After Bipolar Comes the Sun

I make it a practice to open the blinds in my house every morning. My therapist suggested it once. I appreciate the practice, even if I don't feel like it on some days, because I ache for the sun. Will today be the day it is sunny? Will today be a good day where I get everything accomplished on my personal agenda or will I wallow in self-doubt and bipolar clouds?

No dark gray skies, thank you.

I hate to open the blinds only to see dark gray skies glaring back at me. If I had my way, it would be a sunny, spring day every day of my life. Or a partly cloudy day. Or even a day filled with rain that pitter-patters on the palm tree outside my window. The kind of rain that stops and there's a giant rainbow streaking across the skies.

Dark gray skies trigger a bipolar episode.

I don't always get my wish. The dark gray days come out to haunt me. They fill my soul with dread and sadness. They make me doubt myself. Will a bipolar episode be around the corner? I crave normalcy, but I realize that will never be me. On dark days, I find myself wishing for stardom instead of being a boring housewife. I dream that someday I will be noticed and my bipolar will *poof* be a thing of the past.

And then there comes the morning when I open the shutters and sunlight gushes inside. Sunny days are like food for my soul. A sunny day makes me want to put on designer makeup and find a nice outfit to put on. I bask in it's warmth and the joy that fills me up to my eyeballs. I feel like dancing and often take out my iPod and dance to the beat of my favorite pop songs. I dance hand-in-hand with my children. I laugh out loud when I hear one of my husband's jokes. The sun revives me in a way that nothing else can. I am a child of the sun.

And, so, in the worst dreary bipolar days, I look to the sun.

I know it will return. It always does. It's what one does with it that's the big question. There will always be bipolar days ready to scream you into submission, but then there are days when you feel like the best you. Savor those days. The bipolar days will return and it's in those days that you will need to find your strength--strength to push past all the dark gray moods and find hope in the simple things in life.