This bipolar life

[Kazzl]

Are your moods are like an elevator with no control buttons? Mine are.

Ground floor ... I feel normal, content, just quietly getting on with ordinary, everyday life, loving my family and friends. This is as it should be. And maybe there's nothing wrong with me after all. Live.

Going up, top floor. Oh look! There's a shiny thing! I want to sing! Let's go buy stuff! Let's have a big party and invite the world! What could possibly go wrong! Woooooo hoooooooo! Play.

Going up (a different day) top floor. What do you mean you don't agree with me! I'm right! Why don't you think like me? Keep up! How can you be so illogical? I'll f-ing shred you if you don't do what I want! Rage.

Going down, lower ground floor. Flat, listless, can't be bothered. Can still function but it's a drag. Cope

Going down, basement. I'm never getting out of bed again. I'm useless, worthless. Total idiot, how could I ever imagine I could do anything, nothing ever goes right because I'm wrong. I'm a burden to everyone. Hide.

Welcome to my bipolar world. It's always been my world, but it's only recently I've seen it for what it is. About 15 years ago I was diagnosed with clinical depression during one of my 'basement' times. I had a lot of lower ground floor times too, on and off, and I kept out of the basement (so I thought) with alcohol. Until that took me into the blackest ever basement with only one obvious way out. Having survived doing something very dangerous I realised I had to stop drinking or I really would die.

I never took much notice of the playful times or the anger, that was just me, I was fun sometimes, and sometimes I was a devastating bitch. Ha! Deal with it people!

Well, yes, but in time the elevator started going up and down too quickly and, as I became more aware and more knowledgeable about mental health I realised this wasn't good. Doctor. Diagnosis. Bipolar 2. Lithium.

So, I've started this thread in the hope that other bipolar folks will join me, to share experiences and strategies. In my 'beginners' understanding, we are different from other fellow travellers of the back dog. While we experience depression as many others on this site do, the hypomanic or manic ups and, for some the rapid cycling that can happen, are experiences unto themselves.

I want to learn more, and I want to share with others. I hope my fellow elevators will join me here.
BTW, it's a ground floor day in my head today! Yay!

Love

Kaz

[Airies]

Yes read Carries book. Am a fan of biographies and autobiographies when I knuckle down and read at length. Leisa not a fan of rap, find Kanye West just really weird, makes the rest of us bipolars look normal.
I’m finding a cup of chai helps me wind down. Been watching the Olympics, fascinating watching elite sports.

Wringer I had a sore arm for a few days.My wife went to bed with Panadol and that helped.

[quirkywords]

Wringer I was tired for a week or two after my booster but then again could just be old age.

I am not good at rhyming,Airies . When I was a teenager an wrote poetry in blank verse my mum dud not like it as it didn’t rhyme.

[white knight]

Hi Quirky,

Most of my 250 poems do rhyme, a few don't but of the latter they must still make an impact.

INK SPOT


To focus on an ink spot

So damn irrelevant

Missing the value of what

Passes me by

I straighten myself

As if I’ve won

Against the fool

Move my eyes from that ink spot

I no longer focus on….

TonyWK

[white knight]

But rhyming is better

SOCIETY OF SAND

I’m sitting in a desert
Upon sand of friend and foe
Can’t find a piece of turf
Where I cannot stand on toes

I collect a handful of grain
Then watch as it escapes
Just like some friendships
A barren temporary landscape

I create my own oasis
By weeping on a weed
But the sand around me laughs
Cause it doesn’t have a need


Till lately it be the friends
That helped me walk the land
They holding me up under my feet
-supportive grains of sand

I begin to sink so slowly
As they gather my precious hide
The quick sand laughing so loud
A kind man says goodbye

And as I become one of ‘them’
My heart now granuled and dry
I try to weep to water the weed
But sand has no means to cry

Damn it! I struggle so
Be damned if I be like them
I crawl out of the society of sand
To remain the man I am…

TonyWK

[Leisa68]

By gees Tony those poems are good. I wish I had an artistic flair, but not this little black duck. However, I did attend a meeting with my club's art circle today and put my hand up to organize a trip to Margaret Olley's museum in May. I've never seen it, but I hear it's wonderful. The organizing will be interesting given my fluctuating moods. We might end up somewhere entirely different!

It's hot here again today, I prefer Winter as you can rug up of course. I hate sweating more than anything. Tomorrow will be good as it's shopping day here. I love to shop!

Hope you all have a good day as well

Leisa

[quirkywords]

Tony

Thanks for sharing your poems. They are very expressive.
My poetry was more of an emotional diary written in my teens and twenties when

I was unlucky in relationship so poems were sad and full of self pity.

Write a few poems after the fires but that was after about 35 years since last poem.

I read a book about Margaret Olley a fascinating painter.

I once read that a Poetry group had thousands of members and nearly 50% had bipolar.

[wringer]

I was not a member of that aforementioned Poetry group but I do have bipolar!!

My mood is a bit whiny today and I don't even care about the weather. My only true friend is the type who says yes when she means No and sugar coats everything, on days like today I sort of hate her. I just want to level out and feel better. Most of the time I am easy going and then that switch in my head gets flicked and intensity rules.

I am really sorry to be dumping. bye

[Airies]

Wringer, this is the place to dump, write, lean on one another, do poetry as we all get one another. I can count my friends on one hand even less. I don’t care . I used to go to great lengths keeping people happy, not now.
Quirky that’s a fascinating statistic. People so talented and yet struggling, akin to actors, authors and people like us. I was going to say normal folk but alas we are not .

[white knight]

Thanks everyone for your appreciation.

Wringer wrote "Most of the time I am easy going and then that switch in my head gets flicked and intensity rules." Being bipolar like all mental illnesses, there is a certain level of individual experiences that make us unique. However, when it comes to acceptance of our illness, that road is uniform imo. My theory is (I dont read up much, my knowledge is from experience) that it requires a blend of motivation, patience, positivity, pace, the right partner, eliminating toxic people from our lives, hobbies, sports and acceptance....to survive and survive with relative happiness. The feelings you are expressing in your post to read by a person like myself, merely reminds me how I used to be 20 or so years ago. It was a constant battle. Well, as you get older it does become less of a challenge because you'll accept the ups and down as part of the weekly ritual. You might even accept it so much that you wont know what you'd do without your bipolar...eg I'd be lost without my poetry.

TonyWK

[quirkywords]

Wringer

This is the thread for dumping or sharing as I call it.

Feel free to write how you feel here.

we are listening to you and are supportive.

I know that switch in my head and it change quickly when I find myself reacting in an exaggerated way and wonder why I was so upset over nothing.