100

As the title vaguely, if it all suggests, this is my one-hundredth Blogger entry. A lot has happened since I opened this blog, and upon reflecting on the last year and nearly a half, I've learned a lot more about myself. I stated that this blog is just as much for me as it is for the, I guess you could call them my "targeted readers", but I've been very vague when touching on the touchy, and have not written up to my self-assigned commission. Although some of you may not be able to relate to the fullest, I know that you can find yourself in me if you try to. I don't want us to be alone.

Inspired by Boss, may she rest in peace.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in June of 2009.

I'd always believed that there was something out of the ordinary about me. I think that thought crosses everyone at some point, and I think we all eventually realize what that something is.

Growing up, I never held any consistent friendships and wasn't sociable. I preferred being alone, and I was not at all happy about it. Depression isn't as much sadness as it is a feeling of helplessness. It's a consistent numbness, like that drone you hear over an empty phone line. You know, you've got a connection, but there's no one there. It's just noise. But you're thankful to be connected at all.

Mania didn't become a major issue for me until high school. I'd always had temper flares as an adolescent, but that could've been attributed to my being so spoiled. I think the anger laid low because I didn't care about anything enough to lose it over. When high school hit, I got a girlfriend and allowed myself to be repeatedly violated. I'm not saying I wasn't without fault. I just didn't know how to cope with it all. It was during the course of my next relationship that my manic depression began hurting others. Being so much in love was, of course, amazingly positively influential, but the occasional feeling of lack-of was equally dangerous. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not feel any guilt over how I ended our relationship. Later, we reconnected and recollected and I really hated myself for a while after. I guess I've become another sort of person because of what I did. "Better", I hope.

I diagnosed myself before my psychiatrist did. It was the realization I came to after a series of intensely self-induced events spanning its own four seasons. In the beginning, I was already a social drinker, occasional toker and chain cigarette smoker. In a cliche gateway fashion, I found my way into hard drugs and respectively hard places. Nothing about it was real. Maybe what I do remember didn't even happen. Yeah, it was all really amazing at first, but I let myself get carried away. I just couldn't handle. You see, addiction is not as hazardous in its persistence as it is in its insatiability. I felt like crap when I was downing, so I'd turn to more of what set me up for the drop in the first place (I set myself up, I mean to say), and life would seem real again. I didn't see most of my friends during this period. You're probably one of them. I thought myself a real ghost at times, and that later became an apparently appropriate analogy. I could have died back there.

I found myself in another's autobiography. Nic and I went through different degrees of similar episodes throughout our lives, and I became somewhat resolved. It wasn't what we experienced, but how we did. Among the determinations of others, Nic was diagnosed as being bipolar. As underlying as this point was made (the book mostly followed his drug abuse), I was able to collect what would change the course of the rest of my life. I researched a great deal and decided to see a psychiatrist.

Over the course of my treatment, I've accumulated five different prescriptions. Two of them are dailies and three situational. I hate it so much that I often forget to take them. It's so difficult to motivate myself back to the point at which I know I need the medicine to raise me back to that point (I had to reread that many times). I'm getting better at it though. Unfortunately, there is no cure for manic depression. I'll be taking medication every day for the rest of my life. I will always be living this. Fortunately, I'm getting better at it.