In the original (redux) introduction, I had kept my cards pretty strongly to my chest.

As I feel very much at ease here, on our little, well-kept island away from the "real" world, I will share you my story. If you really rather not, I understand.

It is very lengthy. But if you ever only read something else of mine, I wish it were this.

I am pretty confident in saying that I lived through all of the spectrum.

I started off pretty much disorganised schizophrenic (as in prodromes; bad memory, strange ideas, trusting intuition more than reason), then I acquired a borderline-like personality which allowed me expression and eased my way then, but certainly not in the long run.

After a few incidents of aggression and more and more reactive mood swings, lots of crying, all that: I put a brake on. Went back to impressionable, mildly delusional, and very little expression of emotions, but now with mood dysregulation. Got more and more mildly depressed, then quickly severely depressed.

It took me years to recuperate. I lost my early teen years. My new life was completely built on my own, unchecked ideas. My theories about perception and consequently BP, stem from that time. At that time, very much delusional, as in relying on them. Over time, re-socialising, these ideas became less consequential.

I lived a happy life for some years. Pretending my "delusional" ideas were just me having a laugh, my beliefs laughed out of court. It was ok: all my friends were normal and saw me as next-to normal. Fine. Had a great time.

Then I met a good friend (still), who lives/lived (somewhere between the two now) very much at the borderline. My father saw it coming: I strayed off the path my father had kept me on. By, mild but impressive, force. And you know what, I am actually very glad I did.

My first mania was just to warm up. It was the last real hypomania I have ever experienced.

My normal is what people call hypomania: I really can't see the difference. At any rate, it was great.

It was what no-one asked for, but it was all under control.
Cost me lots of money (thanks mum and dad, truly) and missed chances, but I learned a lot and was also quite respected.

I did things others wouldn't because they had no need or desire for the costs, but what they would've in a better world with more courageous and caring people (sorry, I drift off). It was very much worth it. That is, that's what I thought (and still think).

At the time I went to university, I really was ready: mania and incongruent psychosis with mixed intervals between weeks or months of that, hit full force (did but is shorter, I remember much less; just fragments, mostly of people shouting or speaking with lots of determination to me, while I told them how it was them, not me).

I brushed it off as dyslexia at that time. It was the only word I knew to describe the problems I'd always had at school. But dyslexia is so much more than a reading or writing difficulty: it is an appraisal and association problem. To me it was what I was, till the very core of my being.

I still believe that: the comorbidity of (early-onset) schizophrenia and dyslexia hasn't been lost on clinicians and scientists alike. Loosened associations is what makes words, sounds, letters and concepts blend together. What's more, bright lights; visual perception. Thoughts and ideas. Everything transcends, including the self.

Ok, at any rate, I didn't yet know that more severe cases were, after exposure to stress, called psychoses.

I was put on a dose of antipsychotic which was far too low and after that they kinda gave up. They had next to know experience with the likes of us (or me). After some time I left, despite a crusade by my mother ("I am not crazy, but you are!") to give me proper treatment, despite all my efforts to keep the identity of my psychiatrist and NP secret (I told her it was apparently called "bipolar disorder", what I was now experiencing). Hyper-dyslexia with the specifier "with sparse memories and visuals loosely associated with each other—and with mood".

But the antipsychotics, as I learned during my second occurrence of fully psychotic mania, helped. I'd gone from schizophrenia-like to SZA/BP-I-like, at that point.

A few months later I went to rapidly cycling BP-II-like when I started a mood stabiliser, but without severe depressions after hypo- or rather pre- (less stable), mostly, mania.

I finally felt more sane than my mother for the first time.

My mum is not far off the borderline of the spectrum. But occasionally her excitement or ecstasy trumps that of mine 3 to 1 or thereabouts. She got worse after having my sister and then worse still, having me. I'd never known normal, really.

My father and sister are quite normal, but not really really. And always very much frustrated with the both of us, sometimes exploding.

My father thought my mother crazy and did everything to keep me from from straying off the path; his very narrow one.

Family dynamics were, as you might imagine, less than ideal.

Having never felt this stable in 20 years, it seems that the brake I put on the excesses of my personality is off. I feel like I live at the borderline, see a relatively normal life before me, but I can't yet cross. I am getting therapy after I am more "truly" stabilised, what ever that may be.

Thank you so much for reading all that! Wow!