Damn discovery for now!

Hello, as a follow u... so I'm glad about the book I'm reading - Living with Bipolar Disrder, LesleyBerc. I said that it made me so happy to know that I'm not alone but there's the down side too...
One of my main concerns is, how do I distinguish between myself and the disease? Am I happy or manic? Is life really good or do I just think it is? Is my anger validated or am I just manic? Am I really sad about something or am I depressed? When is it the illness and when is it reality? This I am going to have to figure out and the book is quite helpful in providing questions and exercises to help one figure that out. I am yet to do it.
The other is that I feel like there is nowhere to turn to get away from this thing. I know that I am going through a period of being depressed but now everything I’m thinking or feeling is ‘so by the book’ that it is not real and it is not me and it will pass later or tomorrow. Now although that sound as if it should be comforting, it is not. It is like my index of emotions has been deleted. No, it is not what you really feel, it is just the disease talking! I have no doubt that this is the kind of feeling that will be dissolved after sticking to this process of learning. It is so great to have found an answer that I want to do this quick but having waited for so many years, I think I can afford myself the patience to do it as fast or slow as it takes.
Then also, while reading those symptoms and explanations for the first time, individually trigger multiple memories of each. For example, reading the paragraph on feelings of hopelessness and that nothing else matters in a episode of severe depression, made me think of times I felt like that. Look, this happens automatically. You read it, you relate to it and boom, your brain serves up a platter of very vivid memories to relive. Nice huh? I remembered once walking out of the office where I worked. I can’t remember at all what the reason or trigger was but I was crying uncontrollably and had to get away from there. We were on the 7th floor. I was working in reception and just at that time, my boss wanted to see me. I ran for the elevator and escaped because of one, how I looked and acted, without a way to change it and two, because I wouldn’t have been able to explain it. I didn’t have a car at the time and was catching a lift to work so I was left on foot as I flee the building. All I could think was ‘get away’. I started walking towards a nearby hospital, now still not knowing what I was thinking to do there but that was away. Miraculously, another friend of mine found me in the parking of the hospital, having visited someone there and took me home. To work, the best explanation I could come up with the next day, was that I learned that a friend of mine tried to commit suicide and was admitted to that hospital and so the urgency to get to her without apologies for leaving (oh, and all the crying for those who witnessed it). Yep, it worked.
I remember having an anxiety attack while I was working in a restaurant. I went in the store room and started hyperventilating and shaking. I cannot remember the reasons for any of these examples, just the emotions of helplessness and not caring for anything at that moment. Gonna lose my job or be in big trouble? I don’t care, I have to get away from here. I remember walking out of a office job I had in England, this time not to return. I remember not being able to go to work on a few other occasions, crying so badly and feeling like it’s the end of the world, kinda knowing that I’m going to have to explain it the next day or whenever but not caring. I couldn’t care. How can one when consumed with such debilitating sadness? I remember an incident in university and in almost every job I ever had. This is what I mean by these memories flooding back when reading about their roots in a book. Over the next few days, more memories of the same symptom and every other symptom, popped into my head constantly.
I got a feeling of looking back at my life with so much pity for the younger me. Seeing myself as a little girl trying to explain feelings unexplainable, trying to relay thoughts never felt by anyone ever, trying to describe the phenomena that’s happening her head. I see her endlessly trying in vain. I see her giving up and vowing to never try again. I remember now, as I write this that I have said to whoever, probably more than one person, that I wish there was a pill that someone could drink and feel exactly what I am feeling. That is the only way I thought that it would be possible to explain. Meantime, back at the ranch, there’s a million case studies and books that could tell me more about what I was experiencing than what I as experiencing.

It's really difficult with any type of mental illness to sometimes distinguish between what it actually happening and what we are 'making up' (ie 'Is it really this bad or am I awfulizing?' or 'Am I really happy or just manic?'). I hope that in the time that's passed since you wrote this you have managed to get a better understanding on what you're going through and that things have been going steadily.