The Chains of a Disorder

I wouldn't have labelled myself a sufferer of mental health at least two years ago. I had my moments of falls and highs with my disorder, but I've begun a journey of deterioration in that two year's space that has left my mind very battered and detached.

I suffer from what is known as Bipolar Disorder Type-2; a condition that once upon a time used to be called manic depression. This condition led to extreme highs of "mania," the feeling of euphoric emotions and "happiness," but with dwellings of depression behind my smile and then latent lows that fell me into a purgatory state.

As a "sufferer" of bipolar disorder, I could feel myself becoming distanced and re-closed; as if my mind was being dragged slowly by steel chains that every now and again would loosen and give me some wiggle room to progress, only to be dragged down and retained again and again. This distancing reached its pinnacle as of July this year.

I'd look out into the world and be speechless but in my mind have a lot to say; I'd become detached; broken; damaged; endlessly unfeeling and from time to time I would react with an expression that had no relevance to how I mentally felt.

I was imprisoned.

July rolled up as a major turning point of my year; traveling to my psychiatrist I had learned that this development of my detachment problem which I originally thought was just a newer symptom of my bipolar disorder, was the early-development of Emotional Detachment Disorder. This news sent me spiraling; kind of like I was descending a castle staircase that never ended.

It wasn't until four months later, in November that I finally began to settle. I moved back home from London after nothing but failure in job-hunting and not getting anywhere with a system that I felt had just rejected me; not just work-wise but with friends, with a community of creators I respected and much more.

There were people who I had reached out to who didn't want anything to do with me, or rather didn't care and that was one of the things during my spiral that made it look as if half-way down the stairs I had tripped and fallen. My body and mind both equally bruised.

It's now the first day of December, and those last six to eight months of living in a spiraled state for four of them, and the other four learning about the plunge my mental health was about to seem distant yet fresh in the mind. It would be a lie for me to say "I'm fine," but I am improving.

I have embarked on my Master's degree in Global Journalism; I have some good friends who, though far, keep me going and are there for me when I need to cry. I still have regrets and that there are people I want to be friends with but I don't know —the downside of being socially awkward I assume.

There are still people in my sphere of this existence who would rather focus negatively than positively; trying to tighten my chains around more than my wrists. But unluckily for them, I've started to learn how the chains work; how they're tied and how to break free from them.

It's just a single link at a time.