I was always an outgoing person. I loved life. I loved my friends. I loved softball. I loved a lot of things about life. I thought I was just a free spirit.

During my young teenage years I was every mother’s worst nightmare. I drank. I started smoking. I was pretty bad. When I met my husband, I changed a lot. I stopped hanging out with my friends. I still hated school, but I went. Eventually I found out I was pregnant and I gave up my old life for good and started a new one. My goal was to be a good mom.

I remember my first manic phase like it was yesterday. I was 3 or 4 months pregnant with my baby boy. I was up all night cleaning, fixing, picking up, pacing. It felt never-ending. I suppose I went through about three manic episodes during my pregnancy. I didn't really think anything of it. I had read in parenting magazines about all the wonderful feelings that mothers go through before birth, and I thought the mania was just my hormones.

I finally had my baby boy in July. I was fine. He was fine. Everything was fine, until I started losing it. It felt like my emotions were just pouring out of me -- sad to happy, sad to mean, mean to happy, mean to paranoid. I was miserable. I was overweight. I was not in a good place. So, thinking I just felt depressed because I was so heavy and my hormones were going through changes, I went on a mission to lose weight.

My husband and I were married in March of 99. My wedding day was awful for me. I insisted on taking care of every last detail on my own. In the long run, I was one miserable bride. My feet hurt, and my brain hurt!

My husband and I were also dealing with a lot of stress at home. His mother was in an abusive marriage, and we had been dealing with the stress from this for a few months. Then we received news that she had passed away. Our struggle intensified. We had to go to court to try and prevent her husband from inheriting her money. The stress from this, and the fact that I was very much needed to take care of things caused me to slowly cycle into mania.

My mania lasted for weeks. I experienced joy and rage in the same moment. I lashed out at my husband. I was so full of energy I had to clean and if things didn't stay clean I would flip! I didn't sleep, and I lost so much weight, which I was happy about. If only I had known that I was eventually going to be sad again.

My thoughts came to me a mile a minute. I couldn't think. My memory was suffering. I couldn't remember things that people said to me -- I wouldn't even pay attention half the time. I was up, up, up. I thought I had received a gift from god – I mean, what person wouldn't want all that energy?

Then my sadness returned. It came and it went. Sometimes I was just miserable. Sometimes I would cry. I looked awful again – just awful. I couldn't believe how fat I was. I felt ugly and wondered how anyone could love me.

It got to the point that my highs and lows were happening in the same week or the same day. I decided that I must have some type of stress problem because I had been through so much. I came to find out that I didn't have a stress problem, and I wasn't just making things up either. I have bipolar disorder. When I first read what bipolar disorder was, my mouth dropped to the floor.

After six years of highs and lows, six years of just trying to breathe, it only took my doctor a half-hour to tell me what was wrong. I was sad. I was angry. I still am. But, I'm also hopeful, and I wasn't before. I'm not crazy! I'm happy about that.