Hot Crazy (Hot+Crazy)

I’m talking about going crazy and it’s going to sound like I’m doing donuts in a parking lot, which seems fitting. It seems fitting because it sounds cool. I always thought being crazy was cool.

Being crazy does not = going crazy.

Going crazy does not feel very cool. I determined that being crazy was cool before it actually happened to me. Maybe I willed this experience into existence, cos we all know how badly I wanted to be cool. Now I’m doing donuts in a parking lot by talking about it, and I can’t tell if it looks cool from the sidelines.

Doing donuts always looks cool, but like most things, it’s cooler if you’re good at it. Am I implying there’s a way you can be good at being crazy?

I’m bad at math, but math isn’t cool. Math is helpful, and honest, and maybe if I use math I will be able to understand being crazy. It’s difficult to understand using just words. I think that is why crazy people make moving art. I was going to say: I feel like this has been done before. I have understood crazy best when I watch a performance or look at an art piece. Crazy with words is winding. Like the starry night sky is winding. That guy was offit, too.

In middle-school, there was an older girl I admired who always got called “Crazy”. (There were many older girls I admired, but for the sake of my point, we’re honing in on this one). This girl had super-long blonde hair. It was fine, and hair like that kind of floats when you twirl around. I always notice hair like that, because mine is not like that at all, though I like to twirl around. When used to describe her, the word crazy meant endearing. There was a different older girl who also got called “crazy”. She went to my middle school, she bullied the fuck out of me (bad) and she had thick blonde hair that she crimped by sleeping in fishtail braids. I knew this about her because my school was small. I didn’t know anything about the other blonde girl, because she went to a small school in the town over. Their friend-groups overlapped, because they were both cool girls in cool groups. The mean blonde got called crazy in the same way that actually meant “endearing”. But these girls were different. Still, they shared the same adjective: crazy. That was interesting to me. What do these two have in common, that makes them so endearing? Besides the fact that they are blonde? Naturally, I went to ask.fm to find out. I asked several people, anonymously: “why do people call your friend [redacted] crazy?” and “what do people mean when they call you crazy?” This was one of the more autistic things I did in middle school. Despite ask.fm being anonymous, I did get found out. Yes, everyone thought it was really fucking weird that I asked upwards of 10 people about [redacted] being called crazy. My friends who went to the same small school as this girl were like: what the actual fuck lol. Why would you ask so many people about [redacted]? I kind of remember phrasing my questions in the oddly specific way I am known to talk. Did that give me away? They didn’t even know me, so how would they know? I do remember that my little anonymous question blunder didn’t make me “crazy”, it made me “weird”. I still think it’s unfortunate that my question never got answered.

Crazy=good. Weird=bad.

?+?=Crazy

Me + ? = Weird

There are still question marks in my math, not cos I suck at math, but because no one communicates effectively, nor do they answer my questions.

Funny enough, I answered my own question

Me + The Way I Always Was = Weird + Uppers + Underlying Mental Illness = Crazy

? + ? = Crazy + ? = Psych Ward Crazy

?+? =The Way I Always Was

This story that I chose to lead with is perhaps one of the most mortifying memories I have from my adolescence, perhaps even more embarrassing than all of my manic episodes. But it helps the reader to understand my way of thinking, and to understand the way I always was. You probably solved for ? in my equation above, but I still don’t know.

I don’t like taking things at face value. I like to think about things, because I am an overthinker. If prompted to think of crazy middle schoolers, one may conjure up a facebook digital album from 2012, a photo of middle-school girls trying to look cute, captioned “my crazyyyyy bestie<333”, and it’s just two girls standing in front of a habachi restaurant. That is probably along the lines of what kind of Crazy we’re considering here. But I see that image in middle school and I’m like: did they do something bad at habatchi? Did they do something funny? Did they steal the peepee boy bottle? What was so crazy about this seemingly normal girl? I am not that kind of crazy, I’m weird, as I was told.

Actually, guys, I am crazy. I am psych ward crazy. Is that hard for you to understand? Because I’m hot? Or is that normal for some equations?

? + Hot = Crazy

? + Crazy + Hot = Psych Ward Crazy

I often think of Hot as a permission slip. Is there a math rule for that? I suck at math. But somehow I solved the equation, though I don’t know how. I can’t try to figure out how I became endearing crazy without just summing it up to being Hot + [whatever makes crazy]

I can’t solve it, because that kind of cocky attitude + Navel Gazing would make me go manic, probably, which is something I’d like to avoid. It might be healthy to look at myself as endearing-crazy like those girls I looked up to in middle-school, but I’m more familiar with loathing myself and being confused, so I’ll probably just allow the equation to sit unsolved for awhile longer. I don’t need to understand myself completely, because I change often. I swing like a pendulum, actually. Between 2 poles. Gee.

Now that I got that under my belt, I finally get to be called crazy (maybe weird too) and I will tell you exactly what kind of crazy I am. If any one is curious, I will answer remaining questions. I think it is the best way to destigmatize mental illness, to offer potential solutions to ?+?=?

First, before you can hear any juicy tea about my crazy escapades, I will do a bit of self-righteous philosophizing about bipolar disorder, and the linguistics around it. Before you get to the juice you must milk the cow (what the fuck).

I don’t merely have bipolar. I AM Bipolar. To have is to possess. I do not possess bipolar, because if I did, I would give it away…….

Now that I’ve made my little joke, I am going to be dense for a second. For the purpose of getting to another point, but also working through the linguistics (Being/Understanding). So: Bipolar is recognized in behaviors that come from being. Beings express. Beings exist. I’m not sitting around being bipolar, I am bipolar, being whatever way I am at that moment. You cannot “be” bipolar, can you? Because it isn’t a constant, is it? But it IS a constant, because while you may not be symptomatic (pendulum in one direction) you still are a pendulum, not a situated, fixed thing. You can’t opt in or out of whether you have the inclination or likelihood to swing to either pole. I can be more or less bipolar at times. But I am not constantly being bipolar. I have manic days, depressed days, and longer periods of both or either. I also have regular days. This inclination to be manic or depressive against my will makes me bipolar. It’s something I am.

I also think understanding this concept of being bipolar allows me to accept myself more. I don’t want to distance from something that is inherent to me, only for the sake of semantics and avoiding social shame. Distancing myself from something that I am, inherently, (where intention has little to no effect) makes me fckng hate myself. It makes me exhausted, and it makes me sad.

Shame + Distance=Rejection.

I can’t reject myself for the sake of being accepted by others. Others don’t always accept me anyways, so that means getting rejected twice. It’s too painful even once. I act like it’s really painful when a guy does it, meanwhile I live with myself 24/7.

I spend 1/3 of time with myself rejecting myself. The other 1/3 I like myself. The other 1/3 I am not paying attention.

I don’t need to like myself, but I need to have enough compassion to allow myself to simply be. I’d really like to stop hyper-analyzing my every thought, mood, and action.

It is not easy to be bipolar, on a macro level. This is because of stigma, and history, and other things I’m sure. I believe this will change soon. Maybe more little girls will be obsessed with figuring out crazy, and they’ll solve for ? and there will be many relatable answers.

