Too much and then too empty
Living with bipolar depression is like living between two worlds that never seem to meet. One is overflowing, the other is hollow. You don’t get to choose which one you wake up in.
When it’s too much, you’re mind won’t rest. Thoughts move faster than you can keep up with. You talk more, plan more, and dream bigger than you’ve ever dreamed before. You might feel on top of the world, confident, alive, unstoppable. But even joy can become overwhelming when it’s turned up too high. There’s a restless edge to it, like you’re carrying more energy than your body can hold. You start a dozen things at once, and sleep feels like a waste of time. It’s exciting, but it’s also exhausting in ways you don’t notice until later.
Then, without warning, the tide pulls you under. Suddenly, its too empty. The energy is gone, replaced by a heavy stillness. Getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain. Things you cared a bout last week feel meaningless now. It’s not just sadness, it’s a numb, gray fog that swallows everything. You can’t think of the future because even the next hour feels impossible. The contrast is dizzying, you were so alive before, and now you feel like a shadow of yourself.
This swing from too much to too empty can be hard for other people to understand. Friends might think you’re inconsistent, or that you’re “just moody,” not realizing there’s a real medical condition behind it. They see your high energy as excitement and your low energy as laziness, but neither is the full truth. It’s not about choice…its about chemistry, about the way your brain works. Bipolar depression isn’t just a mood change. It’s a shift in the whole way you experience the world. It changes your thoughts, your energy, your ability to feel hope. It can take you from wanting to do everything in one day to not wanting to do anything at all. And that can be exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.
But having bipolar depression doesn’t mean you are hopeless. There are ways to slow down the highs so they don’t burn you out, and ways to lift yourself from the lows so they don’t swallow you whole. Therapy, medication, daily routines, and honest self-checks can help create middle ground. A place that feels steady, even if it’s never perfectly balanced.
If you live with bipolar depression, you’re not weal for feeling too much, and you’re not broken for feeling too empty. You’re carrying something heavy and invisible, and still, you keep going. That’s not failure, that’s resilience. The highs might feel out of control, the lows might feel endless, but every single time you’ve made it through. And that means, even when it doesn’t feel like it, you are stronger than you think.
