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Finding My Own 'Bipolar Beats' When Society Keeps Playing the Same Old Music

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The rhythm dances in my ears and the sun blinds me as it radiates huge beams of happiness down onto the world. There is a spring in my step and I can feel the softest breeze on my skin, like silk as it pulls across the body. A chemically charged ball of fire is pulsing through my veins and as my hair bounces on my shoulders, I cannot stop smiling. Life is good! Life is great!

• What is Bipolar disorder?

Thoughts race around my mind, ideas crash into one another and I struggle to control the pace. Voices echo loudly. And music cannot drown out the screams. With hands tight over my ears, the sun hides away behind the looming clouds. The wind tears my heart and soul from my body and an icy grip wraps tightly around my neck. The light begins to falter.

With or without mental illness, life is a battlefield of people trying to figure out their hows, whys, whats, whens and whos. Then society throws in labels to identify the whos and whys. Not quite yet satisfied, society wants to tell us the label means we can’t do or be something. Then we tell ourselves the same lie. We listen to the same rhythm of untruth that wraps around our sore and broken souls. It is time to change the beat we’ve been listening to. Take out that old scratched record and replace it with something new. Those well-rehearsed lines are doing you no favors.

Yes it hurts. Sometimes it’s exhausting and sometimes exhilarating. Sometimes I think that ball of energy might burst from my body leaving a gaping hole in my chest.

Change your music, find a new beat to walk to, a new beat that makes your soul sing. Find your own rhythm to live to.

 

Thinkstock photo via Robertobinetti70.

Originally published: February 27, 2017
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