Here’s some more of the world according to me.

Every day I feel different. I look around and my perspective changes; I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because of the weather, maybe because of the medication I swallow, and maybe as a result of my own semi-twisted imagination looking at the world in a different way.

The big highs and lows have higher arcs, but the daily differences are more subtle than that and sometimes teach me new things, and sometimes not.

During my periods of mania, I’ve imagined myself in many adventures- I thought I would convert to Christianity one day, only to realize that I was probably being secretly stalked by an aging Vampire the next. (To clarify, I did discard that theory two days later.)

Psychosis is not easy to describe to those who haven’t lived through it- when you are alone in your reality everyone else is wrong and you are the only one who is right. Any nuggets of wisdom that you glean from your experiences are not taken seriously because of your mental illness. It’s like being alone on island, but with people all around who “know better” than you do.

When I was depressed, I  thought to myself that I could never have the skills to be a checker in a 7-11, because I was feeling  so slow and down that I truly believed I wouldn’t be able to figure out the register or how to charge someone for gas or a Twix candy bar. It’s all a matter of perception and that changes with time.

I don’t think that this state of flux is necessarily specific to Bipolar people, but that most people are in a state of flux, in which they are hopefully learning and evolving. Those of us with mental illnesses or Bipolar Disorder just happen to have the misfortune (and fortune) to learn things on a slightly different path. I liken my own journey to following a children’s coloring book- I am still following the numbers and going in a sequence, but it’s not clear exactly yet what the picture will be.

Now the changes are more subtle and shift daily. Today, for example, I was inspired enough to look at the organizational possibilities for my life. I’ll admit it, this is not something that often happens on my planet. Usually I live in a semi-chaos that seems to surround me. The only adventure I had was cleaning my closet. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?