Okay, but having cancer also shapes who you are, how people view you, your interpersonal relationships, the choices you make, and it is a part of who you are. So if you are diagnosed with cancer and go through all the treatments, surgeries, hospital stays, gaining of new friends, and loss of old ones (yes, people do abandon you when you get a major illness like cancer,) then that makes you cancer. Right?

Or how about diabetes? Because when you are diagnosed with diabetes you need to take medication, change your diet, change your lifestyle with exercise, check your feet to make sure you don't get scars. Yet people rebell against it all the time, they don't take their meds, it effects their health and wellbeing. It causes major mood swings and their ability to make judgement calls and they can have explosive temper tantrums (especially when way too low or way too high.) So those people are diabetes.

Of course our illness has shaped us. I'm not saying it hasn't. But that doesn't mean it defines you as a person. It's just one small part of who you are. You have bipolar.

I'm a mom. I'm a wife. I'm a daughter. I'm a niece. I'm a step-aunt. I'm a writer. I'm an artist. I'm a woman. I'm a gamer. I'm a secretary. I have bipolar.

Here's antoher interesting thing. People will say "I'm bipolar." Do you people say "I'm boarderline personality disorder?" I usually hear "I have boarderline personality disorder." Or how about. "I'm major depressive." Don't people usually say "I have depression." (Sure they may say I'm depressed but that's a mood vs. a diagnosis.) Why is it that some of these diagnosises get the "I am" and others get teh "I have." I don't see people saying "I'm generalized anxiety disorder." They say I have. These things effect things just as much as bipolar, and a lot of them (like GAD and depression) people have had probably just as long.

So what is the difference?