It has been a year and five months since I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, and also since I started my wellness journey. I look back at pictures of myself when I was in the eye of the storm. I see how thin I got from medications, nausea, and not eating. I see the bags under my eyes from nights of hell, dreams of demons, and endless days in the psych ward. I see the girl who didn't even know what was coming, and the woman I am now wants to reach into those photos and comfort her, and warn her of what was to come. When one goes through such trauma, such suffering, one is bound to turn into someone else. I no longer feel like the girl in those photos. I have finally come into something new. Something with a positive and healthy future. I am starting to understand what I've gone through, and I am learning that I can, and have made it a positive thing. While we're hurting, we're growing, and we don't even know it. I didn't feel like I was growing at the time. I thought I was being destroyed, slowly withering away into the abyss of forgotten and tortured souls. And to tell the truth, I was. There was so much darkness, but somehow I came out onto the horizon and into the light. Some days I even thank God for my disease. It has grounded me, it has helped me come into a whole new world that I may not have gotten to experience, had life not brought such depths. I have learned how important it is to recognize the hardship of others. How important it is to help others. I can now better help those in need. I can even say that I completely understand some of them, since this disability is so common. I still have a ways to go. I will always be working on myself. I will always have this "mental difference". There are days that I'm not understood. There are days that I do not understand myself. Unfortunately, we cannot always spend our time in the light. There are times that we must also spend in the dark. But it is the light that I live for. It is the light that I thank God for. And it is the dark that I eventually come to appreciate. I will never stop learning on this journey. I will never stop growing, and I will never stop moving on. As long as I am moving forward, I know that life will provide me with what I need. I know that I have a future ahead, and whatever that may bring, who knows? That's the beauty of it, the beauty of suffering, the beauty of thriving, the beauty of all man kind. And so we go...
