My friends are all hurting right now.  Deeply.  They each have had death touch them lately and they are hurt and scared and sad.  You know how it is – bad things happen in people’s lives.  This time is it happening to many of my friends all at once.

Having bipolar means that I count on my friends to be my support network.  What happens when my support network is off struggling with their own problems and I can’t go to them?  In this case I actually need to be there for them.  How do I do that when my bipolar is flared up?  I mean it is winter after all.  And of course there are always great pressures on me and my life.

So my friends need me right now and I am busy wondering if they even want my help.  I get so anxious when I hear about their pain.  And one of them didn’t call and tell me what was going on, and although I thought we were really close now I am starting to think that we aren’t.  Other people knew way before I did, and I only found out because I called.

So then I think, well maybe this is just bipolar paranoia?  But I can’t really know because I can’t ask my friends, because they are off grieving their losses.  And how tacky of me to make it about me.

I hate having bipolar.  I hate how much I doubt myself.  I hate how upset I get when there is a news story on TV about someone getting hurt, or I hear that something has happened in my friends’ lives to hurt them.  I believe that I should be able to simply sympathise.  Not get so anxious that I can hardly breathe.

It’s the anxiety that is killing me the most right now.  It seems to be taking over.  I wake up somewhat anxious and then I turn on the computer, or answer the phone, or get the mail and I see/hear the bad news and I get so rilled up.  I become a wreck.

Do my friends love me?  Do they want to be available to me?  Are they comforted when I am there for them?  Or am I just in the way?  Am I just someone that is a lot of work, a drain on them emotionally?  I need them is the thing.  I need them to love me or I don’t feel complete.  How awful that sounds, saying it out loud, but for now it is the truth.

So today I am a wreck I guess.