I Was Basically a Giraffe

A little truth about labels: Keys, cages, and the giraffe I would have rather been.

I don’t remember the exact moment someone labeled me “bipolar.”
I was so deep in psychosis they could’ve told me I was a giraffe, and I would’ve nodded politely and asked for leaves.

That’s how far gone I was … reality was optional, and consent was… let’s call it “flexible.”

For a long time, the bipolar label meant nothing to me.
I didn’t understand it, didn’t want it, and definitely didn’t accept it.

I refused help. I refused medication. I refused even to consider that maybe, just maybe, the doctors weren’t part of some cosmic misunderstanding.

So, acceptance for me didn’t come in one dramatic moment.
It wasn’t like a movie scene where I suddenly “saw the light.”
It was slow.
Messy.
Uncomfortable.

I had to accept my symptoms one at a time …. like picking up puzzle pieces I’d been kicking under the couch for years.

First, I had to admit that the highs weren’t “quirky personality traits.”
Then I had to acknowledge the lows weren’t “just a bad week.”
I had to face the hospitalizations, the spirals, the chaos I kept trying to outrun.

Because reality has a way of tapping you on the shoulder.
And when you ignore it, it upgrades to a slap.
And when you ignore that, it sends you to the ICU.

After more than a few rock bottoms … and being diagnosed by at least three separate doctors who, unfortunately, did not coordinate their stories …

I had to finally consider the possibility that they were all seeing something I couldn’t yet bear to look at.

The realization didn’t arrive gently.
It arrived like a slow dawn … light creeping in under the door until I couldn’t pretend it was dark anymore.

But here’s the twist no one tells you about:
Once I accepted the diagnosis … piece by piece, symptom by symptom … doors opened.

Suddenly, I had access to help I didn’t even know existed.
Medication that actually worked.
Doctors and therapists who understood the terrain of my brain.
Support that was tailored to the thing I had spent years running from.

Labels can do that … they can unlock entire worlds.

But labels can also hurt.
They can make people look at you differently.
Talk to you differently.
Or disappear altogether because your label scares them more than your reality ever did.

Labels do have power… but only if we hand it to them.

That’s the part I had to learn the hard way:
A label is yours.
You get to decide what it means.
You get to determine whether it cages you or frees you.
A label is only a key… your key… and you choose which door it opens.