But It's All In Your Head...

Best motivational poster ever...

For those who haven't figured it out already... Seriously, why haven't you figured it out?! I mean, I think it's pretty obvious from the bizarre nature of my posts and the things I say in them... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what the hell the deal is with me...
Anyway...
I suffer from bipolar disorder, what they used to refer to as manic-depressive, and a rather crippling case of anxiety. Sadly, there is a lot of stigma surrounding mental disorders. And even I'm not immune to their misinformation, though sometimes it was warranted...
I once worked with a woman who had paranoid schizophrenia. She seemed normal enough until she had a psychotic episode while talking to me. The exact content of her delusion, I'll never forget, was, "They (the government) came to my house and drugged me, then they broke my grandson's legs right in front of me because THEY DON'T WANT ME PRAYING!!!" Whoa! What the actual fuck?!? I had no idea what was going on. But it only took me a few seconds to figure it out. It's hard to know what to do in such situations... So I did the only thing I could think of. I looked at her, shocked and sad, shook my head and (thankfully convincingly) said, "Oh my God, that's terrible!" There were times when she would chant to herself... And we worked around large, sharp kitchen knives! I used to have some of the other employees casually pass by because I was fearful she was going to sneak up behind me and jam a knife into the back of my fucking head... The thing is, even I thought she was fucking nuts, and if someone with a mental illness says that, you know she was nuts...

She had beautiful rainbow hair...

However, not all mental illnesses are this way... That's only one example of a severe case of a very serious mental illness in a woman who wasn't taking her medication at the time. Not every case is so severe or uncontrollable. Not everyone has delusions or even the same types. In the case of paranoid schizophrenics, their delusions, more often than not, involve government conspiracies and/or religion. But that also doesn't mean that all people who believe in government conspiracies is mentally ill. I mean really, every person associated with the government intentionally makes people paranoid by dodging questions or giving vague, cryptic answers to questions. So no, Fox Mulder from The X-Files wasn't schizophrenic... He just had normal paranoia where the government was concerned...

The best depiction of bipolar disorder...

But back to my misfortune...
I feel I need to clear up things for those who fall prey to the stigmas of mental illnesses. The image to the left is, by far, the best depiction of what it's like to suffer from bipolar disorder. It's a real crapshoot...
There are various forms of the disorder, one more severe than the other. Thankfully, I have the milder of the two. So let me explain what it's like to live this way every day...
One thing every bipolar person suffers from is mood swings. It's a real pain in the ass... You could wake up feeling cheerful and five minutes later, you're either so down you just can't function or you're ready to rip off someone's head and shit down their neck... literally... Nothing needs to set you off, either, like your lazy coworker or a fight with your significant other. Your brain just shifts gears much like you do in a standard shift car. So even if you wake up and say to yourself, "I feel great today! It's going to be an awesome day!", you can't count on that because your mood changes day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. Yes, sometimes it can yo-yo back and forth that fast. Continuously roll a pair of dice... What are the odds that you'll roll the same combination every time? Not good... That's what it's like to be bipolar. See...? It's a real crap shoot...

Oh what fun...

The image on the right gives you a vague idea of what the moods are like. I, personally, spend most of my time in the latter two, hypomanic and depressive. I wish I experienced manic episodes more often. I tend to be incredibly productive during those times. And I mean productive to the point where people look at me strangely, as if I took speed... I'm overly hyper in my speech and I go above and beyond in normal activities. For example, one day I decided to bake cookies. The idea came out of the blue and I was overly psyched about the idea. I ended up baking non-stop, from the time I got up until I went to bed, for four days! On the fourth day, I was starting to come down and decided I no longer felt like baking. I finished the last batch and had way too many Christmas cookies to show for it. Other times, it's crazy house cleaning, like getting on my hands and knees to scrub the floor or pulling off oven knobs, soaking them and then scrubbing them just because "they needed it". I end up cleaning every little thing and my house is more sterile than sterilization chambers. Sadly, I don't get that mania often. I wish I did... I get so much done! But there are down sides to mania. Sometimes it takes a bad direction and you're a lot like Dr. David Banner, "Don't make me angry... You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...", then you turn into the raging green dude called The Hulk... Or it takes yet another route, "I'm Wonder Woman! I'm invincible!" That's probably the most frightening because you can do dangerous things because you feel nothing can stop you.

