Can I cry on you? Please? I need someone who gets it. I am in pain and need to...let it out, I guess. I hope you don't mind... to be honest, I AM looking for attention....

I feel awful. Just crappy. I'm sad, deeply sad, but not every single second (which is confusing as hell), frustrated but also excited (kind of, fleetingly). I want to be alone, want company, want to just pretend my birthday is not happening...or have everyone in my family make a big deal out of it. To tell you the truth, I think I'm feeling a little sorry for myself.

It's not current mood swing stuff. I'm not in a mixed episode. I'm just riding the roller coaster of turning the big 5-0 and having those "look back at your life" moments that naturally occur with that.

And, woo-hoo! My life looks...decimated.

You guys know how it goes. Right? You build a career to have an episode tear it down. So you build it back up...and have it torn down by mania once again. You save your money...only to spend it away on a wild, wild ride. Congratulations! You now have nothing for retirement! Your relationships are in tatters (best friend hasn't spoken to me since October), my reputation is shattered (thanks hypersexuality). I know I'm lucky to be alive.

Hah. Right. Lucky. Every. thing. is. a. mess.

The depression swept in last November. I'm exhausted, still not dressing or bathing consistently, can't make decisions with any regularity, forget how to get back to my house on the way home from the grocery store. I don't want to eat--then eat like a horse, need to get out of the house--and am terrified to leave!

My 48/49th year brought me ten months of severe, delusional mania, followed by the deepest, ugliest depression I've ever been gashed with. It is ugly. It feels endless. I AM seeing and feeling some improvement, but..It's been SIX months of hospitalizations, meds changes, and therapy visits that are just way too short. And the stuff that goes with bipolar: guilt, confusion, needing to apologize, not being able to apologize, loss, grief, studying "the message in the mania," suicidal.ity, and on and on and on.

Where are my friends? A lot of them, they...haven't called in a long time and I wouldn't want to tell them the truth when they say, "How are you!?" anyway. My sisters? In large part they act like bipolar is contagious (maybe it is).

I wish my husband would get off his computer and hold me, but that doesn't even seem like a fair thing to expect when HIS life was ruined MY disease again, again, again.

I know what I'd say to you if this post was yours. I know I DO have the ingredients to take and whip this dam fiftieth year into shape, or fifty-first, maybe...eventually. I DO count my blessings. I AM grateful for the friends I still have left. I AM aware of my own improvement. I CAN encourage myself. Part of the time.

But, sometimes, just sometimes, don't you feel like hearing it in a different voice? One that doesn't come from your therapist, one that isn't inside your own head? One that sounds like YOURS?