Let’s go back to that first day of my freshman year of high school. It was orientation and I couldn’t seem to grab hold of anyone long enough to even make an acquaintance. I was wandering around aimlessly and anxiously alone. I hadn’t seen most of my group of friends since 8th grade graduation. I had stopped returning phone calls, stopped answering pleas to hang out and spent most of my summer being watched over by my mother, although that part is a blur. My friends slowly went opposite ways and honestly, I think they were scared of me. I thought high school was going to be an opportunity to start over but it seems my reputation had followed me and would only grow worse over time. But nobody understood that I was unstable and mostly unmedicated; they all just thought I was strange and mentally incapable of being normal, that the things I did were for attention.
I walked into the library to hide. The corners were dark and uncharted and I knew I could quietly breakdown without anyone paying attention. As I came through the giant oak door, I felt something cold hit the side of my cheek and fall to the carpet. It was a half empty bottle of Excedrin. I’ll never forget the way the black letters glared violently up at me, rolling back and forth.
“Don’t you want to take the rest of these? Hopefully they kill you this time.”
It was Eric, someone I had considered a good friend in middle school, someone who had been there for me, and he had now chosen to treat me as though my existence had become unacceptable.
I was too mortified to cry. To move, even.
That was the day I decided I would keep quiet about my disorder, that my monsters would remain a personal battle I would never have to explain to anybody. I spent six years “in hiding”, although I think a lot of people knew there wasn’t something quite right about some of my behaviors; the lying, the promiscuity, the lashes of terrifying anger. To be honest, I never took it seriously until I was 22. I flushed thousands of dollars worth of medication down the toilet, sat silently (but angrily) in every therapy session, put on a pseudo face for everyone and lost a lot of important relationships. Although in the beginning, I felt like nobody knew how to handle a 13 year old with bipolar disorder, as I got older, opportunities were given to me to receive help and I brushed them under the carpet, something I didn’t realize until a few ears ago. I truly thought if I just ignored it, it would go away. Even when I had people at my Utah therapeutic boarding school, screaming in my face that I needed help, I never acknowledged it. And for that, I suffered immensely.
I know, I sound ridiculous, like a kid who clearly had years of therapy. But trust me, there are a lot of treatment methods I suffered through that I don’t agree with and a lot of dark things I have yet to come to terms with. It’s not all “rainbows and butterflies and compromise”. Some days, I am still hell to be around and I do a lot of unexplainable things that even I don’t understand. I’ve just come to terms with what I experienced when I was younger and I know now that as much as I want to, I can’t blame my father for all of it.
Yes, I have severe daddy issues too. Of course, add it the list.
just another manic monday. 