Before anyone called it bipolar disorder, before any diagnosis or medication or therapy, it was just… me. Me being “moody,” “too sensitive,” and “dramatic.” Me feeling everything too hard or not at all. Some days I woke up like a sun exploding—full of ideas, ambition, fire. Other days I was stone. Still breathing, still blinking, but emotionally gone. I didn’t have the words for any of it. I just thought this was how people were, except I didn’t seem to be doing it right.
There were days when my skin felt electric, like the whole world was vibrating in sync with me. I’d clean the house top to bottom, make plans to start five businesses, and write twenty pages in a journal, convinced I was finally “figuring it all out.” I’d stay up all night rearranging furniture or texting everyone I knew, talking fast, laughing harder.
And then, without warning, it would all crash. No explanation. No warning label. Just the sudden collapse. I’d sleep for sixteen hours and wake up more tired. I’d cancel plans. I’d stop answering messages. I’d stare at the walls and wonder how I could feel so much and so little at the same time.
I didn’t have a name for the storm back then. But I knew I was living in its eye.
Teachers called me bright but inconsistent. Friends thought I was fun… until I disappeared. My Family told me to snap out of it, smile more, pray harder, pull myself up. But they didn’t see what was happening inside. They couldn’t. Hell, I didn’t even understand it.
All I knew was that something was wrong. Not broken—just bent in a way I couldn’t unbend. And the worst part wasn’t the highs or the lows. It was the in-between. The silence. The stillness after the storm where no one asked if I was okay—and I didn’t know how to say that I wasn’t.
That was the beginning. The first chapter of this life I never asked for, but now must learn to live.
The storm didn’t have a name back then. But it was already shaping who I was becoming.
Leave a comment