I am writing about my experiences with bi-polar, and how I have learned to live around it. It is often young people (usually college aged) that are diagnosed with mental illness; I was diagnosed in my fifties. My journey has been confusing, painful and excruciating, and sometimes all of them at once. I wrote this when I was having a manic episode:
“How many times am I going to be crushed? How many times am I going to be embarrassed? How many times am I going to look foolish to my children, and whoever is watching me? Something is clearly wrong. I am so crushed. I feel like such a fool. I hate bi-polar. I think I am this most amazing person with wonderful things to say. The truth is I am manic, I talk too much and I am too aggressive. Please, God, help me to remember the truth rather than the lie. Help me to wait before you as you promise that jewels will be formed in this journey. Help me to trust you in the dark.”
I knew it before it had a name. Many years later I learned it was manic depression (now called bi-polar), a mood disorder where emotions can swing from very low to very high. That was my diagnosis. I have bi-polar disorder. I have learned not to say that I am bi-polar, but that I have bi-polar. It is important to know that I am still a person, with mental illness, and I need medication just like anyone with high blood pressure.
I had no idea how bi-polar would shape my life, then, now, and forever on this side of eternity. My story is raw at times, but it wouldn’t serve justice without these facts. There are threads in my story. They are faith, fear, brokenness, survival, art, depression, sexual abuse, the obsession to be thin and then finally triumph over wickedness.
A miracle in all this was that I never, ever doubted God. I felt God was doing something severe. I didn’t sign up for it, but I knew He was doing something powerful in my life. Through it all, I felt I was overwhelmed by His mercy.
This is a story of God’s love. I have been encouraged to write my story because it testifies to the devastation that a mood disorder can have on relationships. But more importantly, it is because it demonstrates God’s love, God’s mercy, and God’s victory, even when things look very, very dark.
