Fast ups and down - like in minutes - how common is it?

I almost forgot.

A few of my friends have mentioned that they think it is strange that I do this.  Of course none of them are bipolar.  But even a few of the bipolar ones have said the way I can sometimes hit these mood points in minutes is "a bit odd."

So it was suggested I write about it, so since I just remembered, here I am, writing about it.

One day I was on the phone with one of my friends while my son was having one of the worst meltdowns I think he's had.  He even slapped me in the face, lightly, but he still did it though he was horrified after the fact.

I would be calm and I would progressively start to get angrier and I would be provoked by him and finally I would yell once and boom, instantly I'd be calm again.  It's the same sort of thing that happens when I argue with MOH sometimes.  I can finally get so mad that BOOM I blow my top and then I'm instantly calm.

Now that doesn't happen every single time.  But a lot of the time it does.  And sometimes I can even pull myself to calmness if some other part of me is needed, like my Momness.

Whereas when I was younger and I lost my temper, like really lost it, I could end up blacking out.

As a teen and adult, I've threatened people with scissors, I've gotten into fights, when I was 7 or 8 I broke a girl's ankle and threw her into traffic (she deliberately broke one of my toys and I lost it on her).

In hindsight I am shocked that I was never charged with anything because maybe then I would have had a proper diagnosis sooner and gotten the help I needed sooner.  Who knows?

But the blackout rages were scary.  It wasn't always that I would forget everything, but it was like I'd come back to myself when I was already too involved to stop.  That point of commitment had already passed when I wasn't in control.

So now that it hasn't happened in years and years, I look back on it and think that I somehow developed the ability to explode and then go back to calm (or close to calm) as a self-protection mechanism, not self-defense, because I think it really only protects me from myself.

Whereas the laughter mentioned in yesterday's entry is definitely a form of self-defense and to trick abusers into thinking that I have somehow wrested control away from them, it's a checkmate move in a game of psychological warfare even if I may have lost physically/emotionally/sexually.

But that's straying into stuff I don't want to talk about so I think I am going to try and make a game plan for that damn table.

Ciao.