Making a Silk Purse Out of a Sow’s Bipolar

Many people feel that with this site, I have taken something terrible – bipolar disorder – and turned it into something positive – this site, my writing, etc. People feel that I have taken all the agony and sorrow and turned it into an ability to help people.

And true, those people are right, but I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Turning Bipolar into Something Good

Something Good from Bipolar

I mean, I feel good about creating a valuable resource and I feel good about helping people but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this notion of something good coming from bipolar. In my experience, nothing good comes from bipolar.

Now I know, some of you are going to tell me to “reframe” the issue. Look at it from a different angle. See the good in everything.

Well I say poppycock. I don’t have to see the good in a debilitating, disabling disorder. I don’t have to do it. And I won’t do it. And I won’t be a part of telling other people that “something good comes from bipolar” either.

I Don’t Care About the Good, I Just Don’t Want to be Sick

I would give anything not to be sick. I would give anything to not to have to see doctors. I would give anything not to have to take medication. I would give anything not to be bipolar. Bipolar has taken everything in life worth living for. It’s not a blessing. Bipolar’s a curse. It’s a god-forsaken, torturous, life-killing curse.

Yes, I get it, my professional persona is one of confidence and wellness and sanity. But that is not the way I live. I live in a tight, cramp, painful, shearing, agonized existence where I simply try to scrape by day after day. Like many people with bipolar disorder.

And yes, I know some people have found things to celebrate in their disorder. If this is you, that’s good for you. But I haven’t. I haven’t found anything in the loss of life worth celebrating.

So maybe it’s true – maybe (or, OK, definitely) I wouldn’t be the person I am without bipolar disorder. But that’s OK with me. Because maybe I would be happy and untortured, and I would give anything just to be that.