The 5 Stages of Grief: Accepting Your Illness

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I’m bipolar and it may not be the end of the world. In fact, the world keeps moving.

When you’re bipolar, you become familiar with the feeling of unsteadiness, the lack of solid ground to plant your feet on. You become accustomed to instability even though everyone around you disapproves of it, but you can't help it. Unstable bipolar people can be reported as troubled. Maybe that’s true but maybe we should also be given some grace. Are we troubled or just unsteady? Our unsteadiness isn’t that unmanageable.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Bipolar type 2 disorder, the kind I have, is classified as having at least one hypomanic episode and at least one major depressive episode with no history of full mania. 

In my experience, bipolar disorder is like a game of Jenga. Everything can be stacked perfectly but, if you mess with a single block, it all comes toppling down.

My tower toppled at the beginning of my third year of university. 

I’ve had periods of depression my entire life but nothing as severe as during fall of 2024. I went from sadness to a pit of darkness so deep I couldn’t see an exit. I was scaring my friends, my family and myself. I stopped going to class and barely made it to work. I rarely ate and was asleep more often than I was awake. Sometimes going days without talking to another person. Showering became optional and the chore of picking up a toothbrush weighed so much it seemed impossible.

I collapsed. 

I stopped participating in my life. Instead, I became a ghost haunting it instead. I skulked in doorways looking for the light but being unable to step into it. The shadows felt stronger than my willpower. Eventually I admitted to myself that something was wrong and saw a doctor and proceeded with therapy; but talking wasn’t enough, having a support system wasn’t enough. I felt like I had no control over my life, that I couldn't stop my life from bursting apart at the seams. Medication was my beginning and end. I didn't know I was bipolar, neither did the clinic doctor I was seeing at the time. I didn’t know this at the time, but bipolar individuals cannot start antidepressants without risking mania. 

Riding the waves of feeling better is a familiar tale to most of us bipolar people. 

At first, I was getting better. My roommate remarked that I seemed happier and was cleaning non-stop. I hadn’t been that productive in months. 

However, instead of sleeping most of my day away, I was awake for days on end, completely exhausted but unable to sleep, constantly moving as if something were chasing me. It was like someone cut my brakes and I was running on fumes to keep me pushing through. 

I was unaware that this was a hypomanic episode, all I knew was that something was wrong. 

When I tried to go back to the clinic to get weaned off my medication and switched to a different one, medical staff informed me they had lost my bloodwork and cut me off my antidepressants cold turkey due to the complete loss of my patient file. 

I was pushed into the deep end without a life preserver, there was no safety net, and once again I was left alone in my journey to recovery. I was thrown from a hypomanic episode into a depressive episode which put my mental health in an extremely high risk situation.

I went from one rock bottom to another unable to climb to the surface.

At the time, my therapist deemed my hypomania to be a one off and I found a new doctor who prescribed me a different antidepressant to much of the same result. 

I was switched to the new medication and sent back to school, but it only got worse. I was now on a higher dose of a different antidepressant which caused me to be even more hypomanic. Except this time, I was sleeping even less and maxing out my credit card by frivolously spending every paycheque I barely earned, from the shifts I could barely bring myself to show up to.

I was impulsive. Isolating myself worse than I ever had during my depressive episodes. Usually hypomanic episodes only last a couple of days, but mine were prolonged by incorrect medication. It created mixed episodes where my depressive and manic episodes overlapped.

I ended up failing most of my classes and spent the rest of exam season coming down from another episode at home with my family. I was utterly mortified but convinced I couldn’t possibly be bipolar. I told myself it was just those specific medications. My understanding of hypomania was more closely linked with psychosis. I assumed that since I wasn’t hallucinating or hadn't completely “lost it” that I was completely fine. I lied to my family– underplaying my condition. 

“I’m on the wrong meds, they'll switch me to new ones and all will be well.”

This was only partially true.

Eventually I went back to school but my mom was worried and came to see me from Windsor, Ont., a four hour drive from Toronto. She saw the essentially empty fridge and my messy apartment and destroyed bedroom. I had so many clothes on the floor, the hardwood wasn’t even visible. I was more upset to have been seen like that than I was to the fact that I was suffering so much. My mom was extremely kind, but frustrated. She knew it was bad but not to this extent.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.

What was there to say? 

I couldn’t function on my own and every medication I tried only made things worse. I either was too depressed to move or so hypomanic I’d torpedo my life at the flip of a switch. I was mortified and the hole I had dug for myself was terrifyingly deep and I couldn’t seem to get out, at least not on my own.

