There is no September. There is no nineteenth storey. Sorry.

I’ll be out of town for a few days, so I won’t be posting until sometime next week. I’m fine. My brother’s doing less fine, but is at least staying out of the hospital. That’s good, right?

I really need a mini-vacation. Yay.

Okay, there are multiple problems with mood charts. Yesterday, the bipolar chicks blogging pointed out how inadequate mood charts are for rapid cyclers, or even just for trying to accurately explain how you feel. The post is funny because it’s true.

Lately I’ve been noticing another problem with mood charts: The times it might be most useful to keep them tend to be the times that you just say, “Screw it,” and don’t bother filling anything out. You’re too depressed to think a mood chart could be of any use, or you’re too depressed to hold a freakin’ pen or open your mood chart file on the computer, or you’re too scattered to have any idea what day it is, or you can’t remember yesterday, or you can’t remember that you even keep a mood chart, or you think that the FBI and your boss are monitoring your mood chart because it’s really a secret code, or you feel so good you don’t know why you ever thought you needed a mood chart in the first place.

To be fair, I guess this isn’t so much a problem with mood charts as it is with mood disorders themselves. Maybe it wouldn’t even be so much of a problem if I had a little more self-discipline. I usually keep a mood chart at Mood Tracker. But sometimes, for whatever reason, I just can’t be bothered to.

Seven years ago today, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I tend to prefer the term “manic depression” to “bipolar disorder,” but when I thought up “polarcoaster” it was just too amusing and appropriate for me to ignore, due to the terribly obvious roller coaster rider imagery, and I had to do something with it. I don’t often use the word “bipolar,” but if the shoe fits, well, I might as well be a polarcoaster.

I’m apprehensive about mental health blogging again. I used to journal online about my mental health or lack thereof in the late ’90s, but I’m not sure that I had anything useful to say then, or that I will now. (What, you think that just because I wasn’t correctly diagnosed until 2000, I — and everyone around me — didn’t know in the late ’90s that something was wrong? Just kidding — I’m sure that anyone who finds this site will have had their own experiences with misdiagnoses.) Philip Dawdy discusses clinical trials and current news stories much better than I could ever hope to. All I’ve got to offer are personal stories with the details blurred, and opinions whenever I’ve got ‘em and can marshal ‘em into relatively coherent sentences and paragraphs.

I’m the kind of person who gets really affected by anniversaries. April 3 is not only the anniversary of my diagnosis, it’s also the anniversary of one of my most spectacular breakdowns. No, these two things didn’t happen in the same year. This doesn’t mean, however, that I sit around in the dark, wallowing in misery, on anniversaries of bad days. I remember them, though, and today I want to do something to commemorate this one (these two?). So I set this blog up tonight even though I don’t have an important idea for a post and even though I don’t have any time to work on the site’s design in the near future, which irks me because I love web design and this place will probably be dull and generic for ages.

One way to let you know a little bit about me, quickly, without actually telling you anything, is to mention that I loved Seaneen’s post yesterday because I could relate to so much of it. I might as well have said a big “Me, too” to the entire entry.