I was always told I was a happy kid. Adventurous, smiley, a beam of positive energy. I don't remember that kid. I remember eight year old me, knowing he was incredibly sad and that he shouldn't be. I learned years later Inwas suffering from a crippling depression, that was present more often than not.

I never told anybody how I felt, I just tried even harder to appear happy. I was scared I wasn't normal, I was already bullied and didn't want things to get harder for me. I had no idea what I was dealing with. When it came to being asked about depression, or how I was feeling, it was deny or lie. That was my life.

That didn't stop me from living my life, but it did create some very unhealthy habits, like over eating. I became the fat kid who tried to protect himself through humor. I thought things could only get better, but it was going to get much worse.

Fast forward eight more years, and I'm 16 years old. Things started to change for me, every few weeks I suddenly felt full of energy, incredibly flirty, and I felt as if nothing could go wrong. These periods of time didn't feel intense, not at first. I never even knew I was in these phases until after it ended.

I seemed to make decisions easier, and I would often deal with minor "fallout" in relation to my actions. Sometimes it was things I would say, or do. These wouldn't catch up to me until I was 18. There were signs, concerns, but no one addressed it. It was treated as a happy coincidence, my mood that is.

The summer of 2012 was the summer before my freshman year if college. I had never been in a better place in my life. My only concern was these random, and increasing episodes of explosive energy, ramped up sexual activity, and quiet frankly reckless decision making. At this time I was dating a woman who I honestly believed was the love of my life. I had plans to marry this girl.

One day we were talking together and I told her, "I think something is wrong with me." She replied with, "That's just your depression talking." This frustrated me, beyond words. I calmly replied, "No. It's something more than depression. I don't know how to explain it, but something is not right. I'm scared to say anything, though. I've worked too hard to get where I am."

My girlfriend, having dealt with mental illness herself, surprised me. She kind of brushed it off. She meant well, she loved me. I did need help, though, and had I gotten the help I needed, what happened next could have been avoided.

The last week of August, 2012, was my first week moving into college. My relationship had a few hiccups, but things were on solid ground at this point. A few days into the first semester, I began to have the worst manic episode of my life at that point. I was completely careless, reckless really.

I wasn't sleeping, at all. I was drinking, taking pills, and hanging around with a girl who had nothing but the worst of intentions. This behavior was a 180 from my norm, and it would have been abundantly clear to anyone who knew me well, but we were all freshman in a new place.

My girlfriend noticed my odd behavior, and in the confusion made the assumption that I was cheating. In my right mind, almost a decade later, knowing what I know, I see her point of view. She had been cheated on before. I was hanging out with a strange girl, acting way out of character, and I couldn't give a convincing explanation because I wasn't in my right mind.

It reached a boiling point. My girlfriend called me, making accusations of cheating. We had both been cheated on before, and when we started dating we made a pact. If one if us cheated, it was over. Done. Period. No if, ands, or buts.

When she accused me of cheating, it suddenly brought my great mood crashing down. I became incredibly irate, telling her it was over. How could she say these things? Accuse me? She was no angel, she had dissolved my trust more than once and she was accusing me? I told her I was done. It was over. She said she didn't accept it, and I told her to figure it out.

In my mind, it wasn't really over. Everything was going to be okay. That's how it was when I was manic, nothing could go wrong. Beyond all reasoning, nothing could go wrong. This was the worst day of my life, and I didn't even know it. My brain was so out of sorts that I ended it with the love of my life, over the phone.

I rushed out of my dorm room, almost running into the girl across the hall. The girl I had been hanging out with, who had become a good friend in a short period of time. While manic, I had began to flirt with her, a lot. Also completely out of character. She wanted out of a bad relationship, and she saw her opportunity.

She asked to go on a walk with me, and I accepted. I was talking a mile a minute, and I was acting frantic. She told me straight out, "You don't seem okay, like I know you just broke up, but this is more than that, isn't it?" I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, everything was fine. She shrugged it off.

I told her about the pact, about how it was over. She pointed out I hadn't cheated yet. Yet, that wording should have raised a red flag but I didn't catch it. She sat us down in the campus garden area. We talked some more, and I began crying. Everything was confusing, I couldn't think straight, I felt so off. Then it happened.

She leaned in, and kissed me. I kissed her back, Inwasnt even thinking about it. Afterwards she said, "Now you're free, you kissed someone else." Reality came crashing down on me a few hours later when the "high" of my manic episode began to fade away.

I became inconsolable, and frankly suicidal. In my mind, it felt like my life was over. In one night I broke it off with the live of my life, cheated on her, and there was no going back.

A few days later we met in person, and I broke it off officially. I planned on killing myself afterwards, but fortunately that didn't come to fruition.

Why am I righting this?

It didn't get easier, it hasn't gotten easier. It's gotten worse and it's taken more from me than it ever gave me. I was diagnosed woth Bipolar Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder.

If I had seen someone in high-school, told an adult, a doctor, anyone, my life could have turned out differently. I could have saved a lot of people, including myself, ab insurmountable amount of hurt.

So, if you made it this far, thank you for reading. I know this wasn't written as well as it could, and it misses years of context, but I needed to mention these points. Someday I hope to write more thoroughly on my experiences, and the warning signs. Also, I hope to write more about the effects this has had on my life.

If you're reading this, and you have concerns about your mental health, please get help. The stigma may feel real, but the pain, difficulty, and loss that comes with untreated mental health will feel a lot more real. Be a lot more real.

Please, go get help. Just have a conversation, and know you have a world of support, you just need to reach out. I wish I had.