Hi, and welcome to the first episode of my new podcast, The Journey Never Ends.

Today, I'm just gonna chat a little bit and tell you a little bit about myself.

I'm 36 years old, I live in Magnolia, Texas.

In 2009,

I was diagnosed with bipolar one disorder,

which for those of you that do not know,

it is a mood disorder that causes

disability can cause hallucinations,

psychosis,

and can be very difficult to diagnose and to treat.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about my perspective on why the journey never ends.

And it all started when I did get diagnosed in 2009 and

I had a very severe manic episode with hallucinations, delusions, you name it, the works.

And after I was diagnosed and hospitalized,

a lot of other things went poorly in my life as well.

I was broken up with, I had to take semester off school, a lot of other things.

So I got really down in the dumps, but I

Bipolar depression, it's not down in the dumps, it's down in the mantle of the Earth's crust.

And so I stayed there for a while and I started journaling.

I have about 15 journals now,

but I started journaling and at the time I just wanted to make a quote.

I was like really depressed and I wanted limited words to express the deep emotion

that was going through me.

And I came up with a quote and I came up with this quote after feeling the most

deep sorrow, this void of hope.

And this quote that I journaled got me out of this hole.

It gave me hope.

And the quote is, “life is the unsuccessful organization of chaos”.

In other words,

We already failed.

It's unsuccessful.

You know,

you look at chaos as entropy and chemistry,

you will see that we are all trying to just decompose.

We are just trying to have chaos in life on an on on like an atom level, molecular level.

But we still live life.

It's okay.

We already failed.

It's unsuccessful.

This is life.

Life is a failure.

And we're all in here together.

It sounds a little morbid,

but that was actually really hopeful for me at the time,

just to give you a little bit of perspective.

And that kept my journey going, to be quite frank.

But my journey for the next couple of years was an interesting one.

It was one of survival.

It was one where I could not see the future.

I thought I was going to die when I was 30.

I didn't try to kill myself, but I just assumed that this existence was just going to end.

I had no aspirations for the future.

I was in survival mode for a while, for many years.

And then I turned 30 and I decided to pledge to myself, make a pledge for life.

I pledged that I would not self-destruct.

I pledged that I would not self-destruct, not just for me, but for those people who

that love me, for those people that believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself.

So when I wrote this pledge,

when I turned 30,

when I was in complete awe of the fact that I was still alive,

I realized that my journey will never end.

And that concept is because I will persevere through everything.

I mean, and then I'll die naturally in my bed with my dog next to me or something like that.

I mean, ideally.

But all I know is that I will not end my journey.

And I hope that any person that is listening to this right now that struggles with

suicidal ideation or has a family member or a loved one

that has committed suicide or has had issues with suicidal ideation, I send my prayers to you.

Suicidal ideation is no joke.

I don't think there's anything worse than experiencing the void of hope that takes

you into the tunnel of suicidal ideation.

And I highlight this for people that can't comprehend suicidal ideation.

I guess those neurotypical people they call them nowadays.

I just try to put people in their perspective.

Imagine feeling so much emotional pain.

And I believe that emotional pain is pain.

That the only thing you think that's going to make it better is to self-destruct.

That is wild.

That is, that is some pain you're going through.

And so again, if anyone's going through that, just please hear me out.

Make a pledge, a pledge to life.

You can persevere through any obstacle.

I promise you.

I made a pledge to life and I realized that my journey will never end.

And that's how I live my life every day,

knowing that I must persevere because I pledged to persevere.

I also wanted to highlight a little fun fact about bipolar disorder.

It's not really fun.

Actually, that's completely not fun, is that 20% of people with bipolar disorder

kill themselves.

So that's a pretty high rate.

I just thought you should know about that.

In addition, 2.3 to 2.5% of Americans are bipolar.

So if you think that bipolar doesn't affect you, I guarantee it does.

Maybe it's your aunt.

Maybe it's you.

Maybe it's your husband.

Maybe it's your coworker.

Maybe it's the person.

Maybe it's your neighbor.

You know, who knows?

But I'm telling you that mental illness affects every single person.

And every person can learn something from someone that is mentally ill.

Because we...

We've been through it.

And I hope that I'm that mentally ill person that can help you through what you're

going through.

I mean,

that's really the concept that I'm trying to do with my podcast is in a sense,

suicide prevention,

obviously very passionate about that,

but then also just perspective on life,

perseverance,

getting through obstacles,

spreading mental health awareness,

mental illness,

And maybe having a little fun while we do it.

So this is today's episode.

It's my first episode.

I hope you liked it.

I really appreciate you listening.

We'll be in touch soon.

Much love.

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