I have been fooling myself. Even though I write a blog about bipolar, read memoirs about bipolar, take my medicine daily, I still sometimes question if I have bipolar all that much. What does that even mean? I think I’m not as bad off as other people. I have recently come across the concept that bipolar is on a continuum, and some people can have milder symptoms, but they still have it. I still have it.

I still have to be vigilant in my observation of my moods, my sleeping patterns, my activity level, my socialization, my navigation of life events. I still have breakthrough symptoms, and while I wasn’t dancing on the tables with thoughts of stripping, I was twirling around the living room, singing and pretending to play guitar. I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t tired, I was happy. Too happy? Stay tuned!

Recently I was looking through my blog for a song I had posted, and I ended up reading through several of my posts. I was viewing my words at a distance, from another perspective, and to me it was quite clear that this person is bipolar! She’s doing well now, but there were hallucinations, suicidal ideations, and depressed reverberations. There was too much money spent, rambling words to vent, private messages sent. I’m not so very different from the people I read about, maybe just a little. My thoughts are similar, my actions are more cautious. As I read I thought, they are more extreme than me, but I also observed that things can change quickly and you need a plan to manage that. Something you share with loved ones if crisis should hit. You have to be ready to hit back hard.

I have a book around here somewhere that talks about such a plan. It has a template. Probably Taking Charge of Bipolar, by Julie Fast and John Preston. You wait here, I’ll go look.

Here it is, Chapter 8: Teaching Family, Partners, and Friends How to Help You Stay Stable. Chapter 9: Hospitals. Actually, the whole book is just filled with rock solid helpful hints.

So often in my last paragraph of my blog post I state something that I’m going to do to be better. There were many times I never even did those things. I could go back and make a list of all those improvements now forgotten, and tackle them one by one. There I go again. Maybe I will actually do it, now that I’m taking a short break from reading my summer away.