Great writing Glenna. I feel & share your struggles with mental illness. Bipolar type 2 (BP2) is very difficult to diagnose because unlike type 1, hypomania is hard to uncover. BP2 is often misdiagnosed as depression and treated with SSRIs which worsens the condition.
As a molecular biologist, I've taken positive markers for a "dis-ease" with a grain of salt. Ask yourself, before the prescription drug revolution in the 1950s, how did the "crazies" deal with their condition? I can bet you that Jesus was mad with bipolar or schizophrenia. Imagine the lives saved if the man just drank lithium or had a patch for Haldol? After 2000 years, we've drugged God's gifted humans who see visions and think faster than hummingbirds. Think how the poles would stop spinning if doctors weren’t so unipolar.
Yes, mental illness can be debilitating, but it takes a village to support and benefit from bipolar citizens rather than clear-cutting us. Humans weren't meant to be in a toxic gated community as we are caged now, and our villages are endangered & myopic. Living there would bring out the worst of humanity whether sane or bipolar trapped in a rat race of our design.
I would love to find the gene for mono-polar disorder which leads to xenophobia begetting bullying siring bigotry by treasuring greed in the "sane" mainstream. How would our society be if the "crazies" were accepted like them so perfectly ordered? It would be more like unindustrialized races living in harmony, so perfect like a 3D-printed cog stuck on repeat in a mono-polar civilization.
In the 19th century, holistic medicine was bruised and battered by allopathic medicine in the US. It has never fully recovered like sane treatment for the mentally insane. Simple things like gratitude, redemption, low-carb diets and rediscovering the lost art of breathing can work wonders for depression and anxiety. Take a look at this book by James Nestor called breath.
Instead of thinking a diagnosis is a life sentence, I try to think of myself as 1 of God's hummingbird among sanctimonious mono-polar fowls jealous of my heart that beats 1200 beats per minute to their lazy 180 bpm max.
Hummingbirds and bumble bees defy human physicians and their knowledge of physiology and physics. Fake it to you make it takes time.
Let your caged wings fly, find a friend, take your meds, go to group, don't look back, and refuse the rest lest you turn to a pillar of lithium. Good luck on your journey with bipolar symmetry, Ms. Gill.
Rest & Relax. It’s only life. Bipolar disorder is a discarded present from God, the Master of order & disorder. God must have been bipolar like us. All the universe but our race has a mental disorder then.