Was at the casino a little while ago and was outside talking to a girl there. My sobriety came up and I told her I don't drink anymore due to meds, so of course she asked what I take meds for. I told her bipolar, and her response was, "So you have different personalities?" 

Had she stuck around long enough to listen to my side of it, this would have been my response. If this seems inaccurate to any of you, let me know:

Bipolar is a mood disorder, which affects the extent to which you express your personality traits, where different personalities is an inconsistency of particular traits you display at any given time. 

That's not coming out of the DSM so if anyone else has a better explanation please let me know, but that sounds better to me than a blanket statement of what bipolar really is. Then, she jumped to the anger generalization of bipolar, as if all of us bipolars walk around angry 24/7. 

The general public is so uneducated when it comes to mental illness, I suppose that's really no fault of their own, but when you are talking to someone who has an illness and you ask them about it, the least you could do is stick around to hear what they have to say on the subject. Good thing I didn't also tell her that I think I'm on the autism spectrum too, she probably would have sprinted out of there. Smh. For the most part she was nice, but she should have listened to me describe it to her so she would have a better understanding of bipolar.