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After my last blog, looks like crashing into depression is taking longer and approaching closer than I thought. I’m suspended in the manic air space. I did not expect my day to turn out like it did, but I went from waking up depressed-like, being quiet half the morning to having a blast and being all euphoric most of the afternoon to angered, raged and irritated, then came the racy brain and the sudden jolt of energy I thought had finished and the time now is 7:50pm. I seriously have no idea which direction I’m going, and I HATE change. I guess every bipolar despises change because look where I am, in my room, downing a whole lot of Seroquel to put myself to rest.

Let me tell you this now, a dysfunctional sort of family is a trigger. MY trigger. It didnt even take 10 mins for the dysphoric part to kick into action. I’ve been up and down and up and down all day today, rapid cycling is not for me. NOT. I’m FUMING. I mean bloody hell, my mum is pissing me off, my dad pisses me off on a daily basis, my siblings well… I dont even wanna go there. They contribute like 75% towards my mania and 85% towards my depression. They are the reason I close myself away and cut. They get inside my head too much that I feel like exploding. They dont even treat me as family.


 
You could compile an entire book of quotes comparing love to complete madness. But of all the psychological issues in the DSM-IV, only one really resembles the experience of love. “An illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure,” writes Dr. Kay Jamison in one of the most famous memoirs of bipolar illness, An Unquiet Mind . It’s easy to confuse love with mania, Jamison says. The trouble is that love is fleeting. There’s no cure for bipolar.

The popular caricature of the disease — people swinging rapidly between happiness and sadness — isn’t the whole story. Most of us may have been unhappy enough at one time or another to recognize a fit of depression, but the other half of the disease (the mania that leads to everything from religious fervor to shopaholism to insatiable libido) is much harder to fathom. For instance, hypomania, a mild form of mania characterized by enviable productivity, can lead to what is called a “mixed episode,” in which the bipolar individual is both miserable and energetic enough to do something about it.

 
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Apart from being bipolar 1, I’m also psychotic. Yay. Story of my life, but I’m going to share with you some stories of my life with the courtesy of my diary. I had highlighted things in pink, I guess that was code for P= Pink, P=Psychosis LOL. Anyway, here are some random brief’s written in random parts of my diary in the early days:

  • “The laws of the universe no longer apply” I thought I could control time and movement with my mind. Not like there wasn’t a bucket load going on in my brain at the time. Niavity at it’s peak. Sadly, it wasn’t true. I genuinely  thought I was invincible (which still kinda happens when hypomania decides to knock on my front lobe door) Kind of like those dreams where you think you’re invisible but are baffled when people can actually see you.
  • “On my knees in the night, saying prayers in the streetlight” I felt like I was standing on a street corner watching someone else trying to ruin my life. That someone else being me. Yes, I’ve literally seen myself in the third person not believing that I was living that life. Madness. That was enjoyable. I didn’t know whether I was standing  over there watching myself, or I was standing over here watching myself over there. This was when psychosis got the better of me from a mixed episode, and I was tired. I couldn’t live to watch myself in 2 seperate worlds. It was probably the world trying to tell me that I wasn’t well, but even so, I had refused to believe in that. Imagination and reality are closely knit in a bipolar person’s life. Just make sure you dont cross it.
  • A lot of the time, the thoughts and voices were like another layer of interaction with people and the world. It’s as if there were two co-existing realities. It was very upsetting when you knew you couldnt trust your mind enough to determine where you stood in life.


My Short Lived Experiences With Voices

Ah, the voices. Classical part of psychosis. You cant be psychotic without voices really, they are the main feature. The main feature, featured a lot last year. I used to hear them regularly. About 1-2 days a week, but several times within the day. They were unrecognisable, They would yell, whisper, say my name in different stresses. “Look!” “Watch Out!” “Hey You!” “Your about to die” “Dont try and get rid of me, I’ll just make your life a living hell”   This brought on paranoia. I told my sister that night that I will kill her while I was sleeping. She kept her distance for a bit. Especially out of the kitchen.

As I moved on in life the voices became more persistent the more I ignored them. They were torturous, constantly in my mind and the voice became several voices. It shunned me into silence. I went into a catatonic state. I couldnt take the pressure anymore.

Yeah, this craved Early Intervention when I told the mental health team. These experiences are what got me on medication in the first place. How am I now? I still have voices in general, they come more when Im depressed and a fair amount when Im on an all time high, telling me to buy those shoes because you need them.

Curse those sodded voices.


 
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The hypomanic mind (whether it be hypo or the all time high) isn’t like one bee buzzing around, it’s like a nest of bees buzzing all at once in a tiny, tinny, room with crap acoustics.. Hypomania is like having small bouncy balls bouncing around inside my head faster and harder and faster and harder. Pressure pushing down on me. (Little bit of Queen never goes a miss) Hitting each other, making divots on the inside of my skull, becoming interior decorators. Fragmented, distracted thoughts. Sentence fragments. Problem grammar.  No capital letters. No punctuation.


 
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I have gone mad. I tell this to myself and one friend. It aint no secret. I figure there’s no point in trying to cover it up; it’ll come out eventually. But I’m trying to stretch out “Eventually” because it will come out to my family and friends in ways you may never expect. The once silent gone loud, strong yet weak, non judgmental yet impulsive on my part rather gives away that something is wrong.

But people really don’t like the word “mad”. In fact, most often, what people say to me is, “no, you’re not!”. Well, actually, I am. I’m bipolar and I’m mad.

So What Do I Mean By Mad?

Well, it’s in the dictionary isn’t it? Let’s pull out ALL the definitons of what mad means:


 
Ah ha! The human brain. One of the best organs in the body. It measures, it categorizes, it makes connections and it remembers the square root of 144. I’m constantly awed by its power, and to have that power is beyond compare.
But one of the annoying things that can happen to a brain is that something gets stuck in it. Whether it be a song, or a catchy slogan. Somehow, even through its great power and ability, the catchy hook of the latest mainstream song from the charts gets stuck inside some errant neurons and plays over and over and over and over again. Some tiring stuff.

And this causes a lot more trouble in my bipolar brain than it does for others.