A Ledge to Rest On

He said I’m standing on a ledge.

            He said it’s like I’m climbing up from the depths of hell on a hot metal ladder trying to reach the top until I find it. A ledge to rest on. A ledge still somewhere in hell, but one I can sit on, waiting until I once again have to force myself to get back on that burning ladder.

            But the problem is, until today, I haven’t realized that I am just sitting here. I sit here today still feeling pain, depression, and exhaustion wondering why my meds are just not doing the job without realizing that I am not working as hard as I should be.

            Sometimes I think my psychiatrist knows me better than anyone I have ever met. I am lucky to have found him because without his honest words I would not realize that I wasn’t working hard enough. Not realizing that I’ve been deceiving myself.

            It is easy when pain is no longer excruciating, but bearable to think that this is the way it is going to be. It is easy to believe that you have done your duty and it is the drugs that are not lining up. After seven intensive years of therapy it is easy to believe that I have done all the work necessary and that the pain and depression are, in fact, a part of my personality. But they’re not.

            I have been told, and I hope to believe it, that there is a top of the ladder. That there is solid ground on which I can rest; solid ground where I can feel safe and secure and happy. But it will take work.

            I can’t imagine going through this alone. I know I am a lucky one. Without someone to tell me, “Look, you’re doing that thing you do, where you shut out the pain and act pleasant and nice so I stop asking questions”. I can’t imagine not having someone to call me out as I deceive myself again and again.

But I’m glad I know now, that I know that there is a higher ground, that there is a place where I won’t have to feel pain all the time. And though I know life can never be completely pain-free I know I can get there.

There is always more work to do.

The pieces come back together...

This morning I returned from a weekend where eighteen family members (three adopted family members) came to one house to celebrate being together. We ate and ate, practiced some old family traditions (Scol!) and slept anywhere we could that wasn't too damp or lumpy (though this usually changes by morning). It was a beautifully sunny weekend and I felt so much love between all of us as we sat around the fire, enjoyed homemade pies or feasted on paella.

When I got home this afternoon I realized it was once again time to work on the book (which now has a publisher!!) so I left my bag by the door and got to work. I find it important to note that I travel around the country speaking publicly about my story. I share it all the time to audiences of 700+, but I haven't read it in a while. In a little over a year and a half in fact. And I will tell you what, it is hard.  Really really hard. And painful.

It is hard to remember, no, let me rephrase, it is hard to read your exact thoughts when you are dealing with the pain of suicidal ideation or the pain of losing friends because of your depression. It is one thing to work through it everyday, which I have gotten much better at doing, but another thing to return to your exact transcripts from the moment of pain.

I remember when we first started playing with thoughts about the book,  people would ask us why we would want to revisit so much pain. And I always knew why, I want to teach the people who don't understand and let the ones who do understand know that they are not alone. I knew it would be hard. But I suppose, after a year and a half of not reading it I forgot.

I suppose the thing I am here to say is, I am glad that I spent the weekend with my family. I'm glad that they could remind me of the happiness and joy in my life even when I'm forced to remember the pain. I'm glad to know that when I was in the most painful spots, those points in the book that made me start crying even  reading them today,  those moments when I never thought anything would ever get better, when I never thought I could enjoy another family event, I'm glad to remember and know that I can be happy. It is possible.

In years past I never thought I would be able to be happy again (happy happy, not manic). And I guess having been relatively stable for so long I must have eased into happiness, because today, having juxtaposed Kirkwood-stravaganza with the really difficult passages from the book I realize that I have the ability to be happy. It's not broken. And I think maybe that is what I'm here to tell you all. Eventually happiness comes back. When you get to the deepest most painful place, the place where people are telling you things will get better and you just want to spit in their face because you know it's a lie, listen.

It takes a long time for all the pieces to settle when your life has been a tornado, but eventually, just as everyone told me it would, it did all come back together. I am happy. I am whole.

Staying Steady (again)

If you have been flowing my blog throughout the last year please forgive me for recycling this post, but I thought it was perfect for my "Treatment Month" posts. Here is my treatment plan, and my ways of staying stable:

Whenever I speak to a large group of people about being bipolar, they always want to know about my coping strategies. They want to know what I do when my life is going a little too fast, or when I am moving too slow to get help. They want to know, how I get through each day, month, year and remain safe, stable, and happy. I feel that though my strategies are based on my individual personality, most of them are rather universal. So, here is a list of the things that help me get through life relatively smoothly, for now anyways...

