Hi. I'm new. Let me be as concise as I can, but it's long.

Really weird childhood, taking care of both my parents. Dad had lymes and we didn't know, very physical with my mother and verbally abusive to us both. I developed depression early on and an eating disorder. I had to pull myself out of both of those, but depression was always severe, and lingered. I raised myself, comforting both parents.

Fastforward, college, hell for a few years. Recovering from ED, put on weight, generally anxious, depressed, fearful. I had to pull myself out of the ED myself.

Fastforward, junior-senior year of college--amazingly happy. First time in years. On low dose of celexa, so happy, best years of my life. Teaching art to high schoolers--i was working on average 80 hours a week, 40 of which were unpaid, and the rest was divvied up between a part time job and homework/classes. I had body dysmorphia at the time but it wasn't an issue.

Fastforward, I got put on prozac for severe depression which occurred right after I stopped teaching. It flipped me into mania. I had always smoked weed but then somehow it made things horrible--hallucinations, weird thoughts, generally weird. Stopped smoking weed after I tried to get on stage at a concert and rock out, thinking I was a music God, hearing voices, seeing things. I didn't know what this was at the time. I pulled myself out of it.

Fastforward, I took prozac because I was feeling weird. So I didn't sleep for a few days, and that's when things got weirder. I broke away from reality, took prozac because I thought it would help but it made insomnia worse, I thought lots of things--illuminati, God, I was god, I heard god (I'm an athiest!) had extreme super anxiety, couldn't sleep for a week, wanted to have sex with everything, super amped up, high energy, just all around mania and psychosis out the wazoo.

I walked myself to the hospital and got on a train myself, got there myself, no one helped me except a stranger who knew where the hospital was. At the time, I was still with my BF, and he thought a relaxing trip to the beach would help. He was a moron.

I got diagnosed as psychosis-nos or something, and then when they gave me ativan to sleep I was pretty much fine instantly. Almost instantly. But I had lingering OCD thoughts and music playing in my head. This was never an issue before this psychotic break. Now it's with me daily, and is resistant to medication. My psych thinks its a coping mechanism. Idk about that. I'm bp1 now.

Fastforward, I've been on many many many many many different drugs for my newly diagnosed bipolar disorder 1. I had a weird trauma reaction a few months ago after my bf of 11 years up and ditched me (was news to me, thought we were just on a break) and then kicked me out of my room and made me sleep on the sofa and had sex with some girl in my bed. I went through a really weird time, my therapist and psych think it was some sortof overloaded ptsd-like stress reaction, where I attacked people verbally, vandalized things, burned things, keyed cars. I took out my frustration on people who were not friends, or just tertiary friends who weren't really involved in my life, bf's things, and other stuff. At the time this was totally normal to me, and acceptable behavior. Looking back on it, I realized it was some sortof reaction like a kid lashing out due to trauma. I was not sad, but I was sleeping all the time, barely did anything but eat pizza, watch tv, and work. Because I was ok at work, no one saw the signs, and suggested instead I was still sad from the break up. It wasn't sad. It was some weird psychotic depression. I pulled myself out of this too.

Fastforward, I took a second job and I thought it was fine but I started to feel physically weird. It was a stressful job. Lots of things were ******; bad bosses, no supplies, unruly customers, broken equipment--all around bad. Plus I had to change my entire identity--had to wear a wig, take out my piercings, cover my tattoos, stopped smoking cigarettes. It was a bad job. My body would shake, I'd get shaky legs, facial twitches, and I was so exhausted constantly. I wasn't sleeping well, had nightmares all the time, horrible nightmares. I quit the job after becoming suicidal because it was overwhelming me and I was being put into situations I couldn't win because I had no control over extenuating factors like paper not being in the printer, camera broken, no order forms, etc.

A few days after I quit I started sleeping normally, totally fine. Weird physical stuff stopped. I had gone to a doctor 3 times for these physical symptoms, and to a neurologist. ER twice for heart issues. All screens came back normal. The neurologist said it was acute stress and adrenal fatigue from stress. Again, my psych did not listen, and I had to go to a blasted neurologist to hear that it was anxiety.

All this recent crap happened within a 4 month time span. I had little time to recover.

Fast forward, after being angry at life for a solid month, but able to survive off of that anger alone (which my thera and psych deemed a coping mechanism not mania as there weren't any other symptoms and I'm heavily medicated) I get back to just one job that is stable, and then my ex's mom dies. This was just about a week and a half ago. I had to take care of him, listen to his problems, when I hate his guts, and try not to cuss him out for what he did to me.

