I'm Amy, I'm 30 and I'm different because I have bi-polar disorder. It's inside me and I don't even know if anybody notices it or not. But I certainly feel different.
When I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder it really hit me when I went to the doctors and I caught a glimpse of the computer with my records on it and it said mental illness.
You know I'd had periods of depression before, but now it was there in writing -mental illness.
The initial feelings of a hyper-manic state make you feel very free. I just feel more confident, I want to go out, I want to be seen, I want to have more sex.
You just feel as though you can do anything. And so you push the limits, you push the boundaries. It's also mixed with this whole speed thing.
Everything is too slow. The whole world seems to be going at a completely different pace. People talk too slow, traffic's too slow. Then you realize that everybody else is going at the right pace and that you're going really, really fast.
Well sometimes it feels really good and I don't really want to go to the doctor and I want to carry on and I want to have this feeling where I can get loads of stuff done.
My most manic time … it's the strangest thing I ever did and I still have no idea why I did it. I spent about four days straight, didn't sleep, didn't eat and I copied out like the entire Revelations from the Bible and printed it all out on my dad's computer. He went absolutely crazy. And when he asked me why I'd done it, I had no idea.
Every four years there's a particularly low point and when you hit that very, very bottom part everything is so upsetting that you just don't want to exist.
I took an overdose when I was about twenty six. I had the children upstairs and my partner was out and I took all these tablets and I just wanted to sleep.
This tiny little spark of rationality came in to my head and I just thought wait a minute, you can't do this now, what if the kids wake up?
And I phoned the doctor and he just said "well can you make yourself sick?" And so I did. And then that's when they made me an appointment to see the psychiatrist.
If I deleted being bi-polar I'd just delete my whole personality. I don't know what I'd be. I have no idea what I'd be, I don't know who I'd be. So no, I would never delete it.
View Amy's video