I'm sorry you are feeling so bad tonight. I'm feeling a lot more manic tonight and am wondering about sleep too. In my case it is because I had that tough visit with my therapist today. Oddly last night I managed to get some sleep but tonight I'm more wound up about it even though I think it went well.

You can talk as much as you want. Tell me about cutting up that card. How did that feel? (ugh, I sound like a therapist) .

I am not even close to who I was 3 years ago but the biggest different is from 4 years ago. I was working, working hard because I was my entire department as we were trying to hire an assistant for a year. I did home health in a rural area so I was driving everywhere. I loved that life. Every visit was different and I never knew what to expect. It was perfect for bipolar, as much as what I did can be perfect for bipolar. And then everything fell apart in Aug. 2011 and that was the end of the life I had worked for. Things are better now. I have 2 nieces I love dearly and who I see as much as possible. I am going to watch them Friday and I can't wait (although they have new chicks that have started turning into birds and I am afraid of birds.....ewww). So tell me about birds. If you can convince me they aren't creepy you'll have outdone my entire family. I already had to read fairy tales to the older girl; I was afraid of them as a kid and didn't know them at all. She's starting to realize I'm different and I need to have her mama start talking to her about this; I want it to be a matter of fact part of her life but not something she just announces at pre-school or something.

What else do you like to do besides shopping? (I wish I could have you shop for me soon.....I have gained weight since upping my Seroquel which is weird since I'm not very hungry but it is all in my boobs which is a bad place. I need a nice top to wear to a casual wedding and I dread shopping for it, especially since I'm going to have to give in and buy new bras and I have to buy new sneakers because the ones I've been wearing since I was allowed to wear sneakers 4 months after my ankle surgery have worn down so they promote rolling my ankle. Which is not good. And too bad b/c I love these sneakers and the new colors for the same pair are blagh.

There's my stream of consciousness. Can you pick something out that helps you focus a little for a minute? I know sometimes I desperately need to find that focal point for just a minute. In fact my therapist has made me do this with pictures, focus in and find tiny details that you have to work to notice. Another thing that helps me is to draw an infinity sign and trace it 10 times with your dominant hand and then 10 times with your non-dominant hand. It's calming, for me especially on a marker board. I also color lines on notebook paper, the first line in one color using my right hand, the next in another (randomly drawn so OCD doesn't kick in) with the left hand. '

I hope by now you are feeling a little better. I've been there with the desperation, just days ago and it just sucks. I'm now in the fragile place where sometimes I'm manic and sometimes I'm not very manic at least and could easily topple into depression. I'm very unstable but not as high as a week ago. But I know from long experience that this means nothing and tonight may be back to bigtime mania.

It would be nice to have some kind of monitorl, like an insulin monitor to judge this for us.