Holy Crap, thank you all so much for your love and concern, you overwhelm me. My cup runneth over. I'm humbled by all of your responses.

The good news is that I'm doing much better after a most spectacular breakdown....physically, mentally, psychologically, but most of all...emotionally. As most of you know I've taken on my bp illness med free. This is a personal choice. But after much correspondence in this forum on the subject, I became willing to adjust my thinking and feelings on the subject and I went on the meds. While they certainly helped initially, ultimately they were my undoing, not the only culprit, but definately one of them. My cycles as of late have been quite different on many levels. The intensity of the extremes has become exponentially greater, the severity of the cycles has gone off the charts, my cycles of depression to mania are lasting a little longer than before, my mixed states are quite so mixed anymore. So needless to say, I'm in unchartered territory, flying blind and dangerously low on fuel.My sleep habits have been all but non-existant which we all know affects our perception of the symptoms of bp, they become more exagerated and more desperate. Another new feature for me is extreme panic and anxiety. I've taken to having horrible anxiety attacks, panic attacks and pretty much a constant state of anxiety on a rather uncomfortable level. Really it was the anxiety that brought me to my knees this time around. It's new to me and I didn't quite know how to handle it, but I grappled with it, did battle with it, surrendered to it and got my *** whooped big time. Fortunately when things reached there absolute worst I was just up the hall from my therapist who kicked her client out of her office to tend to me "emergency situation". She excused me from work for a couple days and one day I went home early when I'd just had enough of the pressure and feared an even breakdown with ppl who weren't qualified to deal with it the way a counselor is. Can you imagine?

I've not totally abandoned the meds, but I'm going a completely different route and am feeling much better. I reached out to each and every one of the resources I have at my disposal for my mental illnesses, mostly bp. I had a very close and personal friend who helped see me through it without missing a beat. My bf did the best he could with his limited understanding of my illness. He's a wonderful man that I've been with for a year. When you think about it a year is not all that long, especially when involved with someone with bp. The stretches of normalcy that are followed by extreme mood swings is rough on even the loveliest of ppl. But he dug his fingernails in and held on for the rollercoaster ride. The ride is by no means over, but it's back to being a little more fun again, LOL, the "thrill" of the ride, the excitement of being creative, clever, witty, funny, not so serious and not taking myself quite so seriously. I swear, amusement parks must have been created by someone with bi-polar....where else could you possibly get an idea like that. The thrill, the danger, the excitement, the fear...all rolled into about 5 spectacular minutes. I don't know, just an opinion, thinking aloud again as usual.

Well, I think I've gone on long enough. Hope I didn't bore you to tears. Thanks again for the support to all of you who cared enough to respond to sqrls post at my request. I have more topics to do discuss in this forum, come on ppl, lets face it, we need to breath some fresh life here. I can't help but feel some sense of disappointment when I sign in and there's nothing here for days on end. We're bp for crying out loud, we can be just about the most talkative ppl in any room we enter. So lets start sharing our thoughts, questions, feelings, hopes, dreams, desires, failures, successes, issues and the beautiful side to this grand illness that makes our lives so colorful. Let's start painting my friends, loved ones and fellow bper's.
TgrsPurr. xo