It’s going to be rather difficult to discuss anything about the past few weeks because I was and still am in a dark place which is why I still need to at least vent about the circumstances, though I’d prefer to steer away from any details. I apologize if any come out though I am just writing what comes out the top of my head. I am okay and safe now and there are procedures in place to keep me that way at least until I can trust myself to do that alone.. It’s been a while since the last time I swung this far down. And normally I can point to a specific event that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that one final moment where everything I had buried under the surface was ready to explode and that sets me on that path of true self destruction. If not in the literal sense, assuredly the life I will return to is never the one I tried leaving and that is by design. There wasn’t any straw this time. The camel’s back just collapsed in on itself I guess. My life had seemingly been going really good lately, at least comparatively; I was in a loving, albeit, shakey relationship but one that made me happy nonetheless, I was taking vacations to visit my online friends doing fun things like exploring Arizona, visiting the Grand Canyon, showing one of my best friends his first Disneyland experience, I was starting to feel more sure who it was I considered “in my pack,” and I had the biggest grasp and understanding of my mental health and emotional swings than I ever had before. 2019’s year in retrospect had probably the only positive outlook towards the year I’ve ever had out of all the years in retrospect I have written. I had built a system that was working incredibly, when you have bipolar disorder you suffer through these cycles of huge shifts and for me at least if I don’t have a system in place to keep me situated then I begin to lose myself. And with this pandemic a lot of my coping mechanisms became quickly unavailable to me so I was fucked.

Losing myself is an extremely strange and uncomfortable experience. When your entire moods, your perspective, and your convictions can all just switch in an instant at any moment it’s downright impossible to keep a consistent idea of who you are. And as a result of recent events I have split majorly. I’m suffering from a trichotomy actually, I have such differing emotions and desires that the only way I can cope/understand that is by splitting those into different “me’s.” You have to when you start switching these feelings every 15 minutes when I was in that state. There was one who was ready to let go, one who wasn’t, and the one I most identified with the one who just stalling because they were to afraid to enact on any of the desires of the other two and just lived in my own deafening silent purgatory. The first voice definitely tended to drown out the rest. However this Saturday night was the first moment I heard that voice that wanted to return back to normalcy louder than a faint whisper so I listened. It still isn’t the loudest voice, it is still the least prevalent “me”, but there’s enough of a drop of doubt to motivate me to work against everything I want to do in hopes that that voice will continue to quiet even if I don’t believe I will change the way I feel ideologically. I’m stuck in a cycle of self-destruction and uncontrollable mood swings with this deep pit in my chest. A loneliness no amount of love, affection, or attention will squelch. I know because I had what I thought I was looking for and I still tried burning it all to the ground all in a single moment. It’d be easy to say that that was just the depression taking over and that wasn’t really me, but living with this disorder I am fully aware that while it might be difficult to grasp to a sense of identity these are all indeed me. I may have been hurting to an extreme, but I made the choice. And like each time before I’m having to live with the consequences of my actions in this mental state.

Fortunately I can say this time the damage was very minimal but there was still plenty of damage. I worried my friends to all hell which I will have to learn to be okay with. That guilt is still consuming me.. I hate feeling like I’m such a fucking burden to those closest to me. And that guilt is probably the only other reason I stopped listening to that voice. Well that’s the reason I came back online, the moment I realized I was too afraid to do it and that I will most likely always will be so stalling served me no purpose anymore. It was only hurting my friends and I didn’t want to do that anymore than I already had. I just want to stop hurting, to stop being stuck in an endless loop of false hope and sudden drop of my entire mood and all motivation. I can put so much work to have it all crumble in a day. It will happen continuously for the rest of my life. I don’t believe that’s something I am or will ever be okay with, but there I also can’t seem to be able to do anything about it. No matter how much I want to. I can’t. But I’ll just have to manage I guess. It would probably help if I made sure to stay on my medication and not suddenly stop taking them like I had but it would be naive to say that what happened was the result of a bad week, a bad chemical reaction. My therapist’s voice is ringing me in my head saying “That’s a harsh judgement. Not fact,” but I really feel like perhaps I’m just broken, on some fundamental level you know? A clock that keeps ticking the same minute over and over. Whatever. It can’t be helped. One thing I do appreciate is my friends who reached out, especially the ones I didn’t expect to. Which was just about all of them if I’m being honest. I do hope it goes without saying or I hope they know, because I’m still dealing with this guilt, that it was none of their faults, none of them no matter what are ever responsible for helping steer this runaway train from riding straight off a cliff. I appreciate the friends that have reached out, but I will not allow any of them to feel like they have to do so in order to keep me alive. That’s my responsibility and while I personally believe it should be up to me what I do with my life and how much longer I want to suffer in it, I currently have a system where I can’t. I had to make a change before a change was made for me, and I’m certain I’m going to be observed more heavily from now on as well because of this. What I’m trying to say in my own depressed kind of shitty way, is not to worry about me because even though I won’t really be okay, I’ll be alive. And eventually I’ll get used to not being okay.