Hello all and welcome to my blog. I have dabbled over the years with many efforts in public writing such as Live Journal and I have spent many years going back and forth on Open Diary however this will be my first, what I consider, public writing attempt. So, the first question I pose is, why am I writing? Though I have a very specific purpose I will disclose that later. First you must get to know my story.
I am just recently 30, and happily married since May 2011, I am the older of myself and a brother. I grew up mostly in the South and along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States (Though luckily I haven't adopted much of an accent from any particular place that I have lived.). My family grew up with very little, though we were a happy lot by and large.
Where my story gets, what I would consider, interesting is when I went off to college. I had my first breakdown in college and went to the hospital. There I was diagnosed bipolar type II. I decided very quickly I didn't need to be with these "crazy" people so I did my best to seem normal to "clear up the mistake" and told the doctor's and therapists exactly what it was I knew they wanted to hear. I refused medication and therapy after I got out, and continued to resist my treatment until just recently when I attempted to take my own life. That is a story for another time.
This time I scared myself into taking it seriously. I went into therapy and am in the process of being diagnosed somewhere between bipolar type II and schizo-effective disorder (the jury is still out as it seems) as well as serious social anxiety issues. I have been a member of a wonderful group at NHS of Northeast Pennsylvania known as Psychiatric Rehabilitation and have been attending for almost two years now.
At this program I have recently been more active on a constructive front and have designed and written a brochure (including a logo that they have fallen in love with), and working on newsletters and the ilk to promote knowledge of the program and its benefits. We were discussing social skills one day, and we were talking about the autism spectrum and what exactly that means. It was mentioned by one of the leaders that I probably fell somewhere on this spectrum myself. As I went home I began thinking about it wrote a short paper (a few paragraphs) on a metaphor about how I feel when I attempt to communicate with the world. I brought it in and after one of the leaders read it (and they gave it to the program director to read), it was said that the message was powerful. Eventually it came to pass that I am going to attempt to get that message out into the world as best as I can, and that is the purpose of this blog (so to speak).
That is not to say that I shall be maniacal in the pursuit or whatnot for I am much more than my illness and have great interest in reading, video games, and pen and paper role playing games and I'm sure will find myself ranting on those topics from time to time as well.
To break up the text (especially at the beginning), I will end here and start a new post. Thank you for reading.
--JJM
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