celebrate bipolar disorder

That’s how long it’s been since my suicide attempt and my diagnosis as bipolar. I couldn’t be happier. My husband keeps me in check and makes sure I don’t get too manic or depressed. My psychiatrist has helped me get medication under patient assistance (I’m uninsured and taking 200mg Lamictal and it’s super expensive).
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way I am. I no longer need to try to be “normal” because I am normal for me.

I see that no one has written an entry about this…i hope i’m not breaking some secret code that I don’t know about. But i would like to write something. Even if it’s just for me.
I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder a half a year ago, but I knew I had it long ago before. I don’t know how I knew, it’s just the way people would look at me. Or how i would have to hide my energy and depression from everyone I knew. The bipolar symptoms in me started actively appearing when I was twelve. I remember that quite clearly. I used to struggle so much with it, especially since I was completely ignorant of the disease and I was pretty young…and stupid. Those were pretty dark times. I tried killing myself multiple times.
But I know, there is no way of compeltey ridding the disease. There’s no way of makign it disappear forever. It’s been with me since the start of my adolescence. It’s been part of my life for so long, that I’ve accepted it. It was so hard accepting it. Who would actually willingly subjugate themselves to pain, mania, euphoria, depression, and so many other extremes. Even now, I sometimes grit my teeth in spite and try not to cry becuase of what I’ve become.
I don’t know if you all are the same as me, but I’m obsessed with death. This makes me slightly, as people would call it, ‘prone to suicide’. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I accept the fact and i know, that i am most likely going to die by commiting suicide. But maybe life will be ironic and I’ll get hit by a bus, or swept away by a plague. Me dying from old age is a joke that I readily laugh at.
I want to celebrate my bipolar disorder. Becuase I know it’s a flaw and a disease. I know people are ignorant and scared of it. But more than any of those things, I don’t want to be ashamed. I will not be ashamed of who I am and what I’ve done. Becuase all those things are me. I’m not going to kill off a part of myself, I’m not going to hate myself, I’m not going to get sucked into some vicious never-ending cycle of self-pity.
I’ve been through too much. Too many people have hurt me, too many things in my life have fucked me up, but I’m not going to let one of those things be me. I don’t deserve to be stigmatized and looked down upon becuase of what I’ve gone through. I don’t need to hate myself anymore becuase there’s enough of that playing in my life. The Bipolar Disease is a part of me, and if people are going to love me they have to accept me for who I am. All of it. Not just the good parts, the bad and suicidal ones too. Becuase this is who I am. And I am celebrating my happiness and my sin.