Читать книгу Welcome to the Jungle - Hilary T. Smith - Страница 23

I get a Google news feed about bipolar disorder: any news article with the word “bipolar” gets sent to my inbox. Every day I get several police reports about missing persons who are “diagnosed with bipolar disorder and thought to be off their meds,” as well as a rash of news pieces about murders and suicides involving people with bipolar disorder. Now look me in the eye. Do you have bipolar? Yes? Are you, personally, going to become a missing person or a murderer? Probably not. There are things in life you can control and things you can't, but if you get your act together as much as possible, given your personal circumstances, and do it early, then your chances of having a wonderful, happy, interesting, completely Google-news-feed-unworthy life are great.

While everyone's prognosis is different, it generally boils down to this: if you have bipolar disorder, your life is going to include some periods of crushing depression, some periods of whacked-out mania or hypomania, a whole lot of meds, perhaps a psychotic episode here and there, and maybe a hospitalization or two (or ten). You can experience all those things and still have a fun, meaningful, productive life.

Look at it this way: you're building a cabin in the woods, but a hurricane comes through and when it's over all you have is a few measly planks of wood, a saw, and some nails. Do you set the wood on fire, step on the nails, saw off your legs and cry about it, or do you chop yourself some new wood, build yourself a cabin, and have a great life? Everything is up to you. You have exactly the same power over your destiny as you did before you had bipolar—now you're just working with a different set of materials.

All you have are the fabulous resources of your own mind to realize your potential. Bipolar or not, you still have choices to make, and you're the only one who's going to be making them.