control over myself.
After I left I was clean and sober for about six months and I was still with my boyfriend. My boyfriend was Bipolar too but he was unmedicated. I was really happy and everything had been going really well, but I had not been able to write and this was a really big deal for me. Writing was such a big part of who I was. I thought I was going to be the next Sylvia Plath and I really believed this. I believed that I was a literary genius at my 18-year-old naïve self. Then, one night I got really upset and my boyfriend freaked out on me and he tried to kill me. He broke my nose and my cheekbone and knocked out some teeth.
After this the doctors put me on opiates and that's when I realized I didn't have to feel anymore. That's when my love of opiates began at the age of 19. A month or two later I was up for a week straight and I started seeing things. I was convinced my house was haunted and I was seeing ghosts and I would talk to them. This is really the only psychotic break I've ever had, and it wasn’t really from a lack of sleep, because it started three days before insomnia took over and it just got worse and worse and worse. When I get manic I don't eat, I don’t sleep, and I forget about all those necessities for life. I started seeing ghosts and talking to them, and then I decided to call my psychiatrist and she institutionalized me for the third time.
Gender
The overall incidence of Bipolar disorder is approximately gender neutral. However, epidemiological studies indicate that Bipolar II disorder, a condition in which depressive episodes predominate, may be somewhat more common in women.
-Keck and Suppes 2005: 2-3
This time they focused more on the Bipolar and less on the drugs. I did a lot of therapy and I started to do dialectical behavior therapy. Dialectical behavior is more of a non-medicated approach. After I got out of the institution this time though, I felt really hopeless. I thought okay the drugs I can get rid of but the Bipolar illness I can’t. So what's the point!!! I was put in a partial hospitalization program for two months and I was using the whole time. I was refusing to take my medication, and the people there told me I was going to die if I didn’t take the medication. And my attitude to this was very negative.
Even to this day I romanticize my Bipolar illness. I think insanity is beautiful. All of my heroes have some type of mental illness or addiction. I knew at a young age I wanted to do drugs and I knew at a young age I wanted to be crazy. I wanted to be an artist, and I wanted to be different, and because of the Bipolar illness I was different. When I'm in a manic state you can't tell me anything. I used to justify that I'm okay, because I was looking up to people who had mental problems and I thought they were brilliant. But the fact is the people I looked up to were just insane . I was like, “Oh Sylvia Plath put her head in the oven and killed herself, that's so beautiful! And I didn't want to be different; I wanted to be something special. Therefore, I convinced myself that I was something very special.
Famous people who have a mental illness led me to believing that there is a reason for me being Bipolar. I needed a reason to have this illness and that was the main thing . That's why I paint and that's why I write. Because I have a mental illness, I believe I'm going to be better at it as a result. That's a common misconception with people who have a mental illness, that because their crazy with a mental illness that they are a genius. And truthfully we do think different from ordinary people. There is something beautiful about being Bipolar, but I take it to great extremes. Romanticizing the Bipolar illness drives my friend’s nuts today. But I do it regardless. Sometimes I love being Bipolar, because I think differently from other normal people. That's what I love -- that my mind is not the same as everyone else.
My mind is different because of the
After I left I was clean and sober for about six months and I was still with my boyfriend. My boyfriend was Bipolar too but he was unmedicated. I was really happy and everything had been going really well, but I had not been able to write and this was a really big deal for me. Writing was such a big part of who I was. I thought I was going to be the next Sylvia Plath and I really believed this. I believed that I was a literary genius at my 18-year-old naïve self. Then, one night I got really upset and my boyfriend freaked out on me and he tried to kill me. He broke my nose and my cheekbone and knocked out some teeth.
After this the doctors put me on opiates and that's when I realized I didn't have to feel anymore. That's when my love of opiates began at the age of 19. A month or two later I was up for a week straight and I started seeing things. I was convinced my house was haunted and I was seeing ghosts and I would talk to them. This is really the only psychotic break I've ever had, and it wasn’t really from a lack of sleep, because it started three days before insomnia took over and it just got worse and worse and worse. When I get manic I don't eat, I don’t sleep, and I forget about all those necessities for life. I started seeing ghosts and talking to them, and then I decided to call my psychiatrist and she institutionalized me for the third time.
Gender
The overall incidence of Bipolar disorder is approximately gender neutral. However, epidemiological studies indicate that Bipolar II disorder, a condition in which depressive episodes predominate, may be somewhat more common in women.
-Keck and Suppes 2005: 2-3
This time they focused more on the Bipolar and less on the drugs. I did a lot of therapy and I started to do dialectical behavior therapy. Dialectical behavior is more of a non-medicated approach. After I got out of the institution this time though, I felt really hopeless. I thought okay the drugs I can get rid of but the Bipolar illness I can’t. So what's the point!!! I was put in a partial hospitalization program for two months and I was using the whole time. I was refusing to take my medication, and the people there told me I was going to die if I didn’t take the medication. And my attitude to this was very negative.
Even to this day I romanticize my Bipolar illness. I think insanity is beautiful. All of my heroes have some type of mental illness or addiction. I knew at a young age I wanted to do drugs and I knew at a young age I wanted to be crazy. I wanted to be an artist, and I wanted to be different, and because of the Bipolar illness I was different. When I'm in a manic state you can't tell me anything. I used to justify that I'm okay, because I was looking up to people who had mental problems and I thought they were brilliant. But the fact is the people I looked up to were just insane . I was like, “Oh Sylvia Plath put her head in the oven and killed herself, that's so beautiful! And I didn't want to be different; I wanted to be something special. Therefore, I convinced myself that I was something very special.
Famous people who have a mental illness led me to believing that there is a reason for me being Bipolar. I needed a reason to have this illness and that was the main thing . That's why I paint and that's why I write. Because I have a mental illness, I believe I'm going to be better at it as a result. That's a common misconception with people who have a mental illness, that because their crazy with a mental illness that they are a genius. And truthfully we do think different from ordinary people. There is something beautiful about being Bipolar, but I take it to great extremes. Romanticizing the Bipolar illness drives my friend’s nuts today. But I do it regardless. Sometimes I love being Bipolar, because I think differently from other normal people. That's what I love -- that my mind is not the same as everyone else.
My mind is different because of the
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