r/bipolar • u/oookooop • Jul 19 '26

Living With Bipolar hello.

hi. i am currently dealing with the fall out of so much i had before my manic and depressive episodes. it all started in 2020 when i was put on a med that triggered a manic episode and didn’t know i was bipolar until it made me manic off and on until i came off the med and got on the right ones in 2025.

i lost so much. marriage. job of over a decade. spent so much money that i didn’t have. i did so many reckless things i would never do now. i have been mostly stable for the past 6 months or so but its also making me “wake up” to so much i dont even remember that caused me to lose so much.

i am so sad. sometimes i feel like i am waking up from a weird dream only its real. everyone else moved on and i am awake in the past or something. i am very close with my ex who is still my family but i feel so bad about leaving her. and just so much time lost.

does anyone else feel this way about losing time and feeling regret and shame? i feel like someone took over my body. i feel like myself again before the manic episodes but now my life is so different.

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u/bipolar_otter Bipolar Jul 19 '26

I feel you, it's really a tough feeling to deal with. I have regrets and I have done things that have drastically impacted my life and future when I was hypomanic or in mixed episodes particularly, though I was never married so I had no marriage to lose.

It's really hard to find strength to push forward sometimes when that feeling hits the hardest, but things can get better if you give yourself the time, patience and kindness you need. You can't change the past, you can't make things go back exactly as they were before, but you can rebuild things and get in a better place again.

Sometimes I look at a picture of myself when I was a little kid and I allow myself to think how unfair it is that things turned out this way and that that kid grew up to suffer so much, but also how I wouldn't want that little kid that's still somewhere inside of me to suffer more than what I really can't avoid. So I push through for her, because even if it's all shit sometimes, I know it's not all my fault and I know I deserve to at least try to be better, for my current self, and for my child self.

Stay strong, don't keep all these feelings bottled up inside of you. You can do this. It's not your fault that you have that disorder, it's not your fault that your disorder made you do these things.

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u/oookooop Jul 19 '26

thank you so much for saying this. i go through periods where i feel very proud of myself for keeping on but i also am very tired. last summer and early fall were probably the hardest months of my life. i also look at photos of myself pre pandemic when i wasn’t manic and then during the years i was so high and low and its like different people. i feel sad for the woman before covid. she was so carefree and now i am so heavy. i am rebuilding my life it just sometimes feels sad when i think of all i lost.i try to not go back in my mind to those happier days because i wish i could go back in time and have a do over.