I was diagnosed with bipolar and PTSD a good minute ago. I grew up with a sibling in an out of mental hospitals. She would threaten to kill me and sometimes attempted when I was a child. My father sexually abused me for two years as a child.
I spent my childhood poor and drifting. I spoke Cajun French, and a teacher in Southern Georgia put me in remedial classes until my mother enforced that I learn English. I was sick, my right leg was weak and twisted. I developed epilepsy later, and still get the shakes.
I was anorexic in highschool. I'm 5'7, and I weighed 99.I had seizures almost everyday, and went into a coma.
I attempted to kill myself three times.
I have been sexually assaulted multiple times.
Now, when I feel suicidal I tell my roommates. They know that means "take my medicines and the knives." We organized a branch of the Icarus Project together where I live. My therapist knows that I am more often suicidal than manic. She promised to not hospitalize myself so long as I was brutally honest with her and that if she asks me to do something very specific (ie ask my best friend if I can go to work with them so I'm not by myself) that I do it and call her throughout it.
When I know I'll be high on mania I give myself lists of things to do and projects.
I still think that suicide is a human right.
I don't take medicine, which I like. Other people take medicine, which is similarly okay.
I'm learning ASL, Spanish, and Portuguese. I am studying ASL in order to get into an interpreter program, and studying political science at a fancy liberal arts college. I am 21, and usually a snarky cheerful person. I am obsessed with Liberation Theology, the way hands move, bikes, and the EZLN.
So, hello.
