The first time I heard of bipolar disorder was when I was 15. At my high school, students could choose between politics or psychology class. Back then, I wasn’t really interested in psychology. I wanted to understand the world through fairness, not “feelings”. One day, a classmate returned from the ever-so-cool psychology class, excited about all the disorders they were learning about. He told me, “We learned that there are people who can feel extremely happy and then very, very sad—it’s like they have two completely different personalities.” He was so fascinated, and I remember how he spoke, as if he were describing another species. I told him that it sounded boring. Looking back, I said it because I was a little jealous I hadn’t taken the class myself.
It wasn’t long before that when my own (depressive) symptoms began. I found all sorts of reasons to skip class—even saying the weather wasn’t right because it was too cold. My grades dropped, and I almost had to repeat the year because of how badly I was doing. As my parents got more and more worried, they insisted on talking to one of my teachers, who described me to them as “a little bit crazy.” Then came a romantic and strangely perfect summer, right before the final years of school—the years that really matter if you want to get into university. And suddenly, the lonely, sad student turned into a productive “nerd” with straight A grades in almost every subject. Those grades ended up being my golden ticket to study pharmacy (and later psychology).
I knew I was depressed—but also not. It felt more complicated, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Doctors ran all kinds of tests—on my heart, my thyroid. They told me to take vitamin D and iron supplements. I spent years going from one medical appointment to another, but nothing made a difference. When I finally sat down with a psychiatrist, she had a very concerned look and said, “These are the pills, and I’m prescribing them right away.” I didn’t want to believe her—or the diagnosis. She seemed too efficient. Shouldn’t something like this take more time? More tests?
While studying psychology, I still found it hard to accept. Even after everything, I still thought bipolar disorder was something that happened to “these other people”—the kind of people my classmate had described. The manic episodes didn’t feel “manic” enough—or sometimes didn’t seem to be there at all. And whenever I did seek help, it was always because of the depression. That was the part that scared me. The rest? The happiness, the jokes, the people, the places, the intense motivation—those felt like finally being myself again.
But after yet another depressive episode, even my stubbornness couldn’t hold out. I just started the medication—not with hope, but with exhaustion. With all the resources available to me—as a psychologist, no less—I kept wondering how I had let it come this far. I should have known the signs. I did know the signs. And when the diagnosis came, I wanted a second opinion. A third. More tests, more time, more evidence, please. It’s strange — how sure I was that I’d recognize the pattern in someone else. But when it was about me, I hesitated. I still do, sometimes.
I am not sure I have made peace with it. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But for now, I am somewhere in between. Still, that is not what matters most right now. Living with the diagnosis and trying to treat it does not feel like a breakthrough. It’s maintenance: small improvements, awkward conversations—just daily life. My story is an in-between one and I used to think that these stories do not matter until there was something more conclusive to offer. But this is where I am. Not at the beginning, not at the end. Just here, trying.