Hello, I'm Manic

Over Christmas my OCD was driving crazy so we raised the Prozac. Unfortunately with bipolar patients there comes a risk of mania and here I am, back again.  Its so frustrating feeling like you are riding a fucking see saw all your life.  Right now im high but i know when it ends i have a bumpy road to the bottom. My bipolar disorder has a triad of symptoms so i can usually tell whats up. 

1. Irritability. Usually this only affects my parents and Justin but it also means I want to scream at everyone, even my friends.  Everything bothers me. Im more impatient and spend most of the time angry.  Some people say they get euphoric and feel great.  I will say that sometimes happens on the first day but it slowly morphs into anger. And I always know it's coming. 

2. I start work on a thousand projects- writing and crafting usually. Right now I am attempting to sell  my crafts, work on four books, read six books and be involved in a knitting group, three book clubs, a poetry group, a music group and a gaming group. And somehow that just doesn’t seem like enough.

3. Hypersexuality. It’s a delicate subject but after the enthusiastic crafts and projects it hits me completely distracting me from everything else. AI defines hypersexuality as “an intense, persistent, and uncontrollable focus on sexual fantasies,urges, and behaviors that cause significant stress or impairment in everyday life” Some people think being hypersexual might be fun like a constant party in your loins. Let me just say it’s a mild form of torture. I have to be hypersexual in all my day to day activities. Around all my guy friends. During a therapy session with my male therapist. Dinner with my parents. Obviously I’m in a relationship so that complicates the whole thing too.

Those are the things that tip me off so I can get help. Because if you don’t get help, things get dangerous. 

1. Not sleeping. When I stopped sleeping I didn’t tell anyone because I liked it. I liked my 3 am poetry. I felt like I had discovered an entirely different world. I texted people at 4 in the morning and they were either a) annoyed because who the hell was I? Usually we both forgot how we even knew each other b) curious and we’d talk to they’d pass out. I never would. When the skyline got light I transitioned to my chair and started writing poetry. During my last semester of college I found a different guy and would force them to stay up with me….at least until I finally collapsed and fell asleep. As you can imagine  my grades were at risk. I wasn’t there very long.

2. The hallucinations started in the beginning of  my sophomore year of college. I was put on an an antipsychotic but it wasn't strong enough and the voices kept breaking through.  Usually I’d hide in bathrooms because I felt protected there. Sometimes my friends had to walk me back to my dorm or sit on my bed and calm me down. “The voices are back” I cried once. “Yes, Leigh but so are ours. And ours are real” I wouldn’t have stayed so sane as long as I did if it hadn’t been for my friends who I valued above all else

3. The hallucinations evolved into intricate delusions. After being triggered by a heartbreaking fight with my best friend, I worried all my friends would leave me. I made a list of the friends the voices were “stealing” from me with my best friend number one and a roommate and another close friend next. When my friend told me he didn’t want to take sides between me and my best friend, I took that as a sign the voices were stealing him too. So I went off on him much to his surprise and alarm. I started screaming at him. That night my parents brought me home and checked me into a mental hospital but I don’t think things were ever the same.

This all culminated in a suicide attempt and a diagnosis as bipolar one. I’ve been hospitalized a handful but now I have a good therapist and a good psychiatrist and a good support team. Bipolar (even when it flares up like now) has nothing on me.