Here it comes.

Sometimes I am totally caught off guard as to when I'm in for a huge mood shift. I wake up one morning and have an incredible amount of energy, or I come home from a great day at school and I am suddenly drained. But what is even worse than that is when I DO see them coming. When I'm having a great day, a great week actually, and I just know that the next morning I'm not going to want to wake up. Sometimes I know because I get dizzy, my head hurts, and I occassionally get nausious. Sometimes I can just feel it. Its hard to explain but I trust me I just know sometimes.

That is happening... like right now :). I figure this is a good time to write about it since I'm actually experiencing it and usually when things like this happen I don't have the energy to write about it. What is scariest in times like these is the fear. I am afraid that people are going to get frustrated with me because I'm about to become a lot less pleasant. I'm afraid I'll get behind in classes. I'm afraid of feeling trapped and hopeless.

I was just reading a book called MANIC. It is the story of a very successful, good looking, bipolar lawyer. Her story is absolutely inspirational and I reccomend that anyone hoping to understand the mind of a bipolar person read this book. Its by Terri Cheny. I was looking through the book and my mom (who reccomneded the book to me) had written one of Terri's quotes and put it in the front of the book. The quote says "without the darkness, how can we ever hope to understand the light?" Thank you for writing that down mom.

I'll get through the darkness. I know how. I get better and better at it every day. And I'm lucky because I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There will always be light, that is one of the beauties of being bipolar, no matter how awful I feel at one moment....there is a chance I'll be on top of the world the next.