There’s so much that I want to write about, so much that I
would love the world to understand about living with Mental Illness, but I have
to confess; it can be exhausting and sometimes I don’t always want to be honest
about it. Sometimes I want to look like a winner and announce that it's done, I've conquered it - be that success story you hear about.
November is a bit of a crazy month to begin with, and one
that in my past has always been a triggering time of year for me. Over the
course of the past year, one of my main focuses has been my own personal
self-awareness. Time after time I have spoken to professionals and have been
told that there is no cure for either Bipolar Disorder or Borderline
Personality Disorder. Therapy and medications and lifestyle can help to control
them, but I will live with them for the rest of my life although they may dull
down and not be as serious as I get older.
I have to admit that I kind of believe them to an extent.
You see, first of all I’m a highly emotional person – things just seem to
affect me more than the average person and I don’t know if I can or want to change
that - to me, that is sometime that makes me me. Secondly, my moods will always have the possibility to spiral out of my
control and send me on a rollercoaster ride of emotion. But here’s the thing;
while my emotional regulation is a little out of whack, and I’m quite a bit
more sensitive than the average Joe – I am learning to identify with, work
with, and challenge these qualities – sometimes finding that they can even be
an excellent warning system that I can use to my advantage.
I want to stop right here for a second though and make an
admission. I’m not perfect and I’m pretty sure that I never will be - there will be times that I will make mistakes, or have panic attacks or feel like a complete failure.
But I’m working on me. I’m working on several things that
have come up within the last year or two (or three or four) and I’m figuring
this stuff out. It’s hard work – something that so many people don’t realise –
because I have to know every piece of me, every reaction and every trigger. I
keep journals… several of them that I use to track everything from the food I eat,
to the sleep I get, to moods I experience, to the things I say and do. I need to know my patterns, know my
limits and understand my emotional reactions. And then I also have to fight. I
have to fight to prove that my frustration or anger or upset is legitimate and
not the disorder, I have to fight to keep myself stable and stop my moods from
shooting up or falling down, and I need to fight to keep learning about myself
and what level really is.
This month has been harder than some I’ve experienced
lately. While I’m still doing okay and remaining stable I’ve had quite a few
things come up that triggered me – some of them catching me completely by
surprise and other things that I already knew about and was watching for. And
so I’ve watched as triggers hit me – recorded them in my journal and worked my
way through them, adding new tools to the toolbox, ways to cope with the never
ending fluctuation of emotion and threat of an episode.
This life, it is exhausting right now as I work to do what other
people can do naturally, and I don’t always feel like sharing. But this is when
I should share. Because right now, at this moment I’m a success. I’m fighting
hard to make life liveable, to get to know myself and what I need to do to
survive and to change the way I think. I’m learning to use natural methods and
things that are within my control to manage and redirect myself when I feel
things might be beginning to slip one way or the other.
So this is me being honest. I’m tired and I’m fighting, I’m
learning and I’m growing, I’m alive and I’m well, I’m neither up nor down, and
even though I sometimes still struggle, I’m also feeling the strongest I’ve
ever felt. Nothing beats that feeling of strength and hope, the realisation that you can have a future and that it won't be defined by your Mental Illness.
