Thank you so much to everyone who has read my post and responded. It means a lot to me when even one person is paying attention to me because I am so starved for friendship and companionship.

Confusedinomicon, some of the time it is possible for me to use the bus because one of the hotels we have been staying at is right off a major blvd. The other hotel (we have to bounce from one to the other every month) is nowhere near any transportation. I actually applied for disability fare months ago but threw away my card right after I got it because I became manic and was like, “I don't need a disability pass because I'm not disabled.”

Rcat, no I am not able to move out on my own. I have no money of my own, I haven't been employed since May, and my parents are so financially strapped that they rely on my sister a great deal.

BeyondtheRainbow, my whole psych team has been on me about SSDI for a long time. In fact, I have a caseworker that I meet with once a week and I am supposed to have had that done by the time I meet with her. I can't tell you why I haven't done it yet. It's just that for me, important paperwork and anything to do with finances really scares me. I don't have medicaid, but you're right, I should probably see if I qualify because my Kaiser insurance costs $350 and I've been hanging onto that for a while because I thought I really liked my psych team. Now I'm realizing that they are not really helping me so what's the point. My caseworker did mention about the food assistance, though.

Trippin2.0, regarding therapy, what you are talking about it what I've come to realize – it isn't helping. I really adore my therapist, she is so smart and cool, but mostly what happens is I go in there and vent. I go back week after week and I have not one good thing to say about my life, and she tries to say positive and uplifting things and make it sound like it's actually not as bad as it is.

You are not prying at all. Living in the hotel makes a healthy lifestyle kind of impossible right now. I go to sleep every night with the television on pretty loud because my father won't turn it off. In our last place I had my own room and always slept with the television off, so this is making it harder to fall asleep. We can't cook without a kitchen and all of our meals are take-out or microwave. I have almost no access to the car so even though I have a gym membership I cannot use it.

I don't mean to be throwing roadblocks all around your suggestions but to be honest there isn't much more I can do with my time but be online. I'm trying to find ways to make money online and spend time on my blog, but I stopped doing that a few days ago because we had to move into my sister's house for a week and for some reason right now I feel even more depressed than I have been since I last got out of the hospital in August.

Several of you have mentioned volunteering. I think that this is a really good idea. It is something I have always wanted to do and it would probably do me some good. I'm going to look into that once we get back to the hotel. Right now we are nowhere near the city or transportation.

One of the things I get down on myself about a lot is that from my perspective, this disease has completely beaten me, to the point that I feel like I have accomplished none of the things that even make me an adult person, let alone a functioning member of society. I haven't lived on my own in 8 years. I am so jealous and in awe of those of you who have careers, a home, a marriage, a family. The American dream. It's like I need to know the difference between those people and me, why they have succeeded at life despite this disease, and why I have not.

I read a thread entitled “Tell us your worst stories of manic spending sprees.” (something like that). I read a few dozens posts in which people spent tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars during mania. My story was about imagining I was wealthy and trying to buy thousands of dollars of stuff but my debit card was declined. I was so blown away that all these bipolar people had all this money. I don't think I've ever had more than $5000 in my bank account.

I haven't dated anyone in 4 years. I hadn't dated anyone in the 6 years prior to that. Considering my age marriage is pretty unlikely and the pitfalls of that are even meeting someone who isn't divorced or has children of their own. The window of time I have left to have children is getting narrower, and I also have to deal with the ethical implications of that. A nurse in the hospital during my recent stay who had 3 bipolar brothers questioned me about whether or not I thought it was a good idea to have a child that had a pretty good likelihood of being bipolar. I mean, I had thought about it before, but hearing someone else say it really drove it home.

Thank you to everyone who read the thread and said they were here to listen. And thank you for the hugs. I wish we could all get together and have a support group, with burnt coffee and stale doughnuts.