I’m Coping But What About My Loved Ones?

So its been awhile guys. I spent the second half of my summer taking care of myself, learning how to cope with my bipolar diagnosis and attempting to reconnect with my family.

I have learned that I am not weak because of my Bipolar Disorder, just different. I have spent a lot of time fighting the truth of my diagnosis and have learned the easiest way to lead a “normal” life is to just accept it and work on improving my overall health from there. After this point I started doing yoga daily to calm my mind and body, set alarms on my phone to make sure I never forgot to take a pill and isolated myself from those who were hindering my self improvement. I learned how to cope with myself, but I am not so sure those around me have put effort into it.

My mother has worked hard to try and be okay with this, but sometimes I think she still tries to deny that I am bipolar, thinking that is somehow means she failed as a mother. I have learned that when I start being more aggressive and nit pick people, I need that person to tell me and then give me a minute to settle my own mind. My mother has an extraordinarily hard time doing this, but I am hoping she will get better with time so our relationship can improve.

My dad is the worst. He reacts any severe depression or mania with anger. Like he can scare it out of me. As much as I want to repair the troubled relationship I am starting to believe its better to just let go of him and keep our lives largely separate.

My brothers and I have never been close, but we are trying to change that. The three of us are all spectacularly different when it comes to our personalities. Our biggest struggle lies in figuring out how to relate to one another, but once we can do that I believe they will be a great support system.

Now for the hardest one…

The boy who I love more than life itself. I know he feels the same about me, and that our love for each other runs deep. But he has trouble understanding when certain things I do are caused by my bipolar and when he just needs to be supportive of me rather than bullheaded. I can explain this to him after the fact but it does nothing to tame the fight that happens initially. I wish there were a way to point out to him the signs of when my mania is bad and for him to realize that during this phase, I’m just not myself sometimes. And anger is not a good response. I have high hopes of us working on this together as our relationship progresses though.

My friends are all over the place. Some of them are amazing supportive and curious, all are accepting to different degrees. Some help me figure out how to cope and controls my moods, some promise to be a shoulder to cry on. Others accept it and treat as if I am no different than anyone else and they all play a crucial role in helping me through life.

Does anyone have advice on how to help your loved ones cope in a situation like this?

Personal Growth

I’ve learned that if you want a change to last, it has to be for you. It also has to be slow and steady. 

I tried to rapidly change my weight by becoming anorexic, it worked for the two years I was anorexic and then I went right back to my starting weight once I started to eat again. I tried to change who I am, so I cut my hair, hid my past and pretended to be bubbly and adorable, thinking one day that would just stick as my personality. It did, until I couldn’t take hiding the problems I had not dealt with yet. I broke down, screamed at everyone, drove away everyone close to me. I had went to rock bottom and had to start from scratch. 

This time I decided to go slow and steady. And I am not bettering myself for anyone else’s benefit. Its for me. I am not getting skinny to impress boys, I am getting fit to take care of my mind and body, to be strong. I am working on my mental and emotional health to better who I am and my future. I have always been into philanthropy and am constantly involved in community service to try and better the world around me. The best possible way I can help others is to help my first. To learn to be emotionally strong so I can use my intellect to drive me in future philanthropic events and not get brought down by others’ negativity. 

 

If you want change that works, move slow, do it for you and set small goals. Excellence is not an act, its a habit. Form a habit of being more positive, of going to the gym rather than drinking away your problems. And let go of the past, do not just try to bury it. 

Call Me Crazy

Call me crazy, but I hate the word crazy. When I am having a panic attack, it only get worse when a good friend calls me crazy for it. I have a mood disorder, I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and PTSD. I see crazy as an insult that undermines all the work I do each day to overcome my mental illness. Calling a mentally ill person to me is the same as calling a sick person weak. 

Sufferers of mental illness shouldn’t be called weak or crazy. No one would call a cancer patient weak for having cancer, so why would a mental illness make someone weak? It can make getting out of bed and being productive just as difficult. Our society needs more education on mental illness and those affected need more support. I am lucky to go to a school that has amazing resources from those suffering from mental illness, but many of my friends’ colleges don’t offer as much support as Mizzou does for me. 

