text: I have always been a relentlessly positive cheerleader. I was chosen as Co-Captain of the Swim Team and President of the Choir Department in high school not because I was particularly skilled at either of those activities - frankly I was pretty bad at both. I was chosen because I motivated people to go farther than they ever realized they could go. That I could cheer them on, on the most difficult of days, and help them to know that they were both wanted and needed. I gave warm, enveloping hugs, and not so much advice as encouragement. I truly have felt, for the last 39 years, that my job was to make everyone live better. In fact, at Christmas this year I had 85 presents for my two nephews and niece, just because I wanted them to know that they were abundantly loved. The problem is, I have never learned to cheer for myself. When I was in my mid-twenties, I was diagnosed with a debilitating psychiatric illness. It took an absurd amount of time to get the most accurate diagnoses, but I am currently labeled as Severe Bipolar 1 and OCD. I was crushed. I should have known there was something wrong with me. That I would never be as good as everyone else. That there was a cap on how much I would be able to achieve and limits to how many blessings I could receive. I suddenly started losing everything. I lost my ability to volunteer with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which was one of the most rewarding parts of my life. I lost the ability to work in jobs that I absolutely loved. I suddenly had no hope to work at all anymore. I lost the ability to buy my own insurance, and had to stick with Medicare, which is both costly and doesn’t cover nearly as much. I lost the hope of being a mom - one of my biggest dreams. I would be an AMAZING mom - especially to a child with special needs - but how can you be a mom if you can’t even stay out of the hospital for a year, when you have depressions that are so deep its miraculous you stay alive, when you have manias that make it too difficult to think, you’re purchasing a ridiculous number of items without even knowing, and you can’t figure out why it’s not okay to strip down in public because you are so hot you can’t stand it. Even I realize, when I am most confused, that you be a mom in those situations? Some days it is impossible to just get out of bed. Plus, I have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of medical expenses. Last year my medical expenses made up almost half of my total income. I can’t purchase items just for fun, or go on a vacation that I pay for, because I don’t even have enough to pay my bills. It gets to the point that I wonder...why even try? Everything I do fails. Everything I have is taken away. A year ago I was trying to run a 5k. Then I started getting chronic sinus infections that we simply haven’t been able to cure, and 9 months later I am struggling to get up, crying in my bed because my throat hurts so intensely, my ears are plugged up and I’m running a fever that leaves me shivering so much that all the blankets I have just aren’t enough. Forget daily living skills. I’m lucky if I take a shower once or twice a week. I barely ever brush my teeth or my hair. I can’t keep up with maintaining a clean house. It is a disaster all the time, even with the help of my mom coming over several days a week. I haven’t been inside a grocery store in months, partly because I am so overwhelmed about the crowded aisles and having to wait in long lines, shifting from one foot to the other, praying that maybe one or two people in front of me will leave, or at the very least just have a couple of items. Partly because I am so exhausted all the time that I wouldn’t even be able to walk through the aisles, even if there were only a few things on my color coated, organized by aisle, list. Then the mania comes. At first it feels great! I put twenty five items on my to do lists, scheduled every 10-30 minutes, and I cross off every single item. I feel incredible, finally a good day! But I should know by now, that I don’t have good days. As soon as I feel good, my support team starts telling me I’m manic. My head is swirling as I go from one topic to the next, and I can’t understand why no one understands me or is not interested in the things I am talking about. How could anyone not be interested in a ten minute debate about the pros and cons of circular vs deep dish pizza?! Why does everyone want to ruin it when I finally feel good? Maybe I like not sleeping! Maybe I’m glad I bought three paper back books, 7 kindle books, and put on hold 7 books from the library?! Maybe this is the best I have ever felt and I want to keep it that way! Bipolar is hard. There are very few days that are just good. Just level. It’s exhausting for both me and my support team, and I don’t really understand what is happening. I have no hope. My amazing cheerleading abilities just don’t stand up to the difficulties I’m challenged with - at least partly because they’re mine, and I’ve never been great at cheering myself on. But then one day I woke up and discovered something from my highschool years. Something old that I thought I had lost. It was my Chutzpah. My drive to fight. I realized there are so many problems in the field of mental health, and there are so few people with a mental illness as serious as mine that are also brilliant and skilled at writing. I had written previously - mostly papers for my difficult educational journey, or individualized lesson plans as I did my best to support my Severely Cognitively Impaired students. But now I had something arguably more important to write about. To tell my story with the effort to make change in the mental health symptom. I finally had a purpose. A reason to write. Something to focus on, on the days that are so difficult I want to give up. I even discovered that on days when I can’t get out of my bed, I can write outlines as a Gmail draft on my phone so that when I was ready to write out the article, my notes would pop up in my email on my laptop. Since that time I have realized that this was the best present anyone could have given me. A purpose, hope, someone to cheer me on. The most exciting part of the whole thing is, though, is that I found it myself. Like Robert Frost wrote in his poem The Road Less Traveled, I didn’t give up, I didn’t listen to voices that said I couldn’t make a difference in the world, “I, I took the “road” less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”