“You likely have Bipolar Disorder Type II. It’s something to investigate more,” said the psychiatrist, head bent to his notes, not even looking at me as he set cracks in my foundation.
I had hired this psychiatrist to investigate whether I did, or did not have, Autism. As I was so sensitive to sound that I often had to cover my ears in pain, I figured I knew what the answer would be. But I asked for a full diagnostic procedure—I figured I had some kind of depression, some kind of anxiety too. But Bipolar? Nothing had even hinted that to me before.
“But everyone gets depressed for a few weeks at a time and then super productive another few weeks after that?” I suggested hopefully. This made him look up from his notes, a mix of professional veneer and confusion on his face.
That was how I lived my life. From childhood to about age 22, when I first started medication. Constantly cycling between ecstatic hope and depression, I went through life like a CEO’s line graph: here’s our success, here’s our crash, how do we recover?
But at this moment, I was 20. I was deeply confused and in denial.
I learned later on that what I had could best be described as Cyclothymia. A little-investigated offshoot of Bipolar Disorder, it might be best explained as “Bipolar Lite.” Or perhaps “Bipolar Deluxe” if you find more-frequently shifting moods more challenging. Whereas the standard person with Bipolar dealt with one mood, either hypomania or depression for months on end before switching to stability or the other end of the spectrum, I was forever shifting. Often, it was like clockwork: 2-3 weeks of depression, 2-3 weeks of hypomania, rarely even a day where I felt “normal.”
My paranoia was always shifting as well. Most days, I couldn’t leave the house because it felt as though everyone was watching me. I stayed away from windows too.
When I left the psychiatrist’s office that day, diagnostic papers for Autism in hand, I filed away the knowledge that I was likely Bipolar. I scoffed at it. I didn’t know that I was living in one of the most challenging ways it was possible to live in a first-world country: fighting yourself and your mental state every day.
I failed semesters. I stopped showing up for classes, either because I was too depressed or because I thought I had better things to do. I became homeless for a brief period of time.
I fell apart.
They say that most Bipolar people get diagnosed when their lives disintegrate in some way. Someone calls the police on them for their suicidal ideation or erratic behavior, and they get taken to a hospital against their will. They have a hypomanic or manic period, and they spend all their savings—or they have a depressed period and lose their job, their home. Most people don’t know that what they’re experiencing is a disorder at all until these landmark events just seem to…happen.
My official diagnosis happened in the same way.
I was dating a man who wasn’t very considerate. I was working back-breaking shifts at a CVS Pharmacy during the day and driving home to sleep at my neglectful parents’ house at night. One day, it all fell apart. I got the breakup text right after lunch, while I was working myself thin at the drive-thru window (stepping up and down on the little step stool because I was too tiny to see out of the window).
Enraged, I crumbled to pieces.
I fell into suicidal ideation and contemplation. Still cycling into delusions of grandeur occasionally, then falling right back into a chasm in the earth. I had that Bipolar breakthrough moment where I realized, “Oh, something is critically wrong with me” as I chatted with the police on my front porch about my plan to kill myself.
It makes me wonder how many Bipolar people have died. If they were acting erratic, if they were just a little too “off,” did they get shot? I sat there holding the guardrails on my parent’s stairsteps to the porch, the sheriff charging his taser on and off.
It would be another year before I had medication. Before I stepped foot in my new house, a gross 6-bedroom closer to my college. But by god I took that medication like I had just discovered a new religion. “How’s that new pill working for you?” my psychiatric nurse would say over a Zoom call, analyzing how dirty my room was in the background, how clean I looked. I’d like to see that slideshow—the gradient of me getting better, shown through my appearance.
We tried a few. It took time. But I got better.
I got better.
Most treatment for Bipolar requires a mixture of medications. An anti-psychotic—which for all the good it does is still a ticking time bomb. It WILL, at high enough doses, eventually give you Tardive Dyskinesia—that uncontrollable twitching that is often associated with “crazy people.” I also take a mood stabilizer that makes me quite sleepy. So much of treating Bipolar just seems to be getting enough sleep. If I don’t sleep much, I wake up angry and erratic. So I’m thankful that this little pill makes me horizontal frequently.
At first, it was like I was handed a brand-new life. One where I could handle a job. I felt like a whole new person, and like a baby born recently, I still had to grow into understanding this new life.
It got better. In general. I’ve been working at the same company for 3 years now, already received one promotion, and I’m interviewing for another soon. I’m well-respected, dependable, reliable, stable—all the things I dreamed about when my cycles were at their worst.
They say that people with Bipolar will forever be sick. We’ll be married to our meds, and we’ll deal with the side effects. But I’d like to think that my disorder is a close friend. He has some terminal illness that means he needs infusions, help, but he deserves that help. I deal with the side effects with love, that med-sleepiness that permeates almost every inch of every day.
It will get better, I promise.
Shannon McEntee (she/her) is a creative nonfiction writer who loves tapping into her past. She is in recovery for Bipolar Type II and an eating disorder, and she firmly believes that recovery is possible for everyone.
Bluesky: @misshalcyon.bsky.social