lonely

having pills in the house is akin to keeping a loaded gun around.

i can only beg for help so many times.

i can only hurt this much for so long.

Where does it start and where do I begin???

Where is the line between illness and individual?

Where does Bipolar start and where do I begin?

Where is the line that determines where symptoms stop and the real me begins?

I am responsible for every single thing I do. I do not dispute this, never have. But do I deserve to be punished for behaviours and actions that are a direct result of symptoms of my disorder over which I truly, at times, have no control?

Where does the blame start? And where does it end?

Where does compassion and empathy belong, and when is harsh cold blame the only option?

I never meant to hurt anyone. Never wanted to hurt anyone. Not one single person, ever, in my entire life.

But my disease has hurt them. My crazy actions spurred on by my disease have hurt them. My desperate attempts to just make the pain stop because the Bipolar will just not let go have hurt them.

Where do I stop and it begins?

As of right now, I really don't know....

I don't ever wanna let anyone down...

Today has been a really hard day.

No particular reason. Woke up, and within seconds could just tell that it was going to be a struggle just to make it through. One of those dark cloud, black hole, cannot find the light no matter how hard you look kind of days. The kind where it feels like apathy swallowed your heart and you couldn't bring yourself to care if your life depended on it. The kind filled with the confusion of somehow being numb and in pain all at the same time.

Ya, one of those days.

It started with me in tears on the kitchen floor because the jam I tried to make for my sister didn't turn out. This tiny mistake brought on a wash of failure shame that I am still struggling to make it out of 10 hours later.

I don't want to let anyone down.

I can't let anyone know how poorly I'm doing, I don't want to let them down.

A very wise online sister, and an incredibly smart close friend have repeatedly told me that I am too hard on myself. I guess I am. I don't know how to be anything else.

I feel like I am letting down my daughters by not being the healthy vibrant mother they deserve. I feel like I am letting down my parents for not succeeding and thriving as an adult after all the promise I showed as a child. I feel like I'm letting my sister down because I have not been able to reach out in kindness to her since a ridiculous meaningless fight almost 3 years ago. I feel like I am letting society down by being a drain instead of an asset. I feel like I have let down countless friends, family members, and partners in the last 20 years just by being unable to be consistent, reliable, and supportive. And I feel like I am letting myself down. By still being sick. Still being weak and unable to fight. Still being stuck, and lost, and hopeless. By not doing more, not being more.

The truth is I let myself down every day. It's rather easy, because if I am honest I don't feel that I deserve any better. It's hard to fight for someone that you don't feel is worthy of fighting for. It's hard to get better when deep down you're pretty sure pain is all you deserve.

I don't like myself. I don't. I haven't in a really, really long time.

So I overcompensate. I try to be pretty so that people won't catch on that I'm sick. I try to be thin, because how can you be sad when you're skinny? I spoil my daughters to alleviate some of the guilt of being a sick, semi-absent mother. I buy really nice gifts for my family, because in my deluded mind this will make them believe that I am doing well so that they never catch on to how badly I am struggling.

I don't want to let them down.

I don't want to spend 2 weeks in Saskatchewan at my parents' house over Christmas. It is hard on me mentally, emotionally, and physically. My daughters want that, my parents want that, so I do it anyway.

I don't want to let them down.

Mine has become a life of smoke and mirrors. If I distract everyone with a pretty shiny outside, and throw on a fake smile no one will ever realize how broken and pathetic I am.

It hurts. It hurts all the time.

But I don't want to let them down.

I really have nothing to say

Sitting.

Staring.

Eyes glazed over.

Mind blank.

The desire is there, but the words just won't come.


The anger comes easily.

Pain floods uncontrollably.

Explosions of violence, self-hatred, self-harm.

Anything just to get it out.

Anything just to make it stop.


Pain and hurt are easy, truth is hard.

So the words stay stuck.

Trapped inside.

Boiling.

Tormenting.

Too fast, too erratic to catch.


The desire is there, but the words just won't come.

Sitting.

Staring.

Eyes glazed over.

Mind blank.


Soul in agony.

To Whom it May Concern:

I'm not worth saving.

Apparently I'm not worth anything.

