Here’s my secret: like millions of other Americans, I have a mental illness. Some days I have the motivation to change the world. Other days I barely have the ability to get out of bed.

A lot of us are masters in disguise. I’ve always hid what I’ve been going through because I felt alone. I felt like it would be a sign of weakness. I knew I’d be viewed as crazy. Because while there’s more understanding and acceptance of mental illness than ever before, there are still some illnesses that fall outside what is considered tolerable. Certain illnesses still invoke more fear and disdain than others, particularly mood and personality disorders, involving delusions, hallucinations, and psychosis.

So how much do we actually know about these disorders, excluding anxiety and depression? Bipolar—my personal poison—is something much greater than dramatized mood swings. It’s a rollercoaster of confusing hills of varying heights that can last for weeks on end. The highs and lows are unpredictable and filled with dark tunnels, and it’s terrifying.

In the short time I’ve lived with my diagnosis, I’ve received a number of misguided reactions from long time “friends.” Following my first full-blown manic episode, I returned home to readjust and stabilize myself with the support of friends and family. I wasn’t expecting some of my longest friends to disappear silently in the shadows, choosing to ignore my debilitating diagnosis. I wasn’t expecting to be slapped with the idea that my inability to manage school was due to my commitment of being a drunken slut.

One friend who had recently scraped through Pysch 101 told me that my education of my own illness was incorrect; I was just exaggerating by dropping out mid semester. Another stressed that he “hadn’t asked for this” after being confronted about his sudden distance. The worst was a friend of nearly 20 years that told anyone who would listen that my story was a stunt for attention. Turns out, my diagnosis was just a plot to disguise my alcoholism and drug abuse. It was even suggested that I take some time to reflect upon my dishonesty. Other than that, they were “so over my drama.” How many times do you have to be rejected and blamed for things out of your control before you start to internalize it?

The truth is if you don’t live with bipolar disorder, or haven’t taken the time to understand a loved one who lives with it, your knowledge is likely limited to the media’s misleading narrative of PMS on steroids. Mental illness isn’t an excuse. It’s a terrifying reality. An astounding 1 in 5 diagnosed with bipolar disorder will complete suicide, a statistic that only sounds out of reach if you’re out of touch. I understand depression, the struggle to stay afloat in a sea of dark thoughts. I understand anxiety, the panic and hopelessness it’s accompanied by, and the frustration of trying to maintain the charade. But without trying to compete in the Pain Olympics, the general public at least has some sense of what these two mean. In regards to personality disorders, there needs to be a drastic change in our understanding of mental illnesses that fall outside the conventional spotlight.

The thought of people identifying me as bipolar is humiliating. It’s so unnerving to me that I originally told my friends my diagnosis was “manic depressive,” an outdated medical term for bipolar. Stupidly, I see depression as invoking sympathy, while bipolar is the adjective reserved for your crazy ex-girlfriend or Michigan’s weather patterns. This isn’t to say that experiencing stigma wasn’t something I dreaded as I hid my depression from my closest friends, but the nature of my relationship to my illness has evolved from something people dismissed and trivialized to something that—on top of all the rest—people are legitimately afraid of. In my mind, a depressed, anxious girl is weak for succumbing to her emotions, but still deserving of sympathy. Her manic counterpart is just downright terrifying.

Mania is much harder to pin down than the lows. It feels like enlightenment, bringing out a world of endless possibilities. It starts as productivity, a burning desire to get shit done. A sudden impulse to organize your closet, your 9^th grade biology notes, your life. It bubbles with a kind of optimism that is easy to welcome as stability, a light at the end of the perpetually dark tunnel. Colors are brighter. Music sounds sweeter. The haze of madness lurks in the distance, but its fine, because suddenly you’re flying, this is different; it’s not madness, just purpose.

To be honest, it’s a little like someone slips you meth every once in a while. There’s a point where you detach from reality and have no comprehension of consequences or time. As the physical limitations begin to fall away, your most assured traits dissolve, replaced by a thoughtless arrogance and an uninhibited recklessness. Pain is less jarring, hunger is unnoticeable, and sleep becomes dull and unnecessary. It’s an incredible high—as addicting as it is terrifying—and it’s startling to finally feel good. Life isn’t a confusing march to death after all; everything is so GREAT you can’t stop smiling. Perfect happiness gives way to a delirious joy, a euphoria that arrives with such ferocity that it threatens to split you in two.

Joy crumbles into irritation, anger, and hysteria. Maybe consequences exist elsewhere but right now it doesn’t matter, because you’re fucking rad and deserve to do whatever you want. Cycling out feels like a morphine drip being ripped from your arm. The inevitability of the dysphoria that follows mania is the most distressing part. I wanted to slit my wrists because I couldn’t comprehend why I kept making these mistakes, couldn’t even remember the series of impulsive, selfish, self-destructive and downright dangerous decisions that littered my past. To go from feeling so much to a droning numbness—I feel like an empty husk of a human being.

Yet the extreme highs and lows of bipolar are the easiest features to accept. No one likes to talk about the other symptoms—the paranoia, hallucinations, hypersexuality, and cognitive impairments—essentially the crazy that lurks beneath our carefully carved masks.

Imagine how frightening it would be if one day you could no longer trust your own mind to control your emotions. If the realness of every murmur in the background and every movement in your peripheral must be called into question. Your entire existence is a walking contradiction. I thought I was someone intelligent, but one day my brain was like molasses and days started to disappear. I thought I was hardworking, but one day my body felt heavy and my legs could no longer carry me out of bed. I thought I had my shit together; I was rational, stable, and definitely not an emotional person. I thought I was driven, but now motivation is a symptom that makes me wary, as I’m unsure which demons may accompany it. It’s hard to appreciate a pass out of the darkness if it means flying too close to the sun.

There are so many questions I have for society and for people who used to be my friends. Why is it easier for you to explain my behavior with an empty fifth than a valid medical diagnosis? Why are antidepressants tossed at patients like candy, despite their dangerous side effects in the event of a misdiagnosis? Honestly, I’m still surprised Olin Health Center didn’t tell me I had mono again. As mental illness awareness is pushed, why are campaigns headlined only by particular illnesses rather than the wide variety that exists? Anything less than a full scale assault on all stigmas for all mental illnesses undermines their gravity and impact on real, living people.

Maybe a raw description of bipolar disorder only serves to support the idea of crazy. I don’t know. I can’t pretend to be an expert in any of this; I’m still new here and obviously I still stigmatize myself. Mental illness is scary and complicated, and I get why the conversation often falls to the background. But if it’s difficult for you to relate to and to understand, imagine how it feels to live with it alone. Unfortunately, there’s no way to pleasantly wrap up a runaway train and make it presentable to those that choose to ignore the alarms rather than understand them.

So to my friend of 20 years that bailed on me when I needed him most: I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting. Turns out you’re an ass.

-xxx