A Support Network

I can't move forward without some form of support network. (Actually, I could if I had to, but they sure make life a hell of a lot easier.) My family has fought long and hard to help me get the treatment, doctors, medication, and education I need both to help me cope with my first onset of bipolar, and my life today. They were always there to stand with me, even when I may not have wanted them there. On that note, my doctors, counselors, and psychiatrists have also all been amazing sources of stability. They are my solid ground when my life begins to sway, shake, or completely break to pieces. My boyfriend has also been an amazingly huge influence on my life. He has been through my rougher times and was the one to help me move from an extremely harmful lifestyle to one where I feel comfortable not drinking, doing drugs, or constantly partying. I also have amazing friends that sat with me in the worst of days. Wonderful ex-boyfriends, old roommates/best-friends and adopted sisters always make life much easier to swallow.

Lifestyle

For me this was one of the hardest choices. If you ask most 18-21 year olds what they do on the weekends, especially those in a college or dorm setting, they will tell you that they drink. They go to parties. They go to bars. And I was just your average 18-21 year old, minus the fact that I was bipolar. I was a little more than affected by the late nights, the excessive drinking, and the drugs. I was stuck in a cycle where all of my friends drank, and all of my coping mechanisms involved putting my mind in an altered state. In the first years of my diagnosis I didn't want to think about how awful I felt. I wanted to be "normal." I wanted a quick distraction. I wanted to be everything I envisioned a "bipolar" person being: a mess. It took a lot of work, a lot of self talks, good friends, and eventually some pretty scary moods swings to get me to move into the healthy lifestyle I live now. It would also have never happened without fate leading me to good friends who lived healthy lifestyles. Good friends who had been through pain, substance abuse, and eventually the decision to get straight. Good friends who inspired me to change my ways. It is also amazing that one of these good friends has become an amazing boyfriend and best friend.

Today my lifestyle has included sleeping well, eating well, meditating, flossing, running, yoga, reading, music, volunteering, and lots and lots of writing. I try to allow myself time to do the things that I know make me happy. These also happen to be the things that make my previous life of parties and anger seem like such a waste of time and energy.

Skills Training

Now, this is something I think about a lot,  but it has also been a big conflict within me. When I began skills training with a counselor  in high school she used to tell me things like, "look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am beautiful..." and I used to leave and swear that I would never go back to an appointment with her again. But I did, and every time she used to say some other cheesy skill I should use to make myself feel better. The next counselor I went to used to tell me to look in "my boxes." And I would again leave feeling angry and skeptical and decide I never wanted to see her again. It took me years to get to the point where I found a counselor I trusted enough to tell them that I hated those homework assignment kinds of exercises. I told her that I didn't want to be counseled by Oprah. I didn't want to be told to be kind to myself, unless it was hidden in something else she was saying. It was through my true honesty about my treatment that I began to actually use some of the advice I received from my counselors. Today I have developed a group of core skills that help me get through the rough patches in life. It was only through the skill of my counselors and the trust I eventually developed that I began to find life skills that worked for me, (that weren't cheesy or what I thought of as stupid.)

Counseling

This has been a huge art of my treatment, and now that I am stable, one of the most important. Because I talked about it in the previous section I simply want to say that I think everyone should see a counselor. It is so important to have someone who is not only trained to listen and respond appropriately, but who is not emotionally involved in your thoughts, feelings, or problems. I love my counselor very much because she has taught me how to begin to help myself, be nice to myself, and how to move forward after experiencing so much pain.

Medication

This was a hard one for me. I am not always a fan of medication. It has not always had the best effect on me and at two different moments it literally almost killed me. Now, I am a girl that likes my body to be healthy and natural, I don't want a bunch of chemicals deciding what mood I am in, but after two hospitalizations I have come to terms with the fact that medication isn't always bad. Today I am on Lamictal, Trileptal, and Lithium. It has taken me about 13 medications to get to three that work for me, and I have now been on these for about three years. I am on medication now because I know that I am not ready to be off of it. Even though I have changed my lifestyle and have become much healthier I am still not an expert on my body or my illness. I am still not aware of the natural ways to get out of a paralyzing depression or an extreme case of mania. And until I know that I am ready and able to use my new skills to get me to a safe place I will stay on medication. It is a slow process and I have only been diagnosed for five years. One thing I do know however, is that I will not be on medication forever. I will get to the point where I am aware and educated enough in my body and mind that I will feel comfortable being off medication. Someday I may want to travel to a third world country to save children, or someday I may want to have children of my own. If these things happen, I want to be free of medication. I do want to find a natural way to deal with my minds many states, but for now, I will continue my self-education from the safe place of medication.

