The theoretical book outline

The theoretical outline of the book I'm thinking of writing looks like this:

I.               Intro and Foreword

II.              About Bipolar Disorder

III.             Mania and Hypomania

a.     Racing Thoughts/Words Piling up like Boxcars

b.     Higher than Normal Drive/Project Obsessions

c.      Hypersexuality/Sex, Fidelity, and The Other

d.     Increased Spirituality/Transcendental Experiences on a Daily Basis

e.     Plummet into Depression/The Words Crash Down

IV.            Depression

a.     Pessimism and Hopelessness/Living Cursed

b.     Lack of Enjoyment/The Grey World

c.      Feeling Empty/The Emptiness In My Center

d.     Coming  Out of Depression/Breathing Without Pain

V.              About Medication

a.     The Toll on my Body

b.     The Day I Couldn’t Stop Walking

VI.            The Rest of My Story – How I Manage

It's scary contemplating writing a book about how I experience bipolar through the lens of my creativity. It's easy to talk about what's going through our heads when it's within the realm of normal, but sometimes I live in a different world than you probably do. As I have Bipolar 2 -- half the mania, all the depression! -- my mania is mild and perhaps even functional, but my depression can be hard to fight. Most of the time my medication works; I have an excellent psychiatrist who keeps an eye on things. But sometimes it fails -- I get my dosage wrong, I hit a very stressful time, the seasons change -- and I am left to navigate through a slightly skewed landscape. When I am hypomanic, the colors are brighter, the lines sharper, and I imagine the trees glow with knowledge. When I'm depressed, I walk through the aftermath of a forest fire, in the snow.

I hope you don't see me differently -- no, I hope you do see me differently, as someone who is neurodiverse, whose brain is wired a little differently than yours.  I hope you don't see me as a curiosity, as a victim, or as an undesirable. My world takes fantastic turns in the the old sense of the word -- tinged with grace and otherworldiness; tinged with horror. That's all.