I was a very dark child...

My brothers called me White Fang because I bit people all the time. I remember waking up one day with the taste of blood in my mouth after a terrifying, re-occurring nightmare. It took my minister to get me out of the catatonic state that I fell into.

In elementary school I was constantly terrified of my classmates and teachers. I remember that I would often hide in the big tractor tires on the playground, huddled in a ball, shaking uncontrollably, while the thoughts and voices in my mind raced around, whispering and shouting dark horrible things.

While still young, I pissed the bed a few times. After that I became so obsessed with it, that each night I would (and still do today,) have to piss three times before I am able to settle down and fall asleep, (fearing that I would piss the bed again.). Most of the time I felt inferior to everyone else (I also knew that I was queer early on,) and I had times where I was sure that I was greater than everyone else, destined to do superhuman things (classical bi-polar.)

My family always thought of me as being oversensitive and easily upset. I would get frantic over politics, religion or just about anything else. These episodes would ether throw me into a dark despair or agitated me into a frenzied state, lashing out at adults and children alike in a loud threatening voice.

A major event in my life happened when I was still very young and I saw it though the eyes of a crazy child. One night I remember hearing loud noises in the house. When I looked out my bedroom door, I saw my Mom being carried out of the house on a stretcher covered in blood. I looked down the hall towards the bathroom and saw it covered in blood too. I later found out that my Mother had slashed her wrist in an attempt to kill herself. To this day, whenever anyone is in the bathroom to long, I worry that they are trying to kill themselves.

I have always been fascinated by the strange and morbid. Whenever I was tense, I would stick sewing needles through my skin, it usually made me feel better and more in control of myself (I still do that to this day.) By the time I was in high school I slept nights in a cheap coffin (that I had gotten from a family friend,) dreaming of doing horrible things.

The worst part of being a bipolar child was the day mares and nightmares that I had constantly. I was sure that there was something in the furnace room (in the basement) that was hunting for me and meant me harm. While this vision was faint in the day light, it would haunt my sleep for many years.

I met Ed in 1981 and he was able to quell all this turmoil in my head. We would ether lay in bed with him patting my head like a good dog or tying me down and ruffing me up. For our first ten years together I was intensely jealous of him, even though he gave me no reason to be. I would verbally degrade him in an angry panic, unthinking and unconcerned with the damage that I was doing to him.

Last summer the voices and images in my head got much louder (as it seemed to every few years.) The man that chased me as a child came back to haunt me, reaching out of the TV and injecting something into my skull. The other voices tried to get me to harm myself and others, resisting these voices is tiring and make me doubt my sanity. I am so sick of the large amount of psych med that I take every day, but I guess its part of the price I pay to hold onto my sanity.

Yes I was a very dark child (and adult.)...

Bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) is a treatable illness marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy and behavior. It is not a character flaw or a sign of personal weakness. Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression because a person’s mood can alternate between the "poles" mania (highs) and depression (lows). This change in mood or "mood swing" can last for hours, days weeks or months.

Bipolar disorder is a serious life long illness that is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by genetics, or abnormalities in brain structure. The disorder causes sufferers to experience “mood swings”; from dark depression to mania where the bipolar feels that they can do anything in the world and can became very aggressive. These swings can cause many interpersonal difficulties and can also be so sever that the bipolar can no longer function. There is a great need for proper diagnosis and treatment of this devastating mental illness.