An Introduction

Hello.

I am going to try to help people understand what it is like to live with Type I Bipolar Disorder by writing about my own experiences. At times, especially when I delve into the past, some of the things I say may seem so bizarre that you may be inclined to believe I am just making them up. But I won't be. Everything I tell you here is true.

So let's get started.

I am thirty-two years old, and my life has almost ground to a screeching halt. All my dreams and desires have fallen out of my grasp, and even though I am doing exceptionally well right now (I'm going to work, I have some money, I have a roof over my head, I'm on the right medications), and even though I'm not in the midst of depression at the moment, my life simply sucks. To say it is disappointing is not even close to expressing how it really feels. Hopefully, keeping up with this blog will help me vent some of the frustration I am feeling and work through it.

How did I get to this point? Why is my life so shitty right now? These are questions that must be answered in future posts, and in time. But I will try to summarize the basics here for you now.

Basically, I am thirty-two years old, and I am living back in my scary little hometown with my mom and dad. I'm back in the bedroom I grew up in. I'm surrounded by my past, and little of it is any good. Everywhere I go in this hick town either scares me or depresses me. And I'm lonely. I have no friends here whatsoever.

How did I get here, though? Why am I living here? Basically, the last two years of my life (actually, the last ten years or more, but let's try to focus) were a mess. A severe mess. A series of lost jobs and suicide attempts. Lost friends. Lost identity. Depression. Alcoholism. And worse.

At this time, a year ago, I had just moved into an apartment with a total stranger. And at that time, I had just started a new job. But before that, I went through, hmm . . . let's see . . . about seven jobs in a matter of, I think, five months. Seriously.

Every job I went to, no matter what it was or where it was or when I had to be there, freaked me out. I wasn't taking the right medication at the time, and as a matter of fact I still wish that, to this day, I had sued my psychiatrist for malpractice, because he was making me take so many pills a day I should have died. But that's a slight digression.

The point is, I would freak out and not go to work. Or I would freak out at work and leave. Or I would freak out and lie, and create an excuse to avoid work. For example, at one of those jobs, I spontaneously decided, while at work, that my brother and sister-in-law had died in a horrible car accident. I started crying and told my supervisor that I needed to leave and go to the viewing of their bodies. Then I proceeded to use that lie for days, or weeks, as I had trouble going to work, or staying there, without bursting into tears for no good reason.

Then there was the job I lost because I kept waking up from nightmares, horrid dreams in which my friends had died in horrible ways. But when I awoke, I thought the dreams were real, and I would lie in bed as the alarm clock beeped on and on, telling me to go to work. But I wouldn't. I would lie there and cry for hours, eventually realizing that I was upset over nothing but a dream, but by then it was too late. My employers were never pleased with this behavior.

Anyway, to get back to the point of why I ended up living with my parents at this point in my life . . . .

I either quit a job or lost a job or whatever, while I was living with my last roommate, whom I had met through "Craig's List" to get an apartment with. He was not happy with me. Basically, I had to flee. Again. I could do an entire post, and I'm sure I will, about how many times I've "fled" my current situation in life. Once, I had to flee a roommate who was ready to murder me, but that's a story for another day.

So I fled, and had nowhere to go, and I ended up here. In hell. I'm going crazy, but in truth, and I can laugh as I say this, I'm NOT going crazy. That's kind of the whole point. I'm doing unusally well right now, mainly because I found a good doctor who put me on the right pills. But my best friend, who does not live here now, has been very impressed with me, stating that if he were me, he would go crazy living in this boring little town with no friends and a shitty job, and he isn't mentally ill.

So I must be doing something right. And I'll leave you with that thought for tonight.