Hi all, 
I’m struggling lately, and trying to figure out something weird going on with me. I will talk to my shrink about it, but I’d really appreciate your insights. 
I have an alphabet soup of other diagnoses, but have recently been screened for bipolar and didn’t really feel like I’ve had anything like a classic manic episode since my late teens. I struggled with intermittent depression in my twenties, but have been more stable since then. However, due to some major changes that eliminated much of the structure in my life, I think my moods have gotten less stable. Over the summer, I fell into my first really debilitating depression in years. My sleep was totally screwed up,couldn’t do anything but cry, blah blah. I was a wreck, but I was also… weirdly wildly creative, to the point where having new songs spring into my head fully formed was the only thing I could think about or deal with. Even in my sleep. It was hugely exhausting and making me very frustrated with having to do anything else. Then right about the time I started to get well and truly freaked out, it just went away.
Had it just been that, I would have shrugged it off (once I picked up the pieces). But it’s happening again. I’m on a tropical vacation, and I feel so flat I don’t want to talk or socialize, but my brain is 90% music again. I feel jittery, restless, ill at ease, and so frustrated with needing to be around other people, doing other things. I’ve been getting and staying stoned all day to shut off my obsessive thoughts. At the same time, I’ve also done more personal writing and edited more photos in the last week than 
in the several months before that. And there’s another thing. I’ve been like, *rabidly* horny since it set in again. I always answered “no” to the screening questions about promiscuity because I’m not going out in the world sleeping with people I shouldn’t right now. But I realized, I am thinking about sex pretty much the entire time I’m awake at a level that is possibly not normal, and this morning I realized “Oh my god, I was really sex-obsessed the last time I was in a bad place… and the time before that…”The last time I was compulsively flirting, sexting outrageous things to men I barely know, posting nudes (not this account, don’t bother), buying naughty things, etc., was the last time I was a basket case, and my interest in that waned too when I suddenly leveled out. Until I crashed again. 
Im not totally out of control, but I’m not really in control either. I feel disconnected from everything, less rational then I usually am, and I’ve made some pretty rash relationship decisions recently. I am not planning to do anything harmful or overly reckless, but I’m starting to see that this is actually an established pattern that seems to be getting more frequent.
Is it really possible I could have gotten to the age of 43 without anyone including me catching on that I am maybe bipolar 2 or something, but never got diagnosed because I never experience mania separately from depression?
It runs in both sides of my family, but is it even possible that it could suddenly be ramping up now that I am in my forties? 
Thank you.