I am a person who live in the moment but always looking towards the future.
Sometimes when I'm way down or when I'm running strongly manic the present moment is all I can handle.
Yet to stay sane I have to look forward to the time when the depression will pass.
That's not always an easy thing to do.
When you're up to your neck in alligators it's hard to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.
It's given me a real respect for life.
When you so often get lost and don't know where to turn you really grow to value those moments of sanity that may come your way.
When it seems that you live lost in a sea of insanity, each moment of sanity becomes a precious gift.
I've learned to value those gifts, those times of sanity, and never to waste them.
When I can I live life to the fullest because all too often I simply cannot.
It has indelibly taught me that this too will pass.
No matter how insane I get, no matter how far down or how wildly manic I get it's only a matter of time until it passes.
I need only hold on until that time and things will be OK.
At the time it may seem that I'll never make it but deep inside me I know that if I can just hold on it will pass.
I've learned not to sweat the moment.
While at the time it may seem as though my whole life revolves around this one moment, as if my life depends on it, this moment too will pass and the sun will shine once again. Thus I've learned to look beyond the moment to the next, and the one after that, always knowing that if I can just make it until then things will be better.
It has taught me that no matter how dark things seem there's a future that is so much brighter.
All you have to do is hang on until that future becomes the present. Sometimes that's a very difficult thing to do but the knowledge that the future is out there, bright and shining, helps me to hole on tight.
I've learned to recognize and empathize with other's pain.
I can connect to it, feel it, know it at a gut level.
As such I am more understanding of others, more patient with them.
I know their pain and how terrible it is and want to do what I can to alleviate it.
I has given me a real respect for other's and their pain.
I can see most of what drives others to live the way they do.
I find I have a greater understanding of what drives them, what makes them do or say the things they do. It's almost like I can look into their souls and see myself shining back.
Being bipolar has made me a stronger person. Sure, when I'm way down in the pit I feel weak and all alone. But it's that very feeling that lends me strength.
I've learned to hold on, to take it one moment at a time, to make it through this moment to the next. If I can just make it through this moment then I can look forward to the time when it'll get better.
My strength of will has grown, sometimes it's all that holds me together.
When I'm sane my self respect has grown too.
How can I fail to respect someone who has successfully made it through the plains of hell? Only I know the torment and pain it has cost me to cross those plains.
So all in all I think I've been blessed by being cursed with Bipolar.
It has taught me far more then it's cost me.
It has made me a better, more understanding, more empathic person.
It has opened my heart to other's suffering where others will turned their backs.
It has shown me that we all experience pain and that no matter how "bad" a person you may be you deserve an understanding ear. It has connected me more solidly to my fellow humans. It's through the bipolar that I can feel another's pain, that I can offer a shoulder to lean on and an ear to hear. It has made me a better person.
