This one may be frighteningly honest

This is something I need to think about, and here is as good a place as any. I find I like thinking here. Somehow I like knowing that nobody I know sees these thoughts, even though I often share them with friends anyway.

Today my psychologist told me that his goal for me is that ultimately I'll be able to manage independently. I didn't clarify how independent he meant; I doubt he meant without constant participation in therapy and obviously I am not ever going to be independent of meds. But this simple thing really hit hard.

I used to think I could manage. I thought I managed without help much of the time and that I managed my bipolar myself. I thought I was so good at that. Then last winter and spring it because so clear that this wasn't true. I wasn't managing, I was holding myself together by a thread.

Then I had to go through the stage of turning everything over to my doctors. That idea was so hard. It's been odd knowing that I would have easily let either of them influence my decision to change jobs; had they said to wait I would have. Yet that was a good decision.

But if I'm truthful, I don't know that I want to move on from where I am now. I'm making decisions but having a lot of support. I feel safe and protected from myself and my own very bad decisions. It's also restful when it has been so very hard to do anything.

Yet this goes so far against how I've always perceived myself. I always thought I was so independent, so brave. Of course I want to manage myself. I'm just scared silly to think of it now, and it scares me even more that the idea scares me.

This last year has changed me in so many ways, and in degrees I cannot begin to understand. And that is the scariest part of all.