Samantha is a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. She stands at the podium of a support group meeting for people with bipolar disorder. This is her first time at a meeting and her first time speaking. She tells her story of unexplained highs and lows and a rage that she couldn’t understand. Finally, her senior year in high school her teacher recognized the signs and assisted to get her help. By this time she had lost her relationship with her parents, friends and her best friend her sister Vanessa. She tells of the great relationship she had with her sister and what it has turned into. Two sisters living in the same house going to the same school who didn’t even speak to one another or recognize the other’s existence of that she was indeed her sister. In the end Samantha wraps up her first share with the group by saying that she is glad that she is there, excited to support them and their stories as they have done for her and with the hope that one day she will come the meeting with her sister Vanessa in the audience supporting her. But until that moment she will work on making herself better. A beautiful story of a girl in trouble who didn’t know how to get help because she didn’t know what was wrong. A diagnoses that changed her life and saved it at the same time.
PR- Diagnoses
Hello, my name is Samantha. My family and friends call me Sam which is a funny thing to say because I honestly don’t have a close relationship with most of my family and I could probably count on one hand the number of friends that I have. My doctor says that this kind of disconnect from people that should be the closest to me is a part of my disorder. I told my doctor that I will try to do better. That’s a big part of why I’m here, he told me that if I got more comfortable possibly speaking to strangers that I would be more inclined, open to the idea of attempting to retake control of the rest of the relationships in my life that I have lost. When I say the word lost I think about myself driving down the highway at two o’clock in the morning and my phone dies which means that I have no GPS and whether I turn right or left at the next stoplight doesn’t really mean anything because I don’t know where the hell I am anyway. Lost has a completely different meaning to me now than it did back then. My mind is lost right now. Every stop sign or green light or red light, yellow light every yield sign and train crossing I look left and then I look right just hoping to find me. My name is Samantha and like all of you I am suffering from, excuse me, my name is Sam and I am living with bipolar disorder.