I'm cheating here and using one of my recent message responses as a SharePost.

There will always be a struggle for the person who lives with a mental illness; it's not likely to be a struggle to win over the disease. Bipolar disease is treatable, but not curable. The same is true for Schizophrenia.

Every day, each minute of each day that I am not otherwise occupied, I wonder to myself, "Will tomorrow be the day that my meds stop working and I go manic? Will something happen outside of my influence that causes my brain to go into a deadly depression? How am I acting right now? This very minute? Do I seem normal to others? Are they judging me? How about my prodromal signs? Am I aware of them enough to recognize an upcoming shift? Will something I do make someone uncomfortable or cause them to think I don't care about them or myself? What if something I say comes across wrong and my husband thinks I don't love him? What if I start buying too many things? How do I know how much is too much?"

These are the words I live with constantly...over and over and over again in my mind.

For those who don't live with Bipolar disorder, it's hard to imagine why we are so focused on ourselves. I don't live in a healthy state of mind. I live in a Bipolar state of mind. It's my illness. I am focused on myself because I am worried about how others see me. Will they see me as normal or ill? Will they love me or abandon me?

It's not a pain-free life but I'm not asking for pity. I'm simply explaining why we do some things the way we do.

Knowing what it means to help myself is confusing at times. Does it mean exposing everything I am to everyone I know to get the right help? Would you and could you? Struggling to win the disease is impossible. Winning a moment of the day is possible.

I take one step at a time, one moment at a time. Each little success is a big win for me. If I remember to cut my pills in half before I need them when I'm running out the door - THAT'S a big success for me. THAT'S how I help myself. Seems trite somehow.

Cindy