Sad vs Depression

    As of now, my beloved bipolar takes no medication for his bipolarness, relying on his own willpower and his happy lamp to stay out of hypomanias and depressions.
    We had a long, unhelpful bought of dealing with doctors, who prescribed him something that sent him into a terrible depression, deeper than the natural depression we both found ourselves in when I miscarried my beloved bipolar's first baby. After almost eight horrible months of fighting, we decided maybe medication wasn't quite worth it and he's been impressing me ever since.

   With a 10 day old baby comes sleep deprivation, and with sleep deprivation comes manias. My beloved bipolar is very excited about food lately, going so far as to cook sugar-free dark chocolate, but he's managed to stay out of a mania.

   Also, his mother was here in Montana for a visit, all the way from Iowa.
  With the thought that she was here to see the new baby and visit with us, Mr. Professional set about making paneer cheese the night before. A great endeavor that does leave an uncomfortably large mass of dishes, along with making my butter cloth dirty. He researched and jumped into a new recipe, chili paneer, pouring love into his cast iron pan, obviously excited to impress his mommy with his cooking skills. She owns and operates a catering business and is one of the reasons he's so passionate about cooking.
     He bought a sparkling red wine with some bleu cheese to try. He was ready and poised, aimed and ready to impress!

    She showed up and chatted briefly, grabbing Bubbles and Icy, and whisked off, a half hour away to her parent's house, with no intention of coming back into town.
    The heartbreaking fact became obvious right then. She wasn't quite here to visit her son.
 

    We ended up inviting his friend over to enjoy his beautiful meal, and wine and cheese.
    It was a very nice evening, but like any normal human being who feels rejected, he was crestfallen and sad, really sad, but he wasn't depressed.

   It's really easy to be proud of him. He's stayed motivated enough to keep on top of chores, helping me keep the house pleasantly clean lately without going over the top into a cleaning mania.
   Cleaning seems to be an easy thing to set off a mania for most of the bipolars I've known.

    Even bipolars can get sad without getting depressed.