Happy hump day!

Happy Hump Day! I am terribly excited to be writing my first post! The idea of my blog came about around a year ago. I was the bipolar girl who was making it all work, my meds were regular my Dr. was happy, I laughed all the time. I had a great career doing exactly what I wanted to, and I awesome at it. I was Defying Logic.

I grew up in a house with two older sisters and a mother with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. My sisters, Carrie and Sami were my heros, they always stuck up for me as a kid, and they just seemed to make life work despite the hell we had come from. It was a larger southern type city in Florida, with a large extended family. Not the kind of family anyone would have guessed what was going on inside our house.

Both of my parents were actually untreated bipolar and I was early onset, showing psychiatric symptoms by highschool. I was the one who got the magic genes of the three of us to produce bipolar disorder, but of my family, I have a mental illness I manage. They're just fucking crazy.

Being at the top of where I was a year ago, my blog was going to be about how to thrive living with bipolar disorder. How to defy the standard outcomes, the stigma. I have always been open about my disorder since I accepted it at 27 and was afraid of it. I knew the rules to live by, and when to seek help.  In fact, I reached out to two new therapists over the last year knowing I was having a problem with grandiosity, but unfortunately, both relationships failed.

When I lost my job last June, it was ok, I was awesome and would find another. My awesome resume certainly did get me awesome interviews, but something was not right, I couldn't land the job. I eventually lost my apartment and returned home after 7 years, I had been gone for a reason.

Fast forward from Sept '14 to Feb '15 and I realized, I didn't even know what mania was until that moment. The disease had turned in to something, despite being very knowledgeable about it, helping others cope with it, and making sure I was trying to take care of myself, it was something I didn't recognize. And I was in a whole heapload of trouble. My sisters and I were at odds vicious then nice, vicious then nice cycles, I felt I had no where to turn.

I had no where to live permanently, I turned in my car I bought after my first year in my career with 14 payments left, I sold all of my furniture. Ideas and Plans were spinning out of control, I was out of control. And then for reason I took the emergency mania meds I had on hand, and I woke up this time to quiet in my head. It was still a few days later after talking to a trusted friend that realized what had gone on for the last few years. For what felt like moments I walked hours around the beach town my friends parents lived in. Tears streaming hot down my face, of this can't be, I couldn't have done all this.

The words plan or idea are currently not in my vocabulary, it is a thought, or a decision. Shortly after my realization of what had been going on despite all my efforts to be healthy, I made the best decision I had made in a long time. I moved back to south Florida to work with a therapist I had worked with for 7 years before. I needed therapy, and I couldn't afford another failed relationship.

Lynn and I have been working together over 10 weeks now, and from the get go she wanted me to file a claim for disability. It took a lot in my heart, in my mind to accept this. There was one statement she said, and I've never looked back. "The last year was horrible and frightening, if you go on disability you will never face that again". SOLD.  So my career dreams, I grieved them, but I also found that I will have the opportunity to use my smarts towards what I want to. To make a difference.

I wanted to get a start out there of who I am, and what I've been through the last year. I invite you to join me through the journey of rebuilding to once again defy logic. To achieve in a place in life where one is almost set up to fail. To learn to love life in a way I never knew possible :)

- Defying Logic