Thank you, OE. You know, I think that I need, at this time, to "reclaim my rightful place in society". What I perceived I have lost during my 2 years and two months of being lost in be wilderness - this time, this episode of being lost, I have been lost before but found my way out.

I need to be heard and validated by my family. I don't know if that can happen or not. But I have to give it a shot. I can see "a better path forward" - I hope I can lead the way down that path.

My entire struggle with the " mental illness question" over the last two years has been one which pitted my intellect, which kept telling me I could be ok, even with this, if I chose to be ok with it, against my emotional side, which was immediately overwhelmed with panic and terror and ran with that.

If I try to be very objective in viewing myself, I think I am a good man. Despite all of this, and despite what "they" told me, I managed to hold on to my job, to juggle my life around a level of intensity I never ever imagined, all against a backdrop of intense fear, despair, and I frankly many, many days when I really did want to die, violently, by my own hand.

But I am still here. I am not living in the gutter (well, not yet anyway, OE, you and only you know that situation I find myself in ), I'm not dressed in rags, I'm not incoherently babbling snockered up,on a thousand drugs.

I want to be able to say, and feel it, that "I am me", with a manageable condition that does not define me. Not "I am bipolar" or "I am mentally ill" or "I am crazy" as my definition.

So, I found out just this year I have had a mild form of asthma my entire life. I never once ever entertained the thought that "starting now, I am asthma, it is all I am or will ever be or all anyone will see when they look at me." Saying that just sounds silly.

But I did that for two years already with mental illness, and I am just sick of it. I want to do more than find my way out, I want to find my way home.