It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't got that Mood Swing

If you're close to me, you know that I suffer from bipolar disorder. Yeah, me and Kurt Cobain! Jane Pauley! Jim Carrey! Anyway, I'm not secretive about it, I refuse to accept ignorant attitudes about mental illness. I happen to be a lucky bipolar person: I don't have substance abuse issues and I take my treatment very seriously. I remember in excruciating detail what life was like without medicine and therapy, and there's no dragging me back there, pal. I literally lost everything that mattered to me, thanks to some fucking genetic mental illness.

I think what saved me from the fate so many of my fellow sufferers endure (suicide, institutionalized, pariahs)is my fierce personality. Go ahead, laugh it up. But when the chips are down and things aren't looking good for Miss Trouble, my fight-or-flight mechanism is transformed into a kick ass and take names mechanism. My therapist loves to tell me what a survivor I am and how I should give myself credit for that. Nuts to that. You either survive or die, those aren't good odds. The more I'm crushed the more I want pillage, plunder, and overthrow.

I fire Psychiatrists. I mock therapists. The only person I revere is the pharmacist. Only medicine tames my wild mood swings. I take my medicine religiously and when I goof and forget, I feel it immediately. I think it ironic that I eschewed mind-altering substances in my youth (I like to play "Hide the Weed" with my pothead friends) only to live slavishly, according to mind-altering drugs.

I get absent-minded. I get diarrhea and acne and other horrible side effects. I cry for no reason and laugh inappropriately, sometimes. I endure impertinent questions and outright discrimination. I know my doctors better than anyone else in my life. I've twice had to check into the hospital for treatment, once because I was near-comatose, and once because I was suicidal, and gained so much wisdom from the experience.

I see my life as pre-breakdown and post-breakdown. My medicine could have "possible growth of a second head" as a side effect, and I would still take it. Because I remember in excruciating detail how I lost everything that mattered in 2002-2003 and though I was positive I wouldn't, I survived, and I don't wish to tempt fate by going back to an unmedicated state.

What seems like ages ago, when I could barely get out of bed, my doctor recommended I file for Disability from Social Security. At the time, I thought I had no future, no hope of anything good ever happening to me. I filed, and I accepted help from the government with medical insurance and day-to-day expenses.

Coming in October, I have a Hearing to decide if I will receive permanent disability status. I'm very nervous, this is huge for me. I have no interest whatsoever in defrauding the government, so forget that. What this means is that I will be able to focus on treating my illness and getting the therapy I need to be normal.

It's hard for me to accept that I'm not normal. A perplexing idea, for sure. But I have this illness, I'll always have it, and it affects me all day, every day. I do pretty well for myself--I get work and I have been, for lack of a better word, blessed by Superfly boyfriend being in my life and being such great support and so wonderful. I'm happy! You couldn't convince me that would happen, a year ago.

So, coming up on this important Hearing, of course I'm on a downslide. I know that occasional episodes still happen on my medication, but I am Cleopatra, the Queen of Denial. I know what's going on, and I'm helpless to stop it.

I wrote out a Plan for Superfly boyfriend, signals to look for and actions to take, regarding my cycling moods. He's promised to take care of me. Believe me, friends, nothing means more to me than that.

Bipolar Disorder is incredibly common. You probably know someone who has it. Do that person a favor and learn more about the illness. You never know if you'll be the one to take care of them.

While I'm washing down some bizarrely inappropriate tears with Champagne, take a look at this list of famous bipolar whackos.