These are just a few of the things I think about everyday when it comes to my health in my body and mind. I hope this is insightful, if not helpful, and please realize that each person's treatment plan and coping skills are different based on their own needs and understandings of the world.

(The picture in blue was taken by Ms. Morgan Minear at the MOMA while we were watching a video installation)

Linea's Treatment Story

The first thing I like to say when I hear people struggling with a new diagnosis of anything is: "thank god you can now start figuring out a treatment to help you feel better/to help your life get put back together/to help you stop hurting so much". In my previous post I ended saying, "why do we love the diagnosis..." because we can finally start getting treatment. I have been reading a lot of bipolar memoirs lately (Kay Redfield Jamison' An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Lizzie Simon's Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D, and Marya Hornbacher's Madness: A Bipolar Life.) In each of these, and from many individuals I have spoken to personally, I hear the pain that accompanies the diagnosis. The questions of "Does this define me?" "Will this be forever?" "Where is the separation between my personality and the illness?" "Am I going to have to be on meds for the rest of my life?" These were the questions I had. These were the worries I had, but at the same time I felt the relief of "at least now we know what we're working with..."

So, let's now imagine the you have a diagnosis. You know that you are bipolar (or fill in the blank). You know that prozac/other medications do not work for you because they make you manic/etc. And now its time to figure out what does work. In order to give you an idea of the process from diagnosis to treatment I thought I would give you a little glimpse at my slow path towards treatment:

When I was first diagnosed I was in a hospital having willfully checked myself in after a near suicide attempt. I was at the point where I was having psychotic suicidal ruminations that lead me to have a one on one aid that watched my every move. In the hospital I was told that I was bipolar II. This seemed very strange to me having only repeatedly experienced extreme depths of depression. I thought, where are the manias, or hyper-manias? I knew however that there was something more, something deeper than just being sad. It was a constant sadness to my core, and I knew it was something that needed fixing, that needed soothing, before I did something drastic. So I drank, a lot, and I started cutting, and I smoked pot, and tried drugs I wouldn't have done had I not been trying my hardest to fight off the seductions of suicide. At the time, I assumed these were my treatments prior to the hospital. These proved inefficient when I found myself blindly checking myself in with those magic words, "I don't feel safe".

In the hospital I was very unresponsive to all types of treatment. I fell into such a dangerous place that extreme measures had to be taken. I could not be left alone for one second because they knew I was watching, searching, for anything I could get my hands on to end the pain. This is when they offered me two options. They said, "we can send you to the state institution where you can wait until you find the right drug, which may take several months, or you can try electro-convulsive therapy". Now at this point I was beyond any other options, and taking the extreme route seemed like the best idea. I told myself "well, ECT will either kill me or fix me" so I begged my parents for the treatment (they of course did not know this thought process at the time) but eventually, full of uncertainty and fear, agreed. I am not going to go into details at the moment about all my experiences with ECT right now. It is a very controversial thing and I want to make sure that I do it justice and help people truly understand more about it, so I am just going to tell you two things: it is much more humane now, (no more One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and, it saved my life. After the first treatment the "thoughts", that urge to hunt down anything I could to kill myself with, were gone. Gone. I was still very veryvery depressed, but I eventually got to the point where I lost the constant eyes watching me and even got to shave my legs (a very big deal at the time).

