You never expect to be a jumper. One day you wake up and have lost your sense of feeling up or down. But what you don’t know is there is a reason. In most cases, the next several years are spent lost, hopeless, and uncomfortable in your skin. You have these emotional cravings that go unsatisfied. So you jump from one extreme to another.
“Leave me in my depression.’
“Join me on the edge of invincible.”
Even with the tossing and turning, so many of us get up, work, and function like ordinary people. We learn to live both of these lives like we own this show. We keep people at arms length, close enough to feel intimate, but far enough to hide our truth. What they think they know, they don’t.
Half our lives are spent maintaining anonymity while exploring the limelight. There are adventures that only mania would travel, and it does. Escapades that you hope never escape your secret life. Then, the switch flips, and you pray you never verbalize those dark, hollow thoughts. Or worse, live them out. You are so busy hiding the other sides that you lose sight of the person you once were. You no longer see the you that you don’t fear, or hate, or pity. You lose your identity, and only see one ashamed soul.
Many live right here. They are stranded by a disorder that claims minds and hearts. The outcome uncertain, hope gone, and eyes are a representation of the emptiness in the center of their being. Living, but dead to life.
Cold and withdrawn, or floating in fabulous, the mood jumps. Every day is a fight to live, no matter what else is scheduled. The good days you fear the bad, the bad days you fear the good turning to bad. There’s no relief.
One day you realize you are courageous. You faced the reflection, the internal voice of loathing, the uncooperative eagerness of a false super power, and you kept going. You work harder than any hard laborer just to shut down voices no one else hears, and keep control of a mind no one else sees losing control.
We wake up every single day, and we fight the strongest opponent ever, ourselves.
That’s living bipolar.
Authentic Truths 