I'm a bipolar teacher. I keep it very quiet. Very few people will get this at all. It's so lonely as I can't talk to anyone about this.
30 years of suffering without any visible scars but a mind torn to pieces and held together with random threads of hope and the glue of medication. This blog is my therapy, it is my personal counselling, writing about my condition helps me; with any luck there may even be 1 or 2 people out there who will understand how I feel. Really that's all I want, to know I'm not completely on my own. My family don't understand, or don't want to. My colleagues don't know. My doctor looks concerned but probably has no idea how I feel.
If I had a physical illness I'm sure I would be viewed differently; maybe I could attract sympathy. Other people know what physical pain feels like but you have to have led a bipolar life to have any understanding of the looming misery of my existence.
This illness is inside of my skull and that the only true cure is death. Suicidal? Not for many years but I do suffer from such a deep and destructive misery that I wouldn't put up a fight if death came knocking.
My bipolar life at the moment is mostly low, a deep depression that I can't remember entering. When I get miserable I get more depressed, filled with even more despair. I'm content these days if I'm simply miserable. Once in a blue moon I experience highs, the pleasure of mania when the world resolves into sharp focus and ideas flow like water. I used to have lots of these when I was younger, periods of intense pleasure and creativity. These periods got me a degree and a doctorate, periods of extreme energy when the whole Universe mad sense and the its structure and workings opened up before me. In those days highs and lows came and went, swinging like a pendulum. As I got older and experienced the pains of existence the pendulum seemed to violate the laws of physics and spend a far greater time in the depressive phase. But more of that later.
I'll tell anyone who ever reads this everything. I'll talk about teaching through the eyes of a manic depressive, I'll talk about my career and my life, I'll ruminate on life and death, I'll get stuff off my chest. Some days I hope I bring solace though I suspect that most of this will be simply maudlin and miserable. Who knows. Please come back.
30 years of suffering without any visible scars but a mind torn to pieces and held together with random threads of hope and the glue of medication. This blog is my therapy, it is my personal counselling, writing about my condition helps me; with any luck there may even be 1 or 2 people out there who will understand how I feel. Really that's all I want, to know I'm not completely on my own. My family don't understand, or don't want to. My colleagues don't know. My doctor looks concerned but probably has no idea how I feel.
If I had a physical illness I'm sure I would be viewed differently; maybe I could attract sympathy. Other people know what physical pain feels like but you have to have led a bipolar life to have any understanding of the looming misery of my existence.
This illness is inside of my skull and that the only true cure is death. Suicidal? Not for many years but I do suffer from such a deep and destructive misery that I wouldn't put up a fight if death came knocking.
My bipolar life at the moment is mostly low, a deep depression that I can't remember entering. When I get miserable I get more depressed, filled with even more despair. I'm content these days if I'm simply miserable. Once in a blue moon I experience highs, the pleasure of mania when the world resolves into sharp focus and ideas flow like water. I used to have lots of these when I was younger, periods of intense pleasure and creativity. These periods got me a degree and a doctorate, periods of extreme energy when the whole Universe mad sense and the its structure and workings opened up before me. In those days highs and lows came and went, swinging like a pendulum. As I got older and experienced the pains of existence the pendulum seemed to violate the laws of physics and spend a far greater time in the depressive phase. But more of that later.
I'll tell anyone who ever reads this everything. I'll talk about teaching through the eyes of a manic depressive, I'll talk about my career and my life, I'll ruminate on life and death, I'll get stuff off my chest. Some days I hope I bring solace though I suspect that most of this will be simply maudlin and miserable. Who knows. Please come back.
How are you? I'm currently signed off for anxiety with depression...although in what feels like this endless stretch of time I've done a lot of thinking and sometimes wonder if there's a little more to it. What impact does your bipolar life have on your teaching? I'm just wanting to function. I'm wanting things to return to normal. I feel like the clock is ticking and yet I cannot go back to work if the smallest thing sends me to tears and I become obsessed for a week at a time over one small thing until I move on to the next. It's isolating knowing that no one can fully see or comprehend what's going on with me, and verbally at the moment, words fail me. I can't put any of it into words. Hope you're well as the festive season is (as always more and more prematurely) thrust upon us!
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