David: Riding the Wave

David, My Bipolar Story I am 30 years old and live in East Texas. While many people with bipolar disorder have a hard time staying in a relationship, I have been blessed to be able to stay married for 11.5 years now.

I have been diagnosed as bipolar 1 rapid cycling, and while my diagnosis is only a few years old, I have been bipolar for most if not all of my life, exhibiting symptoms that my parents remember as early as four years of age. One interesting thing about my bipolar experience is that I am one of the weird ones who happens to cycle up more than down and under normal circumstances reaches higher than lower. While that sounds like fun to many, there are downsides, such as I tend to have psychotic manias.

I am a photgrapher and digital artist. I love to create and attribute much of my creativity to my illness. I also write poetry and fiction and recently completed my first poetry chapbook, which I am quite proud of, titled ~In Search of Grace.~ I am also working on a novel which has a bipolar main character.

As much as I have had my life torn apart by bipolar disorder and have suffered through horrible psychotic manias and suicidal depressions, I usually feel that having bipolar disorder is a blessing rather than a curse. While I do hope for the right meds to help lift the bottom of the lows and put a ceiling on the highs, I do not hope for a cure. I honestly believe that if a cure was discovered tomorrow, I would refuse it. Too much of the person I am, a person I have struggled for years to accept and love and finally do, is molded and shaped by this illness, that at this point I am afraid of who I would become without it.

David

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