After the hospital I went back to my normal college kid life, still feeling slightly blue, but on the whole much better. It was at this point that I was prescribed my 5th or 6th pill, that miracle drug, Prozac. My first day with Prozac was amazing. Suddenly everything was so much better. I did a much better job at work, I got all my house work done, I went for a run...and then everything sped up. Suddenly I was spinning beyond control. No amount of running could help me. No amount of anything could help me. At first the high was addicting, I started drinking more, partying more, spending more, doing drugs I wouldn't do. I started cutting again. I was starting to have very strange, un-Linea, thoughts ("maybe I should jump off the roof" "I wonder if it would hurt if I chopped off one of my fingers...") I was not suicidal, just very very manic. The addictive beautiful high that I experienced in the beginning was gone. I was no longer super-woman, but a paranoid, anxious, agitated child. I was breaking things. I couldn't have a conversation because my thoughts were going to fast to spit out.

Knowing something was very wrong I finally called my doctor. He told me to stop taking the Prozac immediately and prescribed me some anti-anxiety pills. Still being very impulsive, and having increasingly scary thoughts I took one. Just to calm down. Just to make things stop. To keep myself from doing something stupid. Just to keep my mind from accidentally killing itself. And then I kept taking them. I think there was a point where I told myself "I need help. It's time to go to the hospital." And then I took them all. Thirty something pills. And then I walked over to school, turned in my homework, told my teachers I wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be at their classes, and nearly passed out waiting for an ex-boyfriend/best friend to get out of class and take me to the hospital. I knew who to go to. I knew who would take the best care of me. This was not a suicide attempt. I did not want to die. I just wanted the thoughts to stop. I wanted to keep myself from jumping off the roof or in front of a subway train.

After this incident my diagnosis changed. I was not bipolar II. I could not take certain pills. Out of the hospital I made a decision to take care of myself. I decided to get the treatment I needed and though I had a few bumps along the way, (trying to cope through bulimia), I eventually committed myself to finding, and following, a healthy treatment plan. This plan incorporated close work with doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. It involved trust in my doctors to find a medication that made me well enough to try other treatment options. It involved asking for help when I needed it, telling the truth about my feelings, and knowing that hospitals are not shameful, but needed at times. It eventually involved a healthy change in lifestyle--no more drugs, alcohol, no more staying up all night, exercising, eating healthy, meditating, and a regular sleep cycle. I will go into my current treatments in a future post, but I felt it necessary to discuss the difficulty finding, getting, and sticking with healthy treatment. Had I not found the treatment I  have now I would be nowhere close to where I am today. I may not even be here at all. In conclusion, the diagnosis is indescribably painful, finding treatment seems impossibly hard, but with perseverance, a little bit of luck, good resources, self advocacy, and at times, pure trust that things will work out, people can find a better life and get the help they need and hopefully end those terrible statistics involving extremely high rates of homelessness, incarceration, and suicide for those struggling with a mental health conditions. Treatment works, and I will also give you some resources to find good treatment in my next post.

Treatment

My story

We (the momma and I) have decided to make February a month of sharing stories to fight stigma. So, along with our newly posted video on YouTube we are going to start sharing our stories and learnings on our blogs, starting conversations about it on our Facebook and Myspace sites, and commenting on it on our Twitter page. So, visit us, chat with us, and learn with us. And without further adieu, here is my story...

There was a moment in my life when I almost drowned.

Living in the largest dorm in the country with three best friends, experiencing my first serious college boyfriend, living the perfect life of a well-off artsy college kid, I couldn’t have dreamt of anything better. That is, until I turned my back to the ocean and was swiftly and dramatically pulled in by the undertow.

One moment I was there and one moment I wasn’t. It was as if I had suddenly had my brain replaced by someone weaker, angrier, sadder. I didn’t know where I was or what I had set out to do anymore. I couldn’t understand what went wrong. I couldn’t understand why I was suddenly seeing pools of blood every time I closed my eyes.

It was a dramatic and intense case of depression. I stopped eating. I broke up with the man who was, at that time, the love of my life. I stopped leaving my room. I stopped all contact with the world, and whether I pretended I was there or not, my eyes were empty.

This went on for several weeks. Floating around Chicago, the city that I had worked so hard to get to. To me this went on for a lifetime. I floated out to sea.

Then my boyfriend, who was now just a friend-friend, called my parents. He called, and just as swiftly as I was pulled under, I was pulled out.

Completely.

My dad arrived from Seattle no less then ten hours after he was called. My life, my room, and my thoughts were packed up and shipped out. Flown back to Seattle and, in my mind, never to return.

Nothing could have been more painful. Nothing could have been more dramatic to me at that point and place in my life. Nineteen years old and suddenly I was forced to leave my friends, my life, my freedom and everything that I had built within the last two years of hard-earned independence.

I arrived home tired, cold, and wet, water still in my lungs.

The next couple of years moved from an undertow to a tsunami. My mind moved quickly from a simple depression to a devastating suicidal obsession. Looking back I am amazed I am even here to tell my story.

In the next year and a half I spent time in hospitals for suicide prevention and for overdose recovery. I spent time in apartments, manic and drugged and depressed and dangerous. I spent so many hours feeling completely out of control of my mind and so many hours trying to fight against it with every form of self-medication and self-harm I could find that I am amazed I have the ability to form thoughts or press my fingers to these keys.

It took me a long time to come to terms with what was happening. After having a “wait and see” diagnosis of bipolar disorder II at nineteen I spent many, many months fighting the label and implications before I finally received my final, “for sure” diagnosis of plain old bipolar I. My months and years of fighting only made things worse and it took me a long time before I realized that if I was good to myself and my body, my bipolar would be good to me. Who knew stimulants could make you manic or alcohol could make you devastatingly depressed!

Once I finally gave in and decided to change my life things began to turn around again. Though it took lots of self-care and finding the right doctors, counselors, and meds, my stability allowed me to live the life I had always dreamed of living. My stability was more then just taking care of myself and finding the right help however, it was also my amazing luck to have the opportunities and support network I do. It was this fact that inspired me to begin to make a difference in the mental health world.

Having spent time in the worst psych units with the saddest cases I realized that things must change. I realized that people need to talk about these things. People needed to be able to talk about their thoughts, lives, and feelings. We need to be able to share our stories.

So…here I am today, graduating, speaking at conferences, in classrooms and auditoriums, writing and collaborating with mental health and education professionals, working with amazing mental health organizations, writing a book. Through my experiences I have realized that I needed to make a difference, and through my opportunities I have hopefully begun to do so. I am so excited and pleased that I have the opportunity to make the differences that I am seeing.

Today I have found my way back to dry land where I can finally stand on firm ground, and it is here that I will help others do the same.

(This picture was taken when I was 20. I look a little different now that I finally take showers and have let my natural hair color grow back.)

we should all just walk right in.

Lately I have been thinking about trauma a lot. I have been thinking about how people deal with the terrifying, heart-shattering, un-breathable moments in life. I think it all began with several interesting conversations with the boyfriend about people and tragedy. I have also been reading books that deal with similar topics (Atwood's Alias Grace, Faulkner The Sound and the Fury).

So I thought about what happened to me in the past, specifically to do with suicide, and I thought about my distance from it today. I am not sure whether I am just so used to talking about it at conferences, or so used to writing and rewriting papers and a book about it, but somehow I feel quite distanced from those traumatic places in my past. A stranger perhaps rather than the person that truly experienced them. So I talked to my counselor about it and realized that though it seems easier to continue on as a stranger with minor "unconnected" sadnesses, I need to reconnect and fully deal with my fears and pain. I have become so distanced that at times I almost feel like a liar going out and speaking about my emotional understanding of suicide. Do I understand it? Can anyone ever say that? Or am I too numb to truly remember or know what I feel.

But anyways, here is the point, and this is one I had to be told in order to believe: I have experienced it. It did happen. And though many people with horrible trauma find themselves feeling like liars or fakes, or feel as if they simply made it up,  it is something to confront. (I believe.) It is something to acknowledge and rediscover in order to truly let it go. It sucks going through memories of those horrible moments in your life, but I truly feel that it is so much better to confront things before they boil up some other way. I don't have anywhere close to as bad of trauma as many people, but I personally need to remind myself that I was there, and I did feel it. I need to remind myself that I am not lying to people by telling them I understand suicide and the pain of feeling like you don't have any more strength to survive. I just need to remind myself that ignorance is not bliss, not for me, because if I keep trying to forget I will only feel worse. Perpetually.

(And for all those of you who will wonder if I'm "okay," (dad, Jennifer,) or if I am okay doing all the work I am doing with presentations and what not, I only have to say that I am more than okay. I feel like this is important and even more meaningful when it comes to sharing my story with people. We all need to be okay with the confrontation of our selves, our demons, our fears. It is a continual process, and one that I hope my heros are constantly doing too. You go Reverend Tutu!)

