So I Am Bipolar After All

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I’m out on disability and I need to be.

My wife and daughter have been away for several days and I haven’t left the house other than to take a walk or ride my bike. I was invited to friends’ last night for drinks with a few people and I cancelled. The whole idea of social interaction, at this point any social interaction, terrifies me. When required I can fake wellness with the best of them and do most anything.

But I can’t fake it right now, so I stay inside.

The rest of the symptoms are run of the mill. I see things; I hear things; I feel things; I can’t sleep; my moods swing all over the place; anger swells within and too frequently bursts out; I’m impulsive – run of the mill bipolar stuff.

Then there’s the big one that truly disables me. I identify with a disease. I’ve begun to believe I am bipolar.

For years I’ve been waging a war against this phrase: I am bipolar. I’m a writer and, more importantly, a reader, and I know how important just the right words are. My insistence on saying “I have a mental Illness,” rather than “I am mentally ill,” was the biggest take away most people who had anything to say about my book Practicing Mental Illness confided in me or passed on to others.

So I should be saying, and thinking to myself, “I have bipolar disorder.” But I’m not. I’ve caught myself. My doctor pointed it out. My wife is concerned about it. Something profound has shifted. I’m saying “I am bipolar.”

I’m on disability because I am bipolar, and I cannot get off of it until I am not bipolar. This is hard, as bipolar disorder has no credible cure. But it can be managed. And the first step toward managing it is to change your language. Change the way you frame the disease to yourself. Make it something you have, not something you are.

I made it sound so easy in my book. It’s not easy. As a matter of fact reading the last paragraph makes me angry. It sounds like psychobabble. Of course I have bipolar disorder. Of course I want to lose it. But I can’t. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to and it won’t go away. My language has changed from one of liberation to one of sickness. Because, of course, I am sick.

I know what I wrote in the book is correct, and I know I’ll get back there. To survive with this disease one must be a great optimist. But pessimism is easier. Look at the whole world right now. Pessimism is so much easier. In the end it will seem silly again to think I am a disease. In the end we have no choice but to change that way of thinking.

Yet it’s hard. What I wrote in my book I cannot do. That’s hard.