But even with a school that provides me wonderful resources, I have met many obstacles when working towards my degree. I have had TAs and professors that did not care that  I suffer from Bipolar Disorder and anxiety, they still expected me to attend class everyday and heavily dropped my grade after missing one class because my mental illness overcame me for a day. 

I have experienced outright sexism that led to me dropping a class, as I am overly sensitive to such subjects after being raped recently. I was in a male-dominated class (Computer science, which I originally planned on getting a minor in) and everyday I got harassed that I must just be there to find a husband. This is after being the first one to finish my assignment each lab period and recieving 100% on each assignment. Not only did my TA not work to make me feel more comfortable, but he also harassed me, knowing I was a great student. Only my professor was sad to see me go when I withdrew, but it was too late for me to change my mind at that point. The only thing I heard after this incident was that I was being weak, when I was being the exact opposite. I was giving up something I really wanted and giving up proving everyone wrong to save my mental health. I knew I could make it through the class, but it would not have been worth the affect it had on my mental health, so I left to better myself.

I do not want special concessions or privileges, but I do want my condition to be acknowledged and understood. I want a school and society that works with me towards betterment, rather than against me. Will this change ever come?  

Bipolar Disorder

For those of you who follow this blog…sorry this post took so goddamn long. I spent the last two weeks curled under my blankets in fetal position except for when I had to work of course. 

About two weeks ago is also when I finally got diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Over the last year I have been on a constant array of various medications without ever reaching a diagnosis. They just knew something was wrong with me. Some of the medications almost killed me due to bad drug interactions or allergic reactions. One of them I unfortunately saved for months in case I wanted to use it to kill myself to end this goddamn process.

I’m glad I convinced myself to throw it away though because when I was finally diagnosed, I genuinely wanted to kill myself. In a flash I saw everything I always wanted escape my grasp. Whenever there’s a hopelessly crazy person in a movie or TV show, they’re bipolar. Those crazy homeless people on the streets, bipolar. For God’s sake I could get away with an insanity plea if I ever found myself in a court room. Nurses now always ask me how many times I’ve been hospitalized and when I say I haven’t been, they tell me that will change.

How will I ever be hirable when, according to psychology, I cannot even control my own mood? And bipolar disorder is next to impossible to treat. You may find something that works, but it won’t work for forever. And if you’re used to being mostly manic like me, it’ll make you feel absolutely awful. I never feel completely euphoric anymore and my creative energy is basically gone. I don’t have grandiose dreams that always kept me going, now I’m jus trying to make it through a single goddamn day. 

How will I ever be a suitable wife or mother? I cannot be patient and understanding. I cannot put aside my mood and do what I need to do for the other person. I am sucked into the vortex of my bipolar, doing what it tells me to do. Unmedicated, I feel everything to an extreme and the littlest upset will make me scream and cry. Medicated I feel absolutely nothing, now I know why people never want to stay medicated. 

 

Where do I go from here? 

(back under my covers to hide from life again)

Because I got raped..

I let the fact that I have been raped be the cause of too many shortcomings in my life.

Because I got raped I stopped caring about school and no longer have a 4.0 in college (I have a 2.97 now).

Because I got raped I no longer cared about my body or safety.

Because I got raped I spent all my time drinking.

Because I got raped I started doing drugs.

Because I got raped I turned to comfort food and then back to anorexia.

Because I got raped I tried to kill myself.

I refuse to let my rapists be the cause of anymore grief in life. They no longer have control over me and never will again. I will not play the sad victim. I will not drop out of college, or transfer, or try to kill myself again. I will prove they have no power over me and I can still accomplish whatever I want. But first I want to make something clear. Rape is never okay and there is never an excuse. No means no. Stop means no. I’m scared means no. Please don’t do this means no. Being blacked out means no. Being unconscious certainly means no. Consent is sexy, don’t touch another person unless they say yes (sexual assault is gender neutral, whether your partner says male or female, get consent, consent is not an erect penis or wet vagina).

