Disclaimer: This doesn’t come from a place of pity and I don’t want it. For most people who know me, this shouldn’t come a surprise. I keep telling others I know that there is safety in numbers. That is to say that it is easier to manage mental illness when you know someone else is in the same situation. So please, if you need talk to somebody, please do. Don’t put it off. Talk to me if you need to. I’ve been there. I will listen.

My doctor tells me that bipolar disorder is

a disease like any other disease

Except it isn't.

No one is ever told to wait out a cancer

or to find a distraction for a broken leg.

but I still get asked if I’m "over it yet."

No, I'm not over the day by brain shattered.

I'm not over the days where my fingers

feel like the panic is dissolving them.

I haven't found a way around overthinking yet.

The thinking I do at the start of every day

to decide whether I'll see the other end of it.

The days I listen to the whispers,

or talk to the people who aren’t there.

But these are choices, right?

And there are days when I'm not good at choices.

If I'm sure that my bones will burn inside my body

if I don’t touch the color orange

Is that a choice?

If I can't keep track of who is in the restaurant

and which conversation is coming out of which mouth

is that a choice?

I tell people that I'm tired of hiding it.

That part is true.

I tell them that I'm owning it.

But nobody "owns" the crash days

the wreck that my mind just drove into.

the days when I crawl into a narrow pit

and pray that I can shake the walls hard enough

with the tremors that dominate my arm

to pull all the dirt around me.

Because nobody tells you that you can be

manic or depressed and schizophrenic all at the same time.

It doesn't matter that my brain has shut down.

My words can still skitter out of my mouth

faster than my tongue can catch them.

So sometimes I use the word “crash” for “catch”

or “bird” for “tired.”

No, I am not over it yet.

I can make it three days without remembering to eat.

That's when the hallway comes to a point

Like a gothic doorway. That's when I'm sure

I'm supposed to turn, but walk into the wall anyway

Or almost make it to my table - but not quite.

That's when they had to call the paramedics.

That's when anyone listening could hear me say Clonazepam,

Lamotrigine, Lithium, Quetiapine or anything else in the

meds I call trail mix, and build "mental illness" out of it.

I wasn't embarrassed that they hauled me out on a stretcher

I was ashamed that I used the word "bipolar."

The word was tattooed onto a clipboard

to be handed to an EMT, to be handed to a nurse,

to be handed to a doctor. And then... where?

Those are the days in psychiatric wards,

where they don’t know

what to do with you.

So, you spend weeks with meth addicts

Where their high on drugs sounds

A lot like when I miss my meds.

The other day I carved a hole in my arm

with a fingernail I had torn from my thumb.

I twisted it through my skin like a fishhook.

And I hadn't noticed.

No, I am not over it yet.

But at the end of the day I still say "thank you"

not to the white pills or the blue ones

(definitely not the blue ones)

Today I watched the pear blossoms

slip across the street like snowflakes,

and a little girl picked dandelions from my lawn.

I am at the end of the day.

For today at least, I am over it.