Drastic Moods Shifts: Life in a Bipolar Mind

Drastic Moods Shifts: Life in a Bipolar Mind

These journals reveal my spiraling mood leading up to my three month long psychotic depressive episode.

Beautiful Life: April 2014.

I slip into a sweet nostalgia, my heart choosing to live within the concept of a better time & place that I may or may not have experienced in the past. My memory relives pleasant aromas & specific emotions & particular perceptions. I troll the timeline of my existence to gather highlights from each of life’s chapters: playing house & spy; the creativity of childhood; the innocent curiousity in middle school; the mental darkness, during my underclassmen years of high school, that felt so bonding yet mystically freeing; the euphoria of first love; the warmth of kindred spirits; the advantageous escapes of gypsy souls; summer loves; responsible pride seniour year; summer road trips; Colorado storms; Christmas pleasantries; enchanting fireworks; playing with animals on my family’s farm; majestic sunsets; climbing trees; international travels; cuddling with babies; playing hide & go seek; picking flowers; tanning; writing; riding horses; & the list continues endlessly!

I relive the feeling of freedom, my mind recalling the aura of road trips & endless fields that open up & beckon to me like a blossoming, budding flower. My appreciation for life is renewed: for the sunshine, the sound of a breeze blustering by, the limitless bank of creative ideas to be toyed with. I am dancing in a dramatic romance with earth, twirling with joyful laughter & dripping with wondrous confusion. I am lost, & no one may find me because I must find myself. That is the thrill of the journey!

Spiraling Darkness: July 2014.

There are parallel universes within my mind—various states of mind that I alternate between in a psychotic manner, randomly forgetting who is beside me or what year it is or what I was just doing.

I sink. The darkness is more terrifying than ever before. But it’s so much easier, so I give in to the pull of the abyss. Its grip tightens, consuming my confidence, even clipping the corners of my once-vivacious spirit. So I sink. Slipping, I relax, letting go of the obligation of hoping & finally allowing myself to release all tension & stop attempting to gain some form of control in my life. All standards, all boundaries & borders, all possibilities & perceptions & potential pathways towards either purity or pleasure—everything drifts away. Bit by broken bit, piece by peaceless piece, I fade into the abyss of faceless identities.

Choked: August 2014.

My breath chokes back in my throat as I refuse to release this clenched wad of sorrow in a dozen shiny little tears simply to be judged. No one could possibly understand the overwhelming pull of memories as they flood my mind.

Hope: early September 2014.

I forgot that I once believed in daylight, but now the sun is shining in the background of my reflection & I hope desperately that it is something real that will grow in my reality rather than vanish, as all good things seems to do. I believe in the magic of broken charms, unspoken wishes, & forgotten fairytales & dream loves. Redemption can be found in the cracks of life, like the sidewalk where small, faint daisies grow.

Tortured by my Own Mind: late September 2014.

I hope the psychiatric department will get me on some medication that will help stabilize myself so I can get on with my life. I’ve been spending so much time trying to make myself better & have only made myself worse. It would be such a relief to know that this isn’t normal, that my mind can be a better place to exist than this, that I could actually be OK & enjoy life. When my mind is finally in a state to enjoy things, it’s still difficult to because I know it won’t last & it is so devastating to feel the pleasure that I have to miss out on the rest of the time—the laughter, the moments of hilarious embarrassment, learning from mistakes, appreciating the weather & nature & the greeting of a new day. Right now, those things annoy me, &, without any sense of reward or pleasure, every single detail of existence is a chore & completely exhausts me.

I hate not feeling safe; I never f****** feel safe. Every f****** place I go I take myself & I am trapped in a mind that is unstable, irrational, cruel, terrified, spastic, & insecure. I cry & scream & beg for death. I’m a hermit now, & on a good day I cry without hurting myself; on a bad day, I spend hours attempting to self-soothe from panic attacks after my anxiety spiraled out of control, or I slice a dozen bloody lines into my legs so I am numb enough to tolerate existence to get through the day, or I sit & cry in a devastated fashion where I spend hours attempting to convince myself that suicide is not the best possibility or opportunity in my life right now.

