Hi Scott,

Thanks for sharing this.

I’ve yet to be diagnosed as bipolar, but know I’d get that label if a medical professional asked me about my experiences.

I’ve made my own decision to live with it without taking traditional medication, though I recognize that’s a decision each person must make on their own.

Anyway, I appreciate you sharing this poem for it does shed light on the knowing we who have the condition can develop if we work on bringing our awareness to our mental state.

Personally, I’m still trying to just accept the condition, to let each of the phases teach me something, for it’s a deeper belief of mine that everything really does happen for a reason and that personal growth occurs when we accept what is rather than resist it. (Though, we certainly can grow from watching our own resistance, too!).

Point is, for me, I think the depression actually allows me to live with more compassion for the world, for the various trials we all face, and for how so many of the us, those trials may be under the surface.

I know when I am on the opposite end of the spectrum, in the “high” phase, I can sometimes feel a bit “above it all,” and that can lead to a sense of superiority, so the depression phase perhaps serves as a counteracting, needed “medicine” for such feelings.

Ultimately, as a person who wants to dedicate my life to being fully human and to expressing that experience so that others can feel more comfortable with their human-ness, I suppose I feel my own goal in why I’m choosing to live with bipolar is that maybe I’ll discover some actual reason for why the condition exists and thus help others who experience it.

Anyway, man, best of luck with your condition and thank you again for sharing your experience about it. I know it is not easy and that, at least for me, writing about (and during) the depression can be the hardest aspect of it, but it’s also my experience that doing the things that we find hardest are often the things that most reward us in the end.

-Bryan