This is my first post. I also feel that I am walking the line between brilliance and madness.

I'm in my mid 20's. I am a songwriter and musician. I have always been praised for these gifts. I grew up in a healthy environment with a tremendous amount of support for my music and other talents. I was having magical experiences before ever hearing of bipolar disorder.

I never used drugs a teenager . Church kept me inline until I was old enough to drink. I managed to get into State with an associates degree. I didn't think much of my bipolar diagnosis during this time. A daily dose of prescribed benzos kept me from bouncing off the wall as this illness began to manifest itself. I wouldn't realize how well it hid the severity of my illness until later. Not until being discharged from rehab.

After a month in treatment, I have been without benzodiazepines for the first time in four years. Bipolar illness attacked like I never could have imagined. I didn't realize that I was capable of insanity.

I didn't realize hell was a real place on earth. I underestimated the power of the illness. I have no words to describe the behavior altering paranoia I experienced for the first time in my life.

People were after me. People were filming me. People wanted me to join them in their conspiracy. These people were my friends, family, and a few strangers from my past. They were calling out to me through recent memories. They struck me through advertisements, television shows, and websites such as this one. Everything was a puzzle piece for me to play with. My heart would sink as I realized fear.

I didn't know fear until these events. Fear wasn't a concept I ever had a reason to ponder about. I always wanted to feel important, however, not that important.

Whether it has been Zyprexa, Geodon, Abilify, or Seroquel, it sure seems like I have downed a lot of medications this year. It's only been in the last month and a half or so that I have come to terms with the fact that "They" who are after me, are more a part of "me" or something along those lines.

Two weeks ago I felt so damn happy. I wrote and recorded songs as if I had pulled them from the sky. I wasn't really paranoid. Things were going so well for me that I didn't sleep.

I was recently discharged after a 51/50. The cop wrote a very detailed account of why I was danger to myself, leaving out only the things that would show I had an ounce of sanity left in me. 51/50 ... How the hell did that happen? How did I go from always being the teacher's pet, to being slapped around like a bitch in the county psych ward?

So it's me, in fact, whom society refers to as the mentally ill. Damn it. As I sat with the crazy folks on one side of the counter, I observed the half dozen, underpaid, non crazy people on the other side who had been put in charge of our care. From the looks of the empty souls on that side of the counter"¦we are screwed. Alone with our demons and angels.

I found comfort in this site after coming to terms with the fact that it wasn't in fact a production of "them". The paranoia seems to be receding; however, my recent behavior has convinced my family that I need to stay with my Grandmother for now.

It's difficult for me to comprehend how I could start to feel such joy as I move my clothes and laptop into this dark and dusty trailer park home on the other side of town.

So in a nutshell, thats my story and first entry.