Why I Dread Good Days as Someone With Bipolar Disorder

Everyone has good and bad days. Some people have more good days than others. But living with bipolar disorder you never know when a good day is going to turn bad and how quick and extreme things can change.

• What is Bipolar disorder?

Normally good days for me doesn’t mean stability, it means I’m nearing a drastic crash into a manic or depressive episode. You never know when it’s going to turn sour so I take good days with a grain of salt because good days for the most part are often tied to something else.

Things come in waves. When times are good, they’re great. When times are tough, they’re strenuous. When I’m having what seems like a stable period of time, it’s often followed by fits of rage and fury-filled outbursts. On good days my mind is still eating me alive, just in a different type of way than during a manic or depressive phase. When my attitude and irritability changes so rapidly, it’s hard to enjoy the decent times and live in the present rather than worry about the future.

I have a complicated relationship with good days because I’m never sure how long they will last, which sends me into a state of fear and a sense of waiting for the worst to come. I dread good days because they are so few and far between, it’s almost a teaser of something I wish I had regularly.

Good days have weight to them because they make me feel like I have to be extremely productive to make up for all my bad days. Sometimes my streaks of bad days last so long, it becomes a burden on my good days to do as much as possible. Frequently my to-do lists grow too long to make an indent, which makes me feel negative about myself and the things I should be accomplishing.

You can’t force good days and that’s the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around. Time and time again, I try to make every day the best I can and I beat myself up when it doesn’t happen, but I need to realize it’s not always going to turn out that way.

I manage good days by trying to ground and steady myself and my thought process, but often times I catch myself not enjoying my good days because I’m so caught up in preventing anything bad from happening. I try to explain to myself that I do deserve good days and not only the bad.

I need to remember that it is important to take it one day at a time. Good days can be frightening in a wonderful way. The good days are meant to be the light behind the grey clouds, giving hope there are better days out there. Learn from my shortcomings and know that even if you have more bad days than good, you are still deserving of the good days that do come.