I was just taking a right brain/left brain quiz (even though I already know the results), and one of the questions was whether you preferred dogs, who obey their owners, or cats, who retain their independence. Guess which was the right-brained choice?

I just realized that, since I’ve been blogging on this new platform, I haven’t once talked about my disorder. This is probably largely due to widespread misunderstandings of the disorder and some social stigmas that go along with it, but I figure, hey, if I can’t talk about it on my blog then I can’t talk about it anywhere, so why not?

First, just a word on normal chronic (clinical) depression. If you’re not familiar with chronic depression, it’s a problem with serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain. Serotonin and dopamine are chemicals that the brain uses to reward good behavior—things like accomplishment, pleasure, love, and any of a number of other good things. (Serotonin is the brain chemical affected by the drug ecstasy and dopamine is the brain chemical affected by cocaine, if that clears things up.) The reason you get good feelings when something like that happens is because the brain triggers the release of one or both of those chemicals, which are received by the brain and used to produce the pleasurable effect. So depression isn’t necessarily a sad feeling so much as it is a physiological inability to feel any joy.

A chronically depressed individual isn’t sad all of the time, and isn’t even depressed all of the time. The depression comes in waves, and can manifest itself in anything from sadness to complete apathy to self-destructive behavior to emotional desolation. An “episode” usually lasts at least two weeks, but can go on for years.

Bipolar disorder is marked by alternating states of depression, which involves lower than normal levels of those chemicals, and mania, which involves much higher than normal levels of those chemicals. So, while the consciousness and persona of bipolar individuals don’t actually change as with multiple personality disorder, the people surrounding that individual will have to learn to deal with two very different versions of the same person. The individual him or herself will have to learn to live life as two very different versions of the same person. (States usually last more than a year, so wild mood swings aren’t as prevalent as common knowledge would have you believe.)

Before I go any further, let me say that bipolar disorder, just like depression, is largely treatable. I doubt anyone in my life now knows that there’s anything wrong with me. Treatment can get a little tricky, and it’s harder for some people than others, but most bipolar people are able to live relatively normal lives once a treatment has been found.

I said this on my About page, but I didn’t actually get diagnosed until I was 21. Bipolar isn’t so bad in childhood, but gets bad in adolescence and gets much worse in early adulthood. I had no idea the disorder existed until I was 21, so I had to grow up alternating between my two states: on the one side, a quiet, angst-ridden boy with no self-esteem who had a negative self image sometimes to the point of self-mutilation; and on the other side, a very much extraverted, impetuous, fun-loving boy that spoke and acted without thinking—someone who was just as capable of damaging or hurting everything around him (not physically) as passionately pursuing ideals and charismatically bringing people on-board with them.

As you can imagine, these two sides of me did not like each other. As a result, I spent most of my life not liking either my past or present self (or both). I’d spend a year or two depressed, lamenting the careless things I had done just the year before or my own inability to speak up as I had, and just when I got a handle on being that person, I would change over to my other state. Truth be told, I actually got to be pretty good at managing these feelings, but my long-standing friends still weren’t sure what to expect from me from year to year. I don’t want to get into any particulars now, but middle and high school were a pretty rough time for me.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing good that came out of this. Bipolar individuals are generally highly creative, intelligent people. I found myself alternating between extreme introspection, which gave me time to formulate insights on life that many of my friends missed, and extreme creativity and capability, which put me in a spot to do some pretty great things. On personality tests, I walk the line between thinking and feeling, and I have no doubt that experience on both sides of the fence got me here. Not that I was an exceptional person, but I just didn’t want you to think that my life had been destroyed.

If you’ve kept up with me over the past few years, you’ve probably noticed some rather drastic changes in my personality. My later years in Florida (after I got medicated) and my early months in Kansas actually saw me quite hypo-manic, as I was not properly medicated. When I found a new psychiatrist up here, he immediately told me this and I started a new medication. The new medication’s dosage was initially much too high and sapped most of my personality away. (It’s hard for me to see these things because I don’t have any conception of “normal” in my life—I’ve always been off-balance in one way or another.) I was on this medication for a year and a half before tracing the problem back to the medication itself and switching to another one. Now, I’m still a bit on the introverted side, but I’m much more balanced and steady than I’ve been at any other time in my life.

So anyway, that’s my disorder. If you have any questions or anxieties about this (I don’t doubt that there will be at least a few people who will be apprehensive to talk to me after reading this), please ask me. I don’t mind discussing this with people who honestly want to know more about it, and I’d rather have you ask awkward questions than endure an awkward space between us. If you’re suffering from depression or any sort of mental disorder, feel free to drop me a line. I’m not a professional by any means, but I have put quite a bit of research into it and I’ve got some experience under my belt as well.