It all began when mom died. Everyone knew then there was something wrong with me. I was ten and a compulsive liar, and by the age of twelve I was already addicted to cigarettes. (Little did my family know) Anyway to make a long story short, there is a history of lies, drug addiction, impulsiveness, compulsiveness, mania, depression.... the list goes on. No one figured it for bipolar disorder until a year and a half ago. They always thought it was just because I lost my mom. I finally settled down from the drinking and drugging at the age of twenty and got married. We had a child within our first year of marriage, but our marriage was also on the rocks constantly, so I never knew what woman he was going to tell me about next. What truth was finally going to come out. So when my child was 2 years old, and my husband told me that he had been cheating on me with another woman and that he would be moving her in.... it didn’t surprise me. He told me I could either sleep on the couch until I got a job or I could get out. Now, I didn’t know I was bipolar at that time, but part of being bipolar is being very impulsive... so I just took the baby, what I could fit in my car and left. I went and stayed with a friend. Every job I got, I seemed to be afraid of... when faced with customers, I would shake and start to cry and have to be taken to the back of whatever store I happened to be working in until I calmed down. I got fired a few times, and quit a few also.
I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I just gave up. I was about to have to live in my car, and I knew I couldn’t take care of my baby that way. I had to turn him over to his daddy and that woman that was living with him (who is now his step-mother). After I turned him over, I lived in my car for three months in the winter, freezing every night, going to my soon-to-be ex mother in law’s house every morning to beg her to let me in to some heat for just a little while. I panicked every night. I knew I was sick, but didn’t know what to do about it.
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