Hello from Alaska
Posted: December 13th, 2015, 9:29 am
Hi all. I'm a 21 year old female, she/her pronouns, living with Bipolar I disorder, BPD traits, and a ridiculous case of anxiety. I was just diagnosed bipolar at the end of August, following an incredibly traumatic year and a half spent mainly in hospitals and treatment centers, and after struggling hard against the diagnosis for about a month, I gave in and accepted it. (Basically, I hit rock bottom and needed to accept the diagnosis or die, and I chose to accept. I think I would have struggled against the diagnosis much longer had I not been so worn down and close to total collapse already.) So I'm relatively new into proper recovery (only about 2 months) though of course I feel like I'm totally fine now and can pretty much go back to my "pre-sickness" level of functioning.
About me as a person, not as a diagnosis: I'm an artist and I love to help people out. Right now, I'm working online doing some small-scale web development contracting, because the bipolar was keeping me from working outside the home for a while, but I'm just starting to apply for jobs again. In the past, I was a domestic violence victim advocate at two different shelters (not simultaneously) and before that I taught sex ed as part of a peer education program. I play Scrabble against myself and listen to a lot of NPR podcasts. I'm like the most boring 21 year old in all history. I live in a tiny town in Alaska, which doesn't help. As for the art thing, I like to make collages, both cut paper and mixed media, and I love to write. One of my recovery goals was to write a novel for NaNoWriMo last month, and I did. It's the most awful thing I've ever written, and I love it so much. I also had recently rediscovered my love for running. I'm slow, and I can't run more that 30-40 minutes at a time on a good day, but I feel so powerful and vital when I'm doing it.
I have a pretty intense story -- raised in bush Alaska with absolutely no neighbors or community whatsoever, had a pretty typical childhood case of bipolar (i.e. pissed off all the time), was actually diagnosed bipolar in childhood and then undiagnosed when I was 18, functioned with the disease until I turned 20 and then it suddenly got way, way worse. Then I spent a few months in and out of psych hospitals, mostly in a different city in a different state that I had fled to while manic, before getting place in a lockdown treatment center where I lived, mostly under close observation, for nearly nine months. I was out for maybe a month before I went off my meds and started cycling again, which brings us to the diagnosis and the rock bottom and the acceptance and the recovery. I could go on and on, but that's the general gist of the story.
About me as a person, not as a diagnosis: I'm an artist and I love to help people out. Right now, I'm working online doing some small-scale web development contracting, because the bipolar was keeping me from working outside the home for a while, but I'm just starting to apply for jobs again. In the past, I was a domestic violence victim advocate at two different shelters (not simultaneously) and before that I taught sex ed as part of a peer education program. I play Scrabble against myself and listen to a lot of NPR podcasts. I'm like the most boring 21 year old in all history. I live in a tiny town in Alaska, which doesn't help. As for the art thing, I like to make collages, both cut paper and mixed media, and I love to write. One of my recovery goals was to write a novel for NaNoWriMo last month, and I did. It's the most awful thing I've ever written, and I love it so much. I also had recently rediscovered my love for running. I'm slow, and I can't run more that 30-40 minutes at a time on a good day, but I feel so powerful and vital when I'm doing it.
I have a pretty intense story -- raised in bush Alaska with absolutely no neighbors or community whatsoever, had a pretty typical childhood case of bipolar (i.e. pissed off all the time), was actually diagnosed bipolar in childhood and then undiagnosed when I was 18, functioned with the disease until I turned 20 and then it suddenly got way, way worse. Then I spent a few months in and out of psych hospitals, mostly in a different city in a different state that I had fled to while manic, before getting place in a lockdown treatment center where I lived, mostly under close observation, for nearly nine months. I was out for maybe a month before I went off my meds and started cycling again, which brings us to the diagnosis and the rock bottom and the acceptance and the recovery. I could go on and on, but that's the general gist of the story.