I don't really feel depressed or manic, either. Mostly apathetic, I guess. I don't really think I have particularly abnormal behavior. Sometimes I'm sad, and sometimes I'm happy, but everyone's moods vary. I don't think my mood changes are extreme. Unless I'm drinking. And I don't drink anymore.
My spouse had complained to my mother that I often come across emotionless, and that if I DO show any emotion, it's always anger. So my mother talked to me about
it, and I explained that I don't even feel like I'm living my own life sometimes, I'm sitting inside my head watching through my eyes, as if I'm on autopilot. I feel pressured to try and give the emotional response that is expected of me, to avoid being called emotionless, but even if I yell because I think it's what's expected of me, I often find myself laughing because I don't really have any interest in yelling in the first place. Which always results in my spouse screaming at me, asking me how I can possibly be laughing.
I developed a serious drinking problem when I turned 21, which had escalated extremely quickly because the only times I felt I was genuinely alive were when I was drinking. What I mean is, under the influence I experienced all the emotions I can never feel sober. I was extremely happy sometimes, others severely depressed. Sometimes I loved everyone, sometimes I hated people. Always someone specific, and the specific person I was angry at in a particular instance could be entirely different from the next person. But nearly always the same few people.
I had a problem with self-mutilation, that I tried to keep hidden. I once came home drunk and found my ex (not my ex at the time) and my friend re-dressing themselves in our bedroom, and before I'd even thought about
what I was doing I was being rushed to the hospital. I hadn't intended to kill myself at all, but I can distinctly remember thinking on the way that I would be perfectly okay with dying. I had a video conference with a mental health doctor from a hospital across the state. I simply told him that I was drunk, and hadn't intended to kill myself (which was true), and that I would be fine.
A month later, now single and living completely alone, I drank a lot. My friends didn't interest me, and I felt I had nothing left. I got drunk one night and decided to drive to the next state to see my mother. It was a 4.5 hour drive, and I was drinking a 12 pack on the way. Again, I thought about
how fine it would be if I never made it there, and how everyone would have thought it was an accident. Instead I wrecked into the concrete median, an hour from my destination, and was nearly t-boned by a semi on the interstate (instead, I corrected my front end at the last possible second and the semi clipped off my passenger mirror), before being arrested. Which I absolutely, unquestionably deserved. I will never forgive myself for being so selfish and inconsiderate as to endanger the lives of everyone else on the highway and only because I had no appreciation for my own. However, fate or something like it intervened and no one at all was injured.
I quit drinking after that. A year later, after yet another relationship (9 months) had ended, I developed a kidney infection. I didn't see a doctor. It got worse. After the 4th day, I was bed ridden with an incredibly high fever. I was chilling so bad (in the summer) with two thick comfortors on and my recent ex trying to cuddle me for warmth, that I thought my chattering teeth would break. I cried when I had to get up to use the restroom, because it was so cold outside the blankets and I couldn't bear it. I was getting sick uncontrollably, not to mention the excruciating pain in my kidneys. My ex begged me to go to the hospital, but I refused. My roommates bought me cranberry juice and told me not to drink any more Mountain Dew. Whenever they'd leave, I'd force myself out of bed and pour out the juice, and hide Mountain Dew under the bed. I drank as much as I possibly could. This time, for the first time, my sole intention was to die.
That's why my mother thinks I'm bipolar. I disagree because I don't believe that suicidal behavior is exclusive to bipolar disease. While I do think that by anyone's standard (mine excluded) I have a mental disorder, I don't think that it's bipolar.
(I edited your post to bring it in line with Rule 1. No discussion of any illegal activity or threats of violence. (ie. illicit drug use or exchange, threats of suicide or self-injury, or threatened or intended physical harm). Discussions of suicide or self-harm that are deemed negative and therefore potentially injurious to others are also not permitted. -- serafena)
Post Edited By Moderator (serafena) : 9/5/2009 9:15:13 PM (GMT-6)