It may take me a year longer to graduate now because I didn’t meet the grade requirements for my gen eds, I may now have been diagnosed with anxiety and bipolar, but I can do whatever I want. I will still live the dream I have had since I was a little kid. As a little kid I watched TV and always liked the commercials better than the shows, I wanted to do that. I will still work in advertising.

I will still go out and have a good time because everyone has the right to party. My drunk state and slutty clothes are not an invitation for you to touch me, they are for me and no one else.

I will get healthy again, healthy and strong enough that if you come near me again I can knock you out.

 

I, as a strong, independent woman, will not let my attacker or assault define me. I am not the girl who was raped. I am the girl who will one day be your CEO, the girl who will one day spoil her kids with fancy vacations and good educations. I will educate my children to take care of themselves, to be tough and say no.

 

Its time to break the cycle, I am NOT a victim.

 

 

Fuck Love

I’m in love with the concept of love, but I can’t decide if I think  my generation is capable of it. I’m (almost) 20 and have friends that have already been married and divorced. I have friends who have had babies and still cannot have a mature relationship. Half of us have divorced parents, for various reasons.

Half of us lost our virginity very young and no longer think sex is a big deal, but that’s still the only way we know to show affection. We do not hold hands, we do not give each other gifts and we do not write each other love letters. We show our love with a firm ass grab or promise of a blow job. We use our bodies to convey what we want to feel.

However I have realized that many people, myself included, have no idea what a relationship is supposed to feel like. I ran from the one guy who treated me right because it felt weird. Now that he only talks to me for sex and to ridicule me I am once again enchanted.

I know this is wrong, but my mind cannot change the way my heart feels. I’m lost and do not know how to find real love. I have divorced parents, who split because my father was abusive and a cheater. All of my best friends’ parents are separated. None of us like long term relationships. We love the idea of them, but we no longer believe there a possibility. And if its going to end badly, why try so hard for it? Instead we can just have fun fuck buddies and there will be no hurt feelings when we get bored and move on.

I want a real relationship, not a storybook, perfect one, but one where we fight hard and fight often, but we do it because we care and love each other. One where we hold hands in public and go out on dates, rather than spending the day in bed. I want someone who knows my biggest insecurities and loves those things about me, and someone who trusts me with their insecurities. I want something worth working a lifetime for.

But is a generation born from broken relationships capable of that?

If not, what is going to happen to my generation, and the one behind us?

Discomfort

The post I intended to write at the beginning of today is very different than the one I am writing right now. I won’t bother going into it, because I am sure it will come out early on another Sunday morning, being awake from the mischief of Saturday night. After a long day with many ups and downs and unforeseen events, I want to talk about the necessity of discomfort and my generations particular disliking to it. Obviously no one likes to be comfortable, but while the older generations tend to accept it as a part of life, often even reminisce over it, my generation has a tendency to hide from it, even if that creates more work and problems than it would have been to just be in discomfort.

This came to mind after a group of friends and I went to Life in Color together. I was incredibly cranky the entire day leading up to Life in Color, which puzzled me because generally if I am expecting a good event I am an upbeat person and the life of the party before the party even starts. I thought this would mean that I would be unable to enjoy myself at Life in Color and it was just going to be one of those days. 

However there concert was better than I expected, even though we were only in attendance for about two and a half hours. We sang, we danced, we screamed at the top of our lungs, we threw our shirts into the air and skipped around out of joy. My unexpected group of misfits (they’re all great people, but one would never expect the diverse group of us to be such close friends) was getting along as perfect as ever and everyone was constantly running to and hugging each other. We were in a state of bliss. A few were sober, a few were drunk, and I, being the rebellion of the group, and another girl found a boy with mysterious pills and popped molly. 

The concert ended much earlier than we anticipated, with the security guards herding us out at 11 p.m., the time we are normally just arriving at that night’s party. I was aggravated and upset, but now I am so grateful that it ended when it did. 

We headed back to the apartment of four of us in the group and continued to drink there. We played drinking games as usual and talked about light, silly things. But as the hours passed and a few of our guests left, the conversation grew robust. We started to delve into deeper issues and into the very sanctity of our unlikely friendships. This was sparked by the fact that one friend who had been causing issues lately had bailed out of the event last minute. 

