Control Option Command

So where to begin…
Let’s begin like this: Hi. My name is Martin. Late twenties. Live-in girlfriend. Loving family. Good job. Bipolar disorder. Heavily medicated.

Why this blog? Well. I am a incredibly resourceful young basket case, or so my various therapists, doctors and psychiatrists would have me believe. So perhaps my writings here might be useful to someone. That would be the secondary purpose of this site.

The main purpose is that writing is very therapeutic to me. I concentrate better when I have to convey my message to someone else. It doesn’t matter whether this “someone else” is an actual person (although I’ll admit I’d be excited if this site attracted millions) or just the vast void that is the internet. As long as I feel I’m writing it with the purpose of explaining these things to someone else, that helps me organize my mind for myself.

If you’ll stay along for the ride, you’re more than welcome and if you should have some questions I’d love to hear from you, but I’m writing this stuff down for myself and google (who sees all and knows all. All hail our overlords google to whom no corner of the internet is unseen.)

I know, I know. The “I’m writing this for me not for you”-schtick has been the adage of new blogs since the dawn of times. In the beginning there was The Word. And The Word was “If I suck, I’ll pretend I don’t care, but if I don’t; Please give me money.” I suppose it’s true for me as well. I would love for someone to read this and get some meaning out of it, but it won’t shut me up if you don’t.

Shutting up never got nobody nowhere.

I imagine I’ll be mentioning my particular flavour of bonkers in the future, so perhaps I should do a brief intro to bipolar disorder as a way to get things rolling. Bipolar disorder is a pretty messy affair. I mean that both in the sense that it can be a pretty ugly condition to deal with, and that it’s a bitch to try to pinpoint.
The basic gist of it is this: You get mood swings. “So what” I hear you howl, “Everyone gets mood swings” you expound. And a valid point you make indeed, however not everyone gets mood swings so violent as to render you either in a euphoric frenzy or paralyzed with apathy and depression.

While that last description is definitely not true for everyone with bipolar disorder, or maybe not even most, it’s certainly not outside of the limits of the diagnose. The mania that comes with the disorder is well known to induce psychotic hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety and a whole heap of joyful stuff like that.

I don’t want to be overly dramatic here, so I’ll take this opportunity to mention that I myself do not suffer from neither frenzies or paralyzation. At least not anymore. Bipolar disorder can be dealt with and managed. This topic will probably surface in future blog posts. (Actually I have a feeling it will be the next one.)

Another thing to realize about the condition is that it’s actually a chemical screw-up in the brain that you inherit (most likely from your father.) That is to say; It’s not really something you can get rid of with therapy, or indeed at all. (That doesn’t mean therapy might not be a good idea anyway.) The symptoms usually surface at a pretty young age and are often mistaken for ADD. In fact bipolar disorder is mistaken for unipolar depression, schizophrenia, ADD and several other conditions depressingly often.

The last tidbit I’ll leave you with is this; Quite often people with bipolar disorder, if given the choice, do not wish it to go away. This also I will address in a later post.

And that’s all for now.