A letter from your persistence
Dear Amanda,
This is your persistence. I want you to know that together we have been through a lot. You feel like you missed out on a lot of opportunities to grow in your twenties but you have been through things that many people don’t make it through. You can look back without it being negative and see those things as motivation to move forward. You made it through manic episodes that literally ran through your life like a tornado and left you at rock bottom. Even if it didn’t happen the way you wanted and it felt like forever to pull yourself out, you did. You faced the things that happened to you and things you did with a strength you didn’t see you had. No one and nothing has ever been as hard on you or as destructive to you, as you are to yourself. That has always been a horrible reality to you but there is meaning and reason in even that. At the time it gave you the strength to face things you never would’ve thought you could. You did two separate rounds of Electroconvulsive Therapy for gods sake. Before things got so bad and before you went through so many unimaginable things, you couldn’t have been forced to do that but you did it willingly both times because deep down you knew that your life depended on it. You went through the pain of losing people you loved to a disorder you couldn’t control and often had no idea what you had done. You were an empty shell floating up and down, manic or depressed, for the longest time. You felt guilty all the time for things you didn’t know that you did. That is true pain, how do you take responsibility for something you have no recollection of? When you are manic and you haven’t eaten, slept or been normal in any way for days it is really hard to keep track of who you are let alone what you do. When you came down and had to try to figure it out, you would plummet into the deepest rock bottom depression and have painful ptsd flashbacks of things you couldn’t believe happened and actually feel them happening. The invincible feeling of mania or self medicating had kept you from that pain, your brain shut down in self preservation. The grand delusions come back to haunt you and guess what Amanda, it still didn’t compare to the guilt and hatred you had for yourself so- you got through that too. My question is how do you finally realize how strong you really are, how far you’ve come and after real stability- can you let go of the self hatred and move forward with your life? When do you realize that you don’t need that rock bottom survival mode anymore and now you get to find yourself, you get to thrive and have a life again. Just in case you are scared, that strength and persistence isn’t going anywhere. You have the tools you need to set it aside and move forward to truly thrive with bipolar disorder and not be held back by it. It is just something you have, not what you are, that Amanda is up to you. Just do it, just thrive, you earned it.
Love always, Your Persistence
I learned about this exercise from the Rachel Hollis Made for More movie. I thought oh please I won’t fill up one notebook page of writing a letter to myself from my persistence. Turns out I filled up 4 and I couldn’t have come up with some of it if I had been writing it to myself. Very interesting, looking forward to her next book.
