Lost but hopeful

You think mental illness is all about sleeping 24/7? Crying for no reason? Just being negative and unhappy?
You think it is about not having the energy to do anything and just laying on the bed, miserable.

It is not.

Mental illness(es) is a wide concept, where symptoms vary from person to person.
Some people, someone like me, actually gets emotion spikes, where one week I have super energetic days (not in a good way), those days when I do not really care about anything, I just need to move all the time. Cannot stop, it is just something I must do, going from place a to b, and from b to c, and from there maybe from c to d before I can get back to the place a.

Going for a run middle of the night?
Yeah, why not.

Or going to run when it is raining and dark?
Yeah, what would be a better time to do so?



Getting to the gym at 4am and being out somewhere until 10pm with no sleep?
Yeah, no problem at all.

Speeding on the road and doing so risking your own life?
Yeah, who cares.

Having your own mind so messed up, that nothing feels right. Nothing gets done. Not being able to focus on anything.
That mess is just not in the mind.

It is all around me.

And then, after a week or so, there comes the depressed state.

Where absolutely nothing makes any sense.
Where I could just sleep for the whole day. Or a whole week.
Where even 9h of sleep is not enough.
Where I constantly ask myself "wtf I am doing here? What is my purpose?"
The state where I cannot eat.
Where even going to the gym does not sound appealing anymore.
Where just getting up from the bed and showering feels like an accomplishment.

It is damn hard mentally.

To get those emotion spikes.
To go from extremely energetic and restless to being afraid of my own thoughts - all this just in one night.
Not being able to predict when the change comes.
Not being able to predict if tomorrow I will wake up feeling just too exhausted to live.
Or maybe I will wake up feeling super energetic like I could just go for a run (even though I deeply hate running).

Or maybe, for once, I would wake up feeling totally normal.

Somewhere between those two extremes.
Sometimes I feel like I do not even know what is normal anymore.
But it is there, somewhere between those lines, because sometimes, I still do feel totally normal. Like my old self, the one that hid everything behind a smile, who thought that hiding everything would make it all disappear. Once and for all.
But the thing is, that I cannot know. I cannot know if I wake up being too energetic, or if I wake up depressed, or if I wake up feeling normal.

Not sad, not super joyful. 

Somewhere between.

Normal.

Maybe someday, I wake up every day feeling normal.
But until that happens, I keep fighting.
It is a daily fight.
And it is not only about fighting with my body anymore.
It is fighting with my mind as well.

I keep fighting to get over those obstacles.
To get my happy self back.
To put together those pieces that have shattered around.
To put pieces of myself together.

To feel whole again.

But it is still a taboo.
Mental health.
And that is the reason I write about it.
To share awareness.
To tell it is OK to not be OK.

But that it is not OK to stop fighting for a better tomorrow.

Because one day, better tomorrow will come.

At the end of that extremely dark tunnel, is a light, and you, me and we, will get there.
One day.

Just keep believing.