So how do you get to the point where the wheels are flying off the your manic high, especially when you are supposedly supposed to be educated on your disorder. For me that is at once a complicated and in ways a simple question. It is complicated because there are so many warning signs to be missed or to be shoved under the rug, and yet so simple because it is rooted in the fact that your brain is saying that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about, when in fact if you value your mental stability and balance, like I do, there is very much to be worried about. This is not just so abstract question that I ponder in my mind like an artifact displayed in a case at a museum, it is something that is a very real part of my life and something that I am living through at this very moment.
Looking back the first warning sign that I could be risking heading down the road to mania should have been very clear, and it should have been something that I took more pains to nip in the bud. It should have been clear that the risk was high and that I needed to do something when I flew out to visit my grandparents for 3 weeks in upstate NY a three hour time change from home, where my sleep had already started to suffer. I should have taken greater pains to insure that my sleep did not suffer, only I did not, instead I let my sleep get so jacked up that my body was not sure if it was coming or going on some days. Something that with my knowledge of my own disorder I should have know was putting me at risk of losing my remission balance (because the disease is always there but with medication and work one can achieve periods where it is not active in their life) that I had found myself in for quite some time. Yet I put it off as just a normal part of coast to coast air travel and something to not worry to much about, which would have been true if I had been someone with Bipolar Disorder, but as someone with it was in fact something to be quite concerned about.
Then it started to blossom, the increased levels of energy and mental activity started to set in as my sleep patterns worsened, something that should have been a simple sign that things where starting to go array and that I needed to take corrective steps to take care of, instead I rationalized it as simply having to do with being cooped up in an apartment due to the winter weather, after all my mood had not really changed so there for it could not truly be something to be concerned about least of all concerned about to try to take steps with medication to undue.But reality was that was far from the truth this is where action should have been taken and decisive action at that.
Then fallowed the changes in mood the speed up thought and the obsession with ideas ideas that were not really that wise but seemed like they where some of the best ideas in the world. In this case it was that idea that I should buy a new car, even though the car that I was thinking of trading in was a car that was paid off, under a lifetime power train and life time bumper to bumper as long as the cost of the repair did not exceed the value of the car, and a car that was in great mechanical shape and low miles for it ten year age. (only 61K) instead the obsession festered and only got more and more tempting as the idea of buying a new car seemed more and more genius and like something that had no down sides what so every. Right at this point is when I should have actively reached out to professional medical help from my psychiatrist, but to my mind everything seemed fine everything seemed more then fine, everything seemed perfect and there seemed like there could be no issues what so ever and that life was going so great that nothing I put my mind to was not possible.
Then came the day a couple weeks after I got my oil changed came an email from the acquisitions manager at my local dealership asking if I had seen the offer that he had put in my car, I had not. But this seemed like a great idea so I emailed him back asking what the offer was. To only the next day revive an email in response that if I traded it in I would get 6k and a tax credit towards the purchase of a new car. It seemed like the heavens had aligned and that it was a sign that buying a new car was not only a brilliant idea but one that was destine to be, as soon as I got off work that day I called my credit union and got approved for a loan on the car that I had been looking at a Jeep Cherokee Limited with all the bells and whistles (options) that you could throw at it. so with in the hour I was off the dealership with my brother to test drive a Cherokee and see if they had one that I wanted or could find one. After some tire kicking and searching on their part the found that SUV that I wanted and I signed all the paper work to become the proud owner of a brand new 2018 Jeep Cherokee limited with every option on the options list minus towing prep. I just had to wait 3-5 days for it to get transferred to my dealer and for me to drive off the lot in it. At this point not only should there have been read flags but whaling sirens going off that everything was not ok, that I had just made a major purpose with out strong consideration of how it would effect my fiances other then I wanted to buy the car. Luckily I can afford it, it makes my weekly/month budget very tight but I can afford to make my monthly payments. Yet again I ignored the warning and rationalized it as me doing something I had wanted to do for a long time, and that the numbers had worked out, even though I had only wanted to do so for a month at most and realistically jumped into in the span of one day.
I should have not only seen all these warning signs but been alarmed by them and heeded them as soon as I saw them, but like earlier the simple answer for why I did not is my mind was playing tricks on me feeding me lies, lies that I lapped up like a thirst dog, that everything was fine that everything was more then fine and that nothing was going to go wrong and that any doubts that I had about me truly being in control where unfounded and just being overly worried about everything.
It was not until my mania reached the state that emotionally I started to come unraveled and was not able to deal with things that normally I would take in stride. Leading me to emotionally unravel or come dangerously close to doing so, that I started to think that there was a problem, a problem that I had not realized, and that problem did not click until a dear friend pointed out that looking back they thought that I had gone manic. That was the start of the wheels coming off and what finally prompted me to reach out for help and to call my psychiatrist and to try to get an appointment before more damage could be done, now realizing that I had let things get to far yet feeling that things could get better and that I might still be over reacting to something that might be totally innocent. But as my psychiatrist made abundantly clear non of those signs where ones that should have been ignored and they where in fact things that I should have taken not of right away, and that I need to work on doing a better job of doing such things if I want to properly care for my mental health.
Which leaves me wondering why is it so hard to see when things are going off balance into a mania, when things should be so clear?
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