It's throwing things across the house. It's oblivion to the damage you can do to both the ones around you and the materialistic items. It's becoming so angry with that someone you black out and lose all control of every word that comes out of your mouth and all actions that your body does. It's like your body no longer belongs to you. It comes in mood swings that trigger points in life that set you off. It's learning how to control how you take in other people's actions. It's your family walking on egg shells around you, scared to set you off. It's the fact that your mind is a literal ticking time bomb.

You forget everything. Literally everything. Your forget day-to-day activities if you aren't reminded. You may come across to others as careless; but in reality, your mind is just constantly racing and you just skip over important events in life. I've set a reminder as the background of my phone as a constant reminder and still have forgotten.

Those of us who suffer from bipolar disorder are just as aware of our symptoms as others around us are. We walk around every day with the stress of having an episode at any given point in the day. We have to learn to control ourselves, pretending to be all right because the anxiety of letting anyone know we're aren't all right is just too much.

The questions. The questions become so suffocating and over-bearing. If we've been manic for a couple of days, our bodies become bored, and we get scared of having an episode for no reason at all. We are liable to spend every penny we have, because we have an urge. The urges are enough in themselves. The urge to touch, see, look, and hear everything because, well, we can. It's the urge to find a place to lock ourselves away to silently sob, only to realize it isn't actually a sob, but more like our chest caving in from crying. No air escapes from our lungs, making it impossible to take any air in.

We bounce from being incredibly happy with ourselves to feeling like failures. We can talk one day about how happy we are with ourselves and all the accomplishments we've done, and then the very next day want to cry because we feel like failures who haven't done anything right in this world. I feel these ups and downs of failure day in and day out. I truly feel like no one sees all that I've done. I need daily communication and clarification that others are just as happy as I am. Some days I have to "check out." I have to leave my mind in another world and go through a moment in my life without thinking. I worry I might neglect the ones I care about when I do so.

Then there's something no one likes to talk about, due to it being "too personal." When we are having a manic mood swing, we become risky, not just in normal life activities, but with intimacy. Hypersexual behavior comes with a manic episode. We have a greater drive for sexual interaction. We may have more than one sexual partner, think about the action more than often, perform it in risky situations, or have a greater amount of one-night stands. When we aren't in a manic state, our minds are very normal, but you have to be slow during these times. You would rather not even bother with the act. People don't understand that a bipolar episode is more than just being upset one minute and being fine the next.

I've met people for the second time and had them tell me I've completely thrown them off due to a manic episode. I could be the life and soul of a party. I will be the one everyone wants to hang out with. I can crack jokes and laugh at any little thing like I have no care in the world. Then the next outing I can be the one that sits in the corner waiting for someone to nudge me wrong or even look at me wrong, and I will pop off. You can't explain to people enough how anything can set you off.

It's not being able to focus on anything. It's not being able to count inside your head because your mind is literally is racing over 800 things over and over. It's laughing and not knowing why you are laughing until you realize you where telling a story and just stopped because you thought of something else. It's not having anyone know what you're talking about most of the time. It's being in a manic state with your mind working so fast that you come up with rhymes or sing-song phrases and burst out in song or start dancing spontaneously. The perk is you always have something to talk about because you can't focus on discussing one thing for too long.

Being bipolar is such a scary thing that people don't truly understand. Many think bipolarness is just jumping from happy to sad in minutes, when indeed it is much more than that.