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… or y’all, for my south­ern read­ers. What you see above is one of my favorite places—at my com­puter, with you, email­ing with you, IMing with you, writ­ing for you, read­ing your posts and com­ments, drink­ing my tea and enjoy­ing the plea­sure of your company.

When I started this blog, it was as a woman thrash­ing, drown­ing, clutch­ing at the shore, far off. I felt alone, iso­lated by my bipo­lar and my erst­while func­tion­al­ity, lost for the moment. I’d been used to being the social sec­re­tary, the project man­ager, the mom, the best friend, the best wife, the orga­nizer. And then, I couldn’t. When I started the blog, almost two years in to my diag­no­sis, I still wasn’t sure I’d make it, and I wasn’t at that time find­ing sup­port in the sup­port groups around– since it’s not a dis­ease that those who aren’t either suf­fer­ers them­selves or direct care­givers can ever fully get. I was no longer of the peo­ple who’d been mod­er­ately func­tional most of their lives– sud­denly, blammo, I’d lost it. Lost it, like it was my fault, all of a sudden.

Except the bipo­lar wasn’t sudden—just unre­al­ized, unno­ticed, stealth mad­ness, if you will. Creep­ing, cumu­la­tive, accel­er­ated, sud­denly hit-the-wall crazy, alone, unhappy. I wasn’t, but I felt that way. So I started the blog to jour­nal it through, though I was not expect­ing to find read­ers. I was not expect­ing to find com­fort from my blog, just cathar­sis, though I’d found relief in the raw hon­esty of blog­gers like Dooce—I started not really know­ing what to expect, at all. I think I was hop­ing to pro­vide some infor­ma­tion, some com­fort, some you’re-not-alone-ness to oth­ers, but mostly, I was hop­ing to pro­vide it to myself, stop­ping the cir­cling doubts by get­ting them Out There. Hop­ing, but not sure I wouldn’t still feel a lit­tle lonely, mis­un­der­stood. Espe­cially since I wasn’t then sure how out I could afford to be in “real life” about my ill­ness, my dis­or­der, my bane.

Instead, I’m blessed beyond belief, beyond com­pare. Read­ers found me, friends found me, I found friends to read, and some of you have trusted me with incred­i­bly hard secrets, in email or in com­ments. Thank you. Thank you for shar­ing, for encour­ag­ing, for believ­ing, for root­ing, for ask­ing for help, for respond­ing, for being that new num­ber in the stat count, new ISP in my Google Ana­lyt­ics, being There. And Here. Every time I open my Reader, open my com­ments email account, and every time I open “Write New Post.” You’ve made me braver, saner, more Out in real life, more who I am Here that I was afraid to be There. The blog and Real Life are con­verg­ing, and Real Life is bet­ter as a result– amaz­ingly, most “real” peo­ple have been great, just like you. But I might have not known that—except by cre­at­ing here, com­ing here, and stick­ing it out, with my wire­less con­nec­tion, a cup of tea and thou—who are with me all the time. All the way. Thank you. And happy Love Thursday.

You can see more Love Thurs­day posts here, at Shut­ter Sis­ters.