been bipolar from childhood

today's weather: B A S E L I N E
anxiety : 0
agitation : 0

I'm very sure I was born bipolar. I did not acquire bipolar mood. My mind did not break down due to stress at some point, (contrary to what some ignorant fiends from RavenCorp think). I was always bipolar. I will go as far as saying God intended for me to be this way.

It's in my genes, something I inherited from my mother's side of the family. My other relatives' mood-related disorders are proof enough that this didn't "just happen" to me. It has always been there.

As a matter of fact, I exhibited symptoms of bipolarity from childhood. Just to make sure it isn't just a conclusion based solely on my opinion, I checked for How To Identify Bipolar Disorder In Children and cross-checked the items with stuff older people have told me about my younger self.

Bipolar disorder in children manifest itself somewhat differently than adults. Adults have learned to modify and adjust their external behavior so that usually internal clues are more telling. With children, they often let it all hang out. In manic phases bipolar children may bite and draw blood, swing dangerous objects, hit with clear intent to harm, or turn ordinary objects into weapons.  Taken from here.

I snickered when I read this. Even before I went to school I was sort of a violent child. I bit other children (though I don't recall ever drawing blood), hit them and found pleasure in making them cry. I still remember the delicious PLEASURE in seeing another child cry; I enjoyed it somewhat.  I fought lots with my brother, and I was often the initiator - I remember this because my dad had this annoying ritual of pointing out who started it, and it was more often than not, me.

My favorite victim was my cousin who was a year older than me; her mom (my Auntie) used to call me Terrorist. I used toys as weapons. What's interesting is that that particular cousin was also my favorite playmate. When my antagonism cooled, we'd be laughing and playing together - until my next attack of course.

During manic phases of bipolar disorder a sense of grandiosity or invincibility

I had a sense I was smarter and better than everybody else, including all the adults. I was going to grow up and end world hunger or something.  Through my preschooler ears, everyone else had poor diction and illogical reasoning.  I based my rationale on Sesame Street, of course.

I suppose that sense of idiotic invulnerability is also why I got up on the roof one afternoon and jumped - an event my family and I now humorously refer to as the Darna incident. I was nine years old. Save for a slight temporary paralysis at the shock of landing, I suffered no injuries. Well, except for a laceration on my lower lip that needed ten stitches. 

Why did I do it? I thought it would be fun. That was all it was. I knew I would survive, so I went for it. I didn't even regret it; I thought getting stitches was pretty cool.

... a shift from silly or even giddy behavior to suddenly sullen, down, or despondent moods

Yeah, that was me. Everyone around me made sure to point it out. Some have even noted that I "switched" a lot, like it was so quick for me to turn my smile into a frown and vise-versa.

To this day my parents still laugh about incidents in which I was all talkative and bubbly on moment, and then bawling the next. Their favorite seems to be the "I love to talk" episode. I was a preschooler, and I was chattering away until my brother shushed me. Feeling defeated, all I could do was sob and say, "But I love to talk..."

In the depressive state you may feel it is impossible to get children with bipolar disorder out of bed. During manic phases getting them to sleep is the nightmare.

Oh yes, that was me. Just ask my dad. I was his daily source of frustration.  He was a military man whose way of life centered around regimented methods and fixed schedules, and he always (yes, ALWAYS) berated me like a drill-sergeant whenever I was not ready to leave for school by  0600H.

... with mania, expect excitability, hyperactivity, rapid thinking patterns, talkativeness, and explosions of energy.

Talkative certainly was a word people used to describe me as a child. Sometimes I'd felt so much energy that I needed to act things out, and I ended up physically hurting people around me (unintentionally) while I told my story. My mom called them "action stories", rather aptly, since I did a lot of actions and I hit people.

With all the racing thoughts, I felt the need for a journal as early as first grade. My head was going to explode with all my imaginings, I just needed to put the contents somewhere. My dad did not believe in buying "extra notebooks" for non-school-related purposes, so I had to make do with a stash of bond papers I nicked from his office supplies. He didn't believe in art materials either, so I used Crayolas and ball-point pens.

With depressive moods look for lethargy, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, social anxiety, and severe crying or sensitivity.

Lethargy was not uncommon in my childhood years; in fact, my parents and teachers used to call me lazy. I tried to explain that I was actually feeling tired, i.e., physically exhausted, but no one believed me.  They could never understand that I was actually feeling physical weakness.

It was neither uncommon for me to experience an overwhelming, debilitating sadness that I could not describe.  I have too many childhood memories of deep, dark sadness actually.  I really thought it was normal. There was a particular depressive episode I had at age eight, one remember clearly to this day. If that wasn't the first time I'd been depressed, it certainly was one of the earliest and heaviest.

