagnosis, even though it was similar to a schizophrenic diagnosis just lacking frequency of symptoms, hardly anybody knew what it was. Oh I have a thought disorder and the propensity to think in delusional ways sometimes. NBD tho as u can see I’m perfectly fine :). So many more people know about bipolar. And many have strong opinions. The plus here is that there is more push to end stigmatization and more research into ways to cope manage and accept this diagnosis which I am so thankful for, and more easily accessible community. There was nothing on delusional disorder. It was so uncommon that when my psychiatrist in the rehab told my therapist what my diagnosis was she handed me the DSM to read about it because she didn’t know what it was. Yeah, I went to rehab. Last november (2017) I had a psychotic break, though it was not my first experience with delusion. I became manic as a response to feeling rejected by a guy and it escalated to me hardly sleeping, doing a lot of cocaine and other drugs, and having a full blown psychotic break. I experienced psychosis for 2 and a half months. The first 3 weeks of this stint it was all i could feel or think about. At first it was fun, until it wasn’t. I legitimately thought that there was a secret society the illuminati that had been made to “illuminate” me, that all art had been inspired by me, the energetic muse, lucifer “finally reincarnating” back to earth in the age of aquarius and dawn of immortality, and nobody around me was safe because I was all that was valued by this illuminati and the people who I loved most were in danger because while I loved them most and the illuminati knew this, the illuminati was angry that these people has hurt me, someone who was so impressionable, “born schizophrenic and able to hide it in order to learn about ‘normal society’”, and were responsible for the pain I felt which I handled with negative coping mechanisms like addiction. So it was my job to create worldly and spiritual circumstances to keep them safe from disaster and accident or murder because they all felt so bad about hurting me subconsciously that they had less of a will to live, and this was a dangerous way to think, subconsciously of course. That I was everyone’s higher self in the 4d’s favorite 3d person other than their person, and that they all were working to send me messages from the consciously unaware around me. I was fully out too my mind. I legitimately thought I was lucifer, the most hated person on the planet but god’s favorite angel, ready to ask for entry back into heaven. And the only thing that was me was my fear response to my thoughts and the way I read into everything. no I can’t dare think this this can’t dare be true but somehow everything around me is telling me it is. Literally fuck this. I felt that I needed to be with loved ones constantly to “keep them safe” and I understandably was simultaneously scaring the shit out of my family due to my mental health, and exhausting them. my mom and I both agreed the best thing was for me to go into a treatment center, the rose house. A “dual-diagnosis” rehab that treated mental health and addiction. Cool, well when I got there apparently every single reason I had mental health problems was because I had used substances, not because I had struggled with my mental health since becoming conscious in light of my father passing when i was almost 9 and eventually found drugs as a coping mechanism. I felt shamed for my addiction to marijuana and 100% misunderstood and ostracized. out of the 15 women there all of the girls my age were in primarily for addiction and the only woman who was there for first mental health was an older woman named Kathleen, and she wasn’t an addict. The delusions never stopped I got better at hiding them. I was heavily medicated, afraid, fearing homelessness if i didn’t follow my family wishes to finish the 90 day program, and still pretty insane. After I got my diagnosis I left the treatment the night I got onto “transition” 67 days in and got my phone back, called a friend, and got brought up to fort collins where thank god emma was willing to let me stay with her. Miraculously, the delusions stopped within days. I was no longer so stressed and afraid that I couldn’t think for myself. I was bipolar this entire time. and my mania was “so irrational and unrecognizable” that they didn’t even know to recognize that this was my issue, it was more like I was “almost schizophrenic” without the visual hallucinations or auditory hallucinations. I wasn’t hearing other voices, but the voice in my head wanted me dead just as much as it told me I had a special reason to stay alive. I had a “sane reaction to insane circumstances”, and I temporally lost my mind. and I was petrified and anxiety ridden to the point I couldn’t function for months. I couldn’t make a single decision for weeks without going into full blown panic. I felt like everyone knew something that I didn’t and that they couldn’t tell me what I thought I knew, just give me hints, because otherwise they could be punished and also because they “believed in me”. I felt horribly betrayed while simultaneously fearing abandonment and isolation so much I felt I had developed Stockholm syndrome.

