One day several months ago, the singing stopped and only silence remained. I didn't even notice it had stopped because I was preoccupied with what was happening in the silence. Extreme mental and physical tension, racing thoughts, deep sadness, heart-pounding irritability and anger, exhaustion from no sleep and not being able to slow down, obsessions, guilt, shame, crying, hyperventilating, losing interest in what I love. The ups and downs and extreme shifts in mood are often. Not just changing every day, but sometimes every few minutes.
This is newly diagnosed Bipolar II Disorder.
Recently I have started a medicine that may be helpful in healing my brain. It remains to be seen. After one medicine that didn't seem to help and one that made things a lot worse, I have started seeing small positive differences with this one.
One day recently.... I opened my mouth and I sang again. Then, I closed my mouth and I started crying. Because it hit me just how bad things had become that I stopped singing, that I stopped doing something so simple that brought me joy, and also because this disorder had so consumed me that I hadn't even realized I had stopped. The tears also continued to fall because maybe somewhere deep down in this dark pit of hell there is still a tiny ray of hope.
