Feeling Left Behind: Graduation Story or Lack Thereof

I am an entire year behind in college. I should be a senior, but I’m still a junior on the cusp of being a senior. I had to drop all of my classes last semester due to being so unstable because of bipolar disorder. I couldn’t handle the stress, the thought of having to play catch-up after my first hospitalization was nauseating, and the med they put me on during my first visit made me evermore unknowingly unstable. So I had to drop all of my classes. Luckily I no longer need two of them.

My second hospitalization confirmed that I shouldn’t take any classes next semester either because I needed to use that time to find med stability. So having to drop last semester and not even doing this semester has put me an entire year behind so that way I may be graduating in 2015 instead of late 2013.

Most of the friends I came into university with graduated today. I’m going to admit I feel left behind. They’re moving on, hopefully finding swanky careers with their polished diplomas, and here I am just trying to register for the fall semester because the education program doesn’t do PIN numbers and I have to wait until late registration to get anything done. It sucks, I’ll totally admit that. I wish I could join them, celebrate with them, be happy about my graduation and being able to hold on to the hope that the future is endless for me.

But nope. Bipolar did a lot of damage and I’ll probably have to end up making new friends come fall semester. Well, school friends, anyway. It’s no fun being a loner on campus, not that I’m much of one anyway. It’s frustrating, too, because part of me wonders if I could have held on. I probably could have, but then my GPA would have suffered, further damaging my already low self-esteem at the time. And being depressed and being expected to stay on top of things is really, really difficult, especially when all you think about is sleep and not wanting to be awake because everything just hurts and you don’t know why and would rather not deal with the ‘why.’

I could choose to be bitter about what bipolar did, what depression did, but looking at what I was able to accomplish makes me realize I may not have been able to accomplish anything had I been in school. I got to do a ballet recital, and that means so much to me, especially because it was a dream come true. I was dying for the chance to finally be able to show my parents and my fiancé what I’d been doing in class. Then I got a contract for my book, When Stars Die, because I finally took a risk. Who knows if I would have taken that risk in school. Who knows if I would have even been thinking about When Stars Die while in school.

So while everyone is celebrating graduation, I am doing pre-release book marketing, solidifying my platform, writing another book, and instead of holding a graduation party, I will be holding a book release party. I would say two dreams come true beats graduation any day.

Braving the Stigma of Mental Illness

I cannot fathom for the life of me why there is such an unabashed stigma against mental illness. Mental illness has been recorded since the invention of writing. Though the symptoms explained had no specific name, even our ancestors had no doubt such illnesses were real. Of course, believing in their existence isn’t the only problem. When you have a mental illness, society brands you as incompetent, incapable of living your own life.

Look around the internet, at the media. Some people believe those with mental illnesses should be locked away so we can do no harm to anyone, even though we are more likely to be harmed by those who are “normal” due to our vulnerable personalities. I can’t own a gun because I had to be involuntarily hospitalized so I could get a bed; otherwise, I would have been in the ER for another day or two–I wanted to go in, but I couldn’t do so voluntarily. I don’t think I can own a gun for another two years, which is a shame because we’re so hell bent on protecting ourselves with fatal weapons. It’s not that I care to own a gun, but, really, it’s the principle of the matter. I want to understand this, but there are other weapons we’re allowed access to that are more used than guns in harming ourselves or others–knives, for instance.

Seriously. I can be irritable, sad, apathetic, empty, hopeless, all in one day.

But gun rights are not on my bucket list. My fiancé has one, so I’m good to go.

I used to use Tumblr to express my darkest thoughts because I was too ashamed to let others know what sometimes goes through my mind. Then I realized people express personal stuff all the time on Facebook: what they ate, what sickness they contracted, the color of their babies’ shit, how crabby they are, so on and so forth. So now I’m choosing to reveal the rawest parts of me on my website’s blog because it is the only way to get people to recognize that a mental illness can be like any other illness. I’m a very self-aware person, and I hope that’s obvious in some of my posts.

We’re just afraid of mental illness because people sometimes hurt themselves to cope. People can become suicidal. In rare cases, people can become dangerous, but this is rare, so rare it shouldn’t even be a factor because “normal” people can be just as dangerous. I’m more likely to hurt myself than others.

So I’m coming out and saying that I have bipolar Type I Rapid Cycling. I hate it. I hate that I have to deal with this, but it’s here to stay and so I must. All I can do is use it to my advantage, and it does have some perks: I feel more creative, I’m so much more sensitive toward other people, I’m more self-aware now, and I feel like I have an even greater capacity to help those in need. Plus, I can just think of all the greats in history who have my illness. Sure, some of them didn’t survive, but they also didn’t have treatment. So on days where I feel a pity party emerging, I think of all those greats and wonder if they would have been able to do what they did without their illnesses. It’s possible, their works just would have been different, I suppose.

Don’t hide behind pity, shame, self-hate, or stigma. Come out and be loud and demand to be heard. It’s okay to hate your illness, but don’t drown in pity because of it. Make the best of it and be proud that you’re managing it in spite of how sucky it can be.

 

How am I doing today, specifically this morning? Crap. I didn’t sleep well last  night because my anxiety kicked in out of nowhere. So all I want to do is sleep, and, frankly, not wake up for a while. A long while. When a depressed person doesn’t get sleep, symptoms are intensified.