I remember once I was wondering which me was me- the mania, the hypomania, the depression or the elusive stable me. I wanted to find a book then that taught you how to have bipolar in a stable world. I guess in a way, I'm writing that book now. That's the after life, living in the stable world while having bipolar disorder. In the end I found the real me, underneath all of that crud. I wasn't defined by my disorder, I was defined in all sorts of ways that made up the complicated me. I wasn't just my disorder or my job or my relationships or my past, present or future. I was all of those things. I was built brick by brick and each one of those things affected me. In the after life, at least for me, it's all about temperment too. Learning to temper my extreme's into something manageable. And while I thought I would lose some of myself when I shut down the mania and the depression, I learned more than ever to just be myself. That when all was said and done and I looked at myself in the mirror...I was still the woman who did damn good therapy with kids, that loved animals and children, loved to read and write and do research and loved to be with people, not in large crowds, but with just some good quality friends. The mania and depression just seemed to heighten certain aspects of myself and amplify them over everything else. Like sometimes when I was manic I just concentrated on being one hell of a therapist or mental health advocate. I just threw myself into things and everything else be damned. In my now stable life, everything has it's place. Early on in the after life, my job probably weighed a little heavier than anything else. But that was simply because I loved doing it and that is where my heart wanted to be. Later of course, it was with my family. But I guess the main thing was that everything calmed down in the after life. Nothing was over the top anymore. The volume dial was just turned down to a manageable level. And I didn't lose myself in the end. I would say that instead, I found myself.