The Meetup

On Monday, I finally attended the NYC Bipolar Meetup.

After a year of sending my RSVP and not showing up, I finally did.
1. I wouldn't attend solo. (My sis came with me. Yup, she's bipolar, too.)

2. It's only recently that I accepted this whole bipolar stuff, and to be honest, I still questions whether or not I have it.

My sis did however, raise a good point: is my psychiatrist stupid enough to give me mood stabilizers if I really didn't need them?

But I digress.

Can't say I had a good or bad time. I left really confused.

On one hand, being in the presence of people who understood why I couldn't get out of bed or leave my home despite my sincerest desire to do so, was comforting. There's safety in numbers; I didn't feel so weird.

On the other had, all of my preconceived notions of bipolar, how bips "look" and how the disorder manifests, were thrown out of the window.

See, I thought bip2's never get hospitalized, but bip1's did. Moreover, my brother is bip1. I've seen the hospitalizations, the padded rooms, and being around people that "look" crazy. Maybe I just made myself believe this because I need to feel in control of me at all times.

Maybe I'm afraid of that, for me.

Anyway, at the meetup, there was a bip2 that had been in the hospital several times, but a bip1 that was never hospitalized.

Whoa! Abort mission, Abort mission!

Too much at once.

Ok, I was overheating, getting irritable, annoyed, confused. I wanted to bond, and I still do, but I still feel separate. I still feel like I can beat this. I loved that I didn't feel like an X-file, but to embrace everyone as "like me", means I must embrace the possibility that their symptoms and experiences could be real for me.

And that, my friend, was a jagged, rat poison -laced pill I was NOT trying to swallow.

One guy said I needed to realize that what I had wasn't about curing but about managing. I found myself getting a "tude".

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW?!?!?!?!

So what if you've been bip longer than me. I can beat this, I swear I can!

The result: I'm in a f*cking funk.

It was just too much too soon, I guess, and now I'm pissy and irritable; the bad mania.

I'll keep in touch.
I'll attend again.
But I'm deeply annoyed and irritable.