What are your thoughts when the word “bipolar” pops up in conversation?

Maybe you threw it out to explain how indecisive you are.

Maybe you used it to explain your mood swings.

Or, maybe, in quiet whispers across the cafeteria table, your friend informed you of some burning information about your newest crush:

“Yeah, they’re cute,” they might say.

“But they’re bipolar.”

The word may conjure up things you’ve heard — Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting from the asylum window. Fits of extreme rage you’ve experienced at the hands of someone who suffers from the disease. The word itself may even scare you off.

Yet, how long have you stopped to research the disorder?

How hard have you thought about what it’s like inside someone’s mind who has bipolar disorder?

Approximately one million Americans are currently diagnosed. That doesn’t count the people who aren’t. So, what is bipolar disorder? (Disclaimer: it’s not swallowing yellow paint to make your “insides happy.”)

Sufferers of bipolar disorder have more than just a mental illness -- they suffer from a disease. While the research is still out on many aspects of BD, neuroscientists have made it clear that there is a physical aspect of the brain that causes BD.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, bipolar sufferers have structural problems within their brains that cause it to be a physical disorder as well as a mental one. Mixed pathways in the brain can cause wrong signals, causing the symptoms BD sufferers experience.

BD sufferers aren’t just angry and sad. Bipolar causes one to experience heightened feelings. Although many kinds of bipolar disorder exist, most sufferers will experience periods of deep depression and periods of heightened feelings — often categorized as mania.

Mania’s symptoms can range anywhere from anger to euphoria, and in some cases, can ruin aspects of a sufferer’s life. Spending sprees, quitting jobs, etc. are very common during this period.

However, BP is different amongst each person. Some people will never experience extreme mania. Some will experience mania that lasts months at a time. In any case, a sufferer of bipolar disorder will have symptoms that interfere with quality of life — extreme depression being the most debilitating.

This depression that accounts for most of the time an untreated bipolar person will be living. This is why bipolar disorder has the highest rate of suicide attempts of any other mental illness: today, it lies at 50 percent.

500,000 people.

This cycle of up and down, these extreme emotions and feelings -- they can cause a person to become hopeless. Often times, because of how stigmatized this disease is, how misunderstood it is, people refuse to accept a diagnosis or seek help.

Luckily, there are wonderful resources anyone struggling with anything can reach out for. Psychiatrists can help the chemical imbalances in one’s brain become stable so it becomes possible for a BP sufferer to live a normal life. Talk therapy can help one work through issues. Simply reaching out can save a life.

Although bipolar disorder is a lifelong disease, bipolar disorder also can also inspire many things: Sylvia Plath, the renowned poet and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, suffered from bipolar disorder. Robin Williams, comic and actor extraordinaire suffered as well. And yes, Van Gogh himself.

Bipolar disorder isn’t a death sentence.

It’s not a diagnosis that separates bipolar people from neuro-typical humans. Bipolar disorder can be channeled healthily, but we have to start somewhere: society has to understand what bipolar disorder means.

Medication cannot be stigmatized. Most importantly, though, we need to see BP sufferers for what they are: people.

When I was 15, I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It's normal to want to fight it. You ask yourself why you aren't normal.

But normal people don't get what we get: we get to see the world a little differently. We get to see starry nights outside our windows and feel like other humans will never have the privileged.

Don't see bipolar disorder as a bad thing. Be unique. Be different.

Be proud.