Hi young Ricardo,
It’s your teen years, and they’re the most difficult ones. There’s a lot of shyness (as part of your personality), discomfort in groups of friends because of your acne, and your insecurities. And you don’t know yet that you will have your first experience with bipolar disorder at the age of 17. You have fought through depression, basically your whole teenhood.You will have to cultivate trusted relationships with mainly your family and closest friends. This is too important, so you can be open about your first experience with bipolar disorder, where you were very tired during the summer of 2005, and started to feel strange, having racing thoughts, “hearing voices,” and sleeplessness. Then, who do you call? Your mom, of course, who knows right away that something isn’t right. They take you to multiple doctors, and they diagnose you with anxiety and depression. Prescribing some drugs, you feel ok, until you’re 32 years old, which is unusual, but then it happens in Thailand, the first major bipolar disorder event with mania, meaning a lot of suffering with hallucinations, and the people around you don’t know what’s going on with you. And it will happen again four more times, so be prepared. Again, they can’t diagnose you correctly this time; only in the fourth episode will you be finally free of the suffering.
When you were a teen, you didn’t talk very much to other people, you liked to live in your own world, mainly through music, and movies, and know that’s not entirely healthy. It’s fine to listen to music to get out of the vicissitudes of the world, but you should always talk about your problems, your fears, your anxiety, your fear of loss, and powerlessness, with your loved ones.
It will be easy to talk about your disorder with the people you trust, only they will understand that your disease it’s not a weakness, as you once thought. It doesn’t need courage when you accept that it’s a part of you, and with medication, and with the right medical follow-up you will have a “normal” life.
Know that everybody in the world has issues, and insecurities, even more during your teen years, with a bipolar disorder, where you still have to claim your spot in your group of friends, as being strong, emotionlessness, a mannish boy, and the only thing you need to do when you’re feeling depressed, or not ok, it’s seeking out for help. If you hadn’t called your mom when you were feeling strange, maybe things would go differently, nobody knows, yet according to the short experience of reaching out to others, you understand that the help of others is mandatory for your well being. In this world you can’t live without the love of others.
