Sometimes the words inside are silent and sometimes, I can't keep them silent!
Here's a string of word's that took me by surprise yesterday.
I don't think we talk openly enough about the very real and painful path that is walking alongside someone experiencing bipolar.
So here's one view...
My view;
"I liken walking alongside bipolar mania to a chance encounter with a hurricane.
I haven’t navigated how to prepare and predict the severity of a hypomanic storm, or when it will make landfall.
Lingering drugs or stimulants are often a propellant.
Denial is the disease, with no promise of the one I love seeking a cure.
Oftentimes I've not realised we were circling the eye of the storm until I'm sifting through the wreckage afterwards, numb inside and trying to put the pieces back together.
For the one I love, it happens much later,
experiences of delayed apologies and heart wrenching tears.
Pockets of awareness that wax and wane.
On a seemingly good day we wake easy, wrapped tightly in each other's arms, bodies that know instinctively where to find peace.
If I could stop time, it would be in this moment, in his arms.
It’s a sense of home and belonging that leaves me completely helpless.
Outside blue skies beckon through the window, birds singing us into a new day.
For a short while, the world feels stable, calm.
Meanwhile hundreds of kilometres offshore a tropical storm is forming in the warm waters of his equator and, I’m never fully prepared.
The mania moves quickly beside me, sounds and sensitivities heightened.
Prolonged intensity and looming darkness.
Recklessness.
Eventual reactions devoid of empathy, rooted in the depths of a mis-firing brain.
Difficult conversations become torrents and swells of trauma, pain, and slandering.
There's no rationalising with this hurricane, no peace inside the storm.
A world of excitement and endless possibilities for him, quickly becomes a storm of chaos for me.
Swirls thick and heavy, fast, and unruly.
The aftermath; a grey and looming presence of remembrance, even if the skies are shining.
I can't forget the memory of each storm.
Patterns emerge and his brain malfunction is my primal pain, deep within my womb.
Love lingers but with each storm, something wonderful is taken from me.
I am not long suffering.
I am human with my own set of limits.
When I can't push through,
when I can't buckle down and wait out the storm,
when I'm all swallowed up,
I run for cover and call on the ones that know me best."
(Writer - Leah Ann Corey)
#bipolar #bipolarawareness #poetry