So, I'm trying to adjust to my new adventure in mental illness. I'm not liking it much.

I'm used to being depressed. I can handle depressed. Depressed is socially acceptable these days. People understand it (or at least more than they used to). Depression is called the "common cold" of mental illness because so many people come down with it.

But bipolar -- well, let me just say my experiences with bipolar people IRL have been largely unpleasant. Comparatively speaking, not that many people are bipolar. I think it scares folks on the "outside" way more than depression does. It scares ME! I'm not used to these new feelings and sensations. I don't want them. I'd rather they went away and left me alone. But now I'm stuck with them. I just remember interacting with the unmedicated bipolars (of which I essentially am one at the moment, until stuff kicks in) while I was inpatient and thinking, "GOD, these people are NUTS." And now I am one. Somehow bipolar seems more seriously mentally ill than depression. I have spent most of my life trying to become more than my mental illness, and now I feel defined by it again.

How do you learn to live with it?

Candy