As someone recently said to me, Halloween should be a national holiday. It should be the "wear-something-fun-and-gorge-yourself-on-candy" day. It should be just a national day of fun when we're not supposed to be giving thanks or making love or hiding eggs. I could get behind that.

There are two reasons why Halloween is so fun:

1. You get to dress up and pretend to be someone else

2. You get to eat ridiculous amounts of candy and get a ludicrous sugar high

Well welcome to everyday bipolar disorder.

Being Someone Else

Yes, I admit, I have been a gothic cheerleader, slutty nurse and about a hundred other silly things for Halloween. These are fun things allowing an inner part of me to come out and take a bow at the end of October.

But being someone else isn't generally that much fun. As in, right now. I'm impersonating a sane person.

My natural state of being isn't a pleasant one, for me or anyone else. I'm depressed most of the time. I'm self-loathing. I'm tired. I'm misanthropic. I'm irritable. I'm seriously unhappy. And this is not a person you want to be or be around.

So, I buck up, and pretend to be someone else. A sane Natasha. An uncrazy me. Someone who smiles. Who makes jokes. Who is confident. Who is sexy. Who wears something other than pajamas. Who is generally the person my friends like.

A Candy-Coated Sugar Rush

And on Halloween, after eating all that candy corn, chocolate and nougatine you'll feel a sugar rush like at no other time during the year (maybe). And if you add a bunch of espresso shots to that, you start to approach a hypomania-like state. No, it isn't the same, but you're in the ballpark.

And notable about sugar rushes is that when you come down it's with a rather pronounced thud. Hypomania is similar only considerably more so, most of the time.

Happy Halloween! Happy Bipolar Day!

So Halloween is kind of like bipolar day, only a pretty fun version of same. It's much lower-stress being a slutty nurse than being sane person and it's considerably more reassuring to know your mood will return to normal once the candy corn evacuates the blood stream as opposed to whenever your brain feels like it.

So go out and have fun with the witches and goblins, but also consider for a moment what it would be like to be trapped in the unfun version of Halloween all-year-round. Like I am. Like the mentally ill are in general.

You can find Natasha Tracy on Facebook or GooglePlus or @Natasha_Tracy on Twitter.