I have bipolar disorder. It’s something I’ve largely come to terms with; but I still find myself longing for other people who understand what I’m going through. I’m proposing some alternative fairy tales with bipolar leads that bipolar kids can look up to.

Beauty and the Beast

Belle is a book-loving young woman who finds herself the captive of a frightening beast. She soon realizes the beast just needs love, and, through her kindness and persistence, she is able to teach the beast how to love and they eventually get married. Shortly after, Belle goes on Amazon.com and spends $3,000 on books, and that little French candlestick has to take her credit card away.

Cinderella

Cinderella lives with her mean stepmother and step-sisters. There’s a formal ball coming up — but hours before the ball, the mean stepmother says that Cinderella can’t go until she completes the impossible task of cleaning the entire house. Luckily, Cinderella is really manic, so she cleans the entire house in one hour and even has time to sew a dress and start a blog. She then goes to the formal ball, where she falls in love with Prince Charming and six other people.

Dumbo

Dumbo is a circus elephant with bipolar disorder. Dumbo is very depressed and the beginning of the movie is depressing. Dumbo has a mood swing and becomes manic, granting him the ability to fly. He becomes very popular. He also develops a substance abuse problem. Then Dumbo has another mood swing and becomes very depressed again, and the end of the movie is depressing.

The Jungle Book

A very depressed young Mowgli wanders out of town and into the jungle one day. In the jungle, he finds a couch with a blanket on it. He crawls under the blanket and does not emerge for eighteen months. (Some kind wolves bring him food during this time.) When Mowgli finally does shed the blanket, he finds that the ferocious tiger Shere Khan has returned and threatens the entire jungle. Mowgli crawls back under the blanket and stays there for another eleven months.

Peter Pan

Thanks to Peter Pan’s everlasting mania, he remains a little boy forever who has delusions of grandeur and believes he can fly. Peter leads a group of lost boys who all look up to him. Peter is literally the best person in the world at everything. Peter takes in Wendy and her brothers and teaches them how to be like him. Captain Hook shows up, but nothing comes of that. This story is about Peter.

Sleeping Beauty

Princess Aurora falls into a deep sleep for sixteen years. Prince Phillip gives her true love’s first kiss in an attempt to wake her. Turns out, she was just really depressed, and is not in the mood right now. She goes back to sleep.

Snow White

Snow White is driven into hiding by the evil queen and finds refuge with the seven dwarves. She soon realizes all of the dwarves have emotional issues and she becomes obsessed with fixing them. She keeps picturing all these little dwarves playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Seven little dwarves, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except her. And she’s standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What she has to do, she has to catch the dwarves if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going, she has to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all she does all day. She’s just the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing she really wants to be.

Snow White ends up in a mental institution.