Just saw it. The beginning where Mark Watney gets left on Mars, horrifying! Have I been left behind on Mars? The feeling of watching this man realize he is alone on a planet millions of miles away from Earth, how was that so familiar? Of course, it is the same feeling I have felt when I am in the throes of a manic or severely depressed episode! Abandoned in a desert, no help in sight. Quite sucks your breath out of your lungs. Yes, being left alone on Mars is very much akin to bipolar disorder (BPD). Surviving it requires intelligence, ingenuity, persistence, luck, and eventually help from the outside.

I was watching Matt Damon, playing Mark Watney, and I was so in tune with what he must be feeling. Alone, abandoned, injured, yet he had his wits about him and he survived. That is what we, who have BPD, need. But, awfully enough, bipolar takes our mind/brain/wits from us as well. But we survive, just with the thinking we have left, we survive. The thing to do is to never let it get so far that you cannot think logically or real-ly. With BPD, prevention is worth its weight in gold.

That is what life with bipolar d/o is like, like being abandoned on Mars. it’s that difficult, when you are in an episode, it is just that difficult. It takes superhuman strength to survive. So I congratulate all of us who suffer from this nasty disease and who have survived its ravaging effects over and over again!