I want to sabotage the potential that I could be happy. I can see happiness as something that is an option for the future. If I look into the distance I see it as an exit off of the road. It’s something that I could drive to, but it’s not easily accessed. I want it though, I need to be happy but I don’t think I deserve it. Maybe it’s because I want self-sabotage. There are rewards and there are punishments are we are conditioned to respond in certain ways to things. My brain believes that I don’t deserve happiness and I (being the gullible person that I am) believe it. I unknowingly (or consciously even) believe that I am not “supposed” to feel happy because feeling miserable is so familiar. I’ve felt this way for so long that it’s become my “normal.”

I don’t want that. I don’t want to be a miserable human being but I don’t know how else to be. If I change my medications I might become so sick that I actually try to die. And I don’t want that, even if there’s a strong possibility that changing meds will make me better. I can’t get it out of my head that I’ll go into a manic episode and nothing will be able to stop it. I can’t stop thinking about what could happen, and how my doctor won’t know, and what if I just want to leave this world and no one can actually stop me?

Today my friend told me that I can’t live this way anymore. He said that I need to ask my doctor to change my medications and that they aren’t working. He doesn’t want to see me like this. He said that there’s a better way. That I could try a mood stabilizer and that I could live a better life with bipolar disorder. I don’t know what I’m going to do but I know I want a better life. I want a life where being happy isn’t scary. I want to live, like actually live, and not feel like I am just surviving.

I see people out there doing that. I watch other people laughing, working, seeing friends and I’m isolating myself. I don’t know how to talk to people anymore, it’s like I never had that skill or I forgot it. Bipolar disorder doesn’t have to make me into a person I don’t want to be. I’m trying to not let it. But I don’t know how. Do you?