“Things get better.” and they do… they just never go away though, at least not without a price. You can’t run from who you are, but you can hope that the shit storm you’re in “gets better” so it’s an easier pill to swallow. As I’ve slowly recovered from my most recent suicide attempt four years ago, I’ve figured out my pills, and therapy has been great so I’m living a very functional life. My shitty situation has turned into sunshine and rainbows (usually) but fundamentally, my brain has not changed.

My mind was captured by The Bipolar Gang and put out for ransom, which was bought by Big Pharma Corp.

Now I am forever a prisoner to pills because life is craptacular when I forget to take them. However, I can’t testify and say that I know exactly how it feels to break free from my medications. I’m too afraid. I’m afraid of jumping off the walls and then plunging into darkness afterwards.

Does it take guts to come off your medications? Are people “heros” for advocating that “You can be better off them.” and that the side effects don’t outweigh the benefits?

I don’t have the answer to that because my life with bipolar disorder, with our without medications, will forever be a journey I have to accept even though some days are tougher than others. Some are more teary-stringy-boogery while others are blinding from the pot of gold I found at the end of the rainbow. That’s just life under a magnifying glass with most chronic illnesses to be honest, whether it is mental or physical. You just can’t run away from who you are.

My bipolar disorder doesn’t define me but it does have its confinements like when I’m supposed to sleep and what I’m supposed to eat.

I can’t run away from the fact that being bipolar is a big fat part of me. This glaring truth punches me in the face every morning when I swallow a handful of pills. When I forget them, I get a roundabout kick in the gonads, and you know why it’s in my gonads? Because it friggin hurts to be reminded AGAIN that I can’t live without them.

These pills finds mini-me in my mind, straps me into my seat, and turns off the old rickety and dangerous wooden rollercoaster that is called my brain chemistry.

Might I add that these pills have serious abandonment issues too. Even if I forget them in the morning and take them in the afternoon for a couple days, it’ll beat the crap out of me. Suddenly I’m happy, then depressed, and anxious all over again. So like I was saying… “Things get better.” but not without a price.

I have this fantasy that the day I decide to pop off the caps of all my pills and dump ‘em down the toilet (sorry fish), I’ll run free like the girls in Orange Is The New Black. You know, even bathing in muddy water is better than bathing when you’re locked up in prison. Guys and gals… I hope you find your mental freedom wherever that is. Even if you have to pay big pharma to get it.

xoxo,

Joanne