This morning I lay in bed, frozen with a bizarre onset of depression – coming a day after I did everyhting ‘right’. I ended up looking through old photos, wondering where the happiness of ten years go had gone…

I know that life is hard, but I think life with undiagnosed bipolar is particualrly hard on both you nd yur relationships.

The anxiety attacks, the wild behaviour, the downers, the inability to keep my shit together, the ditzyness, forgetfulness…so many things.

And trying to do jobs i knew i could do intellectually, but that i couldn’t do because i couldn’t deal with the stress, has been hard. and as the symptoms grew, i went from bright young thing with a sharp mind, a passion for politics and nice writing skills, to someone who people believed to be disorganised, inconsistent, lazy and slapdash, but a great writer, a witty mind and apowerful persona nonetheless.

I think this is thing with all of this stuff. It’s been a case of pepering over the cracks, socially, with booze and drugs and by creating a ‘wild’ personality, and with the charisma and professional veneer taught to me so long ago at private school, i suppose. actuall,y i don;t think it is taugt at private shool, more just being around people with a sense of entitle ment and having that sense of entitlement rub off on you, embues you with confidence.

And now, here i am, exhausted and damaged by all these horrible experience. with the meds not quite right yet, wondering if I will ever be able to have children, wondering what kind of work i’ll be able to do, if any… wondering who i can be with the medication and what my life will be like. will it be tolerable? will i be able to live with this new me?

will i be able to take the climb down from whatever i was ot whatever i am? which i don’t even know what that is yet. How can i have self belief and self esteem when i don’t know what i am believing in yet and i feel like i’m a failure?

every bone in my body is telling me to reject work right now, like some kind of trauma thing. it has caused me so much pain in the last few years that i feel like my brain is rejecting it. this is also the depression, i suppose.

I cannot cope with normal life stresses right now. i cannot deal with even the minor things that are on my plate, and i hate to say it becasue mat only has so much patience and i dont know who else to tell that hasn’t been bored rigid by my whining. i am doing everything right, but still this is hard. the optimism that came with having the option of medication that might make me feel completely different is waning. perhaps i can only be a little bit better. perhaps life wont be that great. perhaps it is time to hide away from everyone so i can’t see how great their lives are. i feel so jealous. bitter even.

And money…the thing that is sooo hard is that when you have bad mental problems, you lose your job and you don’t have much money, and you feel like a burden and you have little independence, and you feel like shit and your anxiety and depression is brought on by this awful stress. And there’s nothing you can do about it. And even when i take on a new job in march i worry that i will fail at it and things will get even worse.

right, time for a walk…