tw: suicide
It turns out that the continuous up and down pattern that I have so desperately tried to break from is bipolar disorder. Obviously, there are more steps in my treatment and diagnosis before there is a solid understanding of where I fall in the textbook definition of it all, but as of right now, I am bipolar.
I don’t know how I feel about it. At first, I was ready to hear it, maybe I expected it or maybe I have become so numb to my own mental state that it didn’t phase me. Either way, initially I felt okay with it like now I know where to go from here.
But the truth is, I’ve had that same thought and feeling before. I had it when I first went to therapy when I got my first diagnosis and my second and third and fourth and fifth. I’ve experienced this false optimism before and allowed myself to get excited about something that is bound to hit the fan eventually. When do I get to stop discovering new things about myself? Things that explain why my mind is all screwed up.
Never. That's the truth, and I hate it. I hate knowing that I’m never going to stop having these moments of hope where I think everything will be okay. Moments where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is that light is the end. Life doesn’t have happy endings, because, in order for that to happen, you have to end.
There will never be a time when I am actually happy for longer than a second, a time when my brain is still and at peace, a time when I can genuinely take a breath. I am going to have to work the rest of my life to achieve a fraction of what someone without my mind experiences.
And that realization makes me wish I could just get to the end of the tunnel.