The Beginning of My Bipolar Experience

I grew up in a home with a mother who was Bipolar. She did not always take her medication which is one of the reasons that I faithfully follow my doctor's orders. She was unstable consistently. The highs and lows of bipolar disorder, otherwise called manic depression, were difficult enough to deal with in myself- much less living with someone else who didn't follow treatment.

I wasn't diagnosed as manic depressive until I was 17 years old. I spent most of my teenage years depressed and I wrote, "doom and gloom," type poetry while having sporadic times of mania. This was when I was hyped up and talked too fast. I experienced the euphoria and delusions of grandeur of the manic side of bipolar disorder.

I had my first manic episode right after Christmas in 1989. I had been manic without a diagnosis at the time for weeks before when people thought that I displayed strange behavior and I made a lot of enemies at my school without meaning to. Later the friends that I did keep told me that they thought I was under the influence of drugs at that time from the way I was acting. I wasn't taking drugs then though. My actions just appeared that way from being bipolar without realizing it.

I was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital where they tried different treatments on me. I spent weeks there in the adult ward and then was transferred to a youth ward at another hospital. I still have holes and black outs in my memory from those times and I don't really want to remember what all I experienced. I was so scared to be in the hospital. I hadn't really been away from family or people I already knew before that time. I was a senior in high school that year and I was released from the hospitals in time to hear about my school class graduating. Once I was home I was afraid to express any emotion at all because I was scared that I would be put back in the hospital.

I started to go back to high school in the Fall of 1990 but it was too overwhelming for me to face being in school again all day. I took a year off and then in the fall of 1991 a friend of mine suggested that I talk to the school and see if I could only take the two classes that I needed to graduate. By that time my manic depression was under control again and I was ready to face a new challenge. The principal agreed when the situation with being stable after the hospital time for manic depression was explained to him. I took only those two classes and graduated with honors from an actual high school. I am proud of myself for that because it was hard to go back and I was tempted to study and get a G.E.D. instead.

After I graduated, my older sister convinced me to try working as a camp counselor and I was scared too but I did it. I made it the whole summer in spite of the odds against me from being overweight and all my fears I overcame. That was a shining star for me in my memory. I learned how to be part of a team and to be responsible for the welfare of children within a unit of four other counselors. Mental health has such a stigma that some people may be afraid to trust people who have bipolar disorder, especially with their children but manic depression is treatable like diabetes or hypertension. People who are bipolar can lead very productive lives.

When I went back to high school and graduated, that was the start of a new beginning for me. It was a new start on life again for me. There have been many pitfalls I've fallen into since then but somehow there's always a dawn after the darkness of night and joy comes in the morning. The lifelong battle that is still before me of being bipolar is part of what makes me the person I have become for good or bad.