I wish 

I wish someone had just taken the time to teach me how to live with this mood disorder without medication. If they had just made me aware of alternative pathways. Or the notion that this was a dangerous gift and not an illness. 

I was so immersed in trying to find out everything that was wrong that I never paused to figure out what was right. I was taught to hate my brain.The traditional medical model teaches you to hate your brain, that there is something very broken in your mind and it can be fixed, allieviated or hidden by medication. Most of all they teach you to hate a part of you. And thus you end up hating your overall self and no matter what that leads to no where. I was definitely taught to hate the bipolar part of myself and wanted to eradicate it- I thought the bipolar was an unnatural part of me. But it's not. That's just who I am, a very intense person who feels things deeply and thinks fast. 

The whole system needs to change. I think if only I was taught to live with specific symptoms. Like I have a fast brain. No doubt about it- it's just fast. They (medical community) wanted to slow it down and I downed pills for it. But I couldn't deal with a slower brain- that made me more crazy. But no one saw that. If only I were taught how to handle it going fast- taught how to organize my fast thoughts. I had to learn that stuff the hard way. I self-taught myself to handle my speech so its understandable not fast and jumping around topics. I may be thinking that fast but I've learned how to have appropriate conversations. 

When I was hospitalized- there were groups on lifestyle changes but overall they pushed pills. They made me believe that the little white pills could fix my brain. But that never happened. I continued at a frenetic pace, never satisfied with anything. I was constantly researching, convinced I could figure out where it all went wrong, where my faults were and how I could change it all. But what I was really doing was changing my body's natural state. I was taking myself from the natural to the unnatural. And I know I felt all of that and it changed me- changed me into someone ugly. 

The medical model taught me that there was this normal and I should strive to attain it. But normal was so subjective. I had to find out the hard way that the normal they all wanted me to be at was actually not my normal but me depressed. My normal had me thinking fast with much energy. My normal just happens to be a little higher than the average person. But I didn't recognize that and drove myself mad trying to find this "normal" that was untrue to myself. 

Now I embrace myself and who I am and make it work. Often I find myself in harmony with myself. That is wonderful feeling. I do not feel unnatural and that is a God send. So I find myself thinking of all those years that passed and I got worse and I just wish someone had said- hey your looking at this all wrong, maybe those meds are hurting more than helping. If they had just told me that not everything could be fixed, instead of sending me on this journey told normalcy that I was never going to attain. All those years I needed to learn how to live with the symptoms instead of searching for something to get rid of them completely. What I learned the most was how to take this med or that med to alleviate symptoms, but never how to live with them or how to harness them or turn them into a positive. 

I think the problem was this: I believed in a myth. I believed that by taking the pills I would be like everyone else- I would be normal. But what I failed to realize was that I was never going to be like everyone else, even with the pills. I failed to embrace myself- at least the true me. 

By not accepting the natural me- I was never going to get better. And I know that now. I had to accept the real me- which meant I would always run a little high and a little low. I would always have to control aspects of my behavior that were extreme. I was going to feel self destructive a lot of the time. I was going to ride a never ending roller coaster. 

Sure, if someone told me this five years ago, I would have probably reactive very negatively and been really angry, but then maybe gotten over it. Instead they said try this pill or that pill, it would reduce that symptom or hey take this and you'll feel normal. I was searching for something that did not exist. I was chasing fairy tales. It took me five years to grow up and see how it really was. 

I live with this demon inside of me. But if I am in harmony with myself, if I harness the energy just right, it can be something beautiful. And that is what they never tell you in the beginning.