I believe that people sharing their experiences living conventional lives with bipolar, or simply sharing their diagnosis and living their lives, no stories involved, is enough to solve for ?

Some really successful Doctor + ? = Crazy

And it’s like: oh, I didn’t know really successful doctors could be crazy. That’s my doctor actually, and he’s a great guy. I guess crazy isn’t so bad!

There would be many variations of this example, because 1 in every 40 people is bipolar. It is not uncommon, it just feels that way, cos people stay quiet. No one seems to want to identify with their struggles, which I get. They don’t want people to know that they = crazy, or they don’t want to share Them + ? that got them to = crazy. I get that, privacy is also nice. Not everyone wants to be understood by everyone. I don’t mind identifying with my struggles. I am pretty dynamic, and not to boast, but many things go right and wrong simultaneously for me, so I don’t really have to harp on any one thing for too long. Also, It would have been helpful for me, when I was first diagnosed 8 years ago, to read about some silly thotty 26-year-old girl, living in NYC, having a good time, holding a stable “good” job, dating, maintaining old friendships, making new ones, feeling loved, blah blah the normal stuff, whatever. I didn’t read anything of that kind, cos I couldn’t find anything like that. I dug around quite a bit on the internet looking for it.

There are a few things that make being bipolar easier, on a micro level. For me: effective and honest communication, an understanding of myself, consistency with medication (Lithium), supportive relationships, professional care, and Being Hot. Yes, I’m so sorry to share, the fact that I am conventionally attractive has also made it a lot easier to be bipolar. Perhaps I also got hotter, post-diagnosis, to prove myself. I did a lot of self-imposed leveling up, to combat the perceived (and real) stigma I experienced. I will get into that.

Making timelines about my bipolar history has made it easier for me to understand my own experience with bipolar (triggers, indicators, inclinations).

In addition to doing donuts talking in abstractions and math equations, I am also going to share my bipolar-timeline. I will share it in the factual way that it happened, and as I have understood it. I just want to get a few things out of the way first, which is what I’m doing.

So to start: Being hot has gifted me the privilege of the halo-effect. You’d think something like the halo-effect has imposed meaning on looks that don’t belong. But it is real apparently, and it’s easy for me to chalk up my understanding of everything relative to “being hot”. They don’t like me? It’s because I’m hot. I got away with acting like a psycho-drunk-bitch? Obvious explanation: I’m hot. Two opposing things can exist at once, which I am learning through means of being hot.

Hot + Bipolar=?

Well you’d have to look at Not Hot + Regular Brain to understand the social parameters and limitations here. You’d be surprised how helpful math can be!

Similarly,

Hot + Unlikable= ?

Look at hot + likable, plain + likeable and plain + unlikable for a better understanding.

Hot + Lovable, and Kind, and funny = [Insert name of person you idolize]

The above is the type of person I always feel inclined to investigate. One, I want to figure something out about one of the ? variables, and add that to my equation, hoping I become more of whatever = that I seem to like

I also investigate to look for a clue that brings a perfect person down to my level, in an effort to not be jealous. I must admit that some people are just Born Better. Not all hot people have fatal flaws, and I don’t need to conjure one up to make my existence less pitiful. We are entirely different equations, even if we share variables.

As it pertains to me, in this article, I’d like to eventually understand myself as

Desirable Lovable person + Bipolar + Hot

I fucking hate math.

Fact: I have had a bipolar diagnosis for about 8 years. I have been hospitalized 3X for mania. I take Lithium 400 mg 2X daily. Sometimes I take 3X a day when I feel a little manic, don’t tell my psychiatrist.

I am completely OK with existing in the world claiming this diagnosis. I’m OK that strangers or peripheral people know.

It is in existing with myself and in my relationships with my friends and family, where the bipolar becomes scary and less OK. I am such a distant version of myself when I am manic, but they interact with her and she looks just like me. Is she malicious? No. Emotional? Yes. Intense? Yes. She gets irritated when people don’t seem to understand her.

In the past, my relationships with my friends and family were my #1 priority, ahead of myself. They validated me. And I just literally hated being alone, for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been a downstairs-in-the-living room kid, hanging out with the family, unusual if I coop up in my room for too long type. I kind-of felt like it was my responsibility to be this way. As I’ve gotten older (and sober) I have actually started to love being alone. Maybe even more so than being with people. I don’t feel responsible to anyone but myself.

I don’t really like exerting energy on understanding people lately, or getting them to understand me. It isn’t that fun right now. It used to be. It may be again. Or maybe I’ve changed, and I just like being alone now. I only make note of this because when I first got diagnosed bipolar, I made a big show of my relationships. I saw them as all of the people who were still willing to be around me, despite my outburst, and my diagnosis. I wanted there to be a bandwagon thing, one collective accepted me back, so you all should. I loved being seen in groups, I loved when people posted with me on social media. Yes: show them you are not embarrassed to be seen with the girl who embarassed herself. I posted more instagrams with my friends, rarely posted solo shots, god forbid I was alone, and had no support, and got rejected because of my episodes. I had always commemorated everything online, prior to my first-ever manic-episode, but now I had a certain careful intentionality around it. I wasn’t only trying to show people I was hot and cool. Now I was trying to show people I belonged, and other people felt I belonged, please accept me back into society after my bad crazy flare up.

Admittedly, being with myself as a bipolar person is a challenge. It made me hate thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, those things are inherent to being human. But with me, it takes more work. To have a thought or emotion is also to decide if I’m allowed to. I’m not experiencing thoughts and emotions as they come, ever. I’m bipolar girl. I’m tweaker bitch. So I have to think things like: Am I Manic happy or normal happy? Am I context sad or getting-depressed-sad? This happens all day every day. I am trying to be responsible and a Good Bipolar, by doing this. I am trying to not get in trouble. I feel like I am both puppy and trainer. Kicked puppy, because how was I supposed to know? I was new to Bipolar back then, and now I am getting the hang of it by overthinking my every thought and action, all day every day. It is my responsibility to do this, isn’t it?

If it sounds exhausting, then good, because it is. I didn’t sign up for this. I am a victim of it. I don’t like playing victim, but bipolar has made me an overworked under dog. I spend so much time keeping tabs on where I sit in proximity to the Bad Manic/Depressive version of myself. It sucks, cos it isn’t even a resume builder. Hopefully there will be a future where I don’t need to be so strict with myself, I don’t always need to use these hard-skills. But for now I am strict, so I don’t embarrass myself or my family, against my will.

If this sounds sad, it is. It’s very sad. And I don’t feel like talking too much about it up front, cos I haven’t quite figured that part out. I need a different way of living with Bipolar, because this is a very treading-water solution. I aim to get to a place where I accept myself over and over. Not just sometimes, in certain lighting. It sounds really nice to take my own side, and have my own back, no matter what, in all conditions. I might as well, I’m my siamese twin, I’m not going anywhere.

There are a lot of bipolar-coded things about me that I quite like, actually.

