Girl on Fire and More

Alicia Keys' recent single is called "Girl on Fire" and I like it. It took me a while to figure out why I liked it and then everything came crashing down. Here is the opening verse of the song:

She's just a girl and she's on fire
Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a highway
She's living in a world and it's on fire
Feeling with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away

Driving home from work one day listening to this and it hit me, this song reminds me of being manic. Now I have been cycling for a few weeks maybe even a couple months. Lately my mania has been in full swing. After connecting with this song, I was telling KJ that this manic cycle I hate because it so different the the last one and I don't know how to deal with it. 

The best way I can describe what I am feeling inside is by comparing it to a fire, a wild fire. The kind that we know to well living here in the Arizona desert. We know it is going to come every year. We know the fire can change its route with any gust of wind. It's unpredictable and at times unmanageable and can be deadly. Finally it is put out but we all know it will be back but it will be different the next time, its impact, its size, and its duration. The fire inside me is angry and short tempered and banging very hard at the door to come out. 

Part of my goal by posting this and getting this out is to help other people get an idea of what it is like to go through this. I can't control any of this that happens to me, as much as I would like to. I can't control when I am manic or depressed or when I am stable. And to top it all off when I am manic it can be different each time with different triggers and symptoms. Please tell me how one successfully copes with that without going crazy and just losing their cool? Somehow I have managed to do that for last almost 9 years.

There is a lot of talk going on about access to mental health care with the recent shootings. I have access to care and it is still hard to manage financially, I can't imagine what it would be like if I didn't have the right kind of access. Having a mental illness is different from other illness like diabetes or high blood pressure (both of which I have and are significantly easier to manage) and it needs to be managed differently.

If just by having bipolar disorder my life expectancy is shortened by 14-32 years (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2011/no-health-without-mental-health.shtml) and there is a 20% chance I am going to die by suicide, why are we not being given the attention we need and deserve for something that we did NOTHING to get?

The stigma that surrounds ME and others needs to end. I need to be able to say publicly WITHOUT JUDGEMENT "I am Bipolar, I am not a monster"

Here are resources for you:
http://nami.org/
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/