I'm glad you're doing OK, and am happy you're here to add to this great community. I don't like to think of myself as "a bipolar person" (more a person with bipolar disorder), but I definitely agree that interacting with others who really understand is comforting. It makes me feel good when I can add something to a conversation that is perhaps helpful. Many many others in this community have helped me so much.

My first acknowledgement of my mental illness was at 14 years old with anxiety, but it may have started in a mild way before that. Maybe. But at 14 I took my first psychotropic med. At 15, I had my first significant depressive episode. Then it likely transitioned to a mixed episode. I incorrectly thought I had schizophrenia. I didn't know what bipolar disorder or manic episodes were. The course of my illness from there was clearly bipolar disorder, but I wouldn't know that until it worsened severely in my early 30s. In my teens and 20s I looked at my depressions and elevated periods as more like flus and highly "well" periods. Or more just parts of...life. It wasn't until my first hospitalization at 34 that I figured out I had a serious mental illness that would keep recurring. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder almost two years before, but totally blew it off. It didn't help that when first diagnosed I was surely at least hypomanic with no insight.