I don’t think about them often, because I don’t want to go manic over it.

positive self talk + ? = mania

I already told you several facts, and I will tell you many more facts. I tell facts so that I can be reliable and have freedom to have my frenzied, tangential little reactions to these facts. When telling information, I choose to be honest and candid. For one, this makes me trustworthy. As a bipolar person, I need to be extremely trustworthy. I always liked telling the truth, making the bipolar experience very fucking annoying to me. I hate the term “crazy” to denounce or discredit. Fuck you. Use the term “crazy” for free-spiritedness or something. Crazy people are more than capable of telling the truth. Every time I have been manic I try to tell my whole truth. The error is in the communication.

I do think there is power in how you choose to communicate having bipolar. I don’t tell people “I have bipolar” because that sounds like an STD that you can pass on. When I tell people I’m bipolar, I usually try to make it sound cool and sexy (preclosing the sell) and potentially contracting a disease does not seem very chill. Also, to have and to give….I wouldn’t give bipolar to my worst enemies. They are not strong enough to handle it. And they’re not very brilliant (my enemies) which is something I believe you need to be, in order to be bipolar. We already decided earlier that Bipolar is something that I am. So when letting someone know, I say “I am Bipolar”. I have gotten autocorrect by people in the comment section on this. Please: I am fine with this.

I am okay with owning Bipolar, because when it’s not flaring up and making a fucking mess of everything that is structured in my life, it’s a quite-alright trait. Good, even. Genius, even. But you didn’t hear that from me, because I’m not manic, and
I don’t want to fuel your mania. Just be aware, people have been saying that. Many of the greats will admit they are bipolar. It seems like the cemented-bipolar-greats were artistic and creative, and sometimes they made Bad Art, but everyone still calls them great now that they’re dead. Some of Picasso’s paintings are lowkey shite. But he allowed himself to express himself. I wonder if he admitted he was crazy offit.

Many won’t [admit they’re crazy offit], cos they’re shy, or they’re nervous, or embarrassed, or it would make life harder to admit to being bipolar than to just deal with it silently. No judgement on someone’s claim-status. I selfishly just want to know how crazy everyone is.

I think it is empowering, informative, and helpful to admit to having bipolar, in an entirely individualistic way. I think it is important to understand yourself. Not only is it empowering, but it is more productive this way. There’s the positive spin that often gets tacked on with bipolar: madness and genius and all. No one says: oh wow, there are actually great parts about you having cancer. There’s a touch of brilliance in your cancer. No, because that would be an absurd thing to say. Plus, bipolar isn’t literally killing you. It’s just fucking annoying to deal with, and kind of embarrassing.

Maybe in a completely different planet with a different society, bipolar would be easy to have. But here on earth, its not. Neither is cancer. But no one makes fun of cancer patients for their behavioral patients. But like I said, they’re different. Sometimes I wonder if Bipolar is an illness at all. Maybe it’s just a way of being.

But here I am, gobbling down my lithiums every morning because I’m scared to be manic. If I’m taking medicine, and it’s working, then it definitely is a disease. Right?

I am taking a bit of a winding road to get to my bipolar timeline, doing donuts in a parking lot on my way there. Despite my cocky attitude about claiming my bipolar status, getting my diagnosis and learning how to function decently was traumatic. In fact, these were possibly some of the worst times of my fucking life, and now somehow I’m looping in cancer to procrastinate reliving it. Geeee. It’s important I relive it thoroughly and accurately each time I talk about it, so that I am a reliable narrator (very important). I am just gonna let words come out and not really over-think the sounding good or making sense part. Like, I will allow myself to interrupt myself and procrastinate saying things, cos this is a Hard Topic. Does it need to be?

I pretty much kept all my current friends when I started having episodes. Not much changed, except a truly insane few weeks, every few years. My personality has always been full of outbursts. Outbursts of joy, surprise, emotion, ideas, and goofiness. I am just a very reactive person. So the manic episode was like a prolonged, scary, unfamiliar outburst. In this case, I was going on passionate tirades, rattling off an endless stream of ideas about many *unrelated things, never wrapping anything up but never shutting up, either. I was getting really into some purpose-driven mission (made up), making a mess of my bedroom, spending lots of monies on items for my projects that I couldn’t really find the attnetion to finish. I think if I stuck pins in everything I was thinking, it would be fun to revisit on a rainy day, or when I’m bored, as a real project. But nothing was real cos it was all in my head. Or spread around the floor on canvases, on my camera roll, on social media. I loved art when I was manic. I always loved art, but especially then. So much so that I was traumatized by it (kicked puppy moment). My parents kindly said I regress into a child when I’m manic, and my friends kind-of agreed. It’s the distractibility, the nonsense ideas, the vulnerability and excitement and playpretend lala land. A child who maybe thinks they are living in the matrix, or interstellar, or both, and they’ve solved everything and made all these paralells, and they’re a pop star time traveler. That’s the hardest thing to grapple with here. Like, the bipolar is still me, but when the mania comes in, my brain is like a fucked up glitching server. Or like its flicking rapidly between 50 channels, and all the actors just realized they’re on TV. It’s a lot.

Mind you, I think if the comms were a little better on my end during a manic episode, we’d be having some real breakthroughs. But by the time I’m flatline center of the pendulum me, I can barely remember the shit I was on about.

Now that I’ve got 1, 2, 3…4? episodes under my belt, we’re all pretty aware of the step-by-step here. As I mentioned, I’ve been taking notes. I want to understand myself. At first, as to not embarrass myself, or harm the collective bipolar reputation. I want to be a good bipolar as much as I want bipolar to not-be-that-bad. Now I’m getting a little selfish and I’m like, how can I master this? Can I shift my life around the depression and the mania to be mega-productive-bipolar-overlord? Probably, yes. But I spent much of the past few years hyper-focusing on the stigma. Mostly, how I can talk about bipolar with my friends, family, and wider community in a way that desensitizes it? And I’m like: oh yeah. I can just do a good job at things. That’ll show them.

So yes, admittedly, being hot doesn’t solve being fucking crazy. I have to put some effort in, to behave conventionally, and fit in.

Being attractive has not made it easier for my family to accept my bipolar diagnosis. Being accomplished in a conventional way has made it easier for my family to accept my diagnosis (college degree, honors graduate, employment, pretty decent resume). If something could be tracked, on paper, I was going to try to exceed the average, to the best of my ability. I’m not a savant, I only ever achieved slightly-above average accolades, but it did make my parents proud. They like telling their friends what a good job I’m doing. They don’t like telling their friends I’m bipolar. They don’t like telling themselves I’m bipolar. My diagnosis is either weaponized or illegitimate. My episodes are like when your puppy isn’t house trained yet, and it shits on the carpet, and you push its face near to poop so it doesn’t do it again. As much as my parent doesn’t like to admit I have bipolar (that is another story, one that I don’t think belongs in this context) I do feel powerful for having a diagnosis. I see it as a way to better understand myself. To me, a diagnosis is an opportunity. There are a lot of undiagnosed crazy people.

