between two worlds

Last year, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed much later in adulthood. Suddenly, it all made sense. There was an explanation for the years I had mistaken for failure.

I never knew which thoughts were mine and which belonged to the illness. It took years before my life stopped looking like failure and started looking like a diagnosis.

I have to grieve the fact that there are things that were never meant for me from the start. That sheer willpower often backfires. And that I may spend my life moving between two opposite worlds, while neither ever truly feels like home.

But the diagnosis didn't ask me to give up. It asked me to stop fighting the wrong battles.