I'm manic depressive. You get used to it after awhile. You start treating everything like a land mine, because concievably you could be on top of the world until you hear a word wrong and plummet into the depths of human madness. Or there could be no stimuli at all. It can just happen. The only constant that I've ever found is that every manic depressive, or depressive bi-polar, is focused around one problem of event, and it is thoughts related to this core that cause him or her to have the violent mood swings that they do. Their mind need only glance by this central thought in the wrong way, and down they go, nigh instantly. I'm there right now. My rock bottom has been renovated over the years with a wet bar and lounge chair, since I spend a good deal of my time here. You see, I've been dealing with this for over 6 years now. That may not seem long in a geological or historical sense, but remember that it is somewhere around 32% of my life, give or take. When it first happened, I spent almost 80% of every day sitting around in my depression zones, sucking all the fun out of rooms and generally making life unpleasant for anyone within my mood radius. This isn't the case anymore. Now, I'd say only about 12% of my time goes into being a total killjoy. And I've not been suicidal in years. But when I am down now, it is far more serious, far worse, than anything I could have created with my mind at age 13. The core is the same, but with each passing year it becomes more pressing, more deadly. I've grown as a person because of this dual nature, trying to keep the part of me that collects stuffed animals on equal footing with the part of me that collects knives, but sometimes I wonder who will win. I originally set out to have this be an article explaining what caused this split in my head, to try to rationalize why occassionally the loyal readers of the page will encounter a version of me who's name was used for a Ragnarok Online characer, but I don't really have the patience for that. The explanation is so complex and drawn out that it would take me many hours to write it all down, and even then I doubt any of you would want to read it. For those of you out there who know me really well, the acronym JLRBRRR might suffice, but I doubt it. It's been on my mind a lot lately. Once more unto the breach, dear friends. May the war one day end.