Please don't Define me by my Disorders

I would like to reiterate what I said when I first began this blog a year and a half ago.

I am a happy person. I have great joy from my life and in the little things around me. I find nature fascinating and love the outdoors. I am artistic and find passion in music, writing, painting, and every crafty hobby you can think of. My faith blesses me on a daily basis, and I would be lost without it.

Please, rest assured that I am not a suicidal person. You may wonder how I've attempted suicide three times and could possibly not be suicidal, but it's simple really. I am not the diseases and disorders that afflict me. I have Bipolar Disorder, but it doesn't define who I am always and eternally. I constantly fight to gain my ground over these issues, and sometimes it's a lot more difficult than other times. Sometimes I make mistakes; unable to process anything but pain and the virulent - sometimes masochistic - ways to relieve that pain. Sometimes I can only think of dying and wishing I could be put out of my misery.

But somehow I've been protected from dying. I attribute it to the faith and prayers of my family members mostly and to God's mercy. Somehow in God's infinite plan I've been saved for something.

Now, this next 18 months is probably going to be extremely precarious for me. I worry that a major depressive episode paired with postpartum depression will be too much for me. I'm not afraid of death, but I do fear myself doing something irrational when I'm in a state of mind I can't control. Imagine my scary post from two days ago - now double the screaming in my head, and make it last 2-6 months. ...Yes, I am afraid of dying the wrong way. I'm terrified of the emotional damage I might inflict on my children when I'm beyond mental agony and can't stop crying and trying to scrape away the pain, and having to hide in my room so they won't see it anymore. I'm afraid of leaving my husband and children without a wife and mother, because I couldn't remember what love or happiness and anything aside from a crazed sense of inundating mental agony. I don't even know how I keep surviving.

But...I do hope and believe that I'll come out of it somehow - stronger, and hopefully more resilient than ever before.

I just have to keep clinging to that faith and hope as the days grow darker...and the episodes more severe.