A Coming Out Story - Bipolar

Not as bad as many others, but bad enough that I need medication and I’m very manageable on my medication. That’s how I have learned to describe myself when speaking of my chemical infirmity or imbalance to those I choose to reveal it to. I don’t mess around with it. Whatever is prescribed, I follow and I don’t pretend I know better than those who have spent years leaning about my disease. That’s the trap of this sickness. I have learned from those I have seen go before me and thought they knew better and died by their own hand in the end. I know what’s at stake and I don’t play around with it, because in manic swings, thinking I know better than those I have put my trust in can bring on a devastating result. I have learned to be very discriminating in that trust. My psychiatric professional and I have an understanding. We are a ship. She is my elected captain. I share my thoughts and opinions about what is happening with my body and mind. She shares her expertise. I listen and follow her suggestion and prescriptions to the letter.
Nature can play a crewel trick. I think I am sensitive, maybe a little nuts, but aren’t all creative people? I simultaneously praise my affliction as a gift and curse it as a terrible condition of the mind. Creative madness is what they called it in the golden age of amazing artists such as Van Gough. His madness is synonymous with ist’ brilliant works. Had the treatment of today been available to him, would bipolar have the same stigma it does today?
That I would speak of it publicly here is both terrifying and a relief.
I always knew I didn’t fit with the world. Sometimes I would have brilliant insights I would try to manifest in concrete form. However, before I would finish I would be overtaken by a malaise that would undermined all I sought to achieve.
After a number of years of stable, uncomplicated medicated balance and maintenance, all hangs in balance of my other affliction; hormones and age. It is a new challenge that I will meet head on.
With the love and full support of family and friends, it is a challenge I know I can triumph in.