The Decoy

So I'm going to Hawaii next Thursday to speak at a conference and I have found myself being VERY weird about my body insecurities. I am often insecure and worried about the usual girl things: flattering clothing, the right coat, make-up, not wearing anything the common sense fashion committee hasn't okayed, etc. But, I am not usually as bad as I have been these past two weeks.

For those who don't know me I must admit I have had some eating problems in the past, therefore it is important for me to check in with myself if I am being weird again. This however seemed a weird kind of different. I started by being obsessed with my weight, while not doing anything to change it. I thought about it a lot, a lot a lot, but I wasn't exercising or eating different other than saying no more candy until after Hawaii, (which is always silly, because I am completely addicted,) but then I randomly decided to fast, for my health. I wanted to fast because I have heard about the health benefits of detoxing your body naturally by simply drinking water all day. I have wanted to do this for years now, so I finally decided to do it.

So I did, and it was awful, but then I felt so good afterwards, and it was still unrelated to Hawaii, but a few days later I couldn't stop thinking about fasting. All I wanted to do was stop eating. I just wanted to fast and fast. I also started thinking about old purging patterns, and though I didn't act on them I got scared enough to really think about what was happening.

And then I realized, it was different than past times because there was this fakeness about it. I wasn't really feeling worried about my body, I was just convincing myself that I was. I mean, I could be in a little better shape, but on the whole I am doing fine. I realized that it was just a good distraction from these other horrible feelings of depression that I was suppressing. I was using it as a decoy of sorts because my subconscious-self knows that the best way to distract my conscious-self is by giving me a reason to torture myself. So, once I realized that and realized I had to deal with something deeper I began to torture myself in a new way by trying to figure it out. And then, BAM, I figured it out: Thanks to my superbly ESP powered mom I discovered that it was almost exactly three years since my diagnoses with bipolar, three years since the first time I tried to kill myself, and two years since I tried to cope with pain through purging.

The body is amazing to me. My bodies ability to feel dates before I remember them, year after year, season after season, will never cease to amaze me. From now on I am making a timeline of my body's favorite torture dates. I am going to make sure I am one step ahead to stop those horrible decoys from taking over.

And thank God that's over because I do love to eat.

an attempt to reconnect

I have been feeling extremely overwhelmed lately. I find it funny that I always wonder where the stress or anxiety comes from, when all I have to do is consult anyone I know. I have the ability to tell myself that I am not doing enough or that I am not working hard enough when I am in fact doing a million things. I think it is my natural process and patterns that leads me to detach my mind from my bodies physical and mental activities. I think I have just been doing so many things for so long that whenever I am doing one less activity than normal I see my life as slow or see myself as lazy when I'm still maintaining the same pace and attempting to uphold the same standards.

In light of all this I am always and still attempting to let myself slow down. I am currently only taking ten credits, working on one and soon two articles for peer reviewed educational journals, rewriting and organizing things to send to an agent in New York, adding new sections to the already 400 page unpublished book, writing poetry, writing a piece about the human spirit and people's ability to recover from tragic life events, attempting to exercise, attempting to have a social life, attempting to spend time with family, and attempting to spend more than an hour a day with my boyfriend (even though we live in the same house.) When I actually write this all down I realize how much I am doing, but I also realize all the things I am not doing that I want to do. The things that are important for my soul, and the things I keep telling people I do to calm down. These are things that I keep trying to do, but never manage to make a daily part of my life. These are my goals for the month:

run at least four times a week, floss daily, meditate at least every other day, play the piano at least twice a week, cook good healthy meals at least three nights a week.

We'll see how I do, but at least for now it's in writing.

staying steady

Whenever I speak to a large group of people about being bipolar, they always want to know about my coping strategies. They want to know what I do when my life is going a little too fast, or when I am moving to slow to get help. They want to know, how I get through each day, month, year and remain safe, stable, and happy. I feel that though my strategies are based on my individual personality, most of them are rather universal. So, here is a list of the things that help me get through life relatively smoothly, for now anyways...

