Learning to Rise Again

I’ve been struggling to wake up in the mornings. This has been going on for a while now. At first, I couldn’t sleep at all. When I was first medicated for my bipolar disorder, I started on Abilify. At first, it felt like progress, but after a couple of weeks, I hit a week-long stretch of paranoid insomnia. Looking back, I think that might have been a mixed episode—one of those confusing and exhausting overlaps where mania and depression tangle together.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was coming down from a long manic episode, heading straight into a deep depression. It was like free-falling into darkness, and I didn’t know where I’d land. Eventually, I ended up in the hospital—more than once—and went through med changes that felt like a slow crawl toward stability.

Now, I feel like I’m clawing my way out of depression and into something resembling balance. Part of that has been reintroducing running into my daily life. Running has always been my reset button, but being a dad with a job means I need to get up early to fit it in. That’s where the real challenge comes in.

Even though I go to bed as early as possible and don’t drink anymore, it still feels like I wake up hungover. It’s getting better, but I want to wake up earlier, to feel like I’m ready to start the day. Why can’t I just roll out of bed? Why can’t I sit up and ease into it, instead of feeling like I’ve spent the last decade waking up in quicksand?

My body seems stuck in a loop, holding onto the feeling of waking up miserable, even though there’s no reason I should feel that way now. Maybe it’s a habit. Maybe it’s my brain resisting change. Either way, it’s frustrating.

In future posts, I’ll dig deeper into some of these topics—meds, sobriety, mania, hospitalizations, and the long climb toward stability. For now, I’ll sit here with my coffee, wishing it was an hour earlier and hoping tomorrow feels just a little easier.