Tired of acting normal
Am I the only one? I doubt it. I think for those of us who have the milder forms of B.D. and who have good awareness of our illness, we get pretty good at hiding our emotional disturbances to the outside world. When I am in a hypomanic state, I have no problem with presenting a happy face to the world, and serving as a constant source of amusement for my friends. I derive great pleasure from this role that I play, since the majority of my childhood was spent in a self-imposed state of isolation from the outside world. When my mood is high, I can begin to believe that I fit into the society around me and that others who view me see me as just your normal, everyday, outgoing member of society. I like it when I can feel that others think that I am “normal.”
However, when I am feeling down, the world comes crashing down around me. Although I maintain the facade of normality that others have come to expect of me, inside, I feel like an empty husk, an imposter trying her darndest to make the world belief that I have just as rightful a place in society as everyone else. At these low points, I feel like a total fake, feeling that, at any moment, everyone is going to figure out that I am an outsider that has wormed her way into the normal world. I find it so hard sometimes to make myself seem outwardly normal, while internally, I feel as if the world is going to implode before my eyes. For just a few seconds, I would love for my friends and family to see that I am NOT normal as they are and that I have a pack of inner demons eating my insides out, while I go about my life pretending to the outside world that I am perfectly fine.
I love my friends to death, and would be in a much worse state without them, but I feel this constant pressure to always be “up” and to always present to them the personality that they expect from me. While I make my friends very aware of the fact that I suffer from bipolar disorder, to the majority of them, I very much doubt that they have a very good grasp of what it actually means. Thank goodness for my frieds that either suffer from unipolar depression or bipolar disorder, when I am with them, I can feel comfortable in letting all of me come out.
I apologize if this blog comes across as being a bit disordered and disorganized, I think that is the frame of mind I am in right now and I lack the energy to go back and clear my writing up. I’ve always prefered writing in this stream of consciousness style. It is more natural, although the results may not be as pretty as some may like.
One thing I would love to find out about this disease is why there is such a high correlation of this disorder with excessive money spending? Does this only occur in the industrialized cultures, or does this trait find itself appearing in bipolar sufferers from less materialistic cultures? If anyone has an answer to this, please let me know. I would love to find out.
For those of you who are interested in finding out more about this funny thing that some of us have, I highly recommend doing a search in iTune’s podcast directory for “bipolar.” There are several great podcasts that speak about the disorder, current treatments, and new findings. I am currently listening to a podcast of an abnormal psychology lecture from a professor at a community college based in Portland. I’ve always had an interest in the abnormal and unusual, including abnormal psychology; I never expected that I would find personal relevance in the topic. Gotta love the way these things work 
Until next time fellow travellers!
Your lucky you have people you can rely on when you go manic or depressive. My friends ridiculed me when I went depressive and used me when I was manic.
I often wonder about the money correlation myself…I used to think it was where my parents had failed me some how in teaching me money management skills
I am so glad that my boyfriend understands when I tell him, No, I don’t want to go because I do not have the energy to wear the mask.
It’s nice to meet someone else in this world who is messy and has a lifetime supply of lotion! When I am up I try to straighten up the messy rooms and either wind up making a bigger mess by getting 3 projects going at once or crashing and collapsing. I am the proud owner of the world’s largest collection of snowmen plates (go figure) and more art than I have space on my walls! Thank God for a husband that pretty much rolls his eyes and tries not to get too bent out of shape (although he has had to return a lot of stuff to Lane Bryant — I too face the medication battle of the bulge)!