Bipolar Type 2: What it Looks Like for Me

so I woke up this morning, you know, ready to go. I got out of bed when I took a shower. Oh, I filled out like 30 pages of paperwork for a bunch of therapists and psychiatrists. I worked on my thesis for about two hours and then it occurred to me that I was going to go to medical school so I started researching the MCAT and I was bouncing around the house singing jokes and then I went to my closet because I was going to change my clothes. clothes again and a hip dropped so hard that I almost literally fell.

I had to lean against the wall, um,

what

ballet is really hard to understand if you never thought that before, but it felt like someone came up behind me and wrapped a heavy blanket around my body without me knowing it was happening, it's like This, my God, there you all go, I thought, I thought maybe I could paint, but I don't want to paint, um, my mom got me into paint by numbers because that's easier, yeah, and doing creative painting I'm not sorry. physically able to do anything but just stare at the wall right now, today July 20, 2020.

I woke up at a decent hour this morning, I had a meeting with the Marin City Community Development Corporation because I am starting a job I volunteered with them and then I got my dad to help me rearrange all the furniture in my room and then I fell asleep for three hours and woke up at like 7:00 p.m. and now it's like nine o'clock and I just went to make coffee because I have a thesis too and I have to get a lot out of my productivity spells because I'm not a productivity spell Manolo and it's impossible to do something like that. um for some reason about an hour ago my brain went to work right now oh my gosh the door my mom was like Sophie try to get some sleep.

I received my formal diagnosis as

bipolar

depression

type

two about four days ago and my friend Molly. he bought me a little plant, a little houseplant, because I told him that my dad and I have this tradition where at every important step in my mental health diagnosis journey we got a new houseplant, so when I got my first diagnosis , which was a minor major depressive disorder we got a complicated fig tree and then when I started taking my medication we got an African mask plant and then when I was diagnosed with

bipolar

we got like a little fern and then when I started taking my medication for that, Molly brought me my new plants over there you can't see them, I don't know why I'm pointing out, but she called him Winston because she did a little research and Winston Churchill also had bipolar depression and I thought that was really cool and I never did. have done.

I have had a hard time accepting this diagnosis because it is a bit scary, it is a really serious disease, it carries a 10% mortality rate, which I like in terms of diseases. I guess it's not the worst, but it is a bit. Scary Um and the lows are starting to get scary. Is rare. It's a strange way to live life, but it's very enjoyable and it's really empowered me to have my friends and mother teach me about other famous people who have had this disease. In fact, my mom gave me a book that explains and argues how people with depression and bipolar depression actually make better leaders in times of crisis, not as a hard and fast rule, but as a general trend that encompasses Abraham Lincoln Franklin Delano Roosevelt Kennedy Winston.

Churchill Muhammad Gandhi, everyone who had depression or bipolar depression and it's really empowering to remember that every way of being has its drawbacks and its advantages and I think with mental illness and people who have abnormal personalities or moods or inclinations. of companies about you and doesn't let you forget the negative and just living doesn't let you forget the negative, it sucks, but it's good to be reminded that, like you, you know my creativity and my larger than life personality and a Many of the things I have accomplished you may not have known if I had been born neurologically normal or with a stable mood.

I don't know

what

the word is. There is a word for mentally ill people, but not for normal people because they are normal. I guess it's statistically accurate, this I don't like to feel abnormal, yes, although to some extent it is a love-hate relationship, but yes, as I was thinking the other day, I presented a fashion show in Oregon and it was something that happened because I woke up one day and saw that there had been a really cool fashion show at OSU and I got it in my head that I was going to host a fashion show and without thinking twice I started running and at one time I thought: this It's just what I'm doing.

I'm going to have a fashion show, it's going to be great and looking back now I think it was probably some kind of episode, um, I probably guess I've recorded it. so I don't have mania, I have hypomania, but that could have been a hypomanic episode, but it brought something beautiful into existence, so it's like I don't know, I feel a little bit empowered, which is really cool and I think having that . The positive spin will help me get through the lowest moments even more than I already do because it's so important to have information to cast that voice when it says, "Hey, it's never going to get better.

You should quit because you're going to live with this for a long time." the rest of your life and it's going to absorb your useless nonsense, so I already feel like the logical side of my brain has to sit there and say: no, that's not me, that's not my voice, it may sound like my voice, but it's the disease talking, so to have more information to fight that and say, hey, that's not really me, that's the disease talking, it would be once I get out of this, I'll start being me again. and I will get it. mania or that hypomania that actually helps me bring some really interesting things into the world, yes, also, I have Claude, this is Claude called the focus of the cloud scene, I can say that he is like a supportive stuffed animal emotional, it's great, I'm 21, not so much. old to have staff available, okay, I've been at the top for about three, two or three days, um, so you know, at least I have one day left at the top, who knows how long I have left before I'm at the middle, um, so I'll just try to write as productively as possible based on waves and then refine my coping mechanisms when all those good hits come.