Bipolar Disorder Support Group
Bipolar disorder is not just a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders marked by periods of abnormally high energy and euphoria, often accompanied by bouts of clinical depression. This is the place to talk about your experience with bipolar disorder, learn from others' experiences, and find support.
This is getting ridiculous... My depression is so disabling.
I can't get my homework done. For my ECCE class, my favourite, and the easiest. It's 100x easier than even Intro to Psychology, which I did decently at.
I've decided to drop probably Physical Science which will take my Tues/Thurs class days from 10am-4pm ordeals to only 10am-11:20am. Which I feel terrible about, but back on point.
There are I think 3 assignments I have to have done before 8am tommorow. I've decided I'd be better off just doing the paper (which is a literal simple paper, no rules, no MLA format) and one of the outlines, which usually take me about 3 hours to do.
Or even just the damned paper.
But I can't even do that. I'm just so sick and depressed right now that I can't do anything, and without a job or insurance, I can't justify failing or dropping my classes because this is kind of my "only way out" of being resource-less and my only way of proving to my family that I'm good for something.
But my standards are dropping because of constant sickness and depression.
I'm getting over Influenza B (my friend's roomate went to the doctor I guess? Because we're all sick with that now).
And I'm completely dissociated from the "human experience" at this point. I feel like a space cadet most hours of the day, just, isolated beyond all human comprehension.
Back to my standards though.
IDEALLY for my age, 20, I'd have EITHER a full-time job and be doing school half time, like 3 classes, which is what I'm doing now (and badly so), minus the job.
Actually, I know of a lot of people including my cousin who go to school FULL TIME and work full time, at the same time, sometimes with children.
American academic standards aren't even internationally competitive..... Making excellent grades and working however many hours necessary to pay rent, bills, AND save up is just kind of the "standard" for my age demographic, not considering my disability.
Even with that factored in, I should only have to drop EITHER work or school, and my family made me choose. My mother always says, "Okay well, you're not just gonna sit on your ass and do nothing all day".
So I went with school.
Originally I was going to do full-time, between 4-6, sometimes 7 classes at a time, depending your college.
That was dropped to half-time, 3 classes.
It's about to be dropped to 2, possibly a full-blown drop-out if I don't stop getting devastatingly sick on top of being devastatingly depressed.
Still no job. Still not trying. And no insurance, still.
I literally have nothing in life but my academics, and that's about to be gone, too. I am an alien. I'm not a human anymore. I'm constantly sick and isolated from the outside world, severely dissociated and just... devastated about how things got this shitty and bleak. Also I'm constantly non-social, if not outright hateful.
I really can't do this, but there aren't any more resources for me. It's do or die, and I can't "do" because I'm fucking disabled.
Earlier I was watching a documentary called The Last Punk Singer, about Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill/Le Tigre and eventually The Julie Ruin.
Spoiler alert: she winds up with advanced-stage Lyme Disease and kind of drops off the radar so she doesn't have to tell anybody she's ill.
She says, "Why is it that women can't just be honest? You feel like you always have to negotiate your case and convince people of what you're saying. When I go to speak the truth, I have a reflexive reaction where I expect people to think "Is she really as sick as she says? She's probably just exaggerating."
And holy shit that's how it really is... Like... the resources just are not there.
I was in CSU in January and had been there once or twice before, so basically the gist is that they don't want me in there again unless it's "really bad" like, I try to kill myself and get 10-13d there. I don't know where to go? I get worse everyday. But I was told that, that they don't want me to become a "frequent flyer", so. ???????? What do I do?
I can't get my homework done. For my ECCE class, my favourite, and the easiest. It's 100x easier than even Intro to Psychology, which I did decently at.
I've decided to drop probably Physical Science which will take my Tues/Thurs class days from 10am-4pm ordeals to only 10am-11:20am. Which I feel terrible about, but back on point.
There are I think 3 assignments I have to have done before 8am tommorow. I've decided I'd be better off just doing the paper (which is a literal simple paper, no rules, no MLA format) and one of the outlines, which usually take me about 3 hours to do.
Or even just the damned paper.
But I can't even do that. I'm just so sick and depressed right now that I can't do anything, and without a job or insurance, I can't justify failing or dropping my classes because this is kind of my "only way out" of being resource-less and my only way of proving to my family that I'm good for something.
But my standards are dropping because of constant sickness and depression.
I'm getting over Influenza B (my friend's roomate went to the doctor I guess? Because we're all sick with that now).
And I'm completely dissociated from the "human experience" at this point. I feel like a space cadet most hours of the day, just, isolated beyond all human comprehension.
Back to my standards though.
IDEALLY for my age, 20, I'd have EITHER a full-time job and be doing school half time, like 3 classes, which is what I'm doing now (and badly so), minus the job.
