What's Up, Mamma?

Not everyone in the world, or even in my circle of friends and family, knows that I battle Bipolar Depression and anxiety. Well, now I guess that they do. It's not often diagnosed until someone is in their twenties or later because one must not only have a depression related episode but also a manic episode as well. And sometimes after the very first two it's still not caught right away or people tend to self medicate instead of seeking help. 

I was diagnosed in my early twenties. Honestly, in my case, it could have been diagnosed while I was still a teen. Why wasn't I diagnosed sooner? I self medicated. I drank ... a lot. I'm not proud of how much I used to drink nor my reasons for doing it but to be honest with y'all that's exactly what I did. It wasn't until I stopped drinking and went to seek help for my destructive behavior that I began to understand that it was all part of the same issues. I was put on medication for depression for the first time not related to post pregnancy related depression. I stayed on it for over a year and then, because I was feeling "better", I took myself off of them. Not a good idea ... EVER!

I was off of medication for the better part of a decade. Only getting back on it when dealing with post pregnancy depression and sometimes indulging in minimal drinking to "keep myself even" .... OK really stupid of me, I know. BUT, in the past year (and it's been a hard year) I went back to therapy for some professional help. I was crying all the time at literally everything. I wasn't sleeping for days, sometimes up to a week, at a time. I was so anxious that my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was making itself known very clearly. In the last decade I handed back my drivers license because I'm too anxious to drive and had to take a Xanax just to drive to the store, which is not a good idea by the way. I was becoming more and more a homebody where I would spend weeks at a time not leaving the house because I was too anxious to deal with people that I didn't know. I was letting my disorders win.

So, earlier this year I walked into a mental health clinic for the first time in around a decade. I sat down with my new therapist and explained what I was going through, my previous diagnosis, and what I'd been doing for the last decade. I was nervous, I don't like new people and new situations, and I felt embarrassed. It went surprisingly well. Within a month I'd seen my new doctor who immediately put me on some mood medication to get me to some kind of level. It took a couple of months to find the right pick and dosages. I still go see my therapist just about every other week and talk through what's going on in my life and how I'm dealing with it or not dealing with it. 

Sometimes I'm doing fine and sometimes I'm not. But, the disorders that I battle daily aren't easy to see from the outside. My mother had issues figuring out that I battle them and she's a registered nurse. Not everyone out there would know right away what I'm dealing with and that can be a good thing. 

I'm not writing this for sympathy but simply to let others know that some of us who look fine on the outside, who may act fine in a public setting because we've learned to hide our problems, and have very few symptoms that one would see at a glance ... just because we look "normal" doesn't mean that we're not fighting our own personal demons inside. 

Be kind to your fellow human beings because unless you've lived their life you can't know what one harsh word might do to them.

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