Bored With Bipolar

You’d think that after almost 19 years of being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and 63 years of living with it, I’d have come to terms with it by now. And frankly I have, many times. But right now, and for the last few months, I’ve been at odds with my illness and it’s been anything but acceptance that I’m feeling. I’m feeling ripped apart by this disease that has so impaired my life that I have spent hours and days and weeks feeling like I should just kill myself. That I should just end it all and be done with it.

This where it gets Boring. I feel so totally boring in my depression. I’m not a fun guy these days. I don’t feel like laughing at funny things or enjoying the accomplishments I’ve had in my life. I feel like this is too much for me to handle and I just can’t keep doing it. I’ve talked with my psychiatrist and counselor about going into the hospital just for a change of venue for awhile to see if that would kick start me out of this state I’m in now. The Psych. even suggested things like ECT and Vagus Nerve stimulation, all of which scare the hell out of me.

But I need to do something. We also talked about anti-depressants. It’s been a few years since I tried one of them and maybe it’s time to try another one, tho so far I’ve failed on all of them and many have made me more ill than I was before I took them. So I don’t have much hope that they’ll fix things any but I have to keep trying. I’m working so hard on trying to change my attitude and perspective and focus on gratefulness and the abundance in my life. I have a good life and I know it, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference now. I just wanna be done with it all. This is so boring and is why I live a life that is just impossible. I so miss my hypomanias when I felt great and like I could take on the world. Sometimes I went too far with them but I’d take that any day over these crushing depressions I live with these days. A little up time would be nice…

But those times have ended pretty much due to taking an anti-psychotic for several years now. The Abilify cuts down on my hypomanias and keeps me on the low end of the spectrum. I don’t get to experience those times of intense creativity and joy and brilliance that accompany hypomanias. All I get to live with is the depression and how it eats away at my soul. I feel like I’m dying and that I’ve gotten into such a deep hole that I can’t even discern any way out of it. I wrote awhile ago about being stuck and that’s still how I feel.

I don’t have anything interesting to say here, which is why I titled it as I did. I’ll admit that being in touch with a depressed person is a boring thing to have to do. We’re just no fun and we’re a drag to be with. We had company over last night and it was all I could do to pretend that I was alright and could just seem to be OK even tho I’m not sure I was. I so wish I had a space in my life where it’s just OK to be depressed and alone and not impact others with my situation. But I’m in a relationship and that means I have to try to be OK for my partner at least as often as I can just to be fair. He has to put up with so much. I don’t understand why he bothers. I don’t think I’m worth it at all anymore.

I used to have a decent opinion of myself and felt like I had a handle on this Bipolar Disease. But I don’t feel that well at all anymore. If feels like I’ve got so much going on that it will be impossible to ever regain it. I feel so useless and like I have no reason to live anymore. I’m in deep despair and disillusionment. If it doesn’t break soon I really don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t kill myself because it just wouldn’t be fair to Louie and my few friends to do that to them. I do know better and that it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But I don’t really care. I’m too far gone. I had a good friend tell me that any one who tried to commit suicide is just a coward and it really felt bad since I’ve tried to kill myself before many years ago and have never felt bad about that. But now I do. I feel like other people will judge me for it and wouldn’t understand why I did it if I did. It’s all boring tho, isn’t it?

I don’t have any morsels of wisdom to share today. I need help badly and I don’t know where to get it. I’ve slipped so much in my self esteem and self perception that it feels like I’m a totally different person than I used to be. I saw my MD the other day and when I told him I was stuck in depression and that I was stuck in feeling pain and stuck in the knowledge that I’d be in this state for the rest of my life that he just shut down on me and it’s like he didn’t even care anymore. This may be my perspective and he’s fine with me but I dunno. I think he, like me, was bored with me being still upset that I have to live with taking all these damn drugs for the rest of my life just to stay alive. Not to thrive but just to be alive. It hardly seems worth it. It doesn’t in fact.

Anyway I guess I should stop now. I know some people have been worried about me in that I haven’t posted here in such a long time, and I doubt that this post will ease their minds, but at least now the truth is out there still and the angst I feel is clear. At least it’s the true experience of someone who has Bipolar Disorder and can’t control it at all at the moment. Oh I can fake it pretty well for an hour or two but it’s hard to be upbeat for long. I just wanna hide out and not see anyone at all or interact with the world at all. And I have people coming to visit me soon and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I definitely can’t be present with them for too long but I’ll try.

So enough whining and complaining and pissing and moaning. I told you at the start it’d be boring and it sure is isn’t it? I long so much for a change and it feels like I just can’t pull it off by myself and the help I have isn’t doing it. I’m open for something new to try and see if it’ll work. So far nothing is effective and that makes me feel despondent and discouraged. Maybe someday they’ll find a cure for this illness, but until then I’ll keep trying to stop being so boring and be more positive. But I have no faith that I can do it. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, eh?

Wishing you an interesting life,

Steve