The Week After the Super Bowl

Five years ago, the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XLV (45). It was supposed to be a night of celebration and hoping school would be canceled the next day for the parade. In the coming days, it would be the first time in my life that I would be diagnosed with bi-polar. I spent the concluding moments after the game feeling more overwhelm then I imagined. I came home, threw my computer against the wall, and tore up all my homework assignments, exam prep, and everything that was in reach in my room.

My parents came home to me crying uncontrollably and I awoke on Monday morning not wanting to get out of bed. I didn’t even want to face the day. This was a completely new feeling for me. I spent the next three days in doctor’s offices and seeing specialists about what was going on in my head and in my world.

Truth is, my world had been spinning out of control long before that night the Green Bay Packers won, but I guess the perfect storm aligned that evening and I had to face the grim reality that my life was an absolute mess. I was over-committed, over-booked and over-tired. I had made a mess of my relationships, wasn’t doing well in school, and I hadn’t slept more then five hours for months.

The hardest part was faking the entire process and acting like everything was going great. On the outside I was the student that was always happy, always positive, and always willing to take on something. On the inside I was anxious, nervous, and scared.

Over the next few months, I was put on just about every medication you can name or look up to help treat symptoms of bi-polar. I was numb to the core while doctors had me try different concoctions of these very powerful drugs. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, and I had no energy to do anything during the day. I wanted to curl up in my bed all day and not see a single person.

As I came to the reality that this is what my life had become, I started to learn more about bi-polar and everything you can do each day to help curve the highs and the lows. I started the tough process of beginning to truly take care of myself first, and then help others, second. I quit my part-time job, I resigned from three volunteer board positions, put my friends and family as a top priority, and started sleeping again.

“I started the tough process of beginning to truly take care of myself first, and then help others, second.”

I also opened up to a lot of my friends about what had been happening and what I had been feeling the past few months. I’ve since now become an advocate for mental illness and talk about it more then I could have imagined.

I’m truly glad this all has happened to me because I think it has made me who I am today. I look at bi-polar as an absolute blessing and can be something that helps me most days, and a few moments each months is something that grounds me and makes me look at my life with a microscope.