It’s a question I thought I’d answered for myself several times, but it keeps coming up. Because shining a light on it will make it all go away? Hardly. Partly because my current doctor is so disappointing. Mostly because I don’t know what I think about something until I’ve written about it. I write in order to think. These posts are tiny distillations of journal entries that run upwards of 1200 words, most of it more personal that I allow myself to get in here. But why tag myself and my time with the illness? Because it’s still new to me: I was diagnosed in June 2008, after many years of being labeled unipolar depressive. I didn’t blog back then, didn’t think I had anything to say. But this disease, and these drugs, have become so large a force in my life I can’t help but write my way through them toward some kind of understanding. Mostly, I discover questions that have been lurking just under the surface. And if you don’t know the question, then that nagging sense that something’s wrong will tug at you until it pulls you under. I blog about bipolar moods to keep my head above the water line.