#bipolar I

[wheelie-sick]

"I was having a manic episode" "oh yeah I've had those too!"

what I mean: I ruined my entire life in a month

what they mean: I feel silly goofy sometimes

[mogai-headcanons]

icon id: 4 icons in 2 pairs. in each pair, both icons have the listed flags in order in the background and the left icon has an image of the listed character with a white outline and a black shadow. end id.

banner id: a 1500x150 teal banner with the words ‘please read my dni before interacting’ in large white text in the center. end id.

Bojack Horseman from Bojack Horseman is a closeted bisexual man with BPD and NPD traits!

He lives with Mr. Peanutbutter, a closeted bisexual man with NVLD and bipolar I!

dni link

[bipolarsun]

[opens-up-4-nobody]

I'm losing my mind about this.

[wheelie-sick]

saw the post you made about manic episodes -- ive not had tehm myself, but somebody i knew has bipolar disorder, and from what little ive heard, it did not sound fun. i wish you the best, i would not want to expirience a manic episode and hope that things become better then that time soon!

thank you!

honestly I have very complicated feelings on my manic episode. during my manic episode I was having a lot of fun because I had euphoric mania. honestly I still look back on things as fun, I was having a great time. unfortunately I failed all my classes, nearly lost my closest friendships, nearly killed myself on impulse, and nearly got arrested so...... the consequences are not fun. and I'm lucky because my mania left me with a lot of "nearly"s but for some people they do actually have all the prior happen

[bizarrestart]

when i cancelled weekend coffee plans with my friend because i was heading to the emergency room and pretty sure i was gonna be placed in a psych ward, she told me to have fun on my grippy sock vacation.

i didn’t feel anything about that at the time. i was kind of in the business of feeling nothing then. but looking back on it, it strikes me as language that is deeply impersonal, a phrase that seeks to scrub the reality of what i was facing.

a reaction like that slides very easily into the inpatient experience as a whole. everything is deeply isolating, and i remember taking a two hour ambulance ride to the one hospital in my state that had an open bed, the two emts on the van saying nothing to me. i was a package, not a patient. not a person.

inpatient seeks to erase personality. scrubs, toiletries, and rooms are identical. it’s easier to manage people that way. there was very little humanity, nurses had blank, rigid, faces, and the few therapy groups were cold, overworked social workers handing out worksheets. doctor consults were a means to an end, i was not an individual, i was a sack of meat that needed a decent combination of chemicals so i was stable just enough to get cycled out.

most of my healing was found with the other patience. talking about hardships and life with people as vulnerable and raw as me. connecting with folks that i would never consider befriending outside the ward.

i have never felt so connected to the idea of a universal humanity and experience as the time i shared with my ward roommate. she had taken a bottle of seroquel when she couldn’t access an abortion.

i combed week-old knots out of her hair. she read me an old brother’s grimm that she brought in. we secretly shared her nice smelling lotion. i held my hand on her stomach once. she said i was the first person to feel her baby kick.

[bipolarsun]

[the-crazy-echidna-lady]

I think I've finally hit the lowest tier of my low and hitting it right off on a mania. Usually I go at least a couple of weeks just neutral but, sure I'll take an immediate high after feeling like this. EX: Cannot calm down, off the walls for no seen reason. Hit my head on the car on accident and giggled instead of breaking down. Wanting to be out in public. (I'm a natural introvert for reference.) Wanting to squeal loudly for no seen reason. /pos post btw

[golmac]

New Content!

Hi everybody. It's been a challenging few months, as my disability symptoms have really been acting up. The result is that I haven't been able to work on any of my projects, no matter how much I normally enjoy them.

But things are looking up! Here's the first podcast episode in 20 months, and more stuff is coming soon.

If it isn't showing up on your favorite platform, let me know and I'll get it added.

[floriumm]

I’m having one of those moments again where I’m in denial about my Bipolar I diagnosis. Then I think back on my life and I’m like “huh, maybe she was right. But also I still just don’t believe it.”

I’m still waiting on my appointment for my second opinion though. I need to speak with my therapist about that. But ooops I canceled our last appointment the day before because I just didn’t want to go and still haven’t rescheduled. I should probably reschedule… 🫣

[mindfulmosaic]

Not sure if I'm going to leave it like this or add words on top of it later. I like to layer intrusive and ruminating thoughts on top of my art work. Sometimes it helps me to follow the thread of where a thought is coming from and what is being triggered. Sometimes it helps to get "stuck" phrases out of my head. Sometimes it doesn't help anything, but it's what my mind is thinking anyway, so I just go ahead and write it down.

This is sort of a connection piece with a family member of mine who has been sort of ostracized from the rest of the family. We weren't close growing up as there's a huge age difference. The family practically shuns him due to episodes of destruction, aimed at himself or others. I've always wondered if we have similar mental health conditions and if I would have been able to connect with him better if we had been closer in age or anything.

The propane stove is because he moved to a cold state and asked my grandmom to send him a stove because he was homeless and cold. My grandmom didn't send him the stove and asked him to not call anymore. I was also in poor living conditions at the time - I lived on a school bus with unreliable electricity, no running water, and a really dirty living space. I felt lucky, though, to not be feeling the intense cold that my cousin was feeling at night. And I did have a propane stove.

