Blue October's Lead singer on how he has dealt with being Bipolar.
I can remember riding the bus home form school and wondering what would happen if I got off on the “wrong” stop and if anyone would notice. Changing schools so many times made me want to fade into the background and not be noticed, I didn’t want to make friends with anyone because I knew I’d just be leaving soon. I was the quiet kid who never spoke up in class, who would mumble answers if the teachers called on me. Everyone else seemed so happy, so confident and sure of themselves and what they wanted to do with their lives. Kids began talking about college and what they wanted to major in and how they were going to change the world. College? It had never crossed my mind, I never thought of it as an option until my senior year.
Depression can be a very lonely “disease”. When I was diagnosed as Bipolar in 10th grade my mom was extremely upset and never wanted me to talk about it. It was like I was supposed to feel ashamed of this; I was suppose to feel bad and want to keep it a secret. I was happy to know that I wasn’t alone in how I felt and I wasn’t as crazy as I thought I was. There was medication, therapy, and most importantly, help. I could feel happy again, I could find peace and I didn’t have to feel so out of control. I could abandon the balance beam I was trying to walk every day and find some kind of resolution.
Over the years the diagnosis has changed and through new testing Doctors realised that what I had, what I was dealing with was ADHD, Depression and PTSD. They helped me change my medications to ones that better fit these new findings.
I think it surprises people when they find out how open I am about this. There’s too much of a stigma around mental illnesses, everything is too taboo to talk about it. No one wants to talk about how violence can change a person and alter their mindset.
We’re not broken. We’re not crazy, we just have a different way of looking at the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment