Waking Up With Bipolar Disorder

Geetanjal Khanna
Geetanjal Khanna

Did I tell you about the time I got lost at sea?

What about the time I left myself at the hospital?

What about the time I got lost in space?

Once I woke up, newly single, hardly breathing and with a hope to see Austin, Texas or find god, maybe even myself along the way and maybe even get to OKC to see my mother and brothers.

If I was being honest I was going there to kill myself. If I would’ve succeeded, this story would end today but either I made it or hell looks just like a hospital still. It even smells the same.

This time I actually left the hospital with the doctor’s permission. And I didn’t crash the car again, I know how that ends. I’ve been playing this game for over a decade now. I have yet to win. Whatever that means.

I’m in over my head in the hospital again. This year I missed my birthday, christmas, new years– all of it. Fuck yeah… time to celebrate my social death, yeah that one again.

Where do I go from here?

What choices did I leave myself with that aren’t dying…

So,

To Paris?

To hell?

To the supermarket?

Home to dads?

I don’t feel bad for losing myself for the holidays,

I feel bad for my son not having me. How could I get so very lost?

I have Bipolar Disorder.

That’s how.

Now how do I tell people that?

Stop trivializing it, if you haven’t lived it or with it don’t call anyone Bipolar.

At what point in what conversation do I mention that I have been struggling with my mental health since I was 11. I honestly think that it’s been a lot longer than that but that’s a different story.

I must be real still, or a ghost, or a fallen angel. You can pick, it changes sometimes daily when I am not properly treated.

Yes I have triggers, no they are none of your business.Your business is to stop treating every person with a mental illness differently than anyone else.

I don’t want or need your kid gloves, safe words or help with activities of daily living. I need the world to educate themselves on serious mental illness and the affects it has on the people who battle with it every day.  Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

Krista Rae Jarrett

Mother, writer, educator

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