[Moose72]

Caleb told me something interesting this morning. He said our mutual friend Annmarie whom I’ve known for 27 years once said to him that she wishes he could've met me before. Before bipolar I'm guessing. Because I was so smart! Bipolar gets worse as time goes by and I've been diagnosed for nearly 20 years! I watch N3 get all those perfect scores on his exams- some even higher than 100%- and I wish I were that smart. But math was never my strong suit. It is for N3. N2 was always good at math in school too, even getting an award. I’ve been posting here since 2008- have you noticed a decline in my mental abilities? I've always been good at words. Started writing poetry at age 12 and wrote several poems a few years ago. I have all of them still. In two books. The "recent" ones are on my bipolar blog. Most people don't understand the newer stuff. If you'd like, I can private message a few. Some are dark but rest assured that I was of sound mind when I wrote them!

[Tart Cherry Jam]

I have not noticed any decline, read your posts on and off.

[Blueberrybook]

I haven't noticed a decline reading your posts.

But I do know what you mean about a mental decline with bipolar. I know I have definitely experienced one. I was valedictorian in high school, graduated summa cum laude with all A's and one B for a B.S. in microbiology, got an M.S. in cell & molecular biology. Now...I couldn't do even half as well. I used to be able to write stories all the time, and I haven't been able to do that since college. There was a time if I needed to buy 50 items in a grocery store, I could remeber each one without a list, and now, I'm lucky if I can remember a mental list of 3 items. It's really discouraging.

[Tart Cherry Jam]

My math and science r capabilities have declined sharply but verbal ones have probably increased. I attribute it to whether I am using those mental abilities or not. In high school I lived physics and chemistry. Now, if I read about those subjects, I cannot believe that Was able to do so well in them back then.

[Victoria'smom]

My ability fluctuates.

[MuddyBoots]

Originally Posted by Tart Cherry Jam

My math and science r capabilities have declined sharply but verbal ones have probably increased. I attribute it to whether I am using those mental abilities or not. In high school I lived physics and chemistry. Now, if I read about those subjects, I cannot believe that Was able to do so well in them back then.

Same, and I'll add my social skills have probably gotten better in the sense that my BPD isn't as "loud" and my ADHD is under control so it feels like when I'm physically with others, it's not in a volcano. It's also a lot easier to be presentable when I'm 10+ years post-first episode and the bipolar is managed compared to the shytshow I was back then.

Seriously, I was a math nerd and would just look at something like this and attack like it was a post-hike pizza. Now 1) I'd have to look up the definition of every other word in the question and 2) I'd probably try, look at the answer, see something different, retry, get something different, follow the processes at least five times for each question, and then understand it for a full 10 minutes and have a 40% chance of being able to apply it to something similar.