It hurts when my bipolar gets in the way of my life, of meeting obligations...of showing up.
It hurts when I forget things that I've known about for weeks.
It hurts when I feel like is is arduous spending time with people I love.
It hurts when the agitation builds and I snap when I don't want to.
It hurts when I wish I could slow down and take a breath, but the motor within me drives me forward in perpetual motion.
It hurts when I can't be who I know I am.
Radical compassion is the way I live. It has to be, or what kind of life would I have?
It would be the life I used to have before awakening to my Divine worth.
It would be self-hate.
It would be self-injury.
It would be eating disorders and alcoholism.
It would be shame and withdrawing from a world I deserve to experience.
It would be passing by opportunities because I'm burying my head under the covers for another day...missing out on life.
I have no need to live my life that way anymore...however, I still have bipolar and ocd.
I still live with the challenges, the limitations, the pain, the instability, the rollercoaster ride.
Yet, I through it all, I know my worth.
This is what makes me able to connect with others in a profound way. I understand, know and live compassion because it is the only way I can embrace my life.
It is my Divine purpose to guide others to compassion and to their authentic worth.
I am not bipolar or ocd. I am not an illness.
I have an illness.
My illness and my Divinity are interconnected, they are not mutually exclusive. One makes me experience of the other deep and profoundly intimate level.
I am pushed toward leaning into guidance, leaning into trust more everyday...because I must.
This is what I share with others.
It is my illness that makes me the incredible therapist and lightworker that I am.
Am I grateful for my illness? No, I can't say I am. There are days I wish I could just have a brain that was not in levity and not in anguish. There are days I resent the illness and yearn for a life of normalcy.
In this life time I don't know if I will be able to heal myself of this illness...maybe. Yet, self healing may be in the cards for another journey, another dimension. I leave that to my guides, my Universe, to Spirit.
Somewhere, sometime I made an agreement to be here. In fact, I remember it like any other memory. I remember the moment I came into this life, which is a gift I am deeply grateful for.
Yet, being in it, here and now, is still painfully hard at times.
Today is a hard day.
However, I have sessions with clients later, which is wonderful. My incredible clients help me more than anything else in my life. They ask me to step out of my struggle and join them in theirs. I am present with them, I am at peace in those moments with them.
So, in this way, my illness allows me to flourish, which I don't think would be possible otherwise. It also deepens my sensitivity to energies, enabling me to be an effective and talented intuitive.
Thanks, bipolar for what you offer me, yet, in the spirit of duality, I cannot truthfully say I love you. Not yet. Maybe one day. For now we will live together, we will occasionally battle and come together again at some point, unified in my brain for a time until your tide recedes and we begin the cycle once again.
Sarah is a psychotherapist, Ayurvedic nutritionist and light worker in Halifax, Massachusetts. Learn more about Sarah and her work.
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