We concluded that the issue we had with this friend, the problem that could ultimately tear us apart, was her inability to deal with discomfort. She was selfish and short-sighted, doing only what was best for her at that exact moment. She would not sacrifice for her friends or even for her own future. This grated upon one of my more empathetic friends and I. We are the type that are selfless to a fault, letting ourselves be destroyed for the comfort of those around us. The friend who organized the event organized a lot of our group and for all of her friendships. The constant last minute bailing on our mutual friend was tearing her to pieces. 

Any kind of relationship will require discomfort at times. Friendships, romantic relationships and especially within the family. Discomfort grinds out some of the worse parts of ourselves, allowing us to grow and move forward. Discomfort teaches acceptance and empathy. We could not understand why someone would avoid this feeling because while painful, the growth was worth it. 

I realized something, many of my peers, myself included at times, are terrified to grow. We do not know who we are and we think by growing we will further lose our grip on who we are. We live in the moment because for the first time in our country’s history, we will live shorter lives than our parents, we will crippled by debt before we have careers and we will never have a sense of stability. We run from discomfort because its inherent in everything we do. We have the most uncertain future our country has experienced and that is the greatest discomfort there is. 

Putting more on our plate seems impossible. We want boyfriends and girlfriends who only ever make our lives easier and we give up at the sign of a struggle. We want friends who create good times and comfort us in our bad times, but do not wear us down with their own struggles. We want easy classes that will give us grades that will get us a job, not the hard classes that teach us what we really need to know. We turn to our credit cards, alcohol, drugs and other habits to give us comfort. We love to purchase things, but we hate materialism. 

We like to live on the edge, but never actually be pushed outside of our comfort zone. We live for planned chaos, a taste of letting go without the risk. But without the risk, nothing great can ever be achieved because there is no room for growth. 

I can only hope this is something we all learn to overcome, so that we conquer our debt, increase our life spans and learn to find the passion that only comes from a struggle. 

The Need to Feel

I’ve realized a common thread among friends that ties us together, its a struggle we all share. We’re desperate to feel. We see sensationalism on the news everyday and become numb to the horrible images being broadcast through a TV. We text all day, but never feel connected to our friends. We blog to feel connected to people we do not know, rather than making connections to those around us. We don’t say “I love you.” but instead just “love ya.”

Its a trend that I’ve noticed in my friends from all walks of life. Whether its my friends who sat outside in the woods with me near our houses at night because they felt safer than home, or the friends that had loving parents, who were behind them in their every endeavor. We were raised in a visual culture that has made it easy for us to become numb to the things around us. We drank, smoked and fucked too young. The ones who didn’t watched us rebel and scoffed at us, then dreamed of having that freedom at night.

Our rebellions never made us feel free. We were doing what was expected our generation, cracking under the pressure. Some of the smartest people I knew went to college, failed out after a semester and spiraled in a mad downward spin with their addictions towards the end. The most unfortunate never made it to college, they were found hanging in closets, drooling on beds, or with their blood on the wall behind them. They escaped from a world that did not let them feel.

My darkest moments haven’t been caused by an overwhelming sense of depression or morose, they have been caused by the moments I know I should be filled with emotion, but all I really feel is the stagnant beat of my heart.

I live for the rush of drugs that sends my heart racing, the smooth inhale of smoke that allows me to laugh, the sting of cheap alcohol that allows me to cry. I crave rough sex thinking it’ll make me feel connected to another person. People walk in and out of my life and I casually light a bowl at both events, hoping the drugs will tell me how to feel.

I destroy relationships the second I start to feel vulnerable, because I will not give someone else the ability to make me feel. I don’t believe in happily ever after, only bitter divorce, custody battles and fighting over worthless trinkets.

I believe in an older brother holding his sister’s hand while she cries, sitting at the edge of bed wordless, because they both know she’ll never be happy. I believe in siblings who will fuck everyone, but never love a soul, because their dad was fucking kids their age when they grew up.

I believe in a world of heartbreaks and heartaches.

As always, following half of Ernest Hemingway’s advice:

          Write drunk; fuck editing.