I was born to a poor family in 1979.  My mother was only seventeen, and my father, who grew up in Mexico, was only twenty.  My mother has battled depression all her life, and my Dad has almost always been a hardcore alcoholic.  I was within a hair’s breadth of being aborted, but my mother changed my mind at the last minute.

 We barely scraped by and were even homeless at one point, until my father got a well-paying job when I was about eight years old.  At this time I was already in the GATE (Gifted and talented education) program, and I was a model student until about the age of twelve.  For reasons I can’t remember or perhaps never knew, I became very alienated and depressed a good deal of the time. I started getting an inferiority  complex due to my upper-middle classmates. It was here that I was prescribed Prozac, which mitigated the depression but seemed to have strange, even violent side effects.  I became very rebellious, talking back to teachers, instigating fights.  I would write Satanic symbols on my arms, I once wrote the word “Death” on my folder in my own blood.  I did not have a girlfriend until the end of my junior year.  The relationship only lasted a few months, I broke up with her
because I felt I needed my space. She was talking about marriage and kids; it was too much too soon.  I was turned 180 degrees from this when my parents divorced.  I tried to get her back to no avail, and it hurt.  At one point it got so bad that I threw up in the lunchroom.

Not long after I graduated I drifted into alcohol and drug abuse. At first it was just beer and then it went to whiskey, weed, cocaine, meth, acid, pretty much everything short of heroin and PCP.  My friends and I were like those guys In Trainspotting, we partied as much as we could, and hated white middle-class normalcy.

In July of 1999 my uncle offered me a job at an Internet software company.  I worked there for a year, probably the best year of my life.  I was on salary and still had enough time to party on the weekends.  I even met and fell in love with an amazing Indian girl,  But she was about to enter an arranged marriage so the relationship was basically doomed from the start.

 It was about this time that things really began to unravel. I started drinking more and more, often alone,  I would work for a few weeks and then quit, I wrecked a couple of cars and got into fights, and eventually, I found myself homeless.  The only way out I could see was joining the military.  I enlisted in the Air Force, mostly because my dad was
in the Air Force (until he got into a drunken fight with some MPs and was discharged) But I simply could not make the transition. I had become accustomed to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  So I told them that I used to take Prozac, was given a  Separation, and returned to my hometown, homeless again.  This part of my life is still hazy to me, I know that I drank and drugged a lot and had trouble keeping a job. I had my first manic episode while I was in Job Corps.  This was in 2002 and I was Diagnosed with Bipolar I for the first time.

    
Then I reverted to form, went on a two week drunk in Reno, sleeping in an  abandoned car.  I eventually moved in with my mother, started going to AA meetings and fought depression and the increasing number of mixed episodes I was having. In 2004 I got a job as a janitor at a hospital, and it was at this time that I had the most hellacious manic episode I had ever experienced.  I would go into detail about it but to do so would take up far too much space, Suffice to say it was a very, very intense time in my life and several times I barely escaped with my life.  I was hospitalized twice.

The second time my mother now says that I ran into oncoming traffic but I have no memory of this.

 
I then went back to school, living with my Dad, and for a full year the BP was in remission, until my Dad and I got into yet another fight.  In this one he gave me a bloody nose, and as the blood ran down my face into my mouth I would spit it right back at him.  I ran away, homeless again.  I lived in a group home for a few weeks, then a rehab center for about a month, and after that in a homeless shelter.  Needing a place to live, I moved in with my mom in North Carolina, and that pretty much takes us up to the present.

Yet again, I am starting over, but this time I know myself better, know my limitations, my values, my vocation.  I have a plan:  I’m going to save money for the next two years, while concurrently learning Spanish, and move to San Diego, where I have family who might be able to get me a good job.  Regardless, I will continue writing my novels, poems, and essays with an eye toward publication.  I do not have much in the way of material things to show for these past thirty years, my fortune is on the inside, along with the scars that have finally healed.

I just don't know for sure. Perhaps it is mostly in my own imagination.