When I slice into my skin to break the unbearable intensity of an episode, I feel no pain at all. Even as blood droplets form & grow, I am relaxed without pain. Over the past seven years, I have intentionally & repeatedly carved, cut, burned, & shattered (through repeated punching) my body.

In October 2014, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type II & PTSD.

Losing Grounding in Reality: October 2014.

Life feels like its questions are reworded every hour, & its answers changed every day. Of course I’m not genuinely confident; how can I be when reality constantly shape shifts & my perceptions on everything—from morals & purpose to relationships & desires—alters their course in the blink of an eye? I lack an elementary grounding in reality. My internal compass is spastically twirling to no end.

Normally, life has situations, & emotions are formed based on those situations. Having bipolar disorder, life has emotions, & situations arise & the emotions blurt out in whatever way fits the situation. It’s all backwards & so unstable. Episodes are not caused by outside circumstances, not subjective to the environment.

When I am truly suicidal, I feel as though I have already died, like I have been the walking, living dead for a long time, & that physically killing myself is simply accepting the death that has already happened to my spirit. I crave that eternal peace that seems to be the only significant, achievable, desirable objective.

After a mood change, it all seems so strange that it even happened at all. Once I feel stable, and more like my true self, the depressed or hypomanic Kristin is a distant, uncomfortable memory, though a being I do still understand on the deepest levels. But no one else gets it. I feel so alone in this battle against my own messed up mind. I am screaming yet they shush me, listening intently only for whispers.

Call me Crazy: November 2014.

His threatening voice echoes relentlessly within my mind, a constant hum gnawing away at all sense of self. Perhaps I avoided him for years pursuing relief in sex & substances…

For the first time, I see reality clearly, & it is not a pretty picture. In fact, I hate what I see so much that the only thing in the entire universe that I want is to no longer exist. Breath taken from me. Life removed from my blue eyes. The earth continuing to twirl on its axis without Kristin Karina Windsor being a part of the dance. Lives carrying on without my crazy. ‘Cause that’s what I am. Crazy. Hearing voices; fantasizing of death; some days feeling high on cocaine without a single substance in my body. The disconnect with reality is more intense than I originally believed it to be. I feel ashamed to be alive when I don’t even want to be; I feel guilty for continuing to breathe when I wish to give these breaths to someone else who genuinely wants them. The only contribution I wish to give is not my time or talents or treasures, but my life.

Desiring Pain: early December 2014.

Self-harm is hopeless; physical scars & damaged innards from overdosing suicide attempts could never display the emotional pain I’ve endured, the mental battles I’ve fought literally to survive.

I awoke with a bruise-like pain around the outer half of my left eye & the outer area around it. I must have punched myself in my sleep, which is plausible considering how awful & routine my night terrors are. It’s hurt all day, especially when I blink. At this point, my focus is survival. At the end of the day, I think with slight satisfaction, There!, I survived another day; I didn’t let my friends down because I fought for life. My perspective on life has drastically altered & expanded since adopting the view of an outsider.

I feel the empty space where my personality once was, a gaping hole in the definition of Kristin. A black hole swallows my thought process, constricting my conversational skills to an embarrassing, nearly debilitating extent. An ominous, looming darkness lurks in the shadows of my soul.

Cough up those bad memories that’ve haunted for so long

Let go & release the bitter pain that’s stood so strong

Lick away the salty tears that you can’t help but cry

Keep eyes wide open to reality without wanting to die

Suicidal thoughts overwhelm all sanity & life

Craving an ending to earthly troubles & strife

Sleep away until your head spins, forgetting all your dreams

Sleep walker, sleep talker—reality drowns in all your screams

Memories swallowed by the darkness of night

Crowning a glory of a never-ending terror & fright

I look into the lake & soon the reflection of the moon

Demanding a permanent end extremely soon.