Living With Bipolar Disorder

  • Adventures,  Living With Bipolar Disorder,  Musings

    2 Weeks in Cartagena: What I Learned About Myself

     Two weeks in Cartagena taught me just how much my mental illness limits me. So boom, I did my almost annual international birthday trip and decided to really challenge myself this time. After multiple covid infections plus a concussion, I have been worried about cognitive decline and struggling with anything involving memorization and concentration. So instead of my four days to one week of birthday travel, I decided to spend two weeks in Cartagena, Colombia for leisure and to attend immersive Spanish classes. This ended up being the worst international trip that I’ve taken thus far. All of the negative parts about this trip had nothing to do with the…

  • Living With Bipolar Disorder

    Trapped

    There’s been a topic I’ve been avoiding thinking about for a very long time, but I feel like I’m in a transitional period in life that makes it impossible not to ruminate over it. I feel trapped in my state. And not like a “being held hostage” type of trapped, but a “surrounded by a moat of hungry gators” type of trapped. I’ve pretty much always wanted to move out of state, I even started making plans twice. At one point I was planning to relocate to Georgia and another time, North Carolina. My plans fell through each time for different reasons, but the desire to leave never left. However,…

  • Living With Bipolar Disorder

    What Do You Love?

    Do you have something you love to do? If you’ve been struggling with your mental health along the lines of depression or anxiety or really any symptom, do you have things that you want to do? Do you still have hobbies or interests that you take you away, that fulfills you, or makes you happy? What is it that you do that makes you happy? Did you lose your interests? Have you tried to get them back or start new ones? What motivates you to keep doing what you love or moves you to try something new? I was recently asked by a friend “When was the last time you…

  • Living With Bipolar Disorder,  Musings

    Why I Stopped Actively Dating

    I’ve been mulling this topic over for the past year after going through a breakup and 3 severe depressive episodes. I don’t really like the conclusion I’ve come to, because it makes me face some truths about myself, my circumstances, and the world I live in that are far from comfortable. It also shatters a hope that I’ve had since I was young and I’ve been avoiding facing that a lot of my desires from when I was younger were aspirational at best and delusional at worst. I just won’t be actively seeking to date anyone any longer. We all know the most common reason that so many of us…