Actually, I know of a lot of people including my cousin who go to school FULL TIME and work full time, at the same time, sometimes with children.
American academic standards aren't even internationally competitive..... Making excellent grades and working however many hours necessary to pay rent, bills, AND save up is just kind of the "standard" for my age demographic, not considering my disability.
Even with that factored in, I should only have to drop EITHER work or school, and my family made me choose. My mother always says, "Okay well, you're not just gonna sit on your ass and do nothing all day".
So I went with school.
Originally I was going to do full-time, between 4-6, sometimes 7 classes at a time, depending your college.
That was dropped to half-time, 3 classes.
It's about to be dropped to 2, possibly a full-blown drop-out if I don't stop getting devastatingly sick on top of being devastatingly depressed.
Still no job. Still not trying. And no insurance, still.
I literally have nothing in life but my academics, and that's about to be gone, too. I am an alien. I'm not a human anymore. I'm constantly sick and isolated from the outside world, severely dissociated and just... devastated about how things got this shitty and bleak. Also I'm constantly non-social, if not outright hateful.
I really can't do this, but there aren't any more resources for me. It's do or die, and I can't "do" because I'm fucking disabled.
Earlier I was watching a documentary called The Last Punk Singer, about Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill/Le Tigre and eventually The Julie Ruin.
Spoiler alert: she winds up with advanced-stage Lyme Disease and kind of drops off the radar so she doesn't have to tell anybody she's ill.
She says, "Why is it that women can't just be honest? You feel like you always have to negotiate your case and convince people of what you're saying. When I go to speak the truth, I have a reflexive reaction where I expect people to think "Is she really as sick as she says? She's probably just exaggerating."
And holy shit that's how it really is... Like... the resources just are not there.
I was in CSU in January and had been there once or twice before, so basically the gist is that they don't want me in there again unless it's "really bad" like, I try to kill myself and get 10-13d there. I don't know where to go? I get worse everyday. But I was told that, that they don't want me to become a "frequent flyer", so. ???????? What do I do?
Now, looking back, University wasn't the ideal environment for me. I was a rabbit caught in headlights.
Not sure what you should do, it's YOUR life after all, but I didn't have a good experience taking the academic route.
We need to accept when we need to let up on ourselves. The best thing you can do for yourself is only be doing what you can handle so that you can continue to recover. I know how difficult it is, but putting more pressure on yourself is not going to help.
I hope you can think about changing your schedule so it's more manageable, or even talking to your professors if you can (maybe you can talk about a "medical condition" that you're dealing with, rather than debilitating depression).
Keep going. You can do it.
I urge you to hang in there until you are feeling better. Wait until then to make big decisions.
I hope you feel better soon. Everything will look better for you then.
Lily I have to agree with you that it probably would've been best to wait, except for me getting over the flu somewhat, and I talked to the Disabilities office guy, who suggested that taking a sure thing (two classes that you're guaranteed to pass) over a challenge (three that you'll scrape by in at best, trying to juggle all 3 at once) is the best thing when you're sick/disabled and not doing great.
He said the first thing they tell people who walk into the [disability] office is......... It's basically impossible to do full-time work and go to school full-time, or sometimes even just one of those, when you have a disability.
He went on to say... there are those who give the finger to that notion and go on to do that very thing ANYWAYS... but they are the rare exception. And that normally people don't listen and refuse to lighten their work load, "to their peril".
So I dropped Physical Science. I kinda feel like shit, but not as much as I thought I would. I loved the class, but the work load is extreme.
I found out possibly why. Because of the way our technical college system works, most credits are transferable. Meaning we do courses that people do at University of Georgia and Kennessaw, at our little technical college. Basically it's the same work load and difficulty level with most classes, just compressed a bit.
Hopefully during summer course I can take a similar class, being Conceptual Physics.
I got the chance to speak briefly with my professor about Astronomy also, which interests me. Science professors are so cool, they're like walking encyclopedias. Anyway. I found out there are literally like.... 4 Astrophysics-based positions in my entire state that don't involve being a professor, and only a handful of even those. So I was probably better off not pursuing astronomy as I'd wanted to do a very long time ago. The medical field is huge, that still is my goal.
The only issue is that my financial aid will expire more quickly if I take classes more slowly. But the reason I dropped a course anyways is because getting a W/F (withdrawal/fail) will wreck your financial aid in no time at all, and I'd probably eventually wind up with that if I'd stayed.
Academia in reality is not what it seems to an intellectual or book-lover. It's actually very similar to work, I feel. Even though I haven't worked. So. I think my options for different "paths" so to speak are a little limited even if I say to hell with it to academics. l: