@cloudcore my top 3 are confident, loving and creative.

Like @LostAngel seeing those around me happy makes a huge difference which is why I struggle so much sharing my life with someone who lives with bipolar. 

Expressing my creativity makes me happy, but I struggle to be creative when I am unhappy because the sadness (or fear or anger) saps my confidence. Rightly or wrongly, my moods are soley dependent upon his moods. I am not strong enough to remain focussed and confident when he off on one of his tangents.

People assume I am an extrovert because I have good social skills and can strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere. In my profession I do a lot of public speaking. However, a part of defining introverts and extroverts is determining where they draw their energy.

Several hours socializing, even though I'm good at it, leaves me exhausted. My energy is renewed through solitude - the point being that living with someone who's mood swings dominate and are omnipresent - someone who is needy and smothering yet also demanding of perfection - well most of the time I'm too sodding tired to be happy.

I've been happy for about three weeks now. He has been calm, given me space when I've need it and not woken me up at night. BUT we've now had four days in a row where things have gone a little pear shaped and I'm back on high alert.

The whole time we've been talking about sadness I've been happy.

Not today.