"I wish you weren't this way"
- Mr. MFBA
By now you "know" me well enough to imagine my initial thoughts.* I know when he says things like this that he is attacking the illness not me. He just does not understand that while I am not my illness, the illness is an integral part of who I am.
I hate even saying that because that statement can be so easily misunderstood. I do not define myself by my illness but it has been with me** for nearly 20 years so it has shaped many of my decisions and molded parts of my personality. It's taken a couple of years but I have come to accept that things I thought were just me are more likely just me due to bipolar.
It does upset me when I think of what I could have had/been/done if I had not made so many irrational or bad decisions when I was younger and manic and/or depressed. Then I look at my life and realize that so much of what I have now is a direct result of those decisions and I can't complain.
I wish I was not this way, too, but I am. I just wish he could finally accept that and let our lives move beyond the world of bipolar.
*If you imagined cussing double or triple the words strung together.
** Officially diagnosed or not.
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