At 20 went into severe depression out of nowhere. In fact, I'd been having a GREAT time preceeding it. So it made NO sense at all -- because there HAD to be a reason, right? At the time I didn't know about endogenous depression. Or bipolar. I was at university at the time, and everything had been going great. Suddenly, I couldn't manage to go to classes -- barely ever even managed to leave my room. It went on for months. Had to drop out.

Never went back. Things were swept under the rug WAY more in those days (and very much so with my family -- heavy-duty denial of OBVIOUS problems), so there was to be no help. I was merely something to be furious at -- for being some kind of slacker ingrate(!!!) (Good grades, hard worker, scholarships and work-study. Go figure. Grrrr.)

Many years of many episodes (so classic in both strong hypomania and depressive phases...) before being "forced" to go see somebody. I'd known for a very, very long time there was something major wrong with me, but was too afraid to know what.

I'd had "peculiarities" forever, but don't speculate much over it. I just count the crash into the massive depression as the start, because it was life-changing and an impossible to miss marker. No fuzzy speculation about it.