I've been "abnormal" since I was a little girl. My parents took me to a child psychiatrist when I was 6, he said he thought something was wrong with me but needed more visits to determine what it was. They never took me back.

My first major depressive episode happened when I was 10. I also had suicidal ideation but never told anyone because I knew they wouldn't listen. Then I had another one at 13, after my grandmother died. (I don't know what caused the other two.) That lasted about a year. My mother took me around to different doctors and I was given various pills, none of which I tolerated. The blue one made me sleepy, the orange one made me vomit, and the green one made me crazy. I had no idea why I was being medicated, but in retrospect I believe they were antidepressants.

I don't remember any mania until the summer of '79, when I went ape sh** for absolutely NO good reason. I also had terrible depression after I had my babies which got worse with each successive child. The last one I think I crossed over into postpartum psychosis; I had these horrific fantasies about leaving my baby on the train tracks or throwing him into the swimming pool and walking away. Even now I can barely talk about it, I am so ashamed even though I know it was illness, not being a bad mother. Of course, I never came close to hurting him, but those intrusive thoughts drove me to drink (literally) and went on for many months.

Long story short, I wasn't diagnosed until I was 53. By that time I was losing my mind and something had to be done. My GP said I had something too serious for him to treat after four trials of different antidepressants and referred me for a psych consultation. It took that pdoc all of 90 minutes to diagnose me with bipolar disorder NOS. The bipolar 1 label came two years later, when I was 55.

So I guess I can say I was born with it, but other than some isolated instances through the years, it didn't manifest itself fully till my 50s. My mother probably had bipolar but she never saw anyone about it; I also had a cousin who developed bipolar 2 after a traumatic brain injury. They are the only family members who have had it besides me.