Trying to understand how I function has been a long hard process.

Being so deeply hurt and betrayed in many different yet pivotal moments in my life has created a life distorted by illness that I have to fight every day.

What is my human impulse of fight or fight? I want to do both I feel a need to fight every minute of every day to make it through to those small moments of clear thinking and feeling safe and secure form the bipolar demons. 

My need for flight is considerable. I often want to pack and run as I have been doing since I was 13 years old. When I couldn’t understand what was happening, what the emotions I was feeling meant, what the adrenaline was doing to my body. Running was the easiest way to push the madness aside. Trying to stay a foot ahead of the darkness that can consume me when I am feeling strong. The constant running from the words that were said to me in anger and frustration. Running from the despair and the lost endurance once had before the wretched assholes preyed on my innocence. The need for flight has become ingrained into my person, it is just a part of who I am now and who I have been for such a long time.

I fight for my children. I want them to have everything they would ever need or want. I cannot give them the stable parent they deserve, but I will give them every part I have left, broken and bent they have me in their corner with fists up ready to take the world on to protect them. 

It is hard to imagine the lengths I would honestly go to for my children but the one thing that I cannot protect them from is what I become when my illness shows up to take advantage of my happiness. What scares me the most is that they would fight for me, to save me from myself, to bring me back from the depths of my depression.  And if they do, they could lose themselves in the process and it would be my doing.   I could be their downfall. I could be their reason for flight, for them to run from the mentally ill mother they have. I may become the dark secret they may want to keep.

I am a fighter, I am still here today because I want to live. The demons can try and try again, I know they will always be waiting for that small window to take me with them.  

I know that the Flight or Fight response is an integral part of who I am, it doesn’t make it easier or harder.  I don’t actually know how I will react to any given situation