There's no trigger warning, because I'm not suicidal; as sick as I've been, I've never been suicidal in my life, and I suppose I should be grateful for that.

I'm 46, I've survived more than 25 years of exceptionally disruptive and damaging mental illness; I have fulfilled my obligations to support my parents and provide for my wife and my wife's parents despite my handicaps, and I am sick of being sick. The last depression I had was of unprecedented length and depth, and the subsequent hypomania brought on by the stress of life in a challenging and entirely self-directed position in an expensive city has become dangerous to me and to those around me. At the same time that I profit from the boosted activity and performance granted by mania, I embarrass and dishonor myself with my barely concealed irrational psychotic aggression.

I don't want to do this anymore: meds that don't work; symptoms that never go away; side effects; friends and relatives who outright abandon you or must make constant allowances for your shortcomings; stigma and shame. A long time ago I had pride and respect in myself. Now, I'm a casualty, and, given my initial potential, I find my failure appalling. I am appalled, I tell you. My therapist has told me repeatedly that blaming myself for my pathological behavior is just a mechanism of denial, and that makes impressive sense, but I haven't been able to internalize it.

Global warming, the permanent radionuclide-outgassing facility kept under wraps by the Japanese at Fukushima ("Tōkyō 2020!", peep the emasculated, humiliated and thoroughly irradiated defeated imperialists), the depletion of the oceans, the failures of central bank monetary policy and the inevitable breaches by Russia and China in American economic and military hegemony, not to mention the Burning House of War (comprised of Turkey, Syria, Israel, Saudi, Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Iraq, the Kurds, the Houthis, the Yazidis, ISIS, the Taliban, the Sunnis, the Shia, the Wahhabis. Muqtada al Sadr and all superpowers who would use them as proxies), should keep me awake and horrified and scrambling to survive from upheaval to crisis until the lethal pancreatitis described in Depakote's black box warning comes to claim another 1800 mg/day consumer; I just had an irrepressible impulse to declare tonight in my 500th post that I have officially had enough of bipolar disorder and wish to terminate our relationship at its earliest possible convenience. We're through.