"Truly, this is the best of all possible worlds!" So goes the enless refrain of Candide, the character in the short novel by Voltaire of the same name. Its so short, you can read it in a single sitting. Candide is a biting satire of a crazy world as applicable today as when it was written. You'll never regret reading it.

But I didn't really come here today to review centuries old novels, but to dare to share the nature of my cycles with all of you who have shared so much with me and thereby enriched me.

Candide is the ultimate optimist, and some aspect of that is a mile wide streak inside me. Weather it comes from my bipolar brain or is just in me, I can't say. But when my cycle shifts sharply upward, it seems to join hands with my inner Candide and race hell bent to the horizon of the wonderful possibilities of the human heart and conciousness. I see the divine nature and would split myself in two to share it with even one person.

As altruistic and pure and dripping with honey as this state is, it has it's trouble spots for me. It was tricky juggling the responsibility of enlightening the world with showing up to work for example. LOL. Then, the thrill of revelation edged out my need for sleep on the priority chart. I started going outside and sitting with a fire all night. Every night. For 8 months. Don't do that. LoL. I would take naps sort of spontaneously here and there and not every day. I comforted myself with the memory of learning that Albert Einstein rarely slept for more than a couple of hours at a time. He was too busy thinking about physics, I was too busy unraveling the mystery in my own way. Seemed like the same thing to me.

Needless to say, the break down precipitated by this hubris was exceedingly thorough. I sobbed my guts out for two weeks straight and was semi catatonic for almost an entire year. I could remember all of it, as though able to replay every single second of the episode in detail, but could no longer see the light of the sun.

This is getting sort of disjointed, but I'll try to bring it around.

This is the first time since that 8 month spree that I have been so high. But it's mixed this time, lots of panic and attention span trouble. In the past, this used to create a feeling in me that I had suddenly awakened in another person's life. Why do I work at this job? Who's idea was living with this partner? None of the things around me seem like they could have ever been my choice. Ironic isn't it? When i'm at my craziest, I accuse my saner life of being crazy. Everything begins to seem designed to hold me back, when I want to boogie down like James Brown.

For the five years since breaking down and getting dx'd, I've learned to guard my sleep and to do everything in my power to devolop a sense of awareness of myself as seperate from my state of mind. By doing that, and noticing the changes, and their lack of connection to any trigger, I see the changing part and the stable part. In the highest highs and lowest lows, there is someone inside wathing with dispassion. I have a hunch that we all have something like that in us. Developing my concious relationship with this inner unchanging self has made more difference in my quality of life than I have been able to attain with meds or therapy. Meds help, depending on a lot of things, and therapy is good, but nothing but my awareness of self as stable has made the difference that matters to me.

With that awareness i find i am able to resist fueling the manic when it comes around. I think the thoughts, feel the feelings, write them down, draw them, sing them, pour them through my hugs into someone I love. But in all of that resolve not to shatter my life, or change anything at all. The calmer I can remain as I go manic, the shallower the following depression. I wish more therapists pointed out this relationship between cycle polarities to their bipolar patients. They react to eachother. The manic isn't something you take advantage of to quickly conquer the world unless you are willing to sit in a hell of equal but opposite torment. The swings we are stuck with, the length of the swing's arc is something we can affect directly.

So, here we go. This swing is bigger than I've had yet to test my practice on. And frankly I'm a few days late on even catching it in progress. We'll see how it goes.

I want to say something else about it too. Some of you have touched me deeply. My heart surges like anything with some of the things we share. I've come from utter isolation except for my partner, to a sudden community of kindreds. The headiness of this tonic has quite taken me by surprise. I want to thank all of you.

Right this second I feel like someone might who has just accepted and executed a dare to prance naked past a large audience. As terrifying as it was, I begin to enjoy it. So, rather than treat you all to the delight it would be to watch me cartwheel and sommersault around in my birthday suit, I shall withdraw to my acorns.