By Anonymous

It was the first session with my peer support worker. My eyes were welling up, and I was wondering why this was my body’s reaction to her saying, “It’s not your fault.” It was the most instinctual thing to ever come to me. One would think that I’d obviously know that having bipolar disorder is not my fault – but at the time, that’s how it felt.

Relationships ended. Friendships fell apart. Family members said that they had to walk on eggshells around me, all because they thought that I was hyper-emotional and overly sensitive. I was once asked by my former partner to stop telling them when I was sad because it was getting tiring. There are so many examples of when my bipolar disorder stood between me and being loved or cared for. On reflection though, was it my disorder that made being loved hard, or was it how people handled it?

It remains difficult to avoid demonising everything related to my condition. I am not going to lie to you all and say that being bipolar has its perks or ‘gives me character’. I will say, however, that it is not so simple to draw the line between myself and my condition. As a result, demonising my bipolar means demonising myself.

That is exactly what I used to do. I punished myself for ‘letting’ it seep between the cracks and crevices of my mind. I wish it was only me who did that, but it never was. My former partner once called me a burden. When I told my family that I could not stand to be with someone who had said that, they told me that he had a point. They told me that I was a burden. As much as I wish I didn’t understand why they would say these things, I would have believed them had it been a different time. I would have said that my disorder is a burden, and therefore so was I.

Forgiving myself for having bipolar disorder involved the recognition that my disorder is neither distinct from myself, nor does it define me. By believing it was distinct from myself, I believed that it was the cause of everything that hurt me; it was my fault for not moving on from it. By believing it was defining me, I believed that I would constantly suffer and be at the mercy of my brain. I am neither of those things. I can neither move on from it nor remain at its mercy.

Taking my life back does not mean that I never had my life to begin with, but it does mean that I did not have the tools or capacity to keep my hopes within reach. I took my life back by accepting my bipolar and what it means for the way that I will have to live my life. Not everyone around me has accepted this, but this will come in time. I now have hope again. I have reclaimed my life as my own rather than accepted myself as a host to some parasitic disorder.

When I forget about why I chose to forgive myself, I must remember that I didn’t choose to think like this or to emote like this. I did not choose the mania or the depression. I did not choose this life.

I cried while speaking to my peer support worker when she said that it wasn’t my fault because it was the first time that someone had told me this, and I believed them. In that moment, I forgave myself for everything that I had spent years blaming myself for. I cried because I realised, through my self-forgiveness, that many others had not forgiven me. To those people, I say this: “I am strong enough to forgive my brain, so I am strong enough to forgive you.”