On Being Bipolar
A lot of this rings true to me. I'm a rather bad case of type 1 (classic manic depression) and high functioning. I wrote up a blog post about how I managed to spend my entire life hiding continuous psychosis.<p><a href="https://kayode.co/blog/4106/living-with-psychosis/" rel="nofollow">https://kayode.co/blog/4106/living-with-psychosis/</a><p>Hiding is what I've always done. It's exhausting having to appear normal all the time.<p>I'm fortunate to have understanding friends. Instead of me constantly bitching, we have code words for how I'm feeling. If I'm good, that makes I'm stable and relatively happy. If I'm okay, I'm probably depressed. It goes on from there. I'm able to talk about how I feel without getting into the details no one want to hear every day.<p>At work, I'm extremely fortunate to have a boss whose wife is bipolar. I've been able to get ADA accommodations that give me the flexibility and restrictions I need to go to work every week. This is the first job I've ever had this luxury.<p>And it really is a luxury. This is my first job where I've had any kind of accommodation. I've worked at places where I've pretended to have the flu just to take a day off for mental health.<p>Even now everyone, except my boss and friends, treats taking time off for mental health like vacations, because that's the experience for them. I've used so much PTO, I never get a vacation. Instead, I'm always at home on days off, dealing with a hell that my coworkers have never come close to experiencing.<p>I could go on a lot longer because there is no limit to how many things I have to deal with. But no one really wants to read that and I don't want to write it again.