an introduction that is an epilogue. or vice versa.

these pages are the last pages of the book "detour: my bipolar road trip in 4-D" but as far as i'm concerned, they are an introduction to the world of someone living with manic-depression. i'm not even sure who read this book, aside from me, and probably jezzie, who picked the book. however, it was a very fast read, and i made notes of the pages i wanted to comment on. if none of you read the book, you can feel free to comment on what i decide to talk about. it definitely served as a help to help me look back on the month of january, which i always struggle with, and which i struggled with this year as well. however, this year i also had a crisis of conscience or mid-life crisis or something, as i wondered if i'd always live life alone and if this disease was part of the reason i'd do so. anyway, let me give you these last pages as a way to continue to introduce you to this disease if you haven't been reading 'the smussyolay,' or if i don't do such a good job when i decide to blog about manic-depression when i'm in a depression.

"Everybody I interviewed for this book is diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, between the ages of 16 and 35, on medicine, and highly functional in society ...

Everybody has stories about being dangerously violent or insomniac or paranoid or immobile. Everybody has takes of being reckless with shopping, or sex, or drugging or whatever. Some of us have memories of all these things.

Most of us have been superhuman: seen things, done things, made things, achieved things no regular person could do. Everybody has had some other horrible traumatic events happen.

Everybody has lost faith in everything they thought was sacred, and then regained it in a new, more informed way.

Everybody wishes someone were to blame for this.

Everybody has stories about alienating their friends.

Everybody has stories about exhausting their parents.

Everybody has somebody who loved them unconditionally through the whole damn mess.

Everybody has stories about being misdiagnosed, mistreated, misunderstood, and disrespected by the medical community.

Everybody has spent long stretches of time as zombies waiting for medicine to work. Most of us has been good sports about humiliating side effects like weight gain, bed-wetting, and drooling.

Everybody experienced a time when it didn't look as if they were gonna make it. Everybody did make it.

Everybody feels lucky to be alive. Everybody has survived an illness that is often fatal.

Everybody in this book as said in some way, "Hell no, I'm not gonna sit on a couch and cope. I'm gonna get out there and rock the mic."

Everybody feels lonely, but everybody isolates themselves. They always have, and they still do.

Everybody feels alone, and they're not, but they are.

Everybody has some people they tell and some people they don't tell. Everybody fears stigma.

Everybody self-medicates in some way or another. Everybody did before they were diagnosed and everybody still does.

Everybody has read the same two or three books about this illness, because that's all that's out there.

Everybody is sure he or she experiences existence on a higher level than people without brain problems. Everybody feels anointed, chosen.

Everybody feels they're only halfway to where they want to be. From this group, I believe that everybody's gonna get there they want to go. And far, far beyond.

...we share the same nagging inner voice that wonders: how much of me is me, and how much of me is this illness.

This is our interior, private response to the exterior, public noise of stigma. What does this thing "bipolar" have to do with all that I am and have ever been? What does it mean I will become, now that I am medicated? And what do I have to do with all that they say mentally ill people are?

...Bipolar people need to fight for good health care, accurate information, and proper cultural representation. We need to examine every single way that society's common sense about the mentally ill is affecting us and determining our future.

...We young bipolars, though we may be protected from episodes through meds, we feel with certainty that something has been taken from us. But when we investigate our memories of mania and depression, when we look back to see just how and just when and just who -- where, even -- we, are, tumbled into the dryer, wrestling about with other problems, mitigating circumstances, false diagnoses, false memories ... all we want is to look back, to see it clearly, and to find within these recollections clues, directives, evidence that might lend guidance for our present and future investigations.

...We're looking for what's missing. And we were at the scene of the crime when all of the robberies took place, but we are unreliable witnesses. Our memories fail us: another reason to be disappointed in ourselves, another reason to rely on outsiders, another reason to decide for the sake of peace and progress, to stop looking back.

But we must investigate. We must never rest easy, feeling stolen from. There can be justice for us, too. So we must go forward with our investigations, and we must look back: first at our episodes, and then, courageously, at everything else."