“You were blessed by a different kind of inner view, it’s all magnifiedThe highs would make you fly, but the lows make you want to dieAnd I was once there, hanging from that very ledge where you are standingSo I know, I know, I knowIt’s easier to let go” 

Missy Higgins, ‘Nightminds‘

When I was a child, my mother described me as a live wire. I had an inner motor that never ran out of fuel. I was constantly running, climbing, moving, bouncing off the walls, smacking people with balloons, rolling down hills, flying through the air on flying foxes, winding the rope swing which hung from our gumtree up until it couldn’t get any tighter and then sitting on it in great delight as it unwound and the world became a blur. When I look at photos of myself when I was about two my mouth would be open so wide that it reminded me of those laughing clown ball machines at carnivals. It looked like I was screaming, but if I was, it would have been out of sheer love for life. My eyes sparkled blue as the ocean. I really was, as s.c lorie @ butterfliesandpebbles wrote, the girl who had sunflowers for eyes and fireworks in her soul.

I barely slept, and didn’t need much sleep. My parents said that I was a wide-eyed child the minute I was born, as though thinking “wow! Isn’t this world amazing!”

My mum said that she would ask other parents if they thought her child was “normal”. I was a force of nature with the energy of a tsunami. One carer said she’d rather look after ten kids than one kid like me.

My mum blames my father for my hyperactivity. She said he was always tossing me around and putting me up trees. But I think it was just me. Continue reading “Bipolar” →