Learning to Live with BPD & Bipolar II

Story from: S🦇 , 35, from Philly.

TW: This post discusses suicide.

I wrote my first suicide note when I was nine years old, on a yellow legal pad I was supposed to be using for homework. I tucked it under my mom’s pillow, and went to school the next morning. When I got home, she had written a response on the back of my note, sealed with a lipstick kiss so I could physically see the love she was trying to give me. 

I still have that letter. Sometimes I take it out to remind myself how far I’ve come—and how much work I still have to do. 

My name is S 🦇  , 35, from Philly.
And I am mental.

I live with bipolar II disorder and borderline personality disorder. My care team jokingly calls it “double BPD.” I believe myself to not be quite human and, for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to die.

Not always in the same way. Sometimes it’s fantasy. Sometimes it’s easy and practical. Sometimes it’s loud, and sometimes it’s just background noise, simmering like acid reflux in my nervous system. It’s there when life feels impossible. It’s also there when life feels wonderful. When I’m at my lowest, I find myself imagining funeral speeches or updating my will. When I’m doing well, I think that maybe this would be the perfect time to “leave on a high note.” Like Peter Pan’s shadow, it follows me everywhere.

Depression doesn’t just make me sad, it makes me destructive. I want my outside world to reflect the mess and muck inside my head. If everything around me falls apart too, then maybe the guilt of feeling this poorly makes sense. Maybe there will finally be evidence that matches the pain. I also become obsessed with what I call “safe thinking” – I wear the same outfit, eat the same foods, go to familiar places, and listen to reruns of my favorite podcast episodes. Once, after a breakup, I ordered vegetable pho, two spring rolls, and a ginger ale for dinner for four months. Sometimes depression becomes physical. My vision shakes. I feel invisible bugs crawling on my skin. I become convinced invisible dangers are nearby. I talk to myself. I cry until I can’t move. I sit in the shower until the water runs cold.

Mania is different. It’s loud. Expensive. Fast. It’s online shopping, fast talking, hypersexuality, and performing for strangers. When I can control it, I call it “safe showboating”, like chatting with bartenders or taking myself out to dinner. It’s why I did stand-up comedy. It’s why karaoke sounds fun, despite the fact that no one deserves to hear me butcher Mya’s “Case of the Ex.” When I’m performing, I feel real. Because I know “wanting attention” is something we’re supposed to be ashamed of, I try to keep it at bay – but I don’t think that’s always fair. Sometimes what I’m looking for isn’t really attention, it’s to feel seen and feel tethered back to reality.

Does any of this sound familiar? Let me be living, breathing proof you are not alone.

The hardest part for me is the desperate desire to fit in, despite knowing and loving my differences. I cosplay as a “normal person” at work and in public, because I know that that is what is expected of me. As sick people, we’re told not to talk about our special interests, how we upset someone by fast talking or spontaneous touching, that you’re too much for public consumption, too loud, too dark, too personal – blah blah blah. All my life, I’ve wanted someone to meet me on my level, but, to be (broadly) accepted, I’m forced to meet them on theirs.

I struggle regularly with the fact that society is unable to align mental health difficulty with physical health difficulty, which is confusing because it is the same information being sent to your body. My employer doesn’t treat it the same, my family doesn’t treat it the same, and even some friends are fatigued from having my “chronic illness” in their face all the time. People really think it’s controllable, and it hurts when you tell people “I’m sick,” and they expect a simple and direct treatment to be available. It IS just like a stomach ache, except it’s my heart that hurts and instead of vomiting, I’m crying or unable to take care of myself.

I’ve been told at work that having a mental illness is not the same as having a stomach bug. It doesn’t need the same kind of accommodations or treatment, and that working through it should be easier. 

When I worked in the service industry, I could weaponize it. When I was manic, I could work for days, unphased. Then, when I was depressed, I would just call out or take off. It really worked in my favor. It was “normal.”

Working for a large institution was easy. – they had a disability form when I first started and it was very much a general accommodation. “Here’s the form. Do you need it? Here it is. Are you good? Awesome. When you’re not good, tell us. No questions asked.” I was able to take leave whenever I needed, not to be taken advantage of, of course. It was the first time in the workplace I ever felt seen.

Now, I’m at a small, private company and they do not do as good of a job. I can’t tell them that I need a day off because of my mental health. I’ve never even disclosed what’s going on with me – I just tell them that I’m sick. Because that’s the stigma. It must be controllable by will or it should be pushed through. I’m not “really sick”.

I wish people could just understand that I AM sick.

How would someone act if they had a debilitating migraine? Would they be short with you? Would they be distracted? Mean? Sad? Say something unexpected because they have a crashing headache? Depression, or other mental health issues, allow for very similar feelings. People are given the grace to either take medication or take actions in their lives to avoid a migraine. That’s what I do! I take medication, I plan ahead and take action when I see a pattern forming. When I am feeling sick, my only hope is for people to show me the same compassion as they would for any other illness.

And just like living a physically healthy lifestyle, I try to take care of “Future Me” based on when I start to feel like things are declining in either direction. That can look like meal prepping, because I could either be spending way too much money on food or not eating at all. I might tell someone I trust early on, like “Heyyyy, today I bought a $300 thing. Don’t worry, I did something weird today. Just throwing it out there, and if you could check-in in, like, 1-3 business days I’ll be sure to tell you if anything else weird happened.”

I do have things under control, most of the time. Sometimes, though, something will slip through the cracks. The hard part for me is knowing when to reach out and when I can handle things on my own. I try to have accountability partners that can help me with that. I am so blessed to have the kind of friend who I can say anything to and she’ll respond the way I not only want, but absolutely need, to hear. Having a buddy you can say the worst, most unhinged stuff to and they’re just like “Alright loser, your Nuuly gets delivered in 5 days.” or “If you throw yourself in front of a train, we can’t go to the Andrew McMahon concert this weekend” is exactly the community we need around us to survive (and thrive) through mental illness. I’m not looking for the buddy who’s going to buy me treats and let me rot every time I’m feeling down (though that can feel nice in the moment). It just perpetuates a cycle and, I’ve learned, digs us deeper into a hole that is that much more challenging to get out of.

Healing and coping has become a ritual for me – it takes time, practice, patience, multiple therapists, (for me) medications, movement, and support. Finding DBT as a different form of therapy changed my life, and my entire outlook and what my life could be like. THAT was a huge moment for me. If nothing else, I want people to know, you may not have found your thing just yet, but try different things and allow yourself to be surprised by it. 

Seek the help you deserve. Use your resources. Build your community. Comment here! Call 988. (and for the love of God, please do not let yourself get 302ed, it f*cking SUCKS! 👎and that’s a story for another day).

Let me know in the comments if this resonated with you, or if you have a family member or friend who might be able to relate to this story. Any words of encouragement help, let the world know we are not alone 💜

We are definitely all mental. You are not alone.