On the Subject of Bipolar and Being Manic
from Not Every Year
There are things I’ve lived with for so long that I stopped calling them by their clinical names. Not out of denial, and not out of pride. More like: the language never fit the experience. The textbook waveform — the jagged up down up down — always felt like someone else’s drawing of someone else’s life. Mine never looked like that.
When I described it out loud to a therapist, I realized I’d been talking around something without naming it. Bipolar I. Neither of us had said the words. I didn’t because I don’t walk around thinking of myself as a diagnosis. He didn’t because he was listening to the shape of the story, not the label.
But the truth is: yes, that’s what it is. And: no, that’s not how I live it.
If you picture the classic bipolar waveform, it moves vertically — peaks and valleys, the exhausting climb and the inevitable drop. Rotate that whole thing ninety degrees and lay it flat. Now it’s a river. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to describing what it feels like from the inside.
My “manic” periods aren’t mountaintops. They’re currents. They pick up speed, they carry me, they widen the horizon. I don’t feel like I’m scaling anything. I feel like I’m moving — east, west, east, west — depending on the season, the project, the internal weather. There’s a crest, sure, a moment where the water runs fast and I’m suddenly aware of everything I’ve set in motion. But it’s not a cliff. It’s a bend in the river.
And the descent isn’t a crash. It’s a settling. The current slows. I look around at whatever I built, promised, started, or stirred up during the fast water. I sort it out. I clean up after myself. I let the system come back to its baseline. Then, eventually, the current shifts again.
The cycles have their own timing. Sometimes days. Sometimes weeks. Sometimes months or years. I’ve lived enough of them to know the tempo. I don’t treat it like a crisis. I treat it like weather. Like tide. Like something I’ve learned to navigate rather than something I’m trying to conquer.
People hear “manic” and think chaos. I hear it and think momentum. People hear “bipolar” and think instability. I think rhythm. Not every year is the same, but the pattern is familiar. I’ve mapped it. I’ve survived it. I’ve even built things inside it.
So yes — on paper, it’s Bipolar I. In my life, it’s a river I’ve learned to read. And the truth is, I’m not ashamed of the current. It’s carried me through more than it’s ever taken from me.
#MentalHealth #MentalHealthAwareness #Mindfulness #EmotionalWellbeing #MusicAndMentalHealth #NotEveryYear Words by Rick, Song created with Suno