Claiming the Victory

It's been a jumbled few days.
My brain has been racing in uncharted ways...and even that bible on my head isn't calming the storm.

Very few know...but many moons ago...like 16ish years, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I had a severe manic phase which crashed into a deep depression and through medicine, therapy and love and support of my family...I was able to put the pieces of my mind back together.

Over the years there's been "close calls", the symptoms coming but my husband and I pretty prepared to calm them, deter them and reset my brain. Many years ago I went off of meds all together and I haven't had any severe episodes of manic or depressive phases. Quite honestly, I think I just learned to function within my manic or depressive phases. I learned to hide.

When you're not yourself...when your brain is manic...at least for me, you don't sleep, you are highly agitated, anxious and stressed....it can move almost to a paranoia...you push people around you away and you have almost no impulse control. It's not that you aren't in control...but yet it is. Sometimes. You hit a wall. Because you can only sustain that frenzied way of existing for so long before you just can't function. And what inevitably follows is a dead end spiral of despair and exhaustion.

I am not there yet. But it's coming. And looking back...I can see how the perfect storm has been brewing.

So Monday I have an assessment scheduled. Meds maybe? Therapy for sure. I am relieved and anxious.

So why am I sharing this?? Why expose what many, myself included, keep for just a simple select few?? Why share what many could try to use against me or gossip about me or judge me?? Because I know if I'm going to have healing (and healing does NOT mean no longer having bipolar to me) and peace...then I have to stand in all of my truth.

People I love have suffered mental illness. People I love have committed suicide. People I love struggle with loss. Struggle with hiding. Struggle with shame. Struggle with stigma.

How will we remove the stigma if when we are doing "well" we don't claim that as victory...how will we remove stigma if we keep secrets.

So I stand in my truth and I own my reality. But it does not own me.

I'm claiming victory. And i will again and again.

That's what I got today.