Tom
Beauty and the Beast

I am 53 years old and I have bipolar disorder.  I started having problems when I was in my teens.  What they called it back then and how it was treated was far different from today. 

When bipolar disorder ruled me, it was a sickness, but when I was in a tremendous high, it became a daily opportunity.  I believe people with our sickness (or opportunity) often feel they are alone.  Mild manias were the driving force that pushed me through a very successful career.  But then the ideas came faster which brought on confusion, fear, and paranoid thoughts that led me to believe that people were trying to get me angry.  Which of the feelings are real when I’m in mania?  Few are real.  But oh, how real they feel.

As time went on I would no longer ask myself if mania would happen again.  I just wondered when would it happen again.  I wondered how many more times I could say, “I’m sorry” to the people I cared about.  The words no longer meant anything except the quiet before another storm. 

There are days that I wake up, look at myself and see beauty in the beast that I am trying to make beautiful.  But there are also days that the mirror’s reflection shows fear, confusion, and madness in a face that I have seen way too often but still do not recognize. 

The medications have, without a doubt, kept me alive but the best they seem to be able to do is “take the edge off of it”.  There are still the ups, downs, fears, and of course the feeling of hopelessness.  “I don’t want to be here but there is no other place I want to be,” seems to best describe the feeling as the highs leave and my mind hopelessly wanders.

Some famous philosopher once said “to conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful”.  Once a beast is beautiful, he is no longer a beast.  For me, today, the beast is still pretty ugly but he is getting a little better looking!