And I deserve nothing. Except pain.

Message received.

Loud and clear.

As if the Bipolar wasn't enough, I have to deal with Ignorance too??

I tried...

Just because someone's pain isn't visible doesn't mean it's not real.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's not valid.

Just because you can't empathize doesn't make killing them ok.


If I had cancer people would care. Automatic empathy and compassion, no questions asked.

Why, just because it involves my brain am I constantly blamed, shamed, mocked, judged, and attacked. I didn't think I deserved it. I really tried not to believe that I did. But i must, because it never stops. It never ever stops.


I gave it all I had, I really did. I tried. I tried and tried and tried. But I am too tired. I am too damn tired and it hurts too much.

I have nothing left. I really truly have nothing left. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was supposed to be so much more than this.

I was supposed to be so much more than this......

The Apathy of Depression

I spend a lot of my in a low or depressed mood state.

People with Bipolar 2 experience significantly longer periods of depression than those suffering with Bipolar 1, as well as more severe all-encompassing depression. Bipolar 2 sufferers spend more than 50% of their life in a depressed or "low" mood state so not only are they low more than they are hypomanic, they are depressed more than they are neutral or "normal".

In some people this can be greatly improved by treatment and medication. In others, like myself, the depression is "treatment resistant" and the medications that help so many other Bipolar 1 and 2 sufferers do nothing to ease the pain. Add in some rapid cycling (moving very quickly between states of hypomania and depression) and the horror of mixed states (an indescribable state of depression and hypomania existing concurrently, often accompanied by extreme anxiety, anger, and instability) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Rapid cycling is exhausting. Mixed states are confusing, terrifying, and destructive, as well as exhausting. And depression that hangs on and just won't let go will make you wish you were never born, no matter how hard you try to fight.


That is where I sit right now. In a depressed state that just won't let go. I have been fighting it for months and I just don't seem to be able to crawl out of the hole. I have peeked my head out for a few days at a time here and there only to get dragged back down and beaten senseless by the sadness and hopelessness. I am exhausted beyond any typical definition of the word. I have been fighting negative, destructive, critical emotions for months now and have come to a place where I just have nothing left.

I am not a danger to myself, I haven't given up in that way. I have reached a far more painful state where I'm alive, but I have given up on myself and the hope of ever being any different, or any better. Long-term depression eventually settles in and creates a feeling of complete apathy that is so consuming  it is nearly impossible to even move. I've had days in the past week where, while confined to my bed, it took everything I had just to be able to lift my head. Even when I am able to get up and move around it doesn't do much good as I have lost interest in everything. I have lost interest, lost focus, and nearly lost all hope.

The only bright spot in my life is my daughters. I talk to them daily and I am almost certain that is the only reason I am not yet catatonic and hospitalized.


All the things I normally enjoy have become dull. All the tools I used to use to boost my mood hold zero joy so I am physically and mentally unable to even think of forcing my sad ass to get up and do them.

I feel defeated. I feel deflated. I feel empty and hollow.

I feel sadness. I feel despair. I feel pain and exhaustion that is absolutely indescribable.

And yet at the same time I am numb. I feel hurt, but somehow I don't feel anything at all. It's like I'm not even really here. Like I'm floating around in a nightmare, experiencing hell but not really registering or appreciating fully what is going on.


Forget goals at this point. Forget dreams and success and decisions and direction. I don't even know who or what I am anymore. It is as if the disease has taken over and I am merely a shell for it to walk around, and cause damage in.

I am a walking conundrum of numb pain.


I have given up, lost hope, and to be honest I really don't care. Not about myself at least. I have become a prisoner to this depression. A prisoner serving a life sentence, with no possibility of parole, who has run out of appeals. At this point in time death row would be a less painful place to be. Except for the guilt. The guilt of knowing that I cannot do that to my daughters. I cannot hurt them like that, and risk them suffering because of my illness.

So here I sit. Unable to move, barely able to breathe. Trying just to hold on until the next time I can see them, the next time I can text them or talk to them. Spoiling them with gifts and promises due to the guilt I feel for not being the mother they deserve.