What a life...

The majority of the time, my natural state is beyond couch potato... It's as if my "get up and go" just "got up and went" and left no forwarding address. It's not a fun existence... There is so much I need to do yet I have no energy to do it. It's not fun to look around you and see a good layer of dust on your furniture, dishes and laundry piling up, yet you just can't get your lazy ass up to do anything about it. You hate looking at the disaster that is your house to the point that you're miserable, but you just can't seem to get up and clean anything up. You and the couch have become one and that's about it. It had you in its warm embrace, you're nice and comfortable... Fuck it... You'll get to those things later. But you never do... Short of setting a bomb off under your ass, you're not going anywhere...

What a mindset...

Then there's soul-sucking depression...
I don't just mean feeling blue because it's been raining too long or you're sad because you had to put your pet down... Oh no... I mean real depression, the kind that makes you hate yourself, question your existence and, at times, makes you want to end it all because it's the only way you think you'll ever stop the emotional pain you're feeling. Sure, we've all had things that made us feel at least similar to this. For example, when a loved one passes away, someone you love betrays you, a relationship ends... But it's different in bipolar people. They experience that degree of depression (or higher) for no apparent reason. You hate/loathe/despise yourself for totally unreasonable things and you assume that, if you feel that way about yourself, others feel that way about you, too. So you isolate yourself... You don't go out, you don't talk to anyone. But isolation only makes you feel worse about yourself. How fucked up is this...?!
And five minutes later, you can feel like you can do anything and are ready to go out and take on the whole world in a solo mission... Who needs to hide under that blanket all day, safe and warm, protected from anything outside of said blanket? Unfortunately, that doesn't happen often. Most of the time, depression sets in, sets up permanent camp and there isn't thing one you feel you can do about it...

It's always after you...

Then there's anxiety...
It's difficult to describe the feeling. It's more than just fear... Everyone is afraid at some point. You get that sudden jolt, the "fight or flight" response kicking in. Your heart starts pounding, you break out in a sweat and your brain is screaming at you to get the hell out of dodge. Everyone has had that feeling at some point. And if you haven't... you better go see a doctor because you may be a psychopath...
But anxiety isn't like that... All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you're terrified and you have no idea what you're terrified of. Even if you do know, it's usually an irrational fear anyway, which makes you feel even worse... The biggest problem is that whatever is causing the fear isn't coming from an outside source. It's all in your head... And that's a difficult place to escape from...

Yes... they do...

However, the most annoying and crippling part of anxiety is the fact that having anxiety gives you more anxiety...
For example, most people engage in odd behavior when they have anxiety issues. Your brain creates the behavior as a way to squelch the anxious feelings. Your brain has good intentions and, for a short while, the behaviors seems to help. But, over time, you realize that these behaviors are odd, you're not like other people. Because of that, you feel more anxious, so the behaviors get worse, which leads to more anxiety, more odd behavior... It just keeps going around and around, like a vicious circle. It's like being on a merry-go-round you can never seem to get off of no matter how hard you try...

We all wear one...

And so you go one, every day, hiding behind a mask so no one knows how you really feel...
There are a lot of things out there that tell you to dump negative people from your life because you don't need negativity. That's really cruel... Negative people are usually troubled people who need help, could use kind words or gesture, to know someone cares. So these people are telling you to turn your back on people who are crying out for help. Mighty white of them... Jackasses...

I hope someone found this informative and now has a better understanding of the trials and tribulations that mentally ill people face every day.
And the next time you run across a negative person, remember that some kindness may make a world of difference for someone...