My mother, 57 years into her life, has just been diagnosed as bipolar.

I suppose everyone should have put the pieces together a long time ago. I’m Bipolar, and the genetic link had to come from someone in the family. It explains my mom’s periods of insomnia followed by days of sleeping. It explains everything about her.

My mom was diagnosed with depression for years. I can see why. Periods of staying in bed, tearfulness, and feelings of worthlessness certainly sound like depression. What all of her doctors were missing were the periods of time when she didn’t sleep for days, could be hyper focused, and was severely agitated.

Everything makes sense. This explains my entire childhood.

As I mentioned earlier, my mom slept a lot. So much so that she missed a large chunk of my childhood and I have some serious emotional baggage because of it. Seven year olds don’t understand mental illness; all they see is Mommy sleeping through playtime. But this diagnosis makes her patterns crystal clear.

It also explains where my bipolar diagnosis came from. Yes, there is a genetic link between the predisposition for depression and that of bipolar disorder, but it’s still unusual that we couldn’t point to a specific family member as the one who passed the gene on to me. Now we know that it came directly from my mom.

Now we both get to go through years of therapy.