Written September 20, 2011

I feel such a joy tonight I haven’t felt in a long time. I didn’t do anything for it. It’s because of something someone else is going through. My colleague A--- is engaged. I don’t know much about her personally. I only see her a few times a year when we’re both at some work related event together. She talks mostly about professional stuff and I talk mostly about my children.

When she told me today, I was immediately happy for her. As I looked into her eyes, I saw that her happiness runs deep. I think she was waiting for a long time to have news like that to share, she’s been telling it for a while, and she’s enjoying telling it. Maybe she’s anticipating having children of her own to talk about.

Maybe she looks like that all the time and I never noticed because I never really looked into her eyes. But tonight I saw a beauty that transcends. It was just a few hours ago and I don’t remember now what color her eyes are. I remember feeling a happiness in her soul inducing a happiness in mine.

There are plenty of people I’m acquainted with who have told me the same kind of news without stirring up any joy in me. After all, marriage is just something people go through. Sure, I give the obligatory congratulations. Tonight, I felt it and meant it and I’m going to sleep smiling.

This is the upside of the mood disorder I’m coming to grips with. I am cyclothymic. It’s like bipolar disorder but milder. I can be sad with nothing to feel sad about or happy when everything’s going wrong. Of course, there are times when I’m sad or happy appropriately. Sometimes, I feel an extra dimension to my emotions. Something can go wrong and that extra kick to the emotion makes me feel worthless. Or good news can come along at just the right time to make me ecstatic.

It’s the upside I don’t want to lose. As I wrestle with the idea that maybe something else is wrong with me (even though cyclothymia answers so many questions about things I’ve been through), I wonder if medication should be part of my management. I’d like to lose the down days when work feels like work, mistakes feel like colossal failures, and if there have to be 24 hours in a day I’d rather not do anything with them. I want to keep the up days when work is play, mistakes are just trivial parts of such fun work, and every second is a joyous occasion. Some medication doesn’t let you have it both ways. Both edges go dull. Maybe that’s appropriate for people at the extremes but it’s not for me.

I didn’t know I was cyclothymic until about a year ago. I’ve been depressed many times, but not so badly that I missed work or bailed out of a marriage. I kept reading about depressive disorders because I had no idea having a good time is a symptom of a problem. Somehow, I stumbled across an article about cyclothymia and my whole adult life came into a focus it hadn’t been in before.

A---’s news fine focuses everything. I want to keep the capacity to be happy, sometimes deliriously, about things people should be happy about.