Oh, cyclothymia. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Easier to put up with than pronounce (It’s ’sigh-cluh-thigh-me-uh’, folks). It’s mild bipolar. Consisting of dysthymia – mild depression – and hypomania – mild mania. Sounds like a total walk in the park.

Cyclothymia is probably what people think of when they think of ‘good’ bipolar disorder. Mood swings. Temperamental. Creative. Quirky. A bit grumpy sometimes.

So why, in reality, is it so perpetually shit?

Mild. It sounds like a sneer, doesn’t it? “Oh, you have a mild psychiatric condition? Then why on earth are you complaining? I expect it’s rather fun, isn’t it? It’s not like it’s a problem.“

I don’t know if it’s because the word ‘mild’ is used so many times when describing this condition, which makes light of it, or if it’s because I’ve only been diagnosed with it because I underplay my symptoms, but I assure you that nothing about this illness is mild.

I know that people have it worse than me. A lot worse. And trust me, I’m thankful that I don’t have to go through what they’re going through. I’m in no way trying to suggest that my illness is the worst possible thing ever and that everybody else is having an easy time of it.

I suppose it’s like going to a country that’s just had an earthquake of 5 on the Richter scale, and telling them to count their blessings because some other country just had one of 8. It’s meaningless. If your life’s been destroyed, thinking about how other people’s lives have been destroyed more, or more severely doesn’t help at all.

The only scale of comparison I have is my own experience.

And believe me, I’ve experienced mild mood swings.

I’d say that most of my life from my earliest memories until I turned 18 was spent in a mild swing one way or the other. More extreme than other people’s moods, but I was certainly still functioning. They became more obvious at high school (when I was 11-16), and again at college (16-18), but they were always there.

I would go weeks or months being the life and soul of the party. The centre of attention. Being cheeky to my teachers, correcting their spelling in front of the whole class. Making people laugh, all the time. There’s a path between the college I went to and the main road, and I spent weeks, every day, skipping down it, singing. I was loud, I was quick-witted, I was happy. I sat on a stool in the middle of the social area and pretended to be rowing a boat, just because the idea of it made me laugh. I was funny, I was sarcastic. I was faster, sharper, smarter than anybody.

Then, I’d go weeks or months being withdrawn. Falling out with people because I was too sensitive to their comments. Sitting in corners pretending to read. Quiet, meek. Almost invisible. If I’d had a particularly bad day I would go home and cry, and sometimes, vaguely, think about suicide, although I never planned to do it. I stopped speaking when I didn’t need to. I didn’t seek people out anymore. Every few weeks, I’d fake an illness to get me a few days off school or college.

So, you see, I’m no stranger to mood swings. I’m no stranger to mild.

But this…this is destroying my life. This is destroying who I am.

Now, I have a few days of high mood. Hardly sleeping, hardly even stopping to think. Going out. Talking too quickly. Laughing too loudly and for too long. Making strange associations between things. In a good high mood, I am magnetic. I talk and people listen. I dance around, I talk nonsense, I hardly even know what I’m doing. In a bad high mood, I am angry, irritable. Paranoid, sometimes. Frightened.

Then I have a few days of depression. Proper, debilitating depression. I stop eating, I stop washing, I stop dressing. I stop leaving my room if I can help it. I cry and cry, or I stare at the wall. I think about suicide non-stop. I unplug my phone, I turn my mobile off. I lock my door and pretend I don’t exist.

It’s not dramatic. It’s hardly even interesting. Most of the time, I can pass for reasonably sane. Eccentric, yes, but sane.

But I don’t know how much longer I can cope with it.