Everyone has an interesting response to your question, raspberrytorte. Happy Birthday to you! Nice to meet you. Your signature, namely "The darkest of nights is followed by the brightest of days," is the backwards way of what my mother used to say to me. She said, "The brightest lights are followed by the darkest nights." Something similar. She was trying to cheer me up. She saw me as one of the brightest lights, which I was. But I also had terrible depressions and rages, even as a child. Her attempt to comfort me did not work, because I took it to mean that I was someone punished after a period of happiness. And now I know -- when bipolar, we do get existentially punished after hypomania -- we get a depression crash, just like my mother intuited. As for ruining my life, it ruined my career expectations. I ended up on Social Security Disability Insurance (USA) when all I wanted was a good job where people would treat me right, and I could control my hours -- AND SUPPORT MYSELF. I don't know why I still feel inferior for not having a "job-job." I created two small service businesses. They were very successful for a long time (sequentially). I was treated very well by my clients, and set my own hours. I could rest between appointments. I could not make good money, though, because of my lack of stamina based on bipolar. I had to have a husband to help support us. So after my final divorce, I had to look for a job-job and that's when I ended up on disability retirement. I honestly think part of the problem with my not handling jobs well is because as a woman growing up in the 1950s and 960s, opportunities were extremely limited for us. There was no career advice, no career counseling, no vocational education, no discussion at home of how our interests and talents would be used, or of anything except (for me) teaching or secretarial work. So I did both. These were not good careers for me. Traditionally here is what women before the last 10-20 years could do for work: full time homemaker, waitress, teacher; nurse; office work; nun; house cleaning; sex worker. Am I missing something? I don't know how many women were realtors, but some for sure. Maybe a lot. Limited jobs as church organist or dance studio pianist. Maybe medical illustrators or other book illustrators, but I do wonder if many of these were women. Even symphony orchestras were all-male!!! There were other jobs, too, but they were oddball things like indexing. I met a disabled woman at a vocational rehab conference one time, who made a good living as an independent business woman doing indexing for authors who wrote nonfiction books.