What a grass-roots movement we have here.

Being a good friend and a pleasant person has made it easier to be accepted for being bipolar. On both ends, this isn’t very hard, it’s just being who I am (weird brag, no?). This is where I get stressed though. Being looked at is one thing. Engaging is another. Notions of belonging, or deserving belonging come into play. I don’t want to get too abstract with this, though. Like: I belong at this restaurant, in this country club. I’m not a member, and I can’t afford the meal, but I look the part, so no one would guess. How I feel about that interally is another thing. Then, to say: I am a member at this country club, but I had a total tweaker bitch meltdown and screwed half of these people’s husbands, so while I technically belong, I won’t be showing face there any time soon. None of this happened to me btw. My family aren’t the country-club type people. Veeeery Humble people. No golf club or beach club either. #humble

There are many privileges I have that make it difficult to be bipolar. Despite having a humble no-club-affiliation-family, I do belong to a Family concerned with status, class, education, and earning. They have club-belonging friends, and look like they could belong. If they wanted to belong, they could, but for whatever reason, they don’t. I’ll probably talk about this in the future, cos I love that kind of thing (meaning themes of class, identity, and belonging).

Social circles at private institutions beg for members to build on prestige and status. The diversity that is offered is curated for means to an end. Everything belongs in its place and acts a role. It is not necessary to have understanding of things, in order to have them lined up perfectly. Only enough to understand what is and is not predictable. What will keep things in line, perfectly.

My type of small-town upper-middle-class Tristate Area family does not beg for bipolar daughter. Do we distance from the disease, or from the person? My mother says I am not bipolar. Then I claim claim claim, bipolar claim, online. My mother says: are you manic right now? There is yelling and distance.

Kelley + Bipolar claim = not family member

Kelley + weird = manic?

Wasn’t Kelley always weird, even before bipolar?

Being is not always belonging. And To Be isn’t to be understood as you are. That takes effective communication, and understanding of onself.

The internet decided they liked me, despite the bipolar claim. So did my mom. Still, no bipolar claim from her, for me. I was not bipolar; it was drug induced. Sometimes when she’s angry she says I am a psych-ward psycho. Psych ward psycho does not = bipolar, I guess. Psych ward psycho still = family member. It’s very confusing math. I’m so bad at math.

(The thought of acceptance and ownership has not yet occurred to everyone. Or it has, but it is the more difficult path. It involves changes in the macro and micro. Your neighbor doesn’t want to be near a psych ward psycho, they have not done any math on the subject. To claim or change bipolar behaviors on an individual basis negates the need to elevate change/awareness/perspective to a broader group. Stop acting fucking crazy, basically. And don’t bring it up. And don’t do it again. I know it’s against your will, it’s annoying to me. Great. I was called annoying until I was about 21 years old. Everyone dealt with it.)

I think our society has not given much thought, attention, or grace to the nuance of bipolar. The priveledges I am allotted are very conditional, and concerned with Being more than Understanding. Like, I’m being hot and fun. There is no understanding that I am literally so so mentally ill.

Hot + Rich + Fun = sorority bid

That’s the funny thing with sororities. When they find out you have other variables, besides the ones outlined in the membership requirements, they’re confused. You’re still a member, but you don’t quite belong. Like an edge was added, now the peg doesn’t quite fit in the hole. Like you met me for four days and looked at my instagram. What did you expect?

So now we’re onto sororities, before we even get to timelines.

The other funny thing with my sorority, and the whole bipolar issue, is it actually helped me assimilate back into social life and reaffirmed my status of belonging to everyone else on campus. Not that anyone outside of my 3 close friends really said anything about my mental breakdown Sophomore year, or junior year for that matter. That’s not true actually, my sorority sisters said a lot of nasty things behind my back, #sisterhood. But I knew there was an image my sorority wanted to project. So when I had a complete bipolar-diagnosis ego-death identity-crisis, I thought long and hard about that image. Just kidding, it was very superficial, and it didn’t take me long to do that simple math. The solutions and variables became a guideline on how I needed to act upon my return to campus, post-episode. I got more curated, honest to god, my style got better. I was method acting normal Kappa sister. The KKG gods graced me, or took pity on me, or didn’t want me ruining Kappa’s legacy, cos it pretty much worked, in the way gaslighting typically does.

If you are bipolar, take solace is knowing that every new-person I have ever relayed this information to does not GAF about my diagnosis. Or at least they act like they don’t to my face, and if they had a problem with it, I’ll never know because I never see them, talk to them, or think about them again. When they do opt-in, I always assume why. Either they aren’t close enough to me where my episodes will really have any effect on them, or they are trying to have sex with me. Or! Or..or..or…. Maybe they think my other-parts (I always forget I have other parts) outweigh my bipolar diagnosis. What a concept.

For baby-puppy bipolar girls worried about dating casually, please rest assured that a handful of guys have dated me with both feet in the water, knowing I’m offit. They learn it early on because I tell then fairly quickly (it’s important for me to do this, a preference). I’ll explain later, because people have inquired about how I deliver this kind of information. Girls have befriended me, random roommates have opted to live with me. The whole Bit that you worry about, has not been worrisome for me. I don’t think that this is because I’m Hot. People don’t really choose roommates based on hotness. I think it’s because I’m good at the delivery, honestly. And I think that people are generally more understanding and less judgmental than I was raised to believe. Who knows! I’ll talk more on the details of my delivery later.

Now it’s timeline-time. I have a lot of crazy-lore and silly stories that aren’t integral. So I probably will leave out 40% of it, and revisit as one-offs in later posts. I am going to deliver the information with some sense of structure: timing, treatment, maybe a social anecdote.

First Episode: Manic, December 2017, Villanova

I was diagnosed Bipolar 1 in December 2017, when I was a first-semester sophomore at Villanova. The diagnosis came after my behavior flew quickly from hypomanic (partying on speed) to manic (partying on speed, but she’s not making much sense) to psychotic (no more partying, speed 10X, why is she talking about aliens, nothing is making sense). This was my first time doing uppers. My personality never really needed uppers.

I was truly off my shit. Rapid ideas, scaring friends, going on missions around campus in the middle of the night. The aliens were communicating with me. The end of days were coming, I was preparing (this makes sense, my mom is a Doomsday prepper). So, my dad came and got me, because normal girls don’t prep for the end of days at 2 AM in the campus graveyard. I ran away from him, cos I’m fast. I was scaring the shit out of everyone.

Treatment: I was hospitalized for about a week and a half at the UPenn Psych Ward. I missed the beholden Atlantic City Frat Formal I was invited to, and got discharged with a Risperidone prescription, braids, and a therapist.

I didn’t stay on Risperidone because it was too heavy for me, and it made me too heavy. I was a catatonic zombie. Too much effort to respond or react to anything. Mostly blinking. I also didn’t stay with therapist. My mom isn’t a fan of therapy. I kept the braids for a few weeks. I thought I looked very cool.

