MI - from different to disconnected

Can't breathe,
Panic stricken,
Overtaken by unwanted yet unavoidable emotion. I hate to feel.
Its quite the unfortunate evolutionary product if you ask me. There must be some "survival of the fittest" reasoning behind it, but right now its pretty hard to make out.

The past few days have been tough, who knows for what reason... but they've been tough. Being back at school is both a blessing and a curse. In one sense the constant surrounding of friends/acquaintances and even strangers is a welcome change from the stuffed animals in my bedroom at home. But the constant socializing is also a constant reminder of the fact that all though "Alannah" may fit in... I don't.

Living with the weight of illness or stress in your life changes you, not necessarily for the worse or better, but for the different. Theres nothing wrong with being different, I prefer it to being the same, but when the problem arises, at least for me, is when the "difference" morphs into disconnect. A parted seam between the people around you-- and you. The inability to be fully connected with someone who has not endured. Not always for a lack of trying on both parts, simply the ever present unawareness of the effect of mental illness and its severity.

Even when I'm "balanced"-- which for me is a state of not fully manic and not fully depressed, rather than somewhere actually on the midline of emotion --I carry the weight of a lifetime of personally waged wars, haunting memories of my lowest points, fear and excitement of my highest and what seems like a split unable to be mended between the visible aspects of me, the internal ones and my emotions. I've separated the three unknowingly in order to cope. My balance is visible. My emotions, pure chaos. Me? My internal balance is fleeting, lasting sometimes longer than others, but it always leaves, quicker than it came.

I don't want times of balance and happiness to be fleeting. I'm tired of my mind in such an unresting state. I want be "cured".

But then I realize,
This illness is so tightly intertwined with who I am,
So incredibly connected to so many attributes that make me, me.
I'm 19, I don't know who the hell I am.
But who would I be without Bipolar?

I don't know. And I will never know.

So yeah, brutal few days. But I wouldn't know that these days were so bad if I'd never experienced good ones.