"Severe crying" fits me like a glove.  I used to cry profusely and abnormally as a kid, often for no apparent reason. It annoyed my dad so much, he gave me an ugly nickname for it (Why do military men like giving people cruel nicknames?)  A lot of my pictures from age 4 and below feature me bawling my eyes out. I was told that I did not like my picture taken, but I've seen some photos of me in which I didn't seem to mind the camera.

There were times that I'd cry myself to sleep over small matters. I cried over cartoons with cute animals, but not always. I cried over spilled milk (literally), but not always. I learned the word oversensitive before I was in first grade because I'd heard it around me a lot. When people noticed my red, swollen face, I'd lie and tell them I had a cold.

I was also prone to anxiety - but again, not always.  There were apparently episodes of irrational anxiety that no amount of comforting measures could alleviate. Aside from my camera-fear, there were a lot of other things I was afraid of at times:  Unfamiliar people scared me, especially if they were, er, ugly.  I had an irrational fear of cats and dogs; it caused temporary paralysis.  Even chickens scared me. I recall having a crying fit over a chicken who came too close to me.  My uncle who raised chickens thought he could help me overcome my chicken fear by making me touch a chicken, but the thing pecked me right in the eye.  Thanks, that was kinda stupid.  I really thought all the adults around me were very unsympathetic about my anxieties, and I found their techniques cruel. Of course now as an adult myself, I now know that the right thing for my parents to have done was to consult a child psychologist, instead of serving me taunts and military-style threats that only damaged my self-image.

Of course as I grew up, my fear of domestic animals waned.  Just so you know.  I have a few animals at home.  I'm still scared of ridiculously huge dogs with large teeth, but that's a rational fear that most people have, so I'm good with that.

Anyway.

I remember clearly that I was often anxious in school, constantly feeling that I did not belong, and that I was not wanted .  Even after graduating, I still felt like an outsider in that place. I had a hard time connecting with other kids my age, because I constantly felt like we weren't in the same league. I was never bullied or anything like that (in fact, some old classmates claim that I did the bullying), but my memory of grade school has an overall unpleasant flavor.

This depression will be different than the standard sadness. The child will be withdrawn and will be almost comatose. They will have trouble getting out of bed and entering into the easiest things.
From here.

School was a bitch. I really hated school.  Though tests conducted by the school guidance counselor always revealed I had superior intelligence, my grade average was rarely excellent and I was thus an underachiever.  Notwithstanding, I already felt like I was spread too thin - I really tried to study, and no matter how hard I tried, I never got the grades that matched my potential. Though there were stretches of time I got excellent scores and produced unbelievably impressive work, those alternated with stretches of time with undone homework and failing tests, and that boiled down to a less-than-impressive average.  

I recall periods of time in which I could read with comprehension really rapidly, but there were also times when I could not absorb anything I read at all.  Nothing at all.   I'd sit in front of a page of text for minutes and not understand a damn thing. I'd understand individual words, but my mind could not make them connect into a coherent whole.

There were times I had cried out of frustration because I could not comprehend very elementary paragraphs I'd read several times over. I have this vivid recollection of when I was in fourth grade, I sat through an entire seatwork just staring at my paper because I couldn't understand the directions, no matter how hard I wrung my brain. I didn't get why I was the only one who had a hard time with the activity; I was in the top ten for goodness' sake. I couldn't come up with answers and had to pass an empty sheet; I felt so run down that when the substitute teacher asked me about it, all I could do was excuse myself and cry in the lavatory.

I understand that "almost comatose" state the article above refers to. It wasn't uncommon for me to just sit and watch people; I thought I was already interacting with them, but they hardly noticed my presence. There were times that my energy was so low that all I could do was sleep - in fact I had a reputation for being the girl who was often asleep in class.

... trouble focusing often exhibiting a obsessive-compulsive demeanor.

I did have obsessive-compulsive behavior in childhood. I wasn't merely a neat freak, but I somehow surrounded myself with rituals and personal rules with no rational purpose except to ease my discomfort.

People around me labeled me mood-swingy, but they probably don't realize how much of an understatement that was. Or still is. Finally getting an official diagnosis and learning what Bipolar is all about shed light over my childhood psychology, it's also quite freeing. I'm not merely those labels others put on me - lazy, talkative, oversensitive, et al - but I'm a complicated and wonderful mass of diversity. God made me so.  And despite the stigma that people tend to peg on Bipolars, being Bipolar is not a bad thing.  It's just different.

In the words of another Christian bipolar, to despise my being bipolar is to despise the design God made in me. I embrace it, and I'm though I'm not always thankful for it, I'm thankful in it.