They say confession is good for the soul. This then, is a heavy dose of spiritual enrichment.

I threw the word "bipolar" in a few entries back to see if you were listening, and I knew by the dramatic, collective, yet oh-so-silent intake of breath that you probably were not.

So I draw your attention back to it.

I have bipolar disorder, but I consider myself blessed. Not only for the person it's made me but because I have long stretches free from the depths of this illness. I know that some people are nearly incapacitated by it, unable to work, unable some days even to get out of bed. I'm fortunate because I can work fulltime, and usually am aware of my mood swings and when my medication needs tweaking.

I've been to the dark edges of both sides. On the blackest days - the most recent bout four years behind me - even the simplest tasks made no sense. Last time around, had it not been for a previous employer's kindness and loyalty, I would surely have lost a job. Caught in mania's highest grip, I moved at warp speed. In college, I was for months a full-time student with seven part-time jobs and an almost nightly alcohol-infused social life. And like Willy Wonka's elevator, I once blasted through mania's glass top into a world beyond logical description.

I've come to realize I should avoid high-stress situations. A sticky wicket indeed because I am easily bored and sometimes welcome drama with open arms. I like life to be nonstop. But when it spins out of control, I fall apart. This makes it a balancing act. Strangely enough, the balancing yoga poses remain my greatest challenge.

While I ran from my diagnosis most of my adult life, the first clue that it was part of me was difficult to ignore. It started in my junior year of college - a long bout with an unfamiliar feeling from which there was no escape. Life was gray. Numb. Hopeless. Nine months later, I shot from that into euphoria, and almost immediately to psychosis.

My parents hospitalized me. I only now vaguely understand how difficult a decision that must have been. Then again, the day before the hospitalization, I took their car and tried to flee to Colorado where I was sure a college crush was waiting to marry me. My sense of urgency about this was all-consuming, and I don't know what made me stop when my dad stepped in front of the car. So perhaps their decision wasn't so difficult after all.

I landed on the sixth floor of St. Francis Hospital in my Wisconsin college town. The sixth floor had been nothing to me before but the subject of jokes among my college friends and I as we cruised by the hospital on the way to the bar.

I stayed on the sixth floor for two months, uncontrollable for a few days, and later, packed with drugs and incoherent. Doctors told my parents I likely would always be that way.

I thought I was Farrah Fawcett Majors for a while - my least favorite Charlie's Angel. But most of the time, I thought I was the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary delusion, I've since learned, is common among psychotic female bipolars. All that and I wasn't even original.

The details of that fall - written about in a half-finished book that likely never will see daylight - probably seem horrific to many. But to me, almost 20 years later, they're just part of my history. Something I cannot and would not change. After all, how many people get the chance to be God's right-hand girl?

I went back to college the next spring, graduated and moved to Colorado. I threw the lithium out my car window on the way, determined no doctor would squelch my emotions.

Four years ago, in the midst of a second major depression, I was once again diagnosed bipolar. A second diagnosis from a different doctor in a different state. The Colorado doctor really pissed me off. The first one, after all, could just have been wrong. This one made me face it.

Every day since, I've taken a fistful of pills each morning - vitamins, fish oil for brain-balancing Omega 3, an antidepressant, and a mood stabilizer. And a couple at night - both sleep aids. I fiercely dislike the sleep aids, a fairly new addition to the regimen that I blame on that cursed 40th year.

I've accepted the reality of the hated meds. The dilemma I now face is much harder. Truthfully, I like to think of bipolar disorder as just a little excess on both sides of the spectrum. Conversely, I like to bitch about the stigma, and how it needs to be shattered. I bitch about this to a select few. That makes me a hypocrite.

Further proof: I volunteer a few hours a month with the local Bipolar/Depression Support Alliance, leading a support group, answering phones, and serving on a committee. But when someone who knows nothing of my disorder asks me what I'm doing on those days, I say only that I have an appointment.

I'm proud of my volunteerism. But too ashamed to say where it is I volunteer.

If everyone moved at this rate, the stigma would come toppling down in two or three centuries.

I have miles to go on this journey to full-scale acceptance. But I have learned deeper compassion, I think, through this disorder. I have learned, too, to spot a fellow bipolar - admitted or otherwise - in the space of a few conversations.

Even though most of you reading this already know about my condition, this post makes me nervous. My heart is hammering as my hand moves toward the "Publish Post" icon. But it's a start, perhaps, toward telling others. Toward speaking out about it, ideally someday in a public forum. Maybe even toward finishing that book.