I try not to ask myself "Will I stay well?" too often. But it sort of lurks in the back of my psyche until, finally, I am confronted with it. That's part of living with a mental illness--whether it is chronic or in passing--and it's tough. Really tough. But what about before you were properly diagnosed?

I  have an appointment with My Psychiatrist today. In exactly six hours and forty minutes. Well, six hours and forty-two minutes to be exact. I know things like this. I have not seen her in a month. She was on vacation. She told me she would be riding camel's--I'm  serious--on her vacation.

Picture "forever" in bold font--picture it bold and neon-- flashing like those cheap diner signs offering grilled cheese for $2.50 as you drive past on your way to somewhere else. Somewhere important.

I'm not sure, are you? Ask yourself the loaded question: "I have a mental illness. Am I really sick?" When I ask myself this question my mind conjures up this: "No, sometimes life just gets a bit tough, but doesn't it for us all?" And then my inner psyche rambles on about how the disease of mental illness, the 'sick' part of it, is nothing like, say, a broken leg or bout of pneumonia. But that's not the point.

I have touched on this before. A couple of times. Other bloggers on healthyplace.com have as well because it is important. Very important. It is part of living with--and recovering from--a mental illness. Living With A Mental Illness Makes Us Feel Different

So, what is a case study? Let's refer to Wikipedia--Wikipedia knows everything, right? It can even define feelings!

First, let me pull out my Thesaurus (I have not done this for. . .a month? Two? Long overdue?) to define the word impulse and then we'll narrow it down a bit--a lot. We'll apply it to mental illness and shake the word up a bit.

In my last post The Experience of Depression: The Flip-Side of Mania I focused on both depression and, you guessed it, mania. I have a secret: I'm not feeling so great. I am clinically depressed.

The title of this post suggests that I am focusing exclusively on bipolar disorder and this might be true in content, but the symptoms and the experience described below are common within the spectrum of all chronic mental illness. It is a shared experience among those who are diagnosed--and not just with with bipolar disorder--highs and lows, in part, define mental illness.

When you are first diagnosed with a mental illness, you are presented with the following information: you will probably have to take psychiatric medication for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life! That's tough to hear and to understand.