I LOVE this thread!

As a kid, I saw things differently. In fact, I thought it was because I was a kid and a promised myself that I would never forget what it was like to be a kid. And in large part, that's true. For example, I saw little worlds inside everyday things. Like I had gone into another world. I wrote poetry that teachers and family would say were prodigy-like. As I said in the post above, I thought I was from an alien race. A group of people that were different. (It didn't hurt that I'd read a book like that.) I was depressed from at least age 16 and yet the pdoc said I was "normal". I heard voices sometimes too as a teen, but who knows if these were the normal hypnagogic kind. Only as an adult did these thoughts go "wonky". The disassociations, the hallucinations.... Thank goodness this didn't show up as a kid. I really did feel that there was nobody else out there like me that understood what I did. I still think I understand more than anybody else could, but that could be part of the bipolar. Its a feeling of being special and of not being able to adequately describe the world I live in to others. Then again, I have "normal" days, too. I can go to the grocery store just fine, or what-have-you.