My behavior in the ward was between frolicking and misbehaving. I was generally-well-liked. I was giving all of my stuff away. I did my writing and artwork and twirling and play-pretened make believe. I screamed at my parents on the phone to get me the fuck out of there. and then forgot they existed. I was very confused about time and space. I saw a guy get wrestled by the big ass Tech. He was taken down and put in solitary confinement. That looked fun to me, so I did the same shit, and the tech couldn’t get me, cos I would wiggle from his clutches. I felt like a super spy. I would often play super-spy with myself during this episode, and the following episodes. I knew I was playing, but part of me wanted to truly be a super spy. I was never so out of touch with reality that I thought I was employed as a spy, but I did think that I was receiving Special Information from somewhere, and that I had a Personal Mission. Also, I did not shut the fuck up about the formal and my formal date for the entire week and a half I was there. It was the most important thing. Every time I’ve been manic, I form strong attachments to whatever guy I’m talking to at that time.

Second Episode: Major Depressive, Spring 2018, Villanova/NJ

I got back to campus. Walking through the dorm hallway on my first day back was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Lots of greedy eyes, looking for details to report. It was awful. I had to walk with my chin up, eyes ahead, quick well-timed glances, soft smiles. Normal appearance, nothing to report. Please forget that anything weird happened, I’m not acting weird right now.

I vowed to be sober for a few months, to heal my fucked up electrocuted brain. This was a huge sacrifice, because I’m an alcoholic.

I went out sober to all of my sorority mixers. This is the semester at Villanova where the freshman rush, and the sophomores get their sorority-littles. I needed a cool little.

No one really brought up the episode to my face. They talked about it a lot behind my back. Somehow I wound up with a “good” little. I think this happened by just pretending like I didn’t have a mental breakdown a few months prior. I have no idea, really, why someone didn’t warn my cool-little about my mental breakdown. Maybe they hated her. I was a good, cool big. She was proud to show me off. This was excellent for my plan to re-assimilate.

I stopped going out after I got my cool little. I was fucking depressed, and I didn’t wanna see people. The kid I liked invited me to his bottle-and-a-babe function and I went sober. I wanted to cry my eyes out because I really wanted to be drunk and have fun like everyone else, but I really wanted my brain to heal. I felt bad for myself, and after that, I didn’t go to frats anymore.

Instead, I mostly went home to NJ. My dad would pick me and my laundry up from campus every weekend. I did this to avoid my best friends, who kept trying to hang out with me. I read the entire Harry Potter series on my phone this semester, alone in my dark room. I was generally withdrawn, sleeping a lot, going to the gym to punish myself, getting A’s in my classes, and doing literally nothing else. I didn’t have random crying spells, just routine sobbing myself to sleep, and all day I had tears at the back of my eyes. I’d sit there next to my friends with my burning hot teary-eyes, like: I just don’t fit in with you guys right now.

My sorority formal was the last week of school. I blacked out in celebration of my sober semester. My depression lifted when I reunited with my true love: alcohol. I had a fun summer full of partying.

Third Episode: Manic, August 2018, Villanova

Junior year is when you move off-campus at Villanova. I was lit offit, just the vibes of fall, the new living environment and upperclassmen status. I had my cool little, my cool friends, my cool apartment. I was considered hot, and I could finally drink and party again. I conquered my own rock-bottom. I was very very lit offit all. Very cocky, but in a proud-of-myself and reaping-what-you-sow type way.

I spent the last weeks of summer partying in the off-campus apartment complexes with my friends, feeling cool-as-shit. Honestly, I was having the best time. So much fun, partying every night, going and smoking weed with my downstairs frat-boy neighbors and drinking white claws and just being super popular and hot and friendly!

Syllabus week started and I had forgotten that real-life wasn’t a blur of partying, I was actually on a college campus, and I had classes I needed to attend and preform well in.

By my second week, one of my roommates had called my mom (the other two were abroad) and second my manic episode was cut short. Like, I didn’t get a chance to break from reality. But I was elevated, talking fast about ideas, not myself.

I had also been convinced that my cool-little got raped by this cool-guy in my fav frat. I caused a whole scene about it. I think I must have been delusionally- projecting my own trauma of getting raped 2 weeks into school as a freshman. No excuses, you can’t really ruin someones reputation and accuse them of rape just because it happened to you. This manic episode, I had apology letters to write.

My nana picked me up from school. It had to be my nana, because I didn’t believe my mom that I was manic, she’s just a fucking hard-O and this is my personality.

I ended up in a psych ward, and they were like: You are staying, You are Manic. Fuckkkkkk.

Treatment: one week at Riverview, cocktails of drugs til they discharge me with Lithium. I did less art here, more dancing, back bends, performance art and acting. I did costume changes and hair changes, as part of my acting. I had ideas about businesses.

When I left, I got ordered to go to a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) which is a 9-5 DBT program for women, called the Princeton House. So I realize that I am not going back to college this semester, and I’m really torn up about it, feeling like a total failure loser and like I want to be dead.

I’m doing the treatment at home and kinda getting laid into for being an embarrassing fucking lunatic who can’t get my shit together. Both episodes now, the drugs and partying have been a factor. I am unwilling to admit this.

So here I am, taking the short bus to my PHP program cos my moms really fucking mad at me for being this way. They give me a binder.

Socially: I do nothing first semester except visit Nova for my roommates bday dinner in october. I am there for 2 hours. I make sure to post on IG, and I change my facebook profile picture to that picture, too. I needed people to see we were still friends. I am not sure that anyone actually cared. But as I said before, I do this so people think I’m normal and O.K. and belong and am accepted for just being the way that I am. The way that I am is fucking offit crazy.

I return second semester and I’m scared shitless. Some guy manning the door at my favorite fraternity where I tweaked about the rape asks me how abroad was. I’m like, what the fuck? I didn’t go abroad. Junior year is the time at nova when everyone goes abroad. I had made a point to stay on campus and man the fort, because I didn’t want to give up an entire semester of frat parties to go culture myself in Europe. You’re only young once! (I’m an alcoholic). Clearly he didn’t GAF or keep tabs on me, the world doesn’t revolve around me (truly shocking at the time).

I reassimilated into Bendering and being a college thot in no time (that very night in fact!) The logic here was that I did my penance at home for during the prior semester, remained sober, and thus earned being normal.

I was not taking meds because my mom is anti-pharma and was like: you’re not bipolar, you party too much. Fair! I had a great semester partying, being popular, being hot, and not going manic! Awesome.

Fourth Episode: Manic, Fall 2020, NJ

Post-college, post-covid. I didn’t really drink or party much during this time, so I knew I was Definitely Bipolar, not just abusing uppers and partying too much. This episode was fascinating because I was an adult. I was traveling up and down the East coast (A weekend in Boston to visit a friend in grad-school, weekends in NYC to party with my older-friends with covid-deal leases, a night or two in Westchester to visit the guy from college I was still seeing, a weekend in DC to visit my college roommate). I felt very adult and very cool. I wound up in a psych-hold in DC, which was not very cool. I got out of the psych hold when my parents came and got me, and I spent another month being manic as fuck on the third floor of my parents’ house. Ran away from home to wander the streets of NYC. The goal was to solve puzzles and create puzzles and just be generally insane on the sidewalk. Dad found me getting my nails done all different colors. We went to the hospital, and my parents were super pissed at how fucking crazy I was being, but they packed me a bag of clothes and coloring books anyways.

