How I Survived College As Someone With Bipolar Disorder

Hi, I'm Maya, and I'm bipolar (this is the part where you say hiiiiii, maya).

My mom isn't going to love this post. God, I don't think I'm going to love it very much either. But, this whole thing is part of me, and it's probably part of you, too.

College is difficult for everyone. It's a period of time where you're expected to plunge into adulthood while also trying to savor the last moments of your youth. I spent the first few years of college drowning my organs in alcohol and nicotine. The delightful warmth that spread throughout my body when I'd take a shot of tequila was a green-light for me to exhale and be myself... even when "myself" was deeply, deeply depressed.

I started drinking because when I was 16, I was hanging out with a group of friends and one of the girls in the group got drunk. She was gigglier, funnier, more talkative, and one of the guys we were with happily exclaimed that he liked "Drunk XXX" (keeping her name anonymous). That sentence sparked something inside me that realized if I got drunk enough, or faked getting drunk enough, I could just be myself and blame it on alcohol. Soon, people really started to like Drunk Maya.

Did you know alcohol is a downer? That's one of the fun facts you learn when you wake up the next morning with an awful hangover and a pit in your stomach and storm clouds above your head. It was easy to deal with the depression when I was 20 during my second year of college, staying inside was the norm during the pandemic. Staying in bed for days went unnoticed, I managed to keep a lively online presence when it felt like my mental health was crumbling.

The delightful warmth that spread throughout my body when I'd take a shot of tequila was a green-light for me to exhale and be myself... even when "myself" was deeply, deeply depressed.

People in my life realized something was wrong when I'd drink myself into oblivion. I got so drunk on New Years 2021 that I spent the entire night hugging the porcelain throne, sobbing and dumping all my pain on anyone who would listen. It was one of the scariest nights of my life, knowing that I was putting poison in my body because the pain of being alive was too much to bear. After that night, my best friend at the time returned to Davis, looked me in the eyes, and told me five words that changed my life: "You need to get help."

I'm not going to bore you with the details of my medication journey. I started with antidepressants, got misdiagnosed with depression, then tried to get on stimulants, got misdiagnosed with ADHD, and eventually we got here, with a definitive diagnosis: Bipolar Disorder. Scary, huh? The class of medication I am on are antipsychotics, which is funny when you don't think about it too much. I remember when my psychiatrist first prescribed them, I immediately started crying. "I'm not psychotic," I told her. She reassured me that that was just the name of the class of drugs, not my diagnosis. No, I was just bipolar, and that's not something to be ashamed of.

It was one of the scariest nights of my life, knowing that I was putting poison in my body because the pain of being alive was too much to bear.

My first encounter with bipolar disorder was with Erin Silver in 90210, a show I watched when I was 14. Silver got diagnosed in the very first season when she flew off the handle and filmed a sex tape and distributed it to everyone in her high school as some proclamation of her love for Dixon. Watching those episodes and seeing Silver fall apart was something I couldn't relate to at the time, I just agreed with the rest of the characters when they called her crazy and worried about her.

Bipolar disorder never really crossed my mind after that. I spent most of high school knowing there was something fundamentally wrong with the way my brain handled emotions, but the hard work that goes into really getting a diagnosis and getting help was a burden I didn't need to add to my plate when I was already struggling enough in high school. My freshman year was proof that people noticed I was kind of a wreck, I remember getting called into the guidance counselor's office quite a few times because I had broken down in the middle of the commons.

Emotions with me were never steady. I was either psyched, elated, glowing or depressed, dark, broken. The pendulum swung back and forth at a moment's notice. I could come to school so unbelievably depressed that I wouldn't talk to anyone because the lump in my throat genuinely hurt. And, sometimes, I'd come to school unable to contain myself. I would crack jokes incessantly and I could not stop talking for the life of me. Usually, these days would end abruptly when someone commented on how annoying I was being, and the pendulum would swing all the way back to depressed.

My first encounter with bipolar disorder was with Erin Silver in 90210, a show I watched when I was 14.

I didn't know this was a problem. I thought everyone experienced the world like me, but they were just better at staying levelheaded. You mean me spending six months crying about a breakup with a guy I dated for a month isn't totally normal? It's realizations like that that forced me to take action and really, really figure out how to manage the strong emotions that defined me and my college experience.

God, the work was exhausting. I was putting my faith into complete strangers to medicate me and stabilize my moods with mood stabilizers (hey, that's probably why they're called mood stabilizers!). Having a stable mood felt like a pipe dream, stability was so foreign to me. I thought for a while that the positive effect these pills had on me was just due to the placebo effect and that it would wear off soon enough.

But, it never wore off.

This is the part where I tell you how I survived college. This is my last story before I actually give you the advice, I promise.

I love writing, as you can probably tell. My ability to write poetry is my strongest talent, and if my poetry is garbage, then I guess I need to find a new passion. So, when I got close to finishing my career at UC Davis, I started to wonder what was next for me. I was graduating with a Bachelor's of Science in Global Disease Biology and I knew that my future career was in writing, not public health. I decided to apply to graduate school and get my master's in Creative Writing. The manic excitement that followed that decision was unbelievable. I spent days rereading my writing sample, emailing my recommenders, editing my application. It was all I cared about in the world.

And then, I got rejected. All three schools rejected me, one by one, in the span of two days.

My world fell apart. I felt broken and lost in a way I never had before, and it was truly terrifying. I spent hours, days, weeks locked in my room sobbing so loudly, my entire house could hear me (the walls in our house were very thin). My best friend came over a few times to hold me and listen to me cry, something incredibly foreign to me; I am not touchy and the only person I let hold me is my mom.

Having a stable mood felt like a pipe dream, stability was so foreign to me. I thought for a while that the positive effect these pills had on me was just due to the placebo effect and that it would wear off soon enough. But, it never wore off.

For those weeks, I felt like all the work I put into getting my life together, all my progress, was for nothing. I was depressed in a way I had never been before. I couldn't wake up in the morning without feeling the burden of dread, of failure. I felt like I was losing the best years of my life to the monster that is bipolar disorder.

Then, I woke up one morning, and it felt a little better.

So, here is the part where I tell you how I started to feel better.

I am blessed to have the people in my life. They all played such an incredible part in my healing journey. Find your people. Hold them close. Let them in.

Find an outlet. For me, it was my poetry. For you, it could be music, exercise, drawing, painting, whatever stops your boat from sinking.

Remind yourself that nothing is permanent. Your good moods and bad moods will ebb and flow. Be kind to yourself regardless.

I'm not going to say some cheesy bull that "bipolar disorder doesn't have to define us," because it is something that defines me. The way I feel things and experience life is an incredibly important part of my identity and there's no reason I have to be ashamed of that. Life is not perfect, we are not perfect. Sometimes, your life has to shatter so you can put the pieces back together and make something beautiful.

Find your people. Hold them close. Let them in.

Dear reader, you deserve to be happy. You deserve to find stability. Learn to not only survive, but to live.

Love always,

Maya