I like to say I am "colorful".Before I was properly diagnosed I told people that I was the weirdest person I knew.

I was diagnosed when I was 22. This was about a year and half ago. At the time I pretty much crawled to a doctor begging for help.

When I was a senior in high school I took AP Psychology. As we hit up the abnormal psych chapter, I sat there and listened and read. Light bulb moment! (meaning a light turns on above your head like in cartoons - I can be a dork) Bipolar sounded a bit too familiar.

I knew I could be depressed. My mother and I would fight about it. She wanted me to take antidepressants, I didn't. It is kind of sad that she still never took me to anyone but she is the only one who noticed something was wrong. The thing was, as depressed as I could be, I knew I could happy too. I did not know that happy could also mean hypomanic. I sat there in that class afraid everyone would see right through me and know I was crazy. I was even more afraid to tell people. I thought that people would think I was crazy for thinking I myself was crazy when in reality I was quite sane. It took me a while to realize that by having those thoughts it probably meant I did have some type of problem even if it was not bipolar.

For as long as I can remember I have been a horrible sleeper. Always the last one to bed and the first one up. I got into the habit was watching the TV with the sound turned off and the captions on when I was a kid. People thought it was weird. I was always watching TV in the middle of the night and did not want to get caught and sent back to bed to stare at the ceiling.

When my mother was happy with me she would say, "Sarah, you are such a Gemini! Two personalities!" And when she was annoyed it was "You are either high or low. Just be something in the middle!" Based on things like this, if anyone in my life actually knew what bipolar really was back then, I probably would have been diagnosed as a youngster. Oh well.

My mother made me see a psychologist when I was 19. I was depressed. I still would not

even mention bipolar. I wanted to be wrong and see if this lady could figure it out for herself. I quit seeing her after a month. I quit seeing a second psychologist about 9 months later after 2 weeks. About a year after that I started seeing a psychologist who also was a part of Al Anon, he was good. The Al Anon aspects helped a lot. But after 4 months I quit going to him as well. Four was my lucky number. But this time I was convinced. As more time went on the more behaviors I developed that were in that damn DSM-IV. I went to that forth psychologists crying and begged for help because I had bipolar, I just knew it. The psychiatrist that she referred me to agreed. I got the bipolar disorder type II diagnosis which I saw coming. I was also informed that I had general anxiety disorder and seasonal affective disorder. Did not see those coming. I thought it all went together.