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Carolyn from This Talk Ain’t Cheap left me a commenton that blog post that I tried to reply to, but I felt it I didn’t reply adequately enough. So, please indulge me, while I try to do it justice here.
I was diagnosed in 2007. I had been treated off and on for depression in the years since my divorce from the girls’ dad in 2005. I can now look back and see bipolar behaviors in my childhood that we sort of just wrote off.
We totally missed all the signs
It’s hard to determine exactly when my bipolar disorder manifested itself. My parents and I ignored it, wrote it off, explained it away, for so very long. My childhood was not your typical childhood. My father was a minister, so we lived a pseudo nomadic life, moving every three years. Making friends and maintaining friendships has never been easy for me. Never. I have often wondered if that is because of the moving so often, or if it is because of the BPD. One of the characteristics of BPD is lack of impulse control. I remember screaming and throwing my hair brush at the mirror because my hair wouldn’t curl the right way. I remember my mother being concerned about me because I was so overly involved in my friends’ drama, everything was life or death. Bipolar is about extremes, and so was my life. I could go days, or weeks without cleaning my room, and then, for whatever reason feel this overwhelming NEED to have everything in it’s place. I would spend an entire day tearing my room apart only to put it back together again.
I was a sophomore in high school when I had my first go ‘round with anorexia. BPD does not partly alone. While the thoughts in my head would sometimes rage out of control, I found that the one thing I could absolutely control was the amount of food I ate, or didn’t eat. And I was very good at controlling that. Control though was part of why I went undiagnosed for so long. I was afraid to let go of control. I maintained a B+ average in high school. I always did what was expected of me, I never broke a rule, I was a good girl. I had to be normal, and perfect. We as a family of the minister had an image to maintain. Crazy was not part of that image.
Until my father’s job demanded we move to a new church. In January. Of my senior year. The middle of my senior year I left all my friends, the guy I was dating, and moved to a town where the only people I knew was my family. My brother and sister would be starting school and meeting new people making new friends when we got there. I would be graduating when we moved, and wouldn’t have any way to meet anyone. Hello first depression.
I can point out other episodes throughout my life that should have been huge Ah-ha moments for us. The day I was pissed at my English Lit professor for calling out me and my boyfriend for passing notes in class. After class as my boyfriend and I were finishing our “discussion” I put my hand through a glass door. I drank entirely too much in college and had sex with too many people. Impulse control, I didn’t have it.
Those signs might have been explained away as a rebellious teen pissed at her father for ruining her senior year. The years to come would not be any easier.
One of the biggest signs of lack of impulse control was my first marriage. Chris and I dated off and on (mostly off, only on when nobody else was available) during high school. My father hated him. I can see why now. I graduated from college in the spring of ‘91, that December I looked Chris up. We hadn’t talked in years. He was single, I was single. I always had a huge crush on him, and he was always the one I could never catch. 30 days later we decided to get married. We I told my parents the night before. They were not pleased. I couldn’t stop to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head, I could only hear the mania squeeing inside “I’m going to marry him! I win!!!”.
The manic episodes I experienced
