I want to be "Normal"

I'm slightly broken.

No, I'm majorly broken. At least that's how I feel.

When we are born we are given a name. As we grow that name becomes entwined with our growing identity. Young adulthood brings with it its share of challenges as we struggle to figure out who we are.

But if you're diagnosed with a mental illness you're given another name. Contrary to what many people want us to believe, that it is not who you are I honestly believe that a person's diagnosis is a part of who they are. And as they struggle through the challenges of adapting to this new identity it becomes entwined with who they are. One of the greatest challenges of being bipolar is figuring out where one ends and the disorder begins.

I have written about many different topics in my blog. I have shared my opinions and thoughts. A few I have devoted to my struggles with being alienated from my children, my eating disorder, and yes my bipolar. But none like I am about to share with you now. Or even at the least if no one reads it, it is for me. I hope no one is discouraged from reading by the site of its length.

Bipolar undermines everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. Your successes, yours, or your mania's? Your failure's, yours, or your episodes? Are you accountable or do they owe their existence to your new identity?

The dangers of nothing

Every now and then I'll focus a blog on my bipolar. It's such an engrained component of my being it can't be ignored. It deserves and craves as much attention as everything in my life. If not more. And this may not make sense. But bear in mind, I'm in a severe depression.

I never see them coming. The episodes. They sneak up. But when they make their presence known it's too late and I am at their mercy. You would think after 37 years by now I would be able to spot them a mile away. Maybe the brain just becomes too weak and unable to recognize them; depression, mania, hypo-mania and psychosis.

Today I feel nothing. I call it the Nothing Feeling. There is no happiness. No joy. No sadness. Not even depression. Absolutely nothing. Calling it depression gives it no justice. Today I do not want to exist. I don't want to die either.

Thinking is all but non-existent. Have you ever tried to think feeling nothing? It's impossible. What minimal thinking I can muster up is reduced to thinking how you don't want to do anything.

And that's what I do. Nothing. Exhaustion has set in and even rolling over in the bed I have secluded myself to is a chore. It is where I have spent most of the day with low music in the background. I listen to Standards 90% of time and it seems to fit the occasion. It's just to have something fill my mind.