Spotlight on Stigma... Welcomed but Not Accepted

Today is one of those days that I wonder if there is hope for this journey.  I woke up feeling down but that's nothing new.  However, I also had a bad headache.  I took meds, waited just a bit for them to kick in, and started working at my desk. The meds seemed like they took care of the headache and I live most of my life with an underlying depression, so I still had a small amount of hope that I would be able to accomplish some things today.  One item on my calendar was a therapy appointment this morning.  With the way I feel right now, therapy is probably where I should be. However, as I started getting ready, the headache came back with a vengeance.  I ended up rescheduling the appointment at the last minute. After I finished rescheduling with my therapist, an overwhelming wave of depression came over me and I just cried and cried.  I finally made myself stop, as the crying was just making my headache worse. I have had clinical depression off and on since I was a teenager

Last week I traveled to a state I had never been before.  I went with my boyfriend and we stayed with his aunt and uncle.  It was so much fun... except when it wasn't.  Why were there times it wasn't?  Because I have several mental and physical illnesses that just kept getting in the way of the fun. When you have a mental illness (or a chronic physical one), it's best to keep learning about the illness.  Obviously it's not possible to learn everything about an illness at once - and even if you could, there's the aspect of learning how your illness affects YOU.   So I'm learning.  And learning.  And learning more.  But it will take a while before I actually am able to practice all I'm learning.  For example, one thing that has been recommended more than once to me is that if you have bipolar, it helps to stay in a routine.  Well, the ironic thing about that is that I don't have a regular routine BECAUSE I am bipolar.  At least partially because of

Today was one of those really horrible days.  What I dealt with would be a bad day for anyone, but honestly, I'm not just anyone.  Always lingering behind both my good and bad days are mental illness and being an addict.  So what does this mean in practical terms? It means I can see that I'm irritable and getting on everyone's nerves, but can't seem to stop what I'm doing.  It means that I know I'm messing up when I do something unhealthy to comfort myself when I'm in a bad mood, which just heaps on the guilt and shame I already feel.  It means I second guess every... single... thing... that I do, and then second guess it again (or third guess it?). I told my boyfriend today, "I don't want to have bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder anymore.  I don't want to be an addict anymore.  I'm tired."  But the hard truth is that I will always have those issues.  They will never - I repeat - never, go away.   My only hope is to learn to man

For at least 6 months I have known that May-June 2019 was going to be one of the busiest periods of my life.  Turns out I was correct.  I had 3 huge projects starting mid May and lasting until July 1st.  Even if each one had gone smoothly, it would have been a lot.  But nothing went smoothly about any of them.  Major complications arose for all of the projects.  I ended up adding some work that I hadn't planned on.  At times I felt I was drowning but I just kept pulling towards the sky, trying to break through all of the crushing water to get some air. I actually finished half a day ahead of the last deadline of July 1st.  But another, last-minute project came up.  Even though I was exhausted, professionally it was a great opportunity which could lead to more opportunities, so I decided to do it.  Was it because of my exhaustion or was that just a contributing factor for doing something very poorly that I usually do easily?   There were extenuating circumstances that would have b