BI POLAR MANIC DEPRESSIVE

Not too long ago I was diagnosed with being bi-polar.  The old school called it being manic depressive. In lay mans terms my up and down mood swings occur more than normal. In my case ALL the DAMN time.My family has long since suspected that may be something I am dealing with. After about 3 years of goading,prodding and quite honestly nagging from my mother I saw a counselor. She said it was b-polar after about 12 mins of talking so i went to a psychiatrist and he accessed the same thing after 9 mins. So either I'm quite bipolarish or  they were that damn good. Now the $64,000 question is..what exactly qualifies me of all people as bi-polar. Well it starts many years ago as i noticed i was overly sensitive as a child. It felt like I was more attuned to my emotions than the other boys my age. I cried in class, cried over homework, over a hard test, over the teacher. I just did not have a good handle on my emotions. I got older and I did not cry as much but I
mastered the art of being seen without being seen. I'd appear like a ghost and disappear just as fast. I wanted to be liked but feared rejection so much i ultimately became my own best friend for awhile.  High school i fared OK..loosened up some and made friends. Even asked a couple girls to go with me...whatever that means. But bubbling under the surface was this anger and sadness I didn't know what to do with it. I really wanted to kill myself my 12th grade year. My sadness as i now know was depression. Not the sweet to look at movie kind but the kind that makes everyday horrible to deal with. Makes you wale up and ask God why am i still alive? To question your existence and why your here is something we all do. Just some of us take it further than necessary. I continued to have the same feelings thru out college and my 20's. It was like i existed as 2 or 3 different people. The jester, the angry man and the sad man. Each part of me was needed to exist but it was alot of overwhelming feelings involved. I turned to what i could to handle it. I drank, sexed, took vicodin...all to numb the pain and the voices. The voices of those who teased me mercilessly as a youth, the voices of a certain relative who cut me down at any chance possible, the voice that says you don't deserve anything out of this live and you'll never get it NO matter how hard you tried.  This is a feeling I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. To question your core fiber of your being and your self worth is not fun. Nor is it something that resolves itself quickly from your system.Everyday I am dealing with new discoveries about myself. Everyday I am learning who I am and how to deal with myself. I was once told that people are works of art. Everyone they come in contact with leaves a stroke on the painting that is themselves. So sometimes you need to step back and look at what strokes make up who you are.