I only feel like a failure when I'm depressed. 😔

When I'm in a normal or up mood I don't feel like one. I don't regret any of the decisions I've made in my life because each decision (yes, even the bad ones) led me to something better. For example: circa 2005 I was REALLY abusing alcohol, we're talking about bottle of vodka and day, even going into work drunk, until eventually I got pulled over and got an OWI. That, though a nightmare at the time, led to me getting treatment, getting my **** together, getting a pnurse and eventually getting on meds so I no longer felt the need to self medicate.

Even the major manic episode I had nine years ago that literally led to me losing EVERYTHING (home, job, family) led to me getting on SSDI, and I DID get my family back, and I ended up under a court ordered commitment which led to me getting the support team I needed and now I have an excellent psychiatrist (miss my old one still. 😢 But I guess this new one is okay!), and finally on the right meds (even if I'm a walking pharmacy, which I don't know how to fix, and it doesn't seem like anyone else really does either). I mean, I haven't been in the hospital in going on a year now! That's a record for me!

I'm married to the love of my life, have a wonderful daughter, and feel like I'm surrounded by love I don't deserve because my parents beat it into my skull that I'm a horrible person.

I would like to be more creative and hate how long it takes me to recover after writing a book, and I'm not particularly fond of how I hurt my family sometimes because of bipolar (like I did nine years ago). My life isn't the way I anticipated it would be because I never imagined I'd get such a mental illness, and I assumed I'd be a wildly successful, bestselling author by now, but hey, have my little ezine, written six books (even if they're self-published. Whatever), but once I sleep it out another book will come.

The other day I said to my husband, "Are we kinda eccentric?" And he was like, "Nooooo." Lol. We are weird. We have a little artistic family.