Posted August 20, 2009

I feel like I am in major trouble and I don’t know what to do, and how to deal with it.

I am bipolar, I was diagnosed when I was 18, but had definitely been exhibiting extreme tendencies before then.

Before I was diagnosed, I lived with my family in the UK. My parents immigrated from a third world country, and worked very, very, hard for us.

However, they did not understand mental illness. Mine.

I lived with my family under a dependent visa of my mother’s, whilst she sorted out getting UK residency. Due to my illness, I was up and down, all the time, doing very well, or very badly in school… All that stuff. I was asked to model, I said sure, and left home at 16 to explore this option, it was impulsive, mad, and I was too young, it was obviously a manic decision I know that now. Lots of things happened during this period, inappropriate relationships, an abortion, and when I came home at 19, I more or less stayed in bed for a year or to be honest, more like two.

In between my sleeping, I would have days of feeling the world was mine, I hated how I had began to look (staying in bed, eating, no life, meant I put on weight), and developed an eating disorder to keep up the skinny that had once seemed to offer me options, a shopping addiction habit, stealing money from my parents to fund all of this… Ironically, I still stayed in bed, it’s like, so many new shoes, so many dreams of parties in those shoes, yet you cannot get out of bed.

This was when it was recommended that I see someone, and I got diagnosed, finally got on medications that were actually working just enough to allow me to register at university 3 years later than normal.

This was just over 6 months ago.

What happened next is a bit surreal to those who have not experienced it, and even harder for me, who still does feel completely alone sometimes.

Immigration came knocking.

To summarize, unlike my younger brothers and sisters who were dependents of my mom, and so adding up years to make them able to become UK residents themselves, by running off on my manic spree for almost 3 years, I had stopped the chain, and as I am not under age, I am an adult, who was suddenly looking at a letter, asking her to prove strong ties to the UK, asking what I have been doing the past few years, and asking me to leave if I could not prove this.

I called my doctor, and he sent them my mental health information, the university I had just got into did so as well, everything I could think of. But it was no go, I sought treatment too late, and so it didn’t count to the home office. I shouldn’t be starting university so late, why did I do nothing for all that time, so that didn’t count either.

This whole back and forth process lasted almost 6 months, and I fell into a deep depression, reminiscent of a place I had sworn never to go back to, but for the first time ever, it wasn’t “me,” it wasn’t something happening inside that I did not understand, it was the outside as well, and I had no friends, my relationship with my mom was/is still difficult, and I screamed and blamed her for letting me leave so young, all these things. Ultimately, going “home” to my parents, home country, and I say my parents because I personally, don’t have ties to the place, beyond what I know from them and the media, scares me senseless. It is socially and culturally backward, it is a developing nation, and I am scared it is the last straw that will finally drive me to cut deeper.

Do these stories usually end with a happy ending?

I don’t know what else to say, that is where I am at now. I am so scared and have again begun to idealize suicide, my meds don’t seem to be working, and all grounds for appeal have been looked over so many times… I don’t have a chance. I even joke about the fact that if I hadn’t been a total nut-job, maybe I would have had a successful relationship, as opposed to an abusive one that led in a lost pregnancy, and maybe if I had that… we could be married and I wouldn’t have this problem.

But that’s all day dreams.

I don’t know what to do.

I feel like I have struggled forever, and every day it’s hard to wake up in the morning, and now, not sleeping, eating or thinking, I think the meds aren’t working, and I hardly see the point.

The sad thing is the part of me that is still hugely false, the girl who went out last week, and got completely destroyed, because I felt that rush, and needed to be there, living, and it’s a lie, because that is not even who I am, if I was crazy and “free” that will be more acceptable.

Instead… I am 22, bipolar. Totally alone.