I went to Washington DC with my best friend to visit our other friend. This was the roommate who had called my mom on me during my 2nd manic episode. I insisted we put together a big ass gift basket for her, because she was the first of our friends to move into a big-girl apartment with a big-girl job post-grad. She was kind of rude about the gift basket, asking if it was from Marshalls (it was, but it also had 5 bottles of wine in it, because I insisted we go all-out for some reason, despite the fact I didn’t totally love this friend). It kind of set the weekend off on a weird note. That, and the fact that I was in the midst of a quickly snowballing manic episode.

We had a great dinner at Nobu where I manic-made-friends with the Manager. We stayed after for a whiskey tasting and I Facetimed with his 11-year-old daughter (read: took the phone out of his hands while he facetimed her). She said I reminded her of Regina George, and I was really fucking flattered. I hate kids and I hate babysitting cos kids are mean as fuck, and honest. But here I was, in the bathroom of Nobu DC, after hours, on facetime with the managers daughter, smirking at my fun new compliment. We sat there sipping whiskey from a number of expensive brown bottles, I went behind the bar and I said shit like “My parents love Hibiki, we should try that”.

I got into a drunken tiff with my hosting friend, and in a fit, I decided to stay outside the speakeasy I had just gotten us kicked out of. I had made fast-friends with a large group of gang members who were loitering outside. They stole my purse, which isn’t something that friends really do. One of them took my phone and called my friend to figure out her address, so he could call me an uber home. I was like, I thought we we’re going to afters? I wanted to stay and have more fun. On the phone he told my friend that I was in grave danger of getting gang raped. She was really pissed off when I got back to her apartment. I thought we just experienced what would be a wildly entertaining story, so I didn’t really see the problem.

By the end of the trip I was fully offit. Everything was sparkling, and I didn’t have my car keys or my wallet. Someone had maxed out my credit card on a website that sold Canada goose jackets. We cancelled my cards. I felt like I was in a cartoon, the way the world looks the first time you ever get high off weed. My two friends and I went on a walk. I was feeling very frantic by words, and time and space had become confusing to me. It was a really nice night. Some homeless guy had an awesome American-flag tent set-up. Hell yeah, patriot. I gave him $100. (I had a lot of cash on me during this trip. I had gotten myself into a weird situation on a manic seeking arrangements date a few weeks prior. I had let the guy know that I had no intention of sleeping with him. He started throwing $50 dollar bills at me, in a fit of rage. I had about $200 in one of my jacket pockets and a few more fifties in my stolen-wallet. That is when I realized that money comes and goes.)

I was pissed at my host after a weekend of bickering, which was pretty typical of our dynamic, with and without the mania. One thing led to another, I punched my friend in the face (I punched my host friend hard, but my other best friend got a love tap. We later joked that she wished she got a harder punch, she didn’t even get a battle wound. I told her I purposely punched our other friend leading with this pearl-ring I used to wear, and I punched her using my left hand. I don’t normally punch people. Actually, that was my first time). A group of passerbys started yelling “world star”. They thought my friends were attacking me, but it was actually the other way around. I ran off, quick as hell, cos I love running when I’m manic. My fast friend chased me, but I was faster. I was having a lot of fun, though, so much fun that I almost didn’t notice she was crying. I didn’t feel like looking at her cry. So I veered off to hide in a bush. I that night I parkoured off an overpass onto the grassy median. I was playing super-spy. My friends saw this, and thought I was trying to end my shit. They called 911, and apparently, they we’re scared I was gonna be dead. I was laying in a bed of flowers, and everything still looked like a sparkly cartoon, and I looked like a little baby deer, and my ankle was broken. The cops got me though, and they wouldn’t hear me out when I told them I was actually playing super-spy, I was humming spy music to myself and pretending like I was in a movie scene. Also, I wanted to be good at snowboard tricks in Utah that winter, so I was practicing for the terrain park. I had a lot of valid reasons why I jumped off the over-pass.

Treatment: Washington DC psych hold, escorted by cops. Parents came and got me and brought me to New Jersey, where I had a psuedo rehabilitation at-home-lockdown manic episode.

I spent a month in my house in NJ, and my parents tried to nurse me down from mania with witches brew and tinctures (anti-pharma mother). I thought I was a pop star and I did performance art and played dress up on the third floor. I was going to a clinic with my dad to get random meds, cos I wasn’t taking any. I was popping ativan and they were laying me out flat on the floor in the middle of my art projects, but not doing anything useful to my brain.

I posted lots of instagram stories playing dress up. My third floor was now an artists studio. I redecorated accordingly. I painted on the walls. I posted my paintings and drawings and the little sets I was building in my room. I was tagging brands in all of my stories. I went to the craft store and dropped a grand on art supplies for my projects. I started 10 arty-things and finished none. I pulled out an old camera I didn’t know how to use and started snapping photos. I pulled out my photobooth and started recording myself in my prom dress, covered in paint. I made a 500-slide powerpoint of my pop-culture website idea: Moxycotton. I coerced my friends into the idea, though they didn’t really know what I meant. They went along with it anyways. They came from west chester and long island to visit me. They brought me books and stuffed animals and flowers like I was sick with cancer. We made art and I rambled on and on and got distracted, because I was really excited. Obviously I wasn’t manic, I was just excited (Obviously, I was manic). We went for an outing, to this punk cafe I had been on dates to. They said I acted more normal when I was out of bounds of my parents house.

My dad was nice and made me any food I asked for cos I wasn’t eating. I’d ask for a pancake and he would deliver me pancakes three ways: regular, chocolate chip, butterscotch. I would barely take a bite. I stayed up all night long and crept downstairs and took showers with music. My parents eventually took away my ability to select music, cos it may have been elevating me. My dad would DJ my third floor art studio with songs by coldplay. I was getting my phone taking away because I was acting crazy on it. I freaked out on the boy I liked, even though I missed our date in the city because I was in a psych hold in Washington DC. He thought I had ghosted him. I typed him scrolls and scrolls of blue messages. He never answered. He told people we had “kind of a falling out”.

Eventually I covered my hands in blue paint and slid them down my door in frustration. It looked like a fucking murder scene, only it was blue. My mom had to get all new doors. They are thicker and nicer, and I think

The paint-on-door led to a discovery of paint on walls, and on white carpet, which led to yelling, and a hospital visit. Like: figure out where to put here, this at-home rehabilitation shit isn’t working.

