Day 1: back to the real world

After dropping my fall semester this year due to a manic episode which lead to the diagnosis of BP, I'm back at school for winter semester. I've been wildly lucky to have had a relatively side-effect free and effective experience with the medications I'm on. It's just been in the past week or so, however, that theres been a noticeable difference with regard to the stability of my moods.

The feeling of needing to crawl out of my skin is a lot less frequent.
I don't feel like crying every second of the day.
People don't piss me off (as much!).
My ability to concentrate on simple tasks has improved.
Anddd, I can ACTUALLY get out of bed a lot of the time without dreading the thought of having an entire day to suffer through.
Over all I feel 'less' depressed/hopeless/apathetic toward life. (Although 'less' is relative to the over bearing quality of these feelings)

As much a medication has clearly helped me, I don't think i'd be where I am if I didn't have the support from my friends and family, and most importantly myself. For me personally, being aware and acknowledging depression as a biological thing, helped me to treat it as such, and push through. Did I need a lonnnng while to spend my days doing little more than breathing? Did I also spend those days feeling horrible in every way? Yes and yes. But this depression was shorter and different then other periods of depression I've felt, and I think its because I knew why I was feeling down and useless and hopeless and agitated and indescribably tired. It was the knowing that enabled me to avoid falling deeper and deeper-- I knew the cause of my symptoms and could change my way of thinking to offset them. 

This isn't me saying I'm some sort of professional at dealing with this disorder. Nobody is professional at anything really, theres always more you can learn. In my case, the learning to be done is how to cope... and this learning will be done over the course of my entire life.

So today is DAY 1 back at school; being on campus; living with my roommates; getting my classes in order. And it feels good. Really good. I don't expect that the next few months of my life are going to feel like this, I know school is going to be more stressful and harder for me than usual, I know that avoiding the partying involved in university life is going to be tricky, AND I also know that a few weeks in, I may realize that I'm not ready to be back at school, and return home. The idea of not being able to finish the semester sucks, theres no way around it, but I'm already proud of myself just for trying, and even having a few weeks of being more social and busy will help me to keep that going if I end up back at home.

TODAY:  I woke up. I went to the gym. I booked appointments. I tackled some online banking. I planned a daily/weekly schedule. I'm writing this post. & the day is only half over.

I accept that somedays, the waking up is as far as i'll get.

But I don't accept that most days waking up is as good as it gets. I want more than to just "get by".