being bipolar (but for real this time)

This was originally written on the 9th of March. I just forgot to publish it.

I just came home. I was sitting on the stairs of my apartment building, because I didn’t want to climb up and come home.

We have sensors that cause the lights to turn on after hours. When I entered the building, the lights turned on. As I sat there, they turned off. One after the other. Slowly, but surely, until there was just one light remaining right above my head. Without that, I would have been plunged into complete darkness.

That picture there? That is representative of my life. I haven’t entered the dark abyss yet, because I’ve got that one light still glowing. But I know that sooner or later, even that’s going to go out. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do after that. I’m tempted to kill myself.

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Home is meant to be a safe space. Home is meant to be the place that we return to after a very long, tiring day. Home is meant to be our comfort zone, the one place that de-stresses us.

Why, then, is it the only place I keep running away from?

This is not the first time. Even when I was back in Bangladesh, home was the place I would try and escape. It didn’t really matter where I went, as long as I didn’t find myself in those four walls. But then, I blamed my family for it. Who do I blame now?

I live on my own now. There’s no one to say a word. There’s no one who will order me around. There is no one I need to answer to. Everything I do is because I want to. Whatever I do, it is because I want to. However I live is how I choose to. Why, then, do I still feel like escaping?

Perhaps, it is me that I’m trying to run away from. This nagging feeling in my soul. I think it is trying to warn me about myself. It knows the person that I can be, the person I will become, and the person I’m slowly turning into.

But how do you escape yourself? Where do you go? Where do you hide?

-

I had my psychiatric assessment for bipolar disorder today. A very lovely psychiatrist from the Black Dog Institute talked to me for an hour-ish. Asked me quite a few questions about my life.

At the end of it, he diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. Said that he was very confident in his diagnosis and that I should start treatment ASAP. Take medication and whatnot.

It is nothing that I didn’t know before. Most of what he said, I had already suspected. But to have your worries confirmed like that, it is jarring. Even when my psychologist said that I might possibly have bipolar disorder, there was still room for denial. I could lie to myself and convince myself otherwise.

But here was a stranger, with years of experience, who, from an hour-long conversation, was sure that I was struggling with this disorder. And that if I didn’t start treating it as soon as possible, it would get significantly worse. To the point where I might end up taking my own life.

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Do you know what it feels like to have your world turned upside down like that? To be told that the cards that you’ve been dealt in life, the ones that you were trying to make the best of, are all just the worst possible cards in a deck? That no matter how hard you try, there’s no escaping reality?

Do you know what it feels like to be villainised for something that is completely out of your control? To be seen differently because of a condition that you didn’t even have a say in? To be judged by two words in your life, before a person even got to know you?

The truth is that this is a lifelong condition, and no matter how much people say that they love me and they’ll be here for me, I’ll be the one dealing with this all by myself. This will follow me throughout my life like a shadow. It will be there, present and making itself known - at birthdays, at anniversaries, at work; with every breath that I take.

Because of this, I have never really known what a normal life could look like, and I never really will, either. Little by little, it is stealing the very essence of who I am as a person, turning me into a shell of myself.

The irony here, however, is that I am who I am mostly because of this disorder, so really, I am just a fraud. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know who I am anymore, because if the highs aren’t me and neither are the lows, then who am I?

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I am still trying to come to terms with being bipolar, now that it has been confirmed. I had a major breakdown on the day; I ended up just collapsing on the floor and crying as I lay on it, unable to bring myself to move. I am not sure what this means for me. I have been asked to start treatment and get on mood stabilisers, but I genuinely don't know if I want to.