Bipolar and Me: Triggers, Rules, and Trusting Yourself

Loneliness seems to trigger it. Or maybe it's silence. I tend to have something on in the background. Music, the TV. While I don't consider myself an extremely social person (I have maybe a total of 4 close friends), I do like to be around people. Especially when my mind starts trying to turn on me and become something it's not. When the thoughts start racing in, or when the thoughts disappear completely. Maybe I'm afraid of myself, or at least a part of myself. The part that I've lived with all my life and that I'll always have to keep me company. The medicines keep it quiet for the most part. But certain things, certain places, certain foods will make it louder. You see there are rules you start living by when you have bipolar disorder. You don't drink caffeine, you don't eat too much sugar, you don't stay up too late, and you never stay up all night to name a few. Bipolar takes away that ability called trusting your gut, your instinct, yourself. You second guess almost every thought, afraid that's the mania or depression talking. You go out grocery shopping and realize you are buying things you don't need, racking up a higher bill than usual, and you begin to wonder: Is the mania creeping back in? Am I losing my rational sense again? Am I about to start losing it? And in the panic will creep, while meanwhile there are 3 people in line behind you waiting, as you almost freeze at the cash register. That's the thing that it's taken years for me to get back. The ability to trust myself, my decisions. To be able to tell myself that not everything I think or do is influenced by the fact that I'm living with bipolar disorder.