I don't wish bipolar on anyone.
It's a horrible fucking illness. To periodically lose control of your own mind, thoughts and emotions with little to no outside influence is terrifying.
You start with having an illness that makes you feel completely alone and in despair. It's not something people can see or something that everyone has so they therefore don't understand it. When people can't see something or they haven't experienced it, in their mind, it doesn't really exist as something real and tangible.
If something isn't real to someone they don't support it. They question it's existence and doubt what you're feeling. In someone with bipolar, this outlook only goes to justify the feelings of being alone and despair that were purely made up by your body to begin with.
While spiralling out of control internally you have to try and keep it together so you don't get labelled crazy on top of everything else. So not only are you lonely and despairing, you are also feeling like you have to hide. And of course, hiding doesn't help, it makes it worse.
So you reach out to people, which is unbelievably difficult to begin with, but even harder when you get met with blank faces and strange looks. You realise this is a battle that only you can fight but you feel completely powerless to do so.
You find some strength and push on to do all the things to make yourself feel better but even eating healthy, exercising and taking medication sometimes fail to work and the despair inside you grows to new heights.
As much as you try not to take it out on anyone else and 'hide the crazy' it still seeps out and work and personal relationships take a hit. This only serves to make you more depressed and feel more alone.
Depression is just one side of it though, sometimes you can be on a high which leads to making erratic choices and bad financial decisions and again, people think you're crazy.
So then you're back to square one. Despair and depressed.
Sometimes these emotions cause a physical reaction and you get violently ill and can't stop shaking and that doesn't help you help yourself because who has that kind of motivation when they are unwell.
People with bipolar tend to have a lot of empathy and compassion for others as they understand that everyone is fighting their own battle, no matter what that looks like. However a lot of people without it tend not to have as much and can be dismissive which is incredibly hurtful. Because even though you don't have it, it's real, and it does exist.
Wouldn't it be great if it was just accepted like any other illness and on top of managing it all, you didn't have to hide, pretend or justify yourself.
Through all of this you may be lucky enough to have a few people (at best) that while they can never understand fully, choose to support you anyway. They don't care that it doesn't make sense or that you are acting irrationally, they still turn up, every day and keep you going.
I wish nothing more than to be able to control my head, to be able to live without these patches where I am no longer myself.
But for now, that's not possible so I just have to learn how to live with it.