Bipolar since...

I believe I started feeling like this when I was 8 years old. I would obsess over conversations, thoughts of my mother leaving us every time we sat in the car while she went into the grocery store alone, and those are just a few. Now, it's more conversations I obsess over...I will remember the details of many different things I said, how I said them, and worry and obsess that I maybe shouldn't have said that.

Then you add the constant need to be punctual, if not early. This need made me to the point where I was in the bathroom ten minutes before I had to be on the bus heading to work. At my warehouse job, I would take the bus two and a half hours before my shift started just so I wasn't cutting it close. But the pressures of that job led me to killing myself at the gym, not eating for fear of upsetting my stomach, and smoking. Yep I was so stressed out that I was hitting the cancer sticks like a fiend.

When what happened at that job went down and I ended up not going back to the job after the shut down I was a completely different person. I was sketchy, I was miserable. I was experiencing migraines and not reaching my potential at the government. I had a short fuse at home and about to lose everything. I went to my doctor and at first he just labelled me as depressed and prescribed meds. I was then suspended from my government job for two weeks and realized what I needed to do was pull up my socks and make my deadlines at work. When they called me back, I was a new woman. I pulled numbers I had not pulled even the previous year. I built back up my rapport and everyone was satisfied in my work. I ended up being one of the last 5 employees working there and the contract ended on December 2, 2011.

I then decided I was going to try school. And I decided to apply at a private college, and pay an obscene amount of money for a course I didn't want in the first place. I obtained student loans and set myself in debt to realize that making it down to the school by public transit and sitting there every day was way too much for me. Although my grades were amazing I was missing 2-3 days of school every week.and in order to be considered in full time schooling I had to attend a minimum of 20 hours a week. So, I dropped out. And I decided to apply for disability. Seeing as how it was difficult for me to get out the front door, I figured I could get some help while I am unable to do anything.

And that's where I am at right now...waiting for disability and being an at home mom to my daughter. I have been suffering from this since I was 8 so almost 20 years...and it has just gotten progressively worse.