Gertrude Stein said, "When you get there, there is no there there." Bipolar illness is more like an umbrella term for an illness that manifests itself in large and small ways, like a dam that has large leaks, small leaks and tiny leaks. You can't possibly stop all those leaks.

As soon as it seems you've got one symptom under control, it's as if something in you mutates and now you've got some new symptom, maybe physical, maybe mental, but if the symptom is bothersome, it might have to be dealt with but...as soon as you deal with it, it seems to generate another manifestation. It is endless, frustrating, and baffling.

I read an article in Esquire, August, 2011, about a group of ex- US Marines who suffer from PTSD and/or traumatic brain injury and a Lieutenant Colonel, who suffered traumatic brain injury said something applicable to all of us, "Like many wounded vets, Maxwell has discovered that what's broken can never really be fixed." Ain't that the truth. Like men and women military veterans with PTSD/traumatic brain injury, the best we can do is soldier on. If we get hung up on questioning every little change, set back, flare up we experience, we'll make ourselves more unstable than we already are. All we can do is roll with it. It rains. Why? Because it rains. Theodore Roosevelt said, "You do the best you can, with what you've got, where you are."