When Your Give-a-Darn Is Broken
How it feels when bipolar depression takes away your ability to care about anything.
Do you ever feel like your give-a-darn is broken? Like no matter how hard you try, nothing seems to matter?
For me, I know it’s part of bipolar depression. But even though I can rationalize on the cause, I still struggle to fight it.
What’s probably the most scary thing is that when I’m in this dark place, I often make rash decisions. I quit jobs, sever relationships, and a little over a year ago, I deleted all my social media accounts.
When you don’t care, nothing matters. And when nothing matters, it’s hard to keep going.
How do you survive? I wish I had a simple answer.
I know that when my give-a-darn doesn’t work, it’s because I’m in an episode of bipolar depression. Logically, I know the depression will end. It has every time in the past, and it will again this time.
Logic doesn’t have a lot of force when you don’t care about anything. So instead you fight. At least you try to.
Get yourself out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, and go to work or do whatever you need to do. You push yourself, hoping in time you’ll get past it. Most of the time, you will.
Sometimes you don’t, at least not on your own.
My worst experience with my broken give-a-darn was back in 1995 when I had to be hospitalized. I tried to end all of my friendships, obliterated my relationship with my family, and destroyed my business at the same time. I wanted out of life. And I almost got my way.
Fortunately, someone stopped me before it was too late.
From time to time, my give-a-darn breaks down, even though I’m on the right combination of meds and otherwise stable. An evil entity flips a switch and turns off my emotions and motivation. The familiar darkness envelopes me and all I can do is ride out the storm.
And it sucks.
Death is never the answer, even when you give-a-darn isn’t working. You’ve got to keep fighting. Life is always worth living.
If you have the slightest spark of energy inside you, use it to fight. Better days will come, for you and for me.
It helps me to reflect on the truth I know from the past. I wrote Perspective on Bipolar Depression and How To Survive It to remind me hope to cope with these troublesome periods. Darkness Is Coming is a poem about how it feels when you know your depression is returning.
Rough days are part of having a mental illness, and if you’re having a tough time right now, please hold on. Better times will come. The sun always rises, and every storm ends.
Until next time, keep fighting.
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Originally published at https://speakingbipolar.com on January 18, 2022.
