When I first got sick, like, really sick, I lost a lot of confidence in myself, in what I could do. I felt like bipolar disorder had stamped me “REJECT.” It is hard when you first have symptoms. You don’t understand them. Mania can be scary. It still is for me. I lost my job. Had to move in with my parents. Had a shit-ton of appointments with psychological professionals. This was not the life I planned, nor wanted.
Slowly friends fade away. They are busy and working and climbing that ladder. And you, well, you are sick – and scary. They don’t want to catch it, this sickness you have. They want the old you back – the one who could leave her apartment, the one who danced the night away.
You are not less than them.
You are not less than who you were before the sickness came.
You are just different. And maybe you’ll find new, less shallow friends. And maybe you will do something with you life that, without the sickness, you would have never imagined. But please, I beg you, don’t spend a second thinking that mental illness makes you less than someone without one. You are not. You are amazing.
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