My mom stayed almost two weeks and helped me move apartments. She cleaned and organized my room of the mess that it had been for so long. We probably did over 10 loads of laundry in between bits of me pleading that it really wasn’t that bad, despite it being worse even than I could comprehend at the time.

Eventually, I made the difficult decision to see a psychiatrist. It took two months to even see the doctor who had the ability to refer me. I went to my university clinic because it was the only place that could refer me to a psychiatrist in a “timely manner.” Four months after that initial appointment, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. 

What did that mean? Was I crazy? How could I ever become anything in life while being bipolar? I was terrified but I was more scared of continuing in the perpetual state of limbo the way I had been. 

Yet, still I couldn’t believe that I was bipolar. Every depiction of it I had ever seen didn’t match my lived experience, so they must have gotten it wrong.

I wasn’t hallucinating, I could keep a job, I had good friends and a supportive family so obviously the psychiatrist must’ve misdiagnosed me.   

They say denial is the first step in the five stages of grief, except no one died. I was grieving the life I thought I was going to lead. The person I thought I was.

My psychiatrist weaned me off my medication as quickly as possible and started me on mood stabilizers, better known as antipsychotics. What a scary word. It made me not want to take them. Thankfully, I did. 

The best way I can describe it is like someone finally turned down the dial on the radio. All I have now is static instead of the deafening full blast music that seemed to run rampant in my head. I could finally think. Everything wasn’t so loud anymore. My depression was still there but it became manageable. The ruminating thoughts don’t stick to my brain like old chewing gum, they slide off like water now.

But that doesn’t make my diagnosis less scary.

According to the NIH only 16 per cent of bipolar individuals graduate college and earn their degree. That thought ravaged my brain. Was I capable of being part of that small percentile? Or am I destined to join the other 84 per cent?

That thought terrified me, despite only being a year behind my peers, I felt like the waves of my illness had pushed me out to sea and I was desperately trying to make it back to shore to rejoin them. 

But it felt like I had weights strapped to my ankles. 

Though I know everyone has their own struggles, mine feel incredibly isolating. 

I only know one other person who is bipolar. While I’m extremely lucky to have the support system I do, I am also isolated by it. I am loved, but my loved ones are neurotypical whereas I am neurodivergent. My brain is simply wired a different way than theirs. Often, I feel like I think in a language only I can decipher and that is terribly lonely.

I am bipolar. I will always be bipolar. 

There is no cure, only treatment. I will always be sick. It's truly terrifying. As a kid, you are taught that if you don’t feel well you go to a doctor and then you're cured. That is not my reality anymore. There’s no miracle where I am no longer my diagnosis, my only reprieve is the far off promise of stability; the ability to predict my episodes and treat them accordingly.

But isn’t stability everyone’s goal? Aren’t we all turbulent in our lives, hoping for solid ground? Maybe my ground is just shakier with a few cracks in the pavement. Maybe some people’s stability is a light breeze and mine a minor earthquake. I’m aware I was comparing apples to oranges but I couldn’t help but be viciously angry at my un-orange-like apples. I think I was grieving the life I could have had if I was not bipolar. I was past the point of denying so my next step was to be angry.

My anger came in waves. I resented myself, my psychiatrist, my genetic disposition to being bipolar, there didn’t seem to be an end to the constant state of fierce anger that seemed to consume me. I wanted someone else to blame but at every turn it seemed, I was the only one at fault. 

I suppose the next stage is depression, something I seem to excel at. Learning that my life now had obstacles that were permanent and unavoidable was soul crushing. It felt like my bipolar disorder was a parasite, leeching away all that was good about my life. 

The last stage of grief is acceptance. I’ve accepted that I am bipolar. The proof is sadly undeniable and the life I lead now is different. Not necessarily off course but certainly not how I envisioned it to be. I have to take my medication or the chemicals in my brain decide they need to mix in unpleasant patterns and destroy what I’ve rebuilt. I have to go to therapy because self-reflection isn’t enough. Which at times can feel like I’m not enough while simultaneously feeling like I’m too much for my body and mind to contain. I have to build routines otherwise I regress to old patterns. When my life feels out of order it's like a marching band that’s gone offbeat, ruining the rhythm. So I carefully curate routines and patterns and weave them into my life as if I’ve always done them. 

But, even though my life now isn’t the way I previously envisioned, it’s still one I love leading. I’m in a program I’m passionate about, I have a family I adore and a life I enjoy, it's just centered differently now. I've decided this is acceptance.

I still struggle, sometimes immensely, but I know how to carry it now. Some days are heavier than others. Some days the weight is as light as a breeze and others it's as heavy as a hurricane. I persevere regardless. 

I am bipolar and it's not the end of the world. My diagnosis doesn’t define me or limit my capacity to live my life to the fullest.