I have tried to go back in time, and figure out when my roller coast brain ride began.
I believe my first signs of mild depression were as early as second grade. Before that, I think I was a pretty normal child. Looking back, there were several bouts of mild depression in my grade school years. Some summers, I spent a lot of time hiding in my room and reading. Other summers, I would spend every day playing at the park.
My teenage years were very rocky. My parents assumed I was just a brat. I was up and down and all over the place. I was constantly changing friends and boyfriends. Some semesters I would get strait A's and others I would get D's and F's.
I was first diagnosed (incorrectly) with depression at the age of 25, and then finally (correctly) with bipolar at the age of 28. In my early 2o's, I tried to self diagnose, and mistakenly decided I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder. I was close, but no cigar.
Had I been diagnosed and treated earlier, I would have avoided a lot of suffering, not to mention, I would have caused less stress and suffering on my loved ones. It is not easy to love someone who has bipolar.
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Hi, nice to meet you.
When I was diagnosed with Bipolar, I received medication that worked for me. Then the side effects followed. I could not tolerate them at all, nobody could live like that. So I went on a different medication that worked in the short term but failed in the long term, enabling the illness to get much worse to the point of hospitalization and multiple medications for recovery. I am still in the recovery process. I look back and think, wow, I could have taken that one medication, handled the side effects somehow, and prevented it from overtaking my life.
~Jena (Every Moment Matters)
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