Sometimes you have to put the past in the past. I must have put the past behind me over the past few months. I was doing so well mentally that I forgot the anniversary of my big relapse in 2023. It is hard to believe that I am doing so well now. It wasn’t an automatic easy fix to get where I am today. It took a hard understanding that there are consequences for not adhering to my medication regimen. I am still working at managing my mental health condition. Still, I am in a better place than where I was back then.

It really wasn’t until earlier this year that I realized I needed to get myself under control. I was constantly flirting with disaster and playing around with my medication. Granted, I knew to never make the same mistake that I did two or even one year ago. It was just that I liked being in a manic state without realizing what the dangers were in the process. That is how mental illness operates. Eventually, the crash and burn would happen. It happened over two years ago.

Much of what happened that day is a blur because my workplace is no longer in that building. As of this year the main mental health clinic will be out of the building too. When I moved to our new workplace building, I had been off work for seven weeks. I never understood the dangers of withdrawing from my medication. It would take a year for my therapist to convey that to me along with others noticing. Another year would pass before I re-read that information. My property manager would hand down concrete rules to help me understand why things happen in place. These rules explained why there is a day and night, and so forth. Things would get better in time. But I had to learn that the hard way.

I now understand that my mental health medications are very important to my mental well-being. Things like relapses are real and do happen if I do not take them. I had to learn that I was damaging myself the hard way. I also realized I needed to do more natural things. These complement my mental health. They help make things go well for me during the process.

I am getting better as time goes on. I haven’t got here overnight. The same message has been repeated to me many times. I wasn’t taking care of my mental health for a long time, and others see that. I didn’t want to see it because I liked it, but it was the illness doing its thing. I had to trust the process. This year, I firmly decided to get back on track. I vowed to stick with it through the good and the bad. That even meant if I slept excessively.

I have to credit the TV show Shameless for showing the reality of medication for bipolar disorder. It also shows the realities that people face without medication. It portrays the challenges they face when they must take medication. I understood the necessity of quiet hours. Watching those YouTube clips also helped me. Without these, I don’t think I would have been in a better frame of mind to get back on track.

Of course there is the other things that I was doing to help me. I kept a Wellness Recovery Action Plan, or WRAP, in place. I knew it was my responsibility to make necessary changes. These changes were needed to get through the difficult times over the past two years. There were a lot of them. But I overcame them. I was in a much better state than I was in the past. I was in a better frame of mind when thinking about them.

In the end, I realized that I needed to continue the medication regimen that was prescribed to me. I almost landed in the psychiatric hospital a few times. Yet, I realized the dangers of life if I did not adhere to my medication. This realization allowed me to meet society’s expectations and be the best that I be in the long run.