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.

No kidding! I am telling you what you already know. I might be telling you how you felt when you opened your eyes this morning. But let's start at the beginning. Let's recall, and sorry to drag you back to this time, the first time you were diagnosed with a mental illness. The Diagnosis "Natalie, you have bipolar disorder." A whopping twelve years old when these words were thrown on the table. My reaction? How exhausting! The years before the diagnosis? Bloody exhausting! Next: A small amount of relief. Above all, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired but my life wasn't about to get any easier, no, it was time to try on medication's, fingers crossed they worked, and then fall, defeated, beaten, when they did not. But this isn't my story. It's probably yours as well. Or, it's the story of someone you love. It hurts to watch them suffer. Side-Effects, Complications, From Medication Recovering from mental illness involves medication and medication is exhausting.

Because I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at a very young age, a whopping twelve years old, I have a hard time remembering a life before the diagnosis—before I was told, “Natalie, you have Bipolar Disorder.” The only thing I understood was that I missed the Halloween dance at school; that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. But I remember being a little girl. A little girl who did not take medication. I remember long nights when I could not sleep; even longer days when I was crazed and manic. I recall my mother’s eyes, frightened, and my father's hands hugging me, telling me to calm down. That I would be okay. I can visualize in flashes my siblings; younger than I. Talking to them from the hospital. But it ends there. Life after the diagnosis has captured the rest of my life. At the age of twenty-six, the word ‘after’ lingers.