The first place with a bed was Summit Oaks, so I went there. I made a ton of art there. I got braids and did lots and lots of drawings. I made lots of friends. They didn’t always like me because I was a white girl. They made me cry, and then wrote me an apology letter telling me I was a thug. I also wrote notes, but to my real friends. I wrote them business plans and outfit ideas. I did lots of tearing and collecting and documenting and business plans. I didn’t do any dancing or acrobatics. I was giving all of my stuff away. I did lots of freaking out and calling all of my friends, begging them to come get me and put me on a plane to Utah. I had planned a New Years Eve party in Utah, which I wrote about on 50 different pieces of paper. These pieces of paper also talked about 50 other things. I spent New Years Eve at Summit Oaks. They discharged me after 14 days (what the fuck, didn’t they know I had a party to attend, halfway across the country, planned by me, manic as fuck?) on Lithium (yay). Decided I would stay on it for good. Plan was for me to go to Utah and waitress in park city with my friends. I was late to the party on that one because I was too busy going manic. Showed up a month after the lease started, because I was having panic attacks every time I went to the airport.

Fifth Episode: Depressive, Winter-Spring 2021, Utah

I arrived to Utah depressed as fuck. I was sleeping til 3 or 4 PM and going back to sleep at 7 PM. I had no reason to shower, no will to live, and no energy to do anything about it. I was supposed to get a waitressing job. I couldn’t even bare to be awake. My two best friends would open the curtains in the late afternoon to coax me out of bed. This made me want to kill them.

Eventually I was drawn out of the apartment to the dive bar next door, cos my friends said that there was a guy who saw my picture and thought I was pretty and wanted to meet me. So we met. He was a cute scruffy sad looking ski-bum guy from Texas who was 7 years my elder. I had also gotten a waitressing job, and we had made a friend group that would play around on the mountain every day. I didn’t feel like I had done anything to clear my depression. One day, it was just gone. I actually think it was mostly the guy, and drinking schooners of beer every day with the intention to impress him with my humor and beauty. He ended things with me a few months because I kept drunkenly crying and telling him I wanted to KMS all the time. He said he felt the same and thought it was not a “healthy” match. He also said it wasn’t “sexy” that I talked about wanting to be dead while he was “inside” me. Alright, then! I didn’t actually remember saying that, because I was blacked out! (Read: in addition to being disturbingly mentally ill, I am also an alcoholic. Why don’t you want me?)

Its tough though, cos I generally don’t like life/being alive and have a relatively depressed existential worldview. Despite how I try to be more happy I’m actually not, so there’s that. So these depressive epsiodes last however long they want to last, treatment: dealing with it. I have been told countless times I can’t take anti-depressants because It’ll fuck up my manic brain and make me nuts. So I opt to deal with being sad enough to die, cos it goes away every time. Despite being very painful and dehibilitating when I’m in it.

Part of my treatment was therapy, so I did “walk and talk” therapy with this woo-woo hippie dippy Utah lady. I was like: genuinely What the Fuck. I stopped seeing her but kept taking my lithium.

Sixth Episode: 2024 Fall-Winter, NYC/NJ

I got sober in December 2023 and my typically chaotic life slowed down. I had a stable job, a good apartment, strong friendships. My home life was shit, but that was nothing new. What was new is that I was not speaking with my mother. There was a lot of tension and stress and scream crying on my end. I felt very isolated and alone. No sense of belonging, of being myself. It was heart breaking for me, cos I was the kid who always hungout in the living room, and who got sober and got straight A’s and got good jobs, to be accepted, and to belong.

I got slated for a very expensive jaw surgery in July, and tweaked the fuck out cos I could never afford it, the way things were going. I started posting online, hoping to pop off and make a ton of money in one year, for the surgery. That didn’t happen, but I was really pushing for it.

My account grew pretty quickly in September and October. I was posting 6X a day, cos apparently the algorithm favored that. My parents hated that, and were like: what the fuck? are you manic? This made me feel worse about everything, obviously, cos I’m constantly paranoid about that, and in this case I knew what I was doing. I was, however, over exerting myself like a total workhorse (something I’ve never been, because I hate corporate and I never needed to over-exert myself to do well in school). Additionally, I was paranoid about people seeing me on the street, cos fans of mine from social media started saying Whats Up to me when they saw me in public.

I was struggling with my identity, in a way that is bound to happen when oversharing online and being perceived by strangers and ruthless internet trolls. I was also struggling with my identity because I was not connected to my family, and because I sober. The guy I was seeing loved Ketamine, and I did not feel very cool cos the disparity there. I felt sad and lonely and I missed my family and I wished that the people shitting on me online understood me more.

I was dicking off at work to engage more online, cos I was kinda having fun with that. I got put on a performance improvement plan (PIP) and realized my job was kinda hard and kinda serious, and required more of my attention and effort. I went from putting 40% in at work to putting 110% in.

The stress of all of it definitely messed with my immune system, I wasn’t sleeping, I was constantly anxious and paranoid and started to hear things. I was having trouble with time and space. I was forgetting who I was, where I was. I got sick during Thanksgiving, which was fine cos I was going to be spending it alone anyways, and then I just got to drug myself with a bottle of nyquil for the long weekend, and forget my misery.

It did not take long for me to completely crash the fuck out after this. I was dissociating like never before. I was crying hysterically for no reason. I had no will to live, and I actually was feeling energetic and crazy enough to jump infront of the subway train. I was going to check myself into inpatient, because I was thinking about delaying the 6 train with my body or jumping off a bridge. The train would be easier and quicker, bridge much more elegant. My parents nursed me in what I deem to be a mixed episode, for about 3 months. I told my boss that I’m bipolar and I basically wanted to end my shit, so my short term disability began. This is when I reunited with my family for the first time (yey!) and was back in what is known as my parents house (not my home).

During these few months I was dissociating, having trouble with time and space and who I am and where I am, crying at random, feeling depressed and hopeless, willing death, yatta yatta. I also started outlining a book, I published a website (this blog), I sorted my manic notes and artworks from previous hospital stints. This activity makes me think my most recent “depressive” episode was actually a mixed episode. Not sure it matters, and it kind of makes the equation more confusing by adding this variable, so I try to downplay that theory a bit.

Treatment: I was going to go to a PHP program but decided against it, opting for therapy with a Psychologist 3X a week. Now I’m here. Still depressed, but functioning. The therapist is great because she is smart and keeps up her research.

Upon Reflection, there were early signs, pre diagnosis.

Minor Elevated/ Melancholic states:

Melancholic is what I call my early depressive episodes. I was usually loud at school. During my melancholic states, I was normal at school. I was usually happy and engaged at home and during these times I was withdrawn and quiet and contemplative. My parents would ask if anything was wrong. Nothing was, I just didn’t have any energy to pep up my mood for them, or to say much. I was just chilling, is what I normally said. During this time, I was listening to sad music. Like folky shit and milky chance and mumford and sons. I would put on rap music for entertainment, instead of scrolling twitter or text-bombing my friends. I liked the sad music because it was when I got to cry. In a way I liked the theatrics of it, the softness, but it was a little annoying that I couldn’t will myself in and out of these states. Like, I was being held there against my will but making the best of it. Though sometimes I really wanted to kill myself and would weigh the best methods on how. During these times, felt like a white-grey sky with no rain. Mind you, I was freak out level sad and upset about getting bullied and stuff in my earlier years. But that is contextual and doesn’t really count toward my bipolar timeline.