A Support Network:

I can't move forward without some form of support network. (Actually, I could if I had to, but they sure make life a hell of a lot easier.) My family has fought long and hard to help me get the treatment, doctors, medication, and education I need both to help me cope with my first onset of bipolar, and my life today. They were always there to stand with me, even when I may not have wanted them there. On that note, my doctors, counselors, and psychiatrists have all been amazing sources of stability. They are my solid ground when my life begins to sway, shake, or completely break to pieces. My boyfriend has also been an amazingly huge influence on my life. He has been through my rougher times and was the one to help me move from a extremely harmful lifestyle to one where I feel comfortable not drinking, doing drugs, or constantly partying. I also have amazing friends that sat with me in the worst of days. Wonderful ex-boyfriends, old roommates/best-friends and adopted sisters always make life much easier to swallow.

Lifestyle:

For me this was one of the hardest choices. If you ask most 18-21 year olds what they do on the weekends, especially those in a college or dorm setting, they will tell you that they drink. They go to parties. They go to bars. And I was just your average 18-21 year old, minus the fact that I was bipolar. I was a little more then effected by the late nights, the excessive drinking, the drugs. I was stuck in a cycle where all of my friends drank, and all of my coping mechanisms involved putting my mind in a different state. In the first years of my diagnosis I didn't want to think about how awful I felt. I wanted to be "normal." I wanted a quick distraction. I wanted to be everything I envisioned a "bipolar" person being: a mess. It took a lot of work, a lot of self talks, and good friends, and eventually some pretty scary moods swings to get me to move into the healthy lifestyle I live now. It would also have never happened without fate leading me to good friends who lived healthy lifestyles. Good friends who had been through pain, substance abuse, and eventually the decision to get straight. Good friends who inspired me to change my ways. It is also amazing that one of these good friends has become an amazing boyfriend and best friend.

Today my lifestyle has included sleeping well, eating well, meditating, flossing, running, yoga, reading, music, and lots and lots of writing. I try to allow myself time to do the things that I know make me happy. These also happen to be the things that make my previous life of parties and anger seem like such a waste of time and energy.

Skills Training

Now, this is something I think about a lot,  but it has also been a big conflict within me. When I began skills training with a counselor  in high school she used to tell me things like, "look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am beautiful..." and I used to leave and swear that I would never go back to an appointment with her again. But I did, and every time she used to say some other hooky skill I should use to make myself feel better. The next counselor I went to used to tell me to look in "my boxes." And I would again leave feeling angry and skeptical and decide I never wanted to see her again. It took me years to get to the point where I found a counselor I trusted enough to tell them that I hated those homework assignment kinds of exercises. I told her that I didn't want to be counseled by Oprah. I didn't want to be told to be kind to myself, unless it was hidden in something else she was saying. It was through my true honesty about my treatment that I began to actually use some of the advice I received from my counselors. Today I have developed a group of core skills that help me get through the rough patches in life. It was only through the skill of my counselors and the trust I eventually developed that I began to find life skills that worked for me, (that weren't cheesy or what I thought of as stupid.)

Medication

This was a hard one for me. I am not always a fan of medication. It has not always had the best effect on me and at two different moments it literally almost killed me. Now, I am a girl that likes my body to be healthy and natural, I don't want a bunch of chemicals deciding what mood I am in, but after two hospitalizations I have come to terms with the fact that medication isn't always bad. Today I am on Lamictal and Trileptal. It has taken me about 13 medications to get to two that work for me, and I have now been on these for about two years. I am on medication now because I know that I am not ready to be off of it. Even though I have changed my lifestyle and have become much healthier I am still not an expert on my body or my illness (if you can call it that.) I am still not aware of the natural ways to get out of a paralyzing depression or an extreme case of mania. And until I know that I am ready and able to use my new skills to get me to a safe place I will stay on medication. It is a slow process and I have only been diagnosed for four years. One thing I do know, however, is that I will not be on medication forever. I will get to the point where I am aware and educated enough in my body and mind that I will feel comfortable being off medication. Someday I may want to travel to a third world country to save children, or someday I may want to have children of my own. If these things happen, I want to be free of medication. I do want to find a natural way to deal with my minds many states, but for now, I will continue my self-education from the safe place of medication.

These are just a few of the things I think about everyday when it comes to my health in my body and mind. I hope this is insightful, if not helpful, and please realize that each persons coping skills are different based on their own needs and understandings of the world.

(The picture in blue was taken by Ms. Morgan Minear at the MOMA while we were watching a video installation)