I was talking to a friend of mine today over email about the whole bipolar thing. She told me I was pretty brave to have put it all out there for the world to see. It didn't feel brave when I wrote it, but I guess in a way it was.

The stigma surrounding depression is lessening. More people are being diagnosed and getting help and being vocal about it. But bipolar is a whole different beast. And I think there are still a lot of misconceptions about it. Enough that it did take me almost two months to write about it here. Enough that I did hesitate before I told too many people because I didn't want to be looked at differently. I didn't want to be the "crazy lady."

And I think that's the biggest misconception: that bipolar = crazy. While I haven't done too much research on bipolar, I have read enough to know there are different types of bipolar and naturally people are affected differently by the symptoms of bipolar.

I seem to fit into the manic/depressive category. I think a lot of people hear "manic depression" and think "crazy," but that's not the case. Essentially what "manic" means is that your brain is in a heightened state of activity. So some people who are in a manic state are in a super good mood, feel like they can take over the world, do tasks with greater speed, etc. And then they essentially crash, which is the depressive part of bipolar.

For me, I've been able to tell lately when I seem to be in a manic state because my brain seems to be going 1 million miles a minute. I feel like I want to do every chore on my list, I have tons of ideas, I feel like I need a recorder in my brain to take notes of all the things I'm thinking about, and ohmygosh I'm absolutely in love with everyone!

I certainly get a lot done during those times, but the trade offf is the crash, which can be triggered by something fairly inconsequential or nothing. (Like the other day when I told The Mr. that I wanted to upgrade our desks in our home office and he pointed out that we had other bills to pay first. He was right, but it set me off. Shit like that is hard to deal with.) I can tell when I'm in or headed for a depressive state when every little thing the kids do gives me a knot in my stomach and I want to scream.

The part that's pretty scary right now is that I don't understand why this seems to be happening so fast. Looking back I think it's clear that I had signs of this a decade ago. And thinking about SBD's comment that antidepressants in people with bipolar can actually cause those roller coaster moods. But it still seems like my wild mood swings are wilder and more frequent.

I guess that because I've been working on finding the right medicine in the righ dosage for more than a year now that my body is finally giving me signals that what I was doing just plain wasn't working. And, frankly, if it weren't for SBD telling me she thought I was bipolar I would probably just have continued to assume the antidepressants weren't working or that this was just part of my personality.

So I still have a lot of work to do, and a lot of research to read up on but I'm confident that I'll come out on top. And not crazy.