My childhood wasn't what you'd call successful. I was bright enough but a wise-ass and a late bloomer to boot. All the tough kids would try to start trouble with me in school where, with my quicker wit, I would invariably make them look foolish. After school, however, my wit was no match for their fists.

This went on for years. I said I was bright- not wise.

And I was angry. I stayed angry until not that long ago.

I would like to say that I did well in school because it was the one place I could be successful- where I received positive feedback. This is the tale that I, as a teacher, tell my students. In truth, I succeeded at school because I had no choice. Failure was not an option. Hell, "B" stood for "beating" in my mother's home. I have since seemed to have lost those brain skills- due to age and medication (prescribed and recreational). Several times I've written something only to reread it and get that "WTF was I thinking?" feeling. Happens more and more... I'm sure you'll get the same feeling reading this.

In short, I am no longer 'bright.' But I am still a wise-ass; your garden variety nut-job.

Anyway, my success in school is proof that the fear of my mother outstripped the biology of my yet undiagnosed bipolar. Somehow I stayed focussed on the light, no matter how dark the days became.

I wasn't diagnosed until later in life- 36 or 38 years of age (I remember it began with a 3 and ended with a loop or two...memory fails me after that). My then fiance, M, insisted I see a doctor about my temper. Me, being the accomodating fellow I am, agreed. Several docs later I had the classification we've all come to know and mostly accept.

I'm happy about it. I don't hate the fact that I have brown eyes or a full head of thick brown hair so I refuse to hate the fact that I have bipolar. Hell- sometimes it really comes in handy- like when I have to paint an entire room in one afternoon and I just happen to be manic. I don't particularly care if anyone does have a problem with my diagnosis. In fact, eff anyone who can't take a joke. It's been my experience that normal people have just as much baggage as anyone with an official classification.

So I made it through high school and lettered in football (American football- the one with all the needless commercial breaks and actual scoring). I bring up the latter because the two may have gone hand-in-hand. Football gave me a safe place to be aggressive and it continued the lessons of discipline that began at home. Football made it possible to manage my bipolar without my knowing I had it. Of course, it may have delayed my diagnosis. But still- I was lucky.

Football also gave me a way to pay for college. But it couldn't do my schoolin' for me.

In fact, it was tricky to get through college undiagnosed, unmedicated and unscathed- and thats why I didn't... Scathed I was- in spades. It took me four years, three summer schools, one arrest, a couple of suspensions, and a few too many habits in vice to somehow achieve my diploma. Not a diploma in any practical fields mind you- majors in theater and english and minors in religion and education. Bipolar indeed.

With that background I naturally gravitated to special education. Which is, in my humble opinion, the finest profession for someone with MI. Eighteen years later, I am still here. That's not to say it was easy ... How I managed to hang on to my job is more a credit to the nature of that job than to my effort, I think. Somewhere along the way I learned to sprint- to go short distances while holding on to any shred of sanity. I can accomplish this in a profession with as few hours required at a time as mine. So I held onto that shred but I didn't manage to hold on to much else.

Well my computer...

When I joined BPS M had gone her own way and I had found another sucker I was very interested in. I have no desire to share the horror story that my life was ( any more than I already have)- I just knew I needed help- particularly if I wanted to keep this woman.

BPS was just what I needed. I knew I needed help but I really wasn't ready to do everything I had to. I wasn't that lightbulb quite yet- I could almost change myself. If it wasn't for the no nonsense advice of the members, mods and admins I know I wouldn't have made it.

I have since married that sucker, known here as messydesk. She is diagnosed as bipolar as well.

Yes, our life is bliss.

That is a load of shit and you all know it. Our fights are legendary- epic in proportion. They move with earthquake type intensity and yet blow over like a summer rain. Yet we know that bad weather looks worse through a window. Easy to anger at times, we are also easy to forgive and forget. After all, we must give what we hope to receive from one another. It does work for us so far, a mere six months in.

I'll update as needed.

I am grateful for this site and all its members. I am glad to be more than just an on a bit, off a bit member. I am grateful for the lessons I learned here- the most memorable being that of boundaries, staying compliant with doctors and meds, and that I am unique- just like everyone else.