I've felt 'different' for as long as I can remember, but didn't know why until I was diagnosed this past winter. As a child, I had night terrors from the age of 5 until I was 11. I sleep-walked. I had imaginary friends AND triplet sisters.

At 13 I went through my first actual depressive episode after my grandmother passed away; what's weird is the long-repressed memory of being taken to the doctor multiple times and given different kinds of pills. I was sick much of the time, too, so I assumed they were for my physical illnesses, but of course no one ever told a 13-year-old anything back in the day, so I never knew what I was being medicated for. But I do remember that the green ones made me sick; the orange ones gave me nightmares; the blue ones made me dizzy; the red ones didn't do anything at all. Then I saw my mother's friend, a nurse practitioner, and she came up with the correct medication; after a while I felt much better.

Now I wonder exactly what I was being treated for. There's no way I'll ever find out, because this was 40 years ago and all of the people involved are now dead. But somewhere in the back of my mind I can recall hearing the words "manic-depressive"......I don't know if they were in reference to me or not, but that was a term I know my mother wasn't familiar with. Weird.

So yeah, I've always been about 15 degrees off 'cool'. It's OK now, because I'm old and eccentric and people like me the way I am; but I sure suffered as a child and young adult. At least now I know why.