To be fair to her, he has asked me for money every time we have communicated 😆.

[bizarrestart]

something i learned about being bipolar is that there’s some flavors of other neurodivergence’s in there. i typically borrow the term hyperfixation because hypo/manic or even great days while euthymic can breed some pretty intense passions/interests.

i decided that going along with them is the best thing, as long as it doesn’t turn into rapid buying. intensely interested in writing this week? ok let’s write a lot. sudden passion with linguistics? yeah ok, let’s go to the library and get everything. the saw franchise? fuck it go ham.

[bipolarsun]

It's nice to finally feel like a real person.

[whumpfish]

Apart from having been read to/taught to read early, I might have actually gotten into writing because of The Narrator, a minor psychotic symptom that I had from since I can remember to when I started seroquel that narrated what I was doing as I did it, Stranger Than Fiction style. (You know the scene where Will Farrell is brushing his teeth and a disembodied voice is describing him brushing his teeth? That.)

Bipolar I doesn't hit critical mass until adolescence, but I've had minor psychotic symptoms my whole life. The childhood ones like The Narrator are step in between silent, "normal" thoughts and auditory hallucinations. Just like you can remember the sound of someone's voice, accent and intonation and pitch and all, or a melody played on a particular instrument, minor psychotic symptoms live in this function of your brain, where it registers the aspects of sound and recognizes that as sound without hearing it physically. It's just a voice you've never heard anywhere else in your life - and it's always running, and you can't control what it says or turn it off.

Then again, being read to and reading early may have formed The Narrator subconsciously. The science doesn't really know enough about early psychotic presentation in bipolar I, because to an outside observer, even a clinical one, we're indistinguishable from an ADD child with a vivid imagination.

My elementary school library had this thing where they would "publish" books (go to kinkos and get them spiral bound) we wrote, and I remember doing that a lot. Apart from Louis Sachar type "life of a kid but with magical realism" stuff, I had a lot of high fantasy stuff I would write as a kid - Fantasia left me with a minor obsession with centaurs for several years - and when I was just getting into double digits, Pityr and the other Immortals happened, and they've been with me since. The other universes that I've kept happened from there.

“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

[golmac]

Time for a New Pinned Post

Hi, I'm Drew Cook. I'm probably best known for my long-form criticism of 1980s text adventure games by a company called Infocom. They made thirty-five games in total, and are probably best-known for the Zork trilogy of games. My interests as a critic are mostly cultural and historical. For instance, I choose to look at Zork through a post-colonial lens.

My work has been featured at Critical Distance many times, including their "2022 Year in Videogame Blogging" roundup.

When I stick to my posting schedule (every two weeks), I get around five hundred unique visitors a month. That's pretty large for such a niche topic. Reactions to the site have made me very happy. It's called Gold Machine. Come pay me a visit!

I have also collaborated with Callie Smith on a few podcast episodes about Infocom games. It's called Gold Microphone. Unfortunately, we haven't had time to update it in a long, long while. We still want to get back to it. Last time I checked, it was on all major podcasting platforms.

I also write parser interactive fiction. My first game, Repeat the Ending, is a work of speculative metafiction about grief, mental illness, and the second law of thermodynamics. I tried to resist the tendency of parser games to be about things, focusing instead on narrative, psychological portraiture, and lots and lots of paratext. In fact, one of its themes is concerned with the limitations of parser-based narratives. It's been well-received so far, and earned ribbons for Best in Show, Best Art, and Best Writing in Spring Thing 2023. You can check it out here (linked below) and read some nifty extras, including the source code. Note the "play online" button at top right, and don't forget to save your game!

Feel free to ask me anything about game criticism, RTE, or even my work in progress. Or something else, it's cool.

I'm considered disabled due to the severity and prognosis of my mental illness. I'm not going anywhere with that; I'm just saying.

If you enjoy any of my projects, including my recently started posts about Inform 7 for beginners, consider telling your friends about it/them, or even rating Repeat the Ending at IFDB if you felt it was worthwhile. I do all of this for free, and always will, so knowing people find value in my work is what motivates me.

[warpedsenseofmind]

I’m trying to juggle so many different things. Booking a flight to Oregon for the first time alone on an airplane. I’m searching for the right documents to get my Real ID (fuck you America for making me go to the DMV). I most likely need to get it done in the middle to end of April.

I’m coming up with lesson plans for work but not really getting much prep time to do it. I have a SPED teacher I work under and have to collaborate with 3 other colleagues on a close basis as well as 3 more teachers.

I have 8 different doctors so managing my appointments is a lot.

AND I’m trying to go back to my Master’s program that I never started so I’m emailing 3 different people.. Making appointments, finding tuition money, learning how to use their website. Also I’m trying to avoid having to apply again because fucks no, I’m not writing another autobiographical statement and asking my undergrad college to send over ANOTHER transcript. You got me fucked up.

I am a hot ass mess and I need to stop adding stuff to my plate. I’m trying to get it all done but all I want to do is watch tv and smoke weed.

😊