First, I'll start with an update for my friends here and anyone else who read my last blog. I've gotten out of my poor living situation and have secured an apartment near my job. In fact, it's right next to the library that I work at currently. It is a little awkward to look out my windows and see it right there, but I work all day every day. The only times that I'll be home, no one will be over there. However, I am in the running for Assistant Head of Circulation. They narrowed it down to three people and our second interviews are in two weeks. If I get that job, then I'll be working at a differenet location (still only 5 minutes away). For now, I am staying with my parents until the apartment is finished being recarpeted, painted, and tiled. Staying here for now has its pros and cons, but overall it's just really nice to be spending some down time with my family.

In more unfortunate news, I have officially been found to have bi-polar disorder, which makes sense of a lot of things for me. I always just thought I was overemotional. I am patient and I have a long fuse, but when just the right thing annoys me/upsets me enough, I completely lose it. When my brother (who does have autism) says something horrible to my parents, it upsets me more than if he had said it to me because they work so hard to try to give him a good life, and I absolutely lose it. This is so dangerous because I am the only person in the family so far that he will physically assault and he is three times my size. If I start yelling at him, it escalates way too quickly. Really, when I get into an argument with anyone, I find that I have the inability to drop it, even when the other person already has. I keep rising and rising until I absolutely hate myself for being such a crazy b*** and then I sink into a depression.Or when something sad happens, I sink into the worst depression and it takes me much longer than anyone else to get over it. I also have issues with Complicated Grief relating to tragedies in my life or the passing of loved ones. It's been two years since my Grandpa passed away and I still can't remember him without dissolving into tears for at least an hour. When I'm in a GOOD mood, I get silly. This has actually never been a problem for me, no one has ever said that I'm too hyper or too goofy, because I know when I need to stop and be serious. People have often commended my humor and I've been told that I'm hilarious by a lot of friends, family, and coworkers. When I'm having one of my "highs", I get to use it to brighten other peoples' days and it makes me feel much better about myself.

These drastic, impassioned moods make the low points (or even the normal points) feel too heavy to bear. When my depression kicks in, it's so drastically different from my other moods, that it feels completely helpless and I cacn't help but wanting to kill myself. These thoughts come at a near-daily rate sometimes. Even when I'm in a good mood, a little "voice" in my head is like, "Yeah, you feel fine, but you'll never have to feel again if you just end it all. Then you don't have to anticipate the bad." Even though my true self knows that my subconcious is wrong, these thoughts come frequently. The scariest part is that my instinct towards suiide doesn't just sit at the front of my brain, in the short term realm of thinking, but it really is ingrained in my subconcious and my long-term thinking. It is DEEP in there.

I'll have periods of "highs" that last several days and sometimes several weeks. The same thing goes for my "lows." However, there will be times where I'll cycle through every single drasticly different mood in one day, and that's been happening a lot lately (and is what prompted me to have it evaluated). I'm going to be getting on a medication to regulate it all, which should be more helpful than what I was taking before. My psychiatrist told me that if you have bipolar disorder and you're only taking medicine for depression, it can actually make it worse. So it's a good thing I did this. However, I do still have depression (lucky me, I get both). Frighteningly, people with depression and bipolar are WAY more likely to attempt suicide and have the highest success rate. It's because of how suddenly and drastically exagerrated the lows are. It takes your depression and makes it depression times a thousand.

These rapid changes in mood have been making me feel completely crazy. I feel like such a nuisance to the loved ones in my life. Most of my friends and all of my coworkers and pretty much the general public have NO idea that I'm bipolar. I'm way too good at hiding my mood; I stay professional in all situations. Unfortunately, it does damage to me every time that I have to hold it in. I feel like having bipolar makes me a bad life partner, a bad friend, a bad daughter. Who wants to spend their life with an unstable person? Lately I feel the need to separate myself from the people I care about because I don't want to hurt them. BUT, my Dad has bipolar and depression and (in my opinion) he is the best father in the world. He's never ever been a bad Dad to me. He's my hero and my inspiration because of that. He's my ray of hope that I can have a normal life with these disorders and that maybe I CAN do something great.

But, I'm still convinced that I'm simply crazy. And no one even knows it. I keep it all to myself and I feel like people would be terrified to see how much I love myself and just how much I hate myself at the same time.