But there is nothing left of me. Any thing I was or ever wanted to be is lost or hiding, and I don't know where to even begin to look. And even if I did know, I'm too damn tired to look. And it is getting to the point where I really just don't care. I honestly just don't care anymore.

Can I even believe anything I tell myself anymore?

Have you ever broken a promise to someone you care about?

It feels terrible. We feel guilt, disappointment, and if you're like me vow to make it up to them however we can.

Why is it not the same when we break a promise to ourselves?

I remember a time, a younger happier time, when anything I decided to do or told myself I was going to do got done. It wasn't an issue. There was no question. If I wanted it I went out and got it. If I told myself I was going to do something it darn well got done. I made decisions, albeit it easier ones than those I face now, with confidence and ease. And once a decision was made, that was it. There was no second guessing, no doubt, no decision paralysis, no problem. Decision made, action taken. Every time.

I don't remember the first time I broke a promise to myself. I wish I did. I wish I could remember if it was hard. If I felt the same guilt, disappointment, and need for redemption that I have felt the times I broke promises to other people. I wish I could remember the second, third, and fourth time as well. I wish I could remember so that I could see just how quickly any negative feelings disappeared. So that I could see just how quickly I went from dependable and constantly following through, to not believing a damn word I say to myself and breaking every promise I ever make to myself.

The loss of trust in myself is bad enough. If it ended there that would, on it's own, be sad, damaging, and darn near incapacitating. Unfortunately, as with most things, it doesn't just end there. When it becomes easy to tell yourself you're going to do something and then just not do it, it also becomes much easier to give in to the evil voice in your head that is Bipolar. It becomes easier to binge eat to stuff down your real feelings, to stop seeing friends so they don't see your decline, to stop cleaning your house because what does it matter, to stop getting out of bed, to stop self-care, to stop exercising, to stop going to work, to just give up. After spending any significant amount of time telling yourself you're going to try and then just not doing it, any conscientious effort to begin trying again is infinitely more difficult.


"I'm going to stop bingeing on junk food, eat healthy regular meals, and start being active again" gets met with "shut up fatty you're too lazy and sugar is delicious, you'll eventually cave and eat a cookie so just eat an entire box right now instead of going for a run".

"I'm going to clean my apartment this week, organize things, and keep it that way" gets laughed at while your front room begins to look like an episode of Hoarders.

"This time I'm not going to get scared and drop out of class, this time I will graduate" may last for a month or two, but is soon replaced by "you're dumb, everyone is laughing at you, even if you do graduate you'll still be sick stupid and useless so just quit now".

"I am going back to work. I am going to be strong, beat this, and take care of myself again" very quickly becomes "don't even try. People will just laugh at you, you're qualified for nothing, you're just gonna screw it up again so why go through the anguish?"


Once you make it nearly impossible to trust anything created in your inner monologue the acts of dreaming and goal setting become non-existent. Early on in the promise breaking you still attempt to have dreams and still attempt to set goals, but once you abandon enough of them you begin to abandon the concepts all together. You don't bother dreaming, what's the point? You stop setting goals, or even being able to think of goals you might want to set.

You then stop making decisions. Without dreams and goals there is no direction, and without direction how do you know what path to take? Without confidence in yourself and your abilities the ability to make even the most simple decisions disappears. Decision paralysis sets in so deeply that your life quite literally stops. You are alive, but there is no action, there is no growth, there is no healing, there is no anything. Years, in fact a decade, can go by and you have no idea where it went or what you actually did for ten years. Suddenly you are ten years older, your kids have grown into teenagers, and it feels like you missed it. There are snapshot memories here and there, but there is no real involvement or appreciation. All of the sudden you are a 25 year old in a 35 year old's body. Everyone around you has grown, changed, accomplished things, but you are no better off and no different than you were in 2002.

That is a very frightening and regretful place to be.

Fear and regrets accomplish absolutely nothing, but when a decade of your life has disappeared before your eyes while stuck in a state of complete inaction it is damn hard not to let them creep in.

The only answer is to jump back into life with two feet. Start with small goals, accomplish them, rebuild your faith in yourself, learn to trust yourself, and learn to feel worthy again. Simple right? Ya, sure. Ask me in another ten years.