The Pills Work

_{I recently found out a man who I dearly love and was in a relationship with years ago ended his life by shooting himself in the head. The news was old but I just found out. For me, it’s as fresh as if he had just passed days ago. He suffered from bipolar and didn’t want to start taking pills for the rest of his life. I suffer from bipolar and took a pill this morning as simple as if doing any other morning ritual. In the past, I’ve cut and hanged myself. I even overdosed where all of a sudden I couldn’t hear anything but ringing in my ears where it sounded like I was hearing my own flatline. The overdose felt like my heart was trying to pop out of my chest. I ended up struggling to pull my body and slowly crawl for help because it wouldn’t let me get up….It’s strange, when you think you are about to die, you don’t think about wealth, money, power, anything materialistic….you think only about relationships….about the people who geniunely love and care about you…. your loved ones….and your frantic thoughts are: Do they know I really love them back? Where are they because they need to know I love them.}

_{After all I’ve subjected myself to….I’m here still because after my spiral down from trying to destroy myself so I didn’t have to live with the symptoms any longer….I finally forced myself to seek help. For me, it was making the decision to take medicine after doing research and learning that certain parts of the brain region like the hippocampus of a depressed person was very different from that of a normal brain. I came to terms that there was nothing I could ever do to change that. And all along I had blamed myself for the way I was feeling that if I could only just force myself… will myself… think myself to not feel depression or bipolar symptoms that I would be okay. But it didn’t work. It got to the point where I couldn’t keep going on without help. I realized I didn’t want to die — I just wanted the pain to stop.}

_{I went through different pills….medications until I found the one to balance me. I started to know what the feeling of being ‘happy’ felt like. It had mostly been a very foreign emotion for me….I also had the support, love, closeness, and open conversations of my family and best friend and a few good people who allowed me to move forward so that I could go toward opportunities for myself and take it. I distanced myself from unhealthy elements. I wish I could have gotten a chance to hold the bottle in front of him and smile excitingly that ‘It works, Evan!’ and hold my hand out for him to take it.}

[The reason I am being open now about having bipolar disorder is because I’m standing up to bullying as well. There was a person who was once a trusted part of my family circle and had shared a life growing up. To try to keep me silent so she could continue bullying my sibling, she reached out through cell phone and had threatened that people were going to find out about me and my lifelong illness with having bipolar disorder, so I’d rather be honest than to have to live in fear–Fear? I’ve been close to death and back—Bullies don’t stand a chance with me.]