My minor elevated states I can easily chalk up to being a loud and excitable teenager. A big personality. I don’t think it counts.

I will say taking my lithium has been a god send. It could be a placebo for all I fucking care. I love being able to rely/depend on my brain not getting manic. I love being able to use it as a defense: No I’m not manic, I’m taking my lithium. What you’re observing is part is my personality.

I do notice that with all of my actual manic episodes, I am convinced that I have been selected to share information and Proclaim things to others. I get confused about what timeline I’m on because the similarities in my environment/myself seem so stark that they become a time warp.

I used to like to think about things like time warps, before I got diagnosed with crazy. Now it’s hard to let my brain go there, out of fear that I’ll get sucked back into manic thinking. Like stepping off into the water of what-if’s and not realizing that you’re just hypothesizing, that’s your reality now.

Manic thinking always went from my mind going quickly through normal thoughts, to my mind jumping and attaching normal thoughts and non-tangiable abstract thoughts, to me thinking in abstractions, symbols, and patterns, crying when my friends wouldn’t get it. Don’t you realize I’m trying to save you? I’m communicating the pattern to you, because I am so detached from reality that I can see it and you can’t, I’m trying to communicate and have you see it, you need to see for good things to happen, or to avoid bad things like the end of times. Reality is detiorating as we know it. Come with me. Understand me, I'm understanding the great beyond right now. I’m being saved, once I figure it out completely, I’ll save you too.

It was a challenge for me recognize my thinking was sloping towards crazy, because I was dabbling in speed for the first time, so like, what do you expect? You know? I was leaning in.

How I’m dealing:

So I promised I’d share how I deliver my bipolar tea to new people. More specifically, dating prospects. I find that unless someone knows me enough to already know I’m bipolar, I can tell them pretty much whenever, and they will accept it. What could they do, not? Never talk to me again? Fine. Don’t.

My rule of thumb here is I do not want new characters to enter my plot if they don’t have the open mindedness and roll-with it to accept this diagnosis. Sure, it may present a challenge in the future. But it is a challenge we know how to surmount. I have done this before. If someone would rather subscribe to an easier, problem-less person, fine. I hope no problems ever befall them in the future. I wish everyone a problem-free existence. But that isn’t what earth appears to be. So.

On that note, I usually make sure I’ve talked to someone enough to determine that I still want to talk to them. Then I show them little glimpses of my past, my hopes and dreams, I talk of my family and stuff. I mention my relationships with people I care about. It sounds formal when I lay it out like this, but this is conversational and happens in anecdotes and stories. I want them to understand me. Everyone feels that way, wanting to be understood for their lore or whatever. Bipolar is just an extra layer, and the shitty lore is like: wait, stick a pin here, understand me relative to you, and to a normal person, and even if these facts about me suck, they serve a purpose. They prove to you I can be very normal despite the bipolar.

Sure, I mention deeply informative things about my character (A hilarious thing to say, because this changes based on what Era I’m in, and it’s always funny to reflect on what I thought was so important and so telling, at the time) but I’m not like doing a dissertation on myself. I am just painting color to the canvas, or doing a paint-by-numbers thing, so this person is looking at more of a whole person. If I were to lay a diagnosis like bipolar on someone with no context about me, they will paint on what their ideas about bipolar are. And the painting may look like a hell-scape, because there aren’t the best-ideas about bipolar offered in modern media for people to work with. Like, an uninformed bipolar schema actually sucks, and works against me. So, yeah. I do a little schema building my self. Eventually I will share that I’m bipolar. The actual fact usually gets delivered, then I follow it up with how I got there. I frame it in a very clear way, and I say facts, and I share what I felt about those facts. I do this to establish myself as a reliable bipolar narrator. Then I share a funny story or something, because I want whoever to know that while I take the diagnosis serious, I am also lighthearted about it, and we can joke. I’ve done this on a few first dates, but more often than not, the texting before first dates. Now that I’ve been Putting Myself On, I have more fear of getting red-flagged for my online presence than my mental illness. So there’s that.

When it comes to my delivery: I am offering you food, you’re in my house, you have to eat it. I appreciate anyone who has read this far, despite my insane prose on this insane topic. Politeness seems to be a lost teaching. Like, I hated fish growing up and I finished a whole fish filet at a playdate-family-dinner. I hated having dinner with my play-dates families, yet I was often invited to stay for dinner, probably because I’m cute and polite. Because my mom and this friends’ mom didn’t really get along, I felt a responsibility to just do whatever seemed Most-Polite-at the Moment. That meant I couldn’t weasel-out of dinner after the menu was relayed to me. I couldn’t opt-out of the wet fish entree, and I finished the whole thing. Her mom served me a SECOND filet (that bitch) and I ate a few bites of that too. I love fish now, and in retrospect, my friends’ moms’ fish was not good. It was fucking wet, and she was a bitch to my mom, and kind of a bitch to me. So I am a fucking trooper in pursuit of politeness, and I deserve some fckng respect on my name.

I am curious now if people have read through all of my dense thinking on the subject of bipolar identity and belonging because they wanna know, or because they wanna read. I did some trauma-dump philosophy here, likely because I am still triggered from getting a B on my Heidegger paper on the topic of Being and Understanding. I really thought I was onto something with what I wrote. Like, that was my favorite essay. At the time, I had planned to double major, Philosophy and Communications. When I went completely offit manic for 2nd time, my junior year, I needed to get smart about credits in order to graduate on time. It was important for me to graduate on time. For obvious reasons (that was always the plan), but mostly to prove myself as a Good, Talented Bipolar girl who Gets Shit Done despite it all. So, I dropped the Philosophy major down to a minor. I had more Communications credits, my friends were in it, and why the fuck did I get a B on my paper about Being and Understanding when I am a philosophical genius? Fuck you. Yes, I wanted to learn more about philosophy. But I cared more about teaching the people around me something: I can do conventional things, despite being unconventional. In fact, I can do them well, and better than those without my setbacks. So take that.

In order to be, I don’t have to do anything, just Be. It is not easy to “Just Be” bipolar. One may argue it’s not easy to “just be” yourself. I think people spend more time and thought on proving themselves than they’d like to admit. When you’re bipolar, it feels like you have a responsibility to Be a really great version of yourself all the time, to make up for the shame and all of that. I think a lot of not-bipolar people make a slower mess of things, no psychological factors to blame, and do not work on themselves, or think about their thoughts or actions.

Ultimately, the reason why I wrote this, and the reason why I don’t care about the stigma is cos I’m like: the stigma wouldnt be half as bad if it weren’t for random strangers and societal notions making me feel so shite and freak-bitch about it. I think my bipolar claim, by talking about it, will help people understand and perhaps dismantle some of these shitty notions.

The downside is that someone could now call me a psych-ward psycho. Well, my mother said it first, so you can’t really hurt me with name calling anyways.

There are literally 0 cons to me spiling my bipolar tea. Let me know if you have any questions.