Living Outside the Box of Regret and Shame

I guess for me my life could be compiled of many embarrassing moments. Embarrassing and regretful may be a mild expression for the feelings I have felt. For the last 10+ years I have lived with a Bipolar 1 diagnosis. I have revealed a plethora of characters that I didn’t even know I had in me. At one point I was so crazy I thought I was God and Satan simultaneously. I guess you never know your potential fully until you have gone through such a phase. I have been hopeless. I have been broken but the truth is that is the place where healing can come in. I choose to release the negative and let go of all the emotional drama that this drama queen has conducted.

The last 10 years have been a bit of a blur. Crazy antics, talking trash you know your everyday cheap soap opera. Psych ward after psych ward till I have lost count of how many I have been to. I have contemplated a large spectrum of thoughts from death to life. Just your typical bipolar I suppose...or rather my new “normal”. I have lived s life with a guilty conscience. Did I say the right thing? Did I act right? That was pre-diagnosis. After I was diagnosed my fears became reality. I had become the monster I feared to be. No I haven’t killed anyone although I have come close. I have come to the end of myself and seen the compilation of what is possible in humanity, but more so experientially in me. I have been the hypocrite. I have lied, cheated, swore and drank like a sailor.

I was diagnosed at around 23. I thought the world was ending. I lived in denial thinking there were no signs, it was so sudden. I got angry and got sad, honestly the whole spectrum of emotions hit me in full force(in mania everything is heightened). I had no idea what to think. The thoughts racing through my head just were madness when they came out. No one understood me. I talked so fast at times I put Eminem’s rapping to shame. There was no clear logic. I moved back in with my parents and my mom was worried all the time. Honestly I think at times it got a little carried away.

I wanted to run and hide but I felt even my hoodies couldn’t hide me and my feelings inside. I felt detached, disconnected and alone. It’s not like I didn’t have a loving family and friends. I did. I was surrounded by love but still felt alone. I felt that everything went pitchblack and it was just me. I grasped for the light at the end of the tunnel but sometimes it seemed unattainable. Then I would wake up and breath. Another panic attack. Another pill. This life seemed to get so old. A vicious cycle.

It wasn’t like that everyday. When I was manic everything was euphoric. I never did illicit drugs in my life but I suppose I got the high without drugs. I have to modify that a little because I know I have taken a large range of psych meds and they might of had their influence...who knows the full range of side effects in popping those pills. Anyways, I gained almost a hundred pounds in less than a year and my skin broke out. I lost my hair and it came back curly. Just a few of the know effects. Could be worse than a chubby, pimply face bald girl with a beard. I was Fiona in ogre form.

Yet the silver lining in all this was that I fell in love. The kind of love when you have found someone just as crazy as you and has seen the utter worst and still loves you. That person has been there through the years and it took a crazy ride to see the love that was there all along. I am not alone although I have felt ready to throw myself on an island just to save the world from my antics and crazy moments. Love always has a way of releasing the regret and bringing the light. Hope springs like a blossom in the spring and love endures the test of time. Tested and true coming from someone who has lived in the wilds of the mind that became the horrors of reality and turned to the blissfulness of love.