Alarmed, Used, Hurt, Angry, Confused

Last Thursday I got a short message from an old friend who has bipolar. It simply asked what I thought of her new blog and included the URL. That’s it. When I saw the Web address, I didn’t think it was right, so I checked it out and sure enough, this person started a blog called “Bipolar Bloggo,” which is the exact same title as the bipolar blog that I started years ago, whose posts are now incorporated into this blog (though mine, like bloggo chicago, has no caps). I was alarmed by the blog’s title, called my friend, explained that I once had a blog by the same name, and asked her to change both the title and the URL of her blog. She agreed, promised to do so later that night, and did.

There was only one post on this other blog that said the narrator had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and, as might be expected, was shocked and angry. Except that I’ve known this person for almost 10 years, which is why I used the word “narrator,” because as far as I knew, my friend also has bipolar or at least depression because of how we met.

My friend hasn’t lived in Chicago for years, and even while she was here, she and I lost touch. We’re both writers and when we were close she was always supportive of both my writing and my well-being. As you can imagine, I was concerned about her well-being considering what I’d read on the blog, and asked if she was OK, if she wanted to talk, and so on. I asked about her diagnosis and that’s when the conversation began to, well, get strange.

I continued to reach out to her by replying to her original message after she took down the blog. I’m not going to go into all of the details, but her story kept changing and contradicting itself, and more and more I felt like I was being lied to. I hadn’t heard from her in months, and then all of a sudden I received the initial message with no background context.

Although I don’t own the word “bloggo” the way George Lucas owns the rights to the word “droid” (seriously), I’d rather not have anything regarding bipolar disorder associated with “bloggo.” I don’t want my own thoughts and experiences on the subject to be confused with someone else’s, so I may write a disclaimer of some sort in the sidebar.

There are several issues going on here, and I’ve already hashed them out with Brian, a few friends, and my therapist several times over the past few days. Still, I feel confused as to why she contacted me out of the clear blue sky with that particular message, and then kept changing her story. I felt used, hurt, and angry. However, I’m through trying to figure it out because I refuse to obsess about it. As my friends pointed out to me, I have enough going on that I don’t need to worry about this, too. But I just had to get it out there.