That’s the shitty thing about mental illness. It has nothing to do with how things are actually going.
Me, I’m having a pretty good year. But my anxiety has been higher than ever, and I’m starting to realise my always-there-but-mild depression is maybe a bit worse than normal.
But I know, objectively, I’m having a pretty good year.
Not Chris Cornell, but on that subject:
http://www.theplayerstribune.com/corey-hirsch-dark-dark-dark/
The title is the trigger warning. At the same time, one of the first times I ever addressed my illness as an illness and not as my fault for not trying to be positive, was when a then-friend of mine and I got into an argument, when the news about Hirsch first broke back in the nineties. My friend actually commented with the “what does he have to be depressed about,” and I lit into him about how it has nothing to do with talent, success, money… and it made me think about how that same argument could be applied to me.
Same here. My best guess is that it was to do with undiagnosed learning difficulties and the split between what I should be able to do and what I actually could do, as well as problems with socialisation.
I was 12 before I realised that I thought differently to other people, 19 before I realised it was depression, made a serious attempt when I was 22 (paracetemol - narrowly avoided fucking my liver), 25 before I sought treatment and finally got the meds close to right by 27 (lithium FTW!). I came off the meds at 33 and now consider myself sane.
It is possible to come out the other side of this, although it’s not always easy. My advice is that medication works, but it takes time and patience to get it right. Also, medication won’t fix you, but it does give you space to get better, like crutches for the mind.
I’m glad medication worked for you. Years ago, I spent a couple of years taking whatever meds the psychiatrist prescribed me. It didn’t help, and some of them made it worse. Lithium had absolutely no effect, and one of them brought on the worst vomiting I’ve ever experienced.
More recently I tried an anti-depressant, which my OBGYN prescribed saying it was for PMS, not saying it was prozac in a pink box, and it left me feeling not-sober for the three days I actually took it. Screw that, sometimes I want to be not-sober, but the vast majority of the time sobriety is exactly what I want.
Talk therapy does me the most good. For me, and I cannot speak for anyone else, the root of my depression isn’t my brain chemistry. It’s the way I explain the world to myself, it’s about perspective / loss-of-perspective, for lack of a better way of saying it. My most recent round of depression was absolutely attached to real-world events, which were bad, and made my despair somewhat logical, if taken too far.
Getting the meds right is pretty much hit and miss, so maybe I was lucky. I’m glad you’ve got something that helps. And if you ever need to talk…
As we’re being read by others in both positions I just want to add that for some people, brain-wiring and brain chemistry are the issue, and for them, medication that improves/corrects that is the solution.
That’s not to argue with any of the rest, it’s well said. I just want to make sure people know there are also folks who will be adjusting their brain chemistry permanently. And that’s okay. 
This has been the most difficult part of being bipolar. There will never be a time that I won’t need medication. Never a time that medication will solve all the surrounding issues, so talk/cognitive behavior therapy are necessary as well. It will always be there, and I will forever have to manage it. It’s exhausting sometimes.
Absolutely. Everyone is different, in their brain and in their mind. I hope that anyone in need of comfort gets it. I hope anyone in pain can find a way to help them, in whichever way that’s most helpful to them, without shame or stigma.
I hear you - I’m not bipolar, so I won’t say that I know what it’s like. I have (other) friends (and people I know) who are also bipolar, so I get to see it and talk about it sometimes, but from the outside.
I also have a different wiring issue that has interesting effects that I have to work around, but still not the same.
And I hear that! Loud and clear. I know that there’s little I can do from this end of the net connection, other than offer empathy and an open PM, and well, I was going to say that you’re valued around here, but you know that, dammit - I’m the relative newbie. 
Damn straight! Approve completely, all of it, and will raise a glass to that (even if the meds often mean that we shouldn’t, really.)
Skol!
Well, thank you, sincerely. I still very much consider myself a newbie. I’m too irregular to have achieved elevated statuses (and too lazy to look up what they meant) and frankly didn’t even know about the outside lounges, until I was invited to one, and then gratefully, this one. It’s amazing to have such safe virtual spaces.
Which one of us will be the first to reference ‘imposter syndrome’? 
Well that was a self answering question.
Ha! It was, wasn’t it? I lost.
We’re all new, here, that is the wonder of this place. Some just know each other better than others.
Good point, well made. I approve.
I would have mentioned it but I’m new here 
(applauds)
Scratch my last “fuck today” about some paltry PTA meeting. I just got a text from one of my two oldest friends. I’ve known her since the 5th grade and we actually roomed together in college (good times, good times). Her sixteen-year-old daughter (who was a tiny flower girl at my wedding to Mr. Jilly) just tried to commit suicide and is now in custody? of some sort. I tried to call but she’s not answering (it’s late, even for central time, and clearly she’s dealing with so much). Double fuck today.