I recently experienced my first manic episode and hospitalization, and I'm having a very hard time coming to terms with this new reality. For the first time in my life, I feel like a diagnosis defines me. I feel defective. I feel abnormal. I feel alone.

I think this post is a little pointless and self-serving, but I really just want someone to say they relate to me. I have a very supportive boyfriend and parents who love me, but no matter how hard they try, they don't understand. How could they? They've never felt the crushing weight of depression or what it's like to become so high that they lose touch with reality. They don't know what it's like to feel owned by medication or terrified of potential triggers. They don't know what it's like to be sick.

My problem is this: I don't know anyone who is bipolar and I feel incredibly isolated. I know everyone's experience is different, but I'd love to have someone say, "hey, I felt like that," or "you know what? that happened to me." I just want to know that I'm not alone.

I'd appreciate your comments.

So... this is my story.

My first manic episode was about two months ago. At the time, I didn't realize what was going on until the eleventh hour. Looking back, however, the signs were there.

It began with a familiar feeling: I felt incredibly stressed. At a new job, I had received too much responsibility. As a lifelong perfectionist and overachiever, I felt an overwhelming desire to act beyond my capacity, and ruminated on the stinging pain associated with the failure to meet my own unrealistic expectations.

I had a prescription for adderall at the time--for ADHD--but I remember not taking my prescribed dose one day because I slept for only a couple hours the night before and I felt wide awake the next morning. I felt strange. At work the next day, I felt social and productive. I felt like I understood things that gave me issues for months. Later that night, I started thinking about social and political issues and wanted to write about them. I just wanted to write and write and write. I felt inspired. I felt creative. I felt great.

The next day intensified. I felt so social and connected to everyone at work. As someone who has moderate social anxiety, I thought I was magically cured--it was like my anxiety just disappeared! I was enthusiastic and passionate about everything. And it just felt like I understood things people said when they talked to me--something that I felt like I always struggled with in the past. Again, I felt great.

When I got home from work that night, I started to notice something wasn't right. My mind was racing. I couldn't concentrate. I was barely able to (parallel) park my car at home. It was impossible to stop pacing around my apartment. I knew something wasn't right, so I called my boyfriend and asked him to stay with me.

And then I started to lose touch with reality.

The ideas kept racing in. I didn't know what to do with them, so I just opened my journal and kept writing and writing. The best way to describe it: I made connections with everything in my mind. Everything had a meaning. Everything had a higher purpose. Everything "meant" something.

At that point, I tried calling my psychiatrist (whom I had previously seen for depression, anxiety, and ADHD) to ask for a refill of my anxiety medication--I needed to calm down and sleep, and I knew it. At 6am on a Saturday morning, he wasn't available. I'm still incredibly pissed about this situation, but it is what it is. So, I decided to ask my boyfriend to take me to the ER. After going to two hospitals and waiting in a terrifying ER room for over two hours--apparently at some hospitals there isn't a psychiatrist on duty early morning on weekends--I finally got to see a psychiatrist. At that point, I was completely out of touch with reality. I felt like I was on a mission against the hospital and against insurance and pharmaceutical companies. I was completely crazy.

At that time, I suppose the hospital gave me the option to voluntarily commit myself--but I thought I didn't have a choice. I was so out of touch with reality that thought I was being involuntarily committed.

The whole commitment experience was dehumanizing. Kafka-esque. I didn't know why I was there. I felt trapped. I didn't have my cell phone, my computer, my clothes, anything that made me feel normal. I felt so disconnected from the world. I felt like I didn't belong there.

I have a ton more to say, but I'm tired of writing now. If you've made it this far, maybe you can say you've related to something I wrote. I'd really appreciate that.