I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn’t work for me, the answer would be a simple no… and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It’s complicated… I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and have been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters… Depressed, I have crawled on my hands and knees in order to get across a room and have done it for month after month. But normal or manic I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know.

Kay Redfield Jamison (via catastropheapostrophe)

ehhhhhh

no

If I could give away my bipolar disorder, I would in a second. 

(via liquidiousfleshbag)

^ Yeah, I second that.

I mean, I agree with this quote to a point. I do think that being bipolar has made me feel more, feel differently, and experience things just more intensely, but that intensity isn’t the problem (well, not the whole problem), it’s the fact that there isn’t shit I can do to control it. I don’t choose to feel euphoria and happiness and just general energeticness that are extended through the roof and up and up and much, much upper and I don’t choose to feel depression that just makes me hate myself and hate existing and hate everything that I have ever, ever interacted with—I can’t pick one or the other, I can’t tell one to stop and another to start.

I can’t stop my mania when it crosses the line from “I feel really awesome about myself” to “I don’t trust myself with myself”. I can’t stop the depression, period. 

The knowledge of those experiences—the understanding that comes from having lived and continuing to live with them—is something that I like having, it’s something that I think makes me a better and more understanding and more accepting person in some really fucked up kinda way. The experiences themselves, though, have been shit and for me there’s just no amount of understanding, no amount of feeling things more intensely that is worth having in exchange for giving up the security that would come with feeling like I’m actually in control of my own mind.

I only accept my BD because the only other option is to hate myself because of it, to spend every second hating something that I can’t control—you try to find happiness or contentedness or something in a situation that’s just ugh at the core. If I could automatically stop being bipolar, I probably would—I only say probably because there’s still that fear of who the fuck would I be without it—but since I can’t, I just go for the next best option.

(via theraptorwhomurderedlove)