When I experienced full blown psychosis that was so scary, my whole life went to shit. I lost my scholarships. I lost my house in boulder so my family could afford rehab. everything changed while I was in panic and when I “returned” to a “normal” state of mind I couldn’t recognize anything in my own life, even myself. When I was on medication I gained 70 pounds in 2 and a half months. I went into rehab 95 pounds. I was so manic for months, either full blown or hypo, that I would forget to eat. And I was 165 when I left. I hated my life and the months following I was more depressed than I can ever remembered. I relapsed in april. april to september was a mix of drugs and romance that I don’t really care for. When I got sober again, prompted by a really scary night of returning to psychotic thinking which I thankfully learned reality checking skills for, I feel like after 4 almost 5 years of using drugs I was finally ready to stop feeling so out of control, at least with my substance use. Thank god for today, no matter how afraid i am of my future. I am just as hopeful. I have for hate myself for the ways I have treated people in my manic episodes, my family in my depressive episodes, and how I can hardly even remember it. but I do not deserve to feel this hate. I was suffering. I was living in a world I hadn’t found the words to describe. and now I know. That I am beautiful. truly. inside and out. and I have a beautiful mind. I love fiercely. I believe I can make a contribution to help “save the world”. That those who are mentally ill should be hugged tightly when they need it, that schizophrenic people especially, imo, are horribly and unfairly understood and deserve to feel cherished and accepted just as much as anyone else, not to be feared and casted out of society. I believe every single person no matter what deserves to know they are not alone, no matter how lonely they feel, and so much more good. I am not the ugly or the bad. I am a motherfucking survivor. And thank god I didn’t die the day I re-enacted my dad’s car accident. Because I do have a purpose, and it is special. Most importantly, it’s just as special as everyone else’s special purpose. We are all in this together. And I’m excited to find a community of people who have fought similar battles. Who I can laugh about my “a trillion under the sun” delusions with and find humor in the ways my mind sought to preserve a will to live. and how other people have done the same. I am me, and today I became free of my own condemnation. I will struggle, but now I know there is community and resources that I don’t need to scour the earth to find. I have a home, and it is here, proud to be me. There is confetti everywhere around my room. Who knew that balloon I had been so afraid of letting go of was my own attempt to celebrate myself. I may feel late to my own party, but I’m here now. And there is no problem with not wanting my room to always look like a wild rave. I can always make more confetti, anyways :)

To end with some gratitude, thank god for my true friends and my family. Emma has never left my side as my best friend, even in the distance of living in different parts of the state. She is my best fucking friend. My other close best friends as well, who have not been afraid to hug me when I swore to them my entire body was covered in needles. My mom, who has done everything for me to make sure I know I am never truly alone, no matter how much my mind tries to tell me otherwise. For my little brother, for putting up with my craziness and still being willing to love me and laugh with me at the end of the day. Everyone in my life now is so beautiful it’s hard to deny that there may be some beauty in me, too, then, if they all tell me they like when I’m around. I’m grateful to know that my father, who i have idolized though gone now, was whole loved by the people around me. Whose described as “large than life” personality and substance abuse may have been a way to mask bipolar symptoms, was still a loved personality and loved person. This I know. This people have convinced me. and that I am of him just as much as I am of my mother. I’m grateful for the mental health professionals who have not given up on me, even when they required i be medicated in order to be able to be worked with, even when i was misdiagnosed, these people have helped to save my life too. so many times. And I am so grateful for my higher power, for prayer, the only thing that felt safe to think that sometimes I would just repeat the serenity prayer for hours for the sake of at least having a way to direct my anxious energy and not be in panic from my own delusional thoughts. God, who has always shown me that i will never be truly abandoned or given up on, who has helped me understand my higher power as something that is absolutely not punitive. My family and friends have been my lifeboats, and god, the universe, gaia, the god in every person, has shown me how to survive the storm. I am. I desire. I see. and i am free.

This has been such a clusterfuck of emotions coming out that I have been wanting to feel for a long time and as messy as this is i’m grateful as well for the will to sit through this and write about these experiences, no matter the feelings they bring up. Because know I feel free to understand that the feelings will pass, sometimes more quickly than others, and that I can always survive. Even when that’s all I “manage” to do. Today. I stayed sober. I laughed. I put up the christmas tree with my mom and brother. I talked on the phone with my best friend. I told close friends what I learned about myself today. and I got diagnosed with bipolar. and I found a hope and interpretation for my mental narrative that I never felt was right for me because i don’t understand the words for what i was experiencing. I have learned today. And I have grown. and I am smiling as i finish typing this with tears rolling down my face, because I believe I can be happy. Sustainably happy. and sustainably grateful and hopeful when it’s hard to get to feeling the happiness. I believe and I survive. and I become<3 I am 21. I am brilliant. and I am bipolar.

#bipolar #personal #off my chest #very personal #text

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