The crazies?

I read a lot of memoirs, but particularly memoirs about living with depression, eating disorders, bipolar disorders in some attempt to comprehend myself. I've made it my specialty in school - in some vain attempt to help myself. But, the more I read, the more I study, the less I identify with. So, I'm using this blog to write about my own experiences - although they say that I am "healthy" now and I'm taking my meds like the good girl that I am - I still feel it every now and then. I haven't written in a long time and I almost never talk about my "disorder," because I hope that the more silence and secrecy that surrounds it, the more I can pretend it deos not exist. However, every now and then the crazies still well up in my chest. I feel the precarious balance of between being a normal, healthy, educated, young lady and muttering on the street, with a shopping cart, claiming I'm a prophet sent from God tipping one way or another. This is my worst fear. I start to feel the scale tipping to one side - making me more or less crazy - depending on the tilt. I have been "healthy" or "stable" for approximately two years, but I feel the weight of the scale is sloping slowly, but steadily towards (as my mother loves to put it) an "episode."
When I feel this slope - it sometimes instigates me to think about cutting - I love cutting (or more appropriately, I used to love cutting). I feel that there is some real release of pain and breaks through the numbness ... but, I promised a few people in my life that I wouldn't do it anymore. I am excessively honest and am the worst liar in the world. So, here I am and I can't cut, because I would be breaking a promise and it's sort of hard to hide the gashes in your arms or legs from someone who sees you naked. That same person who made you promise never to do it again. Yeah, I have had slips - but who doesn't. Doesn't an alcoholic sometimes drink? Or a drug addict go on a binge? Well, I sometimes slip and just make one cut through my skin. Just to see it bleed and make sure that I am real - that I exist. It's a funny thing existing. I can see my hands, my reflection in the mirror, I know other people see me and can hear me, because they talk to me and call my name - but sometimes you just need to make sure that you're still alive. That's the thing that the people I promise to just don't get. I don't cut to die. I actually cut to make sure I'm alive. Cutting does not equal a suicide attempt, not always anyways. I don't want to die - I mean, I did at one point - but not now. It's just a way to test that I am still alive. Or, that I can still feel things and that all of the medication doesn't numb me to the point that I don't feel anymore. This brings me back to existing. If you aren't feeling the way you "normally" feel without medication then am I myself anymore? Do I still exist? I read this article a couple of months back about identity and medication and the author debated, which is the real identity when medicated? The one before or after medication? Or, are we part of the same whole? Am I still me, even though I am medicated with stabilizers, uppers, and anxiety medication? It is truly an identity crisis...
But, this is all really getting ahead of myself ... the reason I am writing this blog - that's where I began. I don't identify with a lot of the books women are writing about their experiences with mental illness. They seem to come from families that are broken or breaking. They come from poverty or other bad situations. They were molested or abused by this or that person. I on the other hand, have nothing like that in my life. My parents have been married for twenty-six years - of course they've fought - but who doesn't. I've come from an upper middle-class family my entire life. I've had opportunities to become educated. This is the thing that I never understood. I mean, I had no reason to suffer from depression (when they called it that first) and I don't really have a reason to suffer from bipolar disorder either ... So, this blog is going to talk about my life, with bipolar disorder, through treatments and suffering and wanting to die ... and hopefully someone will be able to identify with my experience ... the experience that we don't often hear about ... the average individual, with nothing deeply traumatic in their life, suffering from mental illness ...