Dear Bipolar: A Letter to My Diagnosis

Dear Bipolar - I accept you, I am accountable for what you put me through, and I pledge to life that I will be crazy good!

Hi, and welcome to The Journey Never Ends.

Today I'm going to perform for you one of my poems.

So for those of you that don't know,

probably most of you,

when I lived in California,

I would do open mic nights to perform my poetry.

Also, many of my poems are in my book, Crazy Good,

Poems and Perspectives on Mental Health.

It is available on Amazon.

Go check it out.

It's a memoir about my experience with bipolar disorder,

specifically with three very destructive manic episodes.

Anywho, today I'm going to read my letter to bipolar.

Dear Bipolar...

You are the lunar and the solar.

You are a canine and a molar.

You go north, you get colder.

You go south, it's a smolder.

Ups and downs, nothing's bolder than the poles of you, dear bipolar.

You are up and down, you're a smile and a frown.

You're about to find out

That love is all around.

Because we love you just the way you are.

As long as the meds keep your symptoms afar.

So essentially what I'm trying to tell bipolar disorder is that we love you.

But like not really.

We love you just as long as you don't show up in my life and ruin my motherfucking life.

That's how I feel.

So dear bipolar...

Bye.

So I wrote this poem back in May 9th, 2024.

And I think it really highlights the idea that I accept I'm bipolar.

But I want to stay away from it.

I believe that mental illness that is not addressed and maintained will ruin your life.

I don't think there's any other way of putting it.

It's pretty impossible to function when your central functioning organ

The organ in charge doesn't really function the way you would want it to function.

And I think part of being able to manage your mental illness is time.

Unfortunately, I really feel that accepting your diagnosis is a grieving process.

You go through the states of grief.

You have to grieve the death of your healthy self.

At least that was my experience with it.

I was suddenly a different person.

And it's not totally true.

I was still the same person when I was diagnosed.

But it just feels different.

It's isolating.

The medicalization of becoming bipolar and being labeled as crazy is really disenfranchising.

There's nothing worse that they can call you other than crazy.

It's like, hey, your brain doesn't work.

You have no authority.

You have no reason to be right.

No matter what you say, you are crazy and we'll never forget that.

At least that's how I felt.

And maybe parts of that's true.

But when you manage your mental illness and are able to really function at your best,

I call that being crazy good.

It's difficult to have any type of disability.

In order for me to thrive, I can't just be good.

I have to be crazy good.

I have to be so good.

I have to be on top of my medication routine and have stability in my routine when

I inherently hate routine.

I have to be cognizant of what I consume, what environments I put myself in, when I go to sleep.

Most importantly, I

I think the number one concept of accepting your diagnosis has to do with accountability.

Once you accept your diagnosis,

you can hopefully ensue a type of accountability as soon as you accept your diagnosis,

which again,

this is the final step of the grieving process.

It starts with denial.

And I went through that for many years.

If you're going through denial and you're rejecting your diagnosis, it's okay.

I get it.

We go through that,

but just know you're not alone and people get diagnosed every day with bipolar disorder.

It's not a death sentence, but it is a fucking wild ride.

But just remember that everyone functions in emotions and you have more in common

with every single person than you would imagine.

The human experience is emotions.

We just experience the human emotion with the volume turned up.

The beautiful thing of being bipolar is when you can have accountability and move

forward and live a stable life.

The beautiful thing of bipolar is that we experience emotions in life a little bit more.

than many other people.

We experience neural networks that many people never tap into.

I've experienced out-of-body experiences that people only experience when they take

hardcore drugs.

It's pretty interesting.

At the end of the day,

I do believe that bipolar disorder is a disability because it is in there is some

silver lining to it.

But don't romanticize bipolar disorder because it is a disability and it is very hard to manage.

Be accountable for your disorder as soon as you're able to accept it and realize

that you are grieving the loss of your healthy self.

And you are experiencing a very difficult thing to accept,

which is that maybe your brain isn't always your friend.

This doesn't mean you don't have value.

You have value.

You have a perspective unlike anyone else.

Just take accountability,

learn what works for you,

and iteratively and constantly fight for a better life.

Remember that the journey never ends.

Pledge to life.

And that every day is a battle.

And every day is a present.

And you can do this if you set your mind to it on a daily basis.

That's all I wanted to talk about today.

I really appreciate you guys being here.

I hope you all have a great day.

Much love.