Low mood

A big component of my neurodivergence is my bipolar disorder. Last year I had a big manic episode and became psychotic. I ended up in hospital, which is how it was identified that I needed supported accommodation.

Now, my mood is a lot lower. It’s probably not a good thing that Taylor Swift’s Anti-hero is a trend on tiktok, because the words ‘It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me’ keep cycling through my head, because it sums up an long held self-belief. I’m trying to tell myself ‘I have problems, I’m not a problem’, but a lot of the time I just end up believing it.

I’m finding life very mundane and dull. Things feel repetitive and that’s constraining, I feel like I’m living the same week over and over. Moving between the same few places: the school, my flat, the communal lounge, the swimming pool, my parents. It feels like there’s nothing that really adds meaning or fulfilment to my life. At the same time, I’m not sure what I could add that would make a difference to that.

It doesn’t help that my flat has descended into a state of chaos. A support worker helped me tidy my bedroom and it feels like a little oasis. My living room is still a mess unfortunately. I find that working on it with someone else reduces the sense of demand and makes it possible to achieve. That’s not a long term solution as I won’t always have the supported accommodation, but it works for now. In the times between being able to get that support though, my flat is cluttered and untidy. It definitely isn’t good for my mental health.

In general, depression is my usual. I get very little time in ‘normal mood’, instead I spend most of my time at some degree of low. It’s frustrating that we can’t really medicate for that, as antidepressants will make me manic. I just have to deal with it, and it really saps the enjoyment from my life.