Thank you Blahpolar for the inspiration! Those two words are very apt adjectives for people with mood disorders. We are very intensely emotional and very extreme in our viewpoints. Is that right? Or am I just projecting my own traits onto everyone with a mood disorder? Well, at any rate, I am very intense and I have been known to have views that may be judged to be quite extreme. In some ways, I see things as black and white and sometimes fail to notice the shades of gray in between. People, in my estimation are either good as gold, or demonically evil. Sometimes, I do realize that a bit of both can exist in the same person.

What’s an interesting question to me is are all people with mood disorders like that? It makes sense that it should be so. We are creatures of high emotions and labile moods. I am vehement in my opinions, not moderate, not calm. I try to be calm, but my emotions are strong, and they don’t overpower me as much I am swept away by them. Things MEAN a lot me. The health of my loved ones, the welfare of my friends, the state of the world and all the injustices in it. Cruelty to humans, or especially helpless animals… Phew… don’t even get me started on that. Images haunt me for years after I’ve seen them. I live in the past and mourn the bad things that happened in it, my heart breaks that I could not give my son the perfect life I wanted to give him when he was a child. I miss my home at 36 Plumwood. I miss it terribly. That is the one place I’ve ever lived, that I will always think of as home. See, all emotions, pure emotions. But why always sadness, despair, heartbreak? Why not happy emotions, like joy, happiness, optimism? Is that a trait of my illness or is it because of my shattered childhood, that my brain got programmed to be negative and live in anxiety and fear and despair? I don’t know. I’ll never know. I just know that I’ve been where I’ve been and who knows where it is I’m  going, but I am here. I am. And somehow, that has to be enough. When I’m at the end of my life, will it all have been enough? Will it have been good enough? Play the cards you’re dealt, Samina. That was my mother’s motto. Mine was: In the end, only kindness matters.