BIPOLAR I

It’s a brand new year, so with that being said it’s time for another one of my notorious passion projects. I’ve exercised nearly every creative outlet that I could think of. So much so that I’ve made music, done a podcast, I’ve even written poetry, and lastly, gone so far as to take up painting. Amidst doing all these things I had fun and learned a lot about myself, however, it just didn’t seem to nourish the soul the way that I was looking for. Though I will say the podcast was one of my favourite forms of expressing myself. Now I am back to the drawing board as to what I want to work towards and accomplish. I sat with myself for days on end trying to think of something that could be monetized, but at the same time serve some net good for society. With that being said my conclusion was to make a blog about mental health. Yes, the market is semi-oversaturated when it comes to mental health stuff, but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less important nonetheless. The format of this blog isn’t going to be your typical mental health blog. It’s going to be raw, real, unhinged, and uncensored. With this blog, the deepest and most difficult subjects will be covered in a wide variety of subjects and mental illnesses. With that being said though I don’t want this to be entirely grim so amidst all our discussions we will also talk about pop culture, in particular Hip Hop. I’m a huge nerd when it comes to Hip Hop so to be in a position where I can address the nitty gritty of mental health and nerd out at the same time is beyond a blessing. The Hip Hop community doesn’t address mental health as much as it should in my opinion so the goal is to strike that dialogue and eventually reach a point where I can interview my favourite artists and ask them about their trials and tribulations navigating the industry. Anyways, enough of me ranting, the most important thing that needs to get addressed here is my mental health. So now I’m going to keep it so so real. To preface the shit I’m about to say I want to say that I come from a position of privilege. I am the bi-product of two loving parents who are happily married in the middle-upper class. By no stretch of the imagination did I ever have it bad in my life. That was UNTIL 2019… I went off to Queen’s University and was in my first year of study when tragedy struck. I had finished all my exams and my parents had come to pick me up from school to bring me back home. This was when nothing was the same. Upon being back home for a month things started getting very odd for me; paranoia had begun, grandiosity was taking over my life and I was feeling as though I was a god, and lastly, I wasn’t sleeping. Eventually, I hadn’t slept for a week straight and it was my inevitable demise. Spoiler alert!!! I was diagnosed with bipolar. For those who aren’t aware of what Bipolar is like just imagine your mind running 1000 miles a minute and your rational mind is completely gone. I won’t get into the details of what happened during the week-long bender of no sleep, but long story short I ended up being institutionalized into a psych ward. I know it’s not PC to say but I always refer to it as the “Loonie bin”. I was in the loonie bin for 6 months and was highly medicated to cool my mania. The medication served its purpose but it came with a plethora of side effects. Upon my release, they had made me gain 60 pounds and now I was a heifer for lack of better terms. That was negative thing #1, negative #2 was my brain was fried and I had no will to push forward. With manic highs come manic lows and that’s the unspoken most difficult part. I’m not endorsing this but the only way that I was able to liberate myself was by coming off the medication a year later. With that being said it wasn’t sustainable… I lost the weight again and felt like myself and could feel, however, a manic low a year later took me out once again. The cycle of being medicated versus unmedicated repeated itself year after year up until the present day (January 1, 2023). With that being said I currently have a good concoction of medication I can feel and can lead a healthy and productive life. I’m writing this because I know how difficult the highs and lows can be. Although it took 4 years to get here I want to be a beacon of hope for those out there who are still struggling. It gets dark, and it gets scary, but this too shall always pass. Stay strong brothers and sisters.