People often think of failure as something that occurs quite suddenly, like a bridge collapsing or dam bursting. Many times however, failure occurs gradually; it takes the form of a slow erasure of past success and a slide into decay. I find myself helpless as I plummet towards a future of total loss. There are no brakes. There is no way back.
Everything I have accomplished has been an inordinate struggle. While others look at what I have done and tell me that anyone would have found it difficult, I can only shake my head and laugh sardonically. Academics were easy. My time in graduate school was an intellectual joke. It was not that the science that was hard to understand or that the experiments were all that complicated. What made things so arduous was that I had to fight myself every single minute of every single day, although in reality, it was more like a chase than a battle. I ran after my ambition as it vanished in the distance. I tried to catch up to my sense of purpose while it slipped from my grasp. I was a like a battery, the kind you throw away, slowly running out of power.
Now I feel that I am spent. I have nothing left to give, and all of my potential has dissipated in the grey haze of depression. It hurts me beyond my ability to describe, knowing that I could have done so much more. And while I write in the past tense as if my life is over, unfortunately, I fear that I have many years ahead of me. It will be time spent in hell, everyday my self-loathing increasing as I despair over the loss of things that never were. This is what I have to look forward to, a life of invisible disability, my own mind crushing the life out of me.
I have tried. Believe me, I have tried. I have gone to psychologists and psychiatrists. I am on multiple drugs. All of this has merely curbed the desire to physically harm myself, but that was never the issue anyway. In a bizarre contradiction of desires, I fight to live more than I will to die. Death is the ultimate failure, and it is one that I vow not to willingly succumb to. So I am left to suffer as my life implodes upon itself. No one should feel the least bit of pity for me. What I endure is not an excusable disease. My mind has failed me, which is to say that I have failed myself. While bipolar disorder is certainly real, whether it be a poorly understood imbalance of neurotransmitters or faulty synaptic connections between neurons, the disorder emerges in my conscious thoughts. I should be able to control it. I should be able to rationalize it away. I should be able to will myself back to a past self that could function in the day to day. But I can’t, and this is my failure. When a runner comes in second place in a race even after giving his all, there is one incontrovertible fact; his best wasn’t good enough. Neither is mine.
Everything I have accomplished has been an inordinate struggle. While others look at what I have done and tell me that anyone would have found it difficult, I can only shake my head and laugh sardonically. Academics were easy. My time in graduate school was an intellectual joke. It was not that the science that was hard to understand or that the experiments were all that complicated. What made things so arduous was that I had to fight myself every single minute of every single day, although in reality, it was more like a chase than a battle. I ran after my ambition as it vanished in the distance. I tried to catch up to my sense of purpose while it slipped from my grasp. I was a like a battery, the kind you throw away, slowly running out of power.
Now I feel that I am spent. I have nothing left to give, and all of my potential has dissipated in the grey haze of depression. It hurts me beyond my ability to describe, knowing that I could have done so much more. And while I write in the past tense as if my life is over, unfortunately, I fear that I have many years ahead of me. It will be time spent in hell, everyday my self-loathing increasing as I despair over the loss of things that never were. This is what I have to look forward to, a life of invisible disability, my own mind crushing the life out of me.
I have tried. Believe me, I have tried. I have gone to psychologists and psychiatrists. I am on multiple drugs. All of this has merely curbed the desire to physically harm myself, but that was never the issue anyway. In a bizarre contradiction of desires, I fight to live more than I will to die. Death is the ultimate failure, and it is one that I vow not to willingly succumb to. So I am left to suffer as my life implodes upon itself. No one should feel the least bit of pity for me. What I endure is not an excusable disease. My mind has failed me, which is to say that I have failed myself. While bipolar disorder is certainly real, whether it be a poorly understood imbalance of neurotransmitters or faulty synaptic connections between neurons, the disorder emerges in my conscious thoughts. I should be able to control it. I should be able to rationalize it away. I should be able to will myself back to a past self that could function in the day to day. But I can’t, and this is my failure. When a runner comes in second place in a race even after giving his all, there is one incontrovertible fact; his best wasn’t good enough. Neither is mine.
Damn you! Do not quit keep fighting and it will get better,I know you think it won't but I've been fighting my whole life! DO NOT STOP FIGHTING THIS THING!!!!
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