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*Beth* · 10:36 PM

That sounds rough, wolf. I have scoliosis and came just short of needing a back brace when I was 13. I've always had a lot of back pain, though.

My environment while growing up? It was loving (except for my parents arguing almost constantly), until I was 5. My parents split up that year after 25 years of marriage. I'm sure my dad had BD. My mom was a textboook borderline personality; as she got older, she slipped more and more into psychosis.

TRIGGER

Possible trigger:

Without going into 80 paragraphs I'll just say that my mom married a man when I was 9...he was horribly abusive, in every way. To both my mom and I. Verbally, physically, and he also sexually abused me. He frequently dressed in drag, which included wearing a garter belt and stockings with no underwear. To put it bluntly, he'd strut around the house masturbating himself, sometimes while he was drunk, oftentimes, sober. And, he just plain molested me, personally.

As soon as they married their relationship very quickly became weird and chaotic. And my mom turned on me. She physically beat up on me, emotionally tortured me (saying things such as, "Don't go to sleep tonight because I will kill you". I was 9 when she started saying that to me.)

We had a nice house in a nice neighborhood and neighbors called the cops routinely, because my mom and her husband would be physically fighting, screaming, breaking things. My mom had some pretty bad paranoia that caused her to do such things as hanging black tarp over all our windows. It was horrible to live like that, plus I had to fabricate stories to my friends (when I occasionally brought someone over). I remember one year, my mom left the Christmas tree up until July. Of course, it was totally dead. I remember worrying that it would catch fire. She was severely mentally ill. I do not blame her for that, I only wish she would have stuck with treatment. She never would. And it took her 10 years before she separated from her husband.

Anyway...like I say, I could write many paragraphs about my childhood, but you get the point. It was, frankly, a hell on earth. I escaped, got out, and was married at age 18.

As a child, I was extremely depressed and anxious. Really badly. When I started high school, however, I started acting out in some ways; I refused to go to any class I didn't like. That was during the late '70's, a crazy era. I managed to graduate high school because I did extremely well in the classes I liked, and I did all sorts of extra-curricular stuff that teachers appreciated.

Overall, I will say that mania really manifested for me in high school. But - here's the thing. I remember being as young as 4 and feeling pure rage inside of me. I didn't know what it was called, but I sure felt it. That rage felt like the same manic rage I've experienced in my life.

I also remember, very clearly, being 4 years old and feeling very depressed. That was prior to my home life going haywire.

So, that's a very general overview of my childhood. It's frankly impossible for me (or any mental health professional) to separate environment from genetics in my case.