I am very excited about introducing the very first featured blogger for Sugar Filled Emotions‘ new feature Mental Health Blogger of the Week.

Please welcome Abby of Life @ The Poles! Abby was initially diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder by her Primary Care Physician in January, 2010.  She originally created Life @ The Poles as a place where she could write about the “the ups and downs and twists and turns” that go on in her head.  As she has been on her blogging journey she has discovered that her blog can serve as a place for other people with Bipolar Disorder to visit and learn that they are not alone.  Her own words best describe this “Because sometimes not feeling so alone is the first step towards not feeling like it’s your fault, towards being able to believe that you are ‘Normal’.”

I know you will enjoy what Abby has written for us.  Please take the time to show her some love in the comments.

Somebody, Someday

When I was a child
I wanted to be Someone.
Someone special,
someone worth taking notice of.
Someone who,
in their own way,
would change the world around them,
who could would help the world
see things from a different perspective,
Someone who was special.
I admired
Albert Einstein and Van Gogh,
Da Vinci and Beethoven,
and imagined,
wished,
dreamed
I had what it took
to be counted among them.
To be Somebody, someday.

I eventually realized that
I wasn’t ever going to be Somebody.
I was different.
I was weird.
I didn’t fit in anywhere.
In the logic of the outcast,
I decided that
I was never going to be Somebody
because I didn’t fit in anywhere,
because no one else
thought or worked like I did,
because where most of my peers
were talking about
the latest TV show
or celebrity news,
I was eyes deep
in Neurobiology
and Astronomy,
and where my peers were reading
People or Cosmo
I was happily reading
Greek Mythology and Edgar Allan Poe.
I
was strange.
I
was weird.
I
was different.

I
was a fish out of water
everywhere but alone,
buried in my books,
or my poetry,
or my art,
or my music.
I was
a Nobody
to the world of my peers.
And yet,
no matter how often I told myself
over the years,
I was never going to be Somebody,
deep down
that little child in me
still wanted
to be Somebody.
Still wanted to believe
that I had what it took.
Even when
I spent more time
talking to myself
or reading or writing
or working on art projects
than I did interacting with people,
that child
still wanted to believe
I could be Somebody,
even when
all signs pointed
to Nobody.

Sometimes
it doesn’t take much to change
the way you see
everything.
Sometimes,
it’s as simple as
someone you trust restating the obvious
from a different perspective –
someone pointing out
that weird
that oddball
that strange
that not fitting in
means
that you are different –
that
you
are special.
And very slowly,
I began to realize
that all those parts of me
that I had come to hate
because they made me “weird”
or “strange”
or an “oddball”
were why
I could be
Somebody –
if I’d stop fighting
who I was.
If I’d stop
trying to be what I am not
and see, realize, understand,
that you can’t change the world
if you aren’t
at least a little different from it,
and that you can’t show people
how to see things from another perspective
if you don’t see from a perspective
that no one else sees from.
You have to be different
to stand out,
and to be Somebody
you have to stand out.
All those years I spent
trying to fit into
what I thought I should be.
All those years
trying to be Somebody
by being like everyone else.
All those years
of wanting to be something
I already was.

My psychiatrist told me
in one of my early appointments,
I suspect as a reassurance of some sort
after I said I hated myself I think,
that many of the great minds
dealt with a mental disorder,
or were suspected of having one.
Einstein and Van Gogh
are said to have had Bipolar Disorder
and Beethoven and Da Vinci
are suspected
to have had Bipolar Disorder, as well.
I guess I’m not THAT different after all,
because
I have Bipolar Disorder too.
There may be hope
for my becoming
Somebody someday
after all.