The day AFTER she was put into the ground, my manager, who I already think is an incompetent jerk although I love him like a brother, brought up some bike hut my roomie (who didn't follow procedures to move in so it's my fault I guess) put up and made a huge stink in front of the whole office instead of being professional about it. He did not take into consideration how I was feeling about this recent death.

To make matters worse, he consistently ignores that we have a WHOLE OTHER PERSON who does part of my job and feels the need to have me do everything like she isn't there, disrespects me on the daily, and took two months to write up a lease (I work real estate) when I know the actual writing of a lease takes 15 minutes. It took me going there with my roomie to get him to write it, and low and behold, it was delivered to my desk the end of that business day. So he was sitting on his ***.

He lies to seem like he is working hard, when he's not, lies to make me look worse when HE messes up, and can't be arsed to pull me aside and talk to me like an adult, instead bringing in the whole office into the conversation.

So after that my anxiety kept getting worse. Then my period came, and depression hit. A friend came to me because she was having boyfriend issues, and at this point I was so emotionally damaged and drained I just auto-piloted and made her feel better and disconnected emotionally to prevent myself from having a nervous breakdown. Days later, that same friend takes offense to something I wrote on facebook, her and her boyfriend are now extremely anti-feminists and are christian somehow due to a drug related psychotic break, and I've lost two important people in my life over FACEBOOK.

So the anxiety got so bad that I went into work monday, feeling like everything was attacking me, noises too loud, everything was scary, songs relating to death or love sent me off, hearing my manager's voice made me have rolling panic attacks. I had to leave.

I struggled all monday to get to the therapist's and psych. Everything was super intense. I know this was not a psychotic episode because I was questioning if I was going insane instead of accepting that this was normal and reality. I also have ocd thoughts, and they play music all the time, and I got them to stay on light things that don't have any emotional weight. It helped a little. I struggled to be in public spaces, I avoided walking past my work, I said very little to people on the street, and it was an intense struggle to just function that whole day. We upped my dosages, talked about the blatant disrespect and my anger and stress reactions to it, and got me some ativan for my anxiety. We also talked about that weird psychotic depression and we agreed it was some intense trauma reaction and not some bipolar thing, that my stress threshhold is probably really low and it just made me freak out.

Every day gets better, but lingering depression is following me. I sleep now for 12 hours straight, I get up feeling hopeless, pop an ativan to go get food, and if I go out I have to pop another one. It's low-grade right now, not like the insanity of monday, but I only feel totally okay if I'm in total control of my environment--IE sitting on the computer in a quiet house with my best friend/roomie, eating food and just generally relaxing and not listening to stressful stories or anything. I can read about events that are stressful, but the minute anyone starts talking to me about their stresses, my threshhold starts to go down and I have to block it out or ask them to stop talking about it.

I'm lucky my boss, who I love and respect, and who knows I have bp1/some kindof anxiety disorder/ocd/other **** let me take the week off or else I'd be a wreck.

tl;dr:
I've had a really hard life, a hard childhood, a really hard past two years or so. I am a practicing artist trying to leave my real estate/data entry job and get into a teaching job because it makes me happy, I actually lost weight and ate more, no anxiety, little to no stress, and I was working more than I've ever worked.

Right now I'm super anxious a lot, and super depressed. I feel better after eating food and relaxing, but it's still a task to do things. It gets better when I talk to friends who care and respect me, and I feel good every time I talk to a stranger who knows about art or life and can understand anxiety or stress. It feels like I get a little better every day, but this anxiety is killing me.

I don't think I'm going to have a psychotic break. I haven't had one in two years, and have only had one in my entire life. I don't consider what happened a few months ago a true psychotic break, maybe moreso a strange PTSD reaction.

I now have to avoid where my ex works. I can't think about love or relationships. Last night I heard my roomie having sex and I had to put earplugs in because it reminds me of when I heard my ex having sex with that girl. I don't know if this is text book PTSD or not, but it's like all the feelings come back and I'm overwhelmed again.

I'm really struggling right now. And I just need someone who understands me to talk with me about this...

Anyone?

My name is Kira. I have bp1/ocd/anxiety issues. I'm an artist. My art career, while popular on the internet, does not translate well into real life. I am frustrated at life, my job, my invisible illness, friends for abandoning me over petty crap, the death of a loved one, and my recent break up. This all happened in succession.

Does it ever get any better?