My mom said something I thought was interesting tonight. We were laughing at my sister's reports of my 10 year old niece trying her patience and my mom was sharing stories of my sister at that age. I laughed and said that she had really been pretty lucky in the teen years. My sister smoked and that's about as bad as it got. My mom told me that I never really gave her problems as a pre-teen or teen except for what she now knows wasn't teenage behavior but was actually manias. So now I know that those go further back than I remember. I remember depressions but not manias from 5th grade on.

I had so many triggers in my family. And a family full of mental illnesses. I have no idea what caused what although I had biological issues in infancy; I didn't sleep. I was eventually prescribed phenobarbital which is a ridiculously strong med for an infant. My mom gave it once, was scared by how sedated I was and just went back to carrying me around and trying to get me to sleep for 8 months. I talked really early and my older brother swears I screamed and then started talking.