Compared to bipolar's magic, reality seems a raw deal. It's not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it's the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity - the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don't understand, we say. They just don't get it. They'll never be artists. David Lovelace
About This Quote

This quote by David Foster Wallace perfectly describes the struggle of living with bipolar disorder. It is often hard to tell whether we are experiencing a manic episode or a depressed episode and there is often a lack of understanding from others. While it is true that we can’t always explain our emotions and experiences, it is also true that we cannot allow the days and weeks and months of suffering to continue. We have to keep fighting on, keep moving forward, keep creating what we need, keep laughing with friends, keep loving ourselves, keep finding ways to help others.

The truth is that people who are suffering from depression are just as capable as anyone else of living beautiful lives. It is just that they have chosen to do so on their own terms.

Source: Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

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More Quotes By David Lovelace
  1. I know the empathy borne of despair; I know the fluidity of thought, the expansive, even beautiful, mind that hypomania brings, and I know this is quicksilver and precious and often it's poison. There has always existed a sort of psychic butcher who works the...
  2. I now know for certain that my mind and emotions, my fix on the real and my family's well-being, depend on just a few grams of salt. But treatment's the easy part. Without honesty, without a true family reckoning, that salt's next to worthless.
  3. Compared to bipolar's magic, reality seems a raw deal. It's not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it's the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity - the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems...
  4. Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It's fun and it's frightening as hell. Some patients - bipolar type I - experience both extremes;...
  5. It's difficult. I take a low dose of lithium nightly. I take an antidepressant for my darkness because prayer isn't enough. My therapist hears confession twice a month, my shrink delivers the host, and I can stand in the woods and see the world spark.
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