The Best Days & The Worst
Trigger Warning: Contains references to suicide
There are good days, but nowhere near as good as they used to be. I miss my hypomanias and low grade manias. Nothing compares, but I don’t miss the psychosis. I do miss being on top of the world. The renewed sense of wonder, the amazing discoveries and connections, and the feeling that everything was perfect. I definitely miss that. I think every bipolar misses it after some time passes.
At first, once I’d finally achieved some sense of stability, I was happy and more than willing to give up anything just to make sure the psychosis never came back. I guess I still am, but early on, you don’t know what you’ll be missing. You don’t realize that some of your best days ever, those days when you believed you were your truest self, were the product of “mental illness.” Still, they were wonderful, and still, they mattered. Anytime I found myself in those hypomanic states, I always thought it would last forever. Now that I have this new understanding, I will never go back to the old days. How could I, knowing what I know now? Hell, I’ve got the universe figured out. Right? … Right? Even so, it never lasts, does it? So, you enjoy it while it does, but you lament it when it goes. The depression always follows, and you wonder every time, what happened?
