My Current Truth

As I'm sure is clear by my recent post (on my Facebook page) I'm struggling right now. I thought that now was good as time as any to update my blog. I've struggled in the past with sharing my really hard times because I've wanted to stay positive about how bipolar can be living a good life. This post is not about that, it's not about overcoming adversity and ending up on top. It's about the hards of bipolar. This is another side to my story; my current truth.

The shitty part of bipolar, and many other mental illnesses for that matter, is that everyone wants to know why? Why are you sad? Why can't you just shake it off? And my favorite...why can't you let the little things go? And for me it's not an overwhelming sadness but rather extreme edginess, replaying things in my mind over and over, and sometimes, like now, anxiety. The frustration this causes makes me scream, overreact, or cry and sometimes all three. So to answer the question why...it's because I have an illness. Just like a diabetic can't answer why their body doesn't process sugar the same as yours does, I cannot answer why my mind allows me to not think about things in the same way you do. Like the diabetic who tries to control their sugar by eating and drinking the right things, I try to control my mind by doing the right things. Sometimes it doesn't work. Yesterday I failed...epically. I had the hardest day I've ever had at work. Couple that with my mind being in a bad place and it was a combination for disaster. The whys and wherefores are unimportant. What is important is me telling you what this means for the bipolar in me. It means I've been up all night in a few blown panic attack. It means that I doubt my ability to ever do my job effectively again. It means that I doubt that I've ever done it effectively before. It makes me wonder if those guests that I didn't succeed at giving a great experience think that I'm a bad server or do they think I'm stupid? It makes me afraid to go back and face my coworkers; I'm embarrassed, extremely embarrassed. It also makes me physically tired because I'm up lamenting yesterday when I should be sleeping to make today a success.

I'm going through some personal drama as well. Drama that smacks me the face the minute I leave work. Drama that has become all consuming for me, as of late. I won't go into great detail because again that's not important. What's important is how I can recover without letting the bipolar completely consume me. To keep it short, I had a person who I thought cared about me really be someone who was betraying me every chance they got. I shared some deep secrets, some past shames, and some thoughts that I thought were private between the two of us. This is hurting me. It is making me sad. It is making little molehills big mountains because the bipolar makes the part of me who should shake it off unable to. The hard part is not the horrible things being said about me out of their own hurt and anger. It's hearing all the details being shared while I thought we were friends. All the private things I shared that were shared with others to mock me immediately after I said them. I gave them the ammunition needed to take me down in the eyes of outsiders. My husband repeatedly asks why I care what strangers think. I've tried to explain it to no avail. It's really three-fold: 1-I want everyone to like me, I think that's a bipolar trait but it could possibly be just a Lisa trait, 2-I'm embarrassed, mortified, and ashamed that my sense of who is alright to trust is way off, and 3-I grapple with the fact that this person truly hated me in order to bad mouth me almost constantly while I trusted them enough to confide pretty regularly. That type of betrayal doesn't come from anger or frustration...it is pure hatred. But why? Even if it started as anger at me not being a good friend, a good person, whatever, where does that turn to such hatred that you'd want to destroy someone? This has put me very close to hospitaliztion. I think that one thing that gives me the last tiny bit of strength over the bipolar is my competitive nature and my absolute refusal to let them win. I refuse to give anyone that power.

While I say that I won't give someone that power, I did today. I cracked at work. I cried, sobbed really, because of the stress. I have for months had someone close to me judging me and dissecting my every action as a way to hurt me. Judgement and being disliked are my two biggest fears. They are always where my mind goes when I struggle. It's always what I beat myself up over. Most people will say they didn't like me, oh well, who gives a fuck, their loss. My mind, especially on harder days, goes to well, I must be a total piece of shit because they are nice, they like everyone but me. And on the really, really hard days (NOT TODAY) my mind goes to let's see how many pills I can swallow before I don't care that they don't like me. And you know what, this part really sucks. I can tell everyone, but me, to shake it off, let it go, they're not worth it. For me, for some reason, their opinion holds weight, even if they are complete strangers. Why is this illness so evil that it can make me hate myself even when others probably don't? I can't answer that and neither can anyone else. Just like the diabetic's pancreas sometimes fails them, my mind sometimes fails me. And for that reason bipolar can always sneak in and steal a part of my confidence, a part of my self worth, and a part of me.