It’s hard to explain and put into words the feeling I get when I stay up for two days. My creativity seems to increase and in Christian terms I become more “anointed.” It’s exciting to be able to stay up a full day with friends and late into the night and then go home and stay up and do another whole day and night. Around the second night up I am so in the flow of things and to type a message or write something seems really easy, as easy as just finding the keys of the keyboard. All my loved ones seem to worry when they find I have been up for a few days. All of them seem to know if they get a phone call early in the morning that I have been up all night as they know my habit of sleeping in. I look at the story I wrote about the man called Legion in the article called “The Man That Juggled Olives That Changed My Life Forever” and it must be one of the finest pieces of writing I have ever done in my life and it was done after being up all night. Writing for me is something I love and I feel my illness helps me with this. I think if my illness were taken away so might my gift for writing.

With my three breakdowns I lost self confidence.

I have to say that having Bipolar is not an easy thing. One of the things it has done to me is that it has stripped away some of my self confidence. What used to be easy like having a full-time job and doing life like an ordinary person is harder now and the idea of working full time is something that is too hard for me to comprehend at the moment.

Bipolar has a stigma also that takes its toll.

People assume because you have something wrong with your mind that you are stupid also. As a born again Christian who hears from God this puts me in a funny camp. Some people consider because I am Bipolar that I am NOT hearing from God and am deluded. This sort of relegates me to the side or the fringes in my Christian experience. Because I hear “voices” people assume that I NEVER hear the right “voice” and that they should not listen to anything I say that I feel God is saying to me and to them.

Of course when I consult a professional they are not too helpful as they call my voices auditory hallucinations. I am not really sure what they think, in all my years of seeing doctors, but they definitely DON’T think I am hearing from God as they don’t believe in God.