I was just diagnosed with bipolar type 2 disorder a little over a week ago. Part of me is relieved, because I've been trying to find out what's "wrong" with me for the last several years, and now I can start doing something about it. But a big part of me is very upset with it. Maybe it's that whole social stigma of mental illness thing. Or the fact that it is something I cannot fix by myself (I'm generally a very shy, quiet and private person). I don't know.

I was actually diagnosed with plain old clinical depression when I was 16, though I knew I was depressed long before that, and tried anti-depressants for the first time a few weeks later. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I tried so many different kinds I can't even count them all, and depending on what medication I was on at the moment, I was lethargic, or anxious, or angry all the time. I gave up on the medication when I turned 17, and just basically tried to deal with it on my own. And for the next couple of years, I was mostly okay. But that all changed when I was 20. I never knew what was wrong with me, but I knew that something was...off. Different, I suppose. I dealt with it the best I could, but it was like I was on an emotional rollercoaster. Though I never went back to seeing a therapist because I was afraid they would put me on yet another anti-depressant, and I did not want to put myself through that again. So I kept it to myself and tried to hide it from family and friends.

About a year and a half ago, I started to notice I'd been having very extreme mood changes; happy and excited one day, sad and wanting to die the next, happy again, then a sudden shift to angry and irritated. Sometimes I'd be stuck in one of those moods for days or weeks, sometimes just for hours. But there was always a constant, depression, even if I was feeling amazing (kind of like...just in the back of my mind. not actually affecting me, but still there, if that makes sense). As the months went by, the mood changes got worse and more intense, until one day that period of "normal" in between just went away entirely, and it was just a constant shift from severe depression, to feeling somewhat okay, to feeling like this giant ball of rage and frustration. It got to the point where my boyfriend was hesitant about even taking my phone calls (we were long distance) because he didn't know what was going to happen. As he put it, "is it going to be the fun, calm Cait that I can talk to about music for hours? Or is it going to be the Cait who is already upset and jumps down my throat for saying one little thing, and then we fight for the next two hours over absolutely nothing?" As awful as that made me feel, he was completely right.

So I did what any anti-social person would do: I turned to the internet. I started doing research on different mood disorders and depression and such. I came across a brilliant website about bipolar disorders, and I had that immediate "this is me!" thought. I know self-diagnosis over the internet is probably not the best thing to try to do, but 95% of everything I read about it described me to a T. But it still took me several months to be able to pick up the phone and actually call a psychiatrist's office to schedule an appointment. It might sound weird, but that's one of the hardest things I've ever done. I am actually hopeful about starting medication soon though, after talking about it for awhile with the therapist and knowing that I'll be taking the right medication for what I have.

Excuse my rambling, and my apologies if that was a bit too long. Therapist excluded, this is the first time I've really admitted that I am bipolar, and I guess it all just kind of came out. I'm still a bit worried about everything, but I'm just so tired of living my life like this. Picking fights with people that I love, feeling so down I can't even drag myself out of bed that day, having my mind run on overdrive constantly. I want to be me again, you know? The me I know I actually am when this thing doesn't have a hold of me.

So, if anyone actually made it all the way through this, thank you for reading.