Joy Higgs:  

I doubt that I am that memorable. In my first years of school I had one friend/best friend. It seems this is just how my life was meant to be. My parents bought a new home and we moved away from everything familiar to me, including my only friend. In the fourth grade I was in a new school and everything was unfamiliar. I was already showing signs of being Bipolar. This move and the new unfamiliar surroundings threw me into a depression and I was just trying to find a corner to be left alone. Someone didn't allow that to happen. She was my one and only friend for many years after that day. We had to make another move to a small logging camp due to the mill shutting down in this area. I graduated from a class of 8, this was considered to be a large class. My father knew some of what I had been put through and made arrangements for me to move back to Porterville and attend High School there. I was excited to see my best friend again, but it didn't work out quite the way I had pictured it in my mind. Maybe I had changed too much, maybe I had grown too used to dealing with situations all alone. I felt pushed aside and spent most of my high school years in a corner watching the world go by around me. I met the love of my life that first year and for at least a year things were great. Things began to happen that pulled me into too many directions, and it was more than I could handle. Again, the Bipolar symptoms began to show. No one else seemed to notice. My father was concerned because I had dropped so much weight, my mother thought it was wonderful - I was so thin. Many things happened the next year. Things I don't care to remember and I'm sure no one else wants to hear or read about. My life seemed to be about as dark as it could be. I just didn't care anymore. I was pushed into a marriage that I really didn't want. I won't say the whole experience was wasted years. I have 3 of the most beautiful daughters anyone could ask for. They are unique and strong, and very good mothers. I would not have had those beautiful children that I love so dearly without my first husband. The marriage would have survived I believe if others had not tried to control our lives. One person in particular "thought" she saw me at the college with a bunch of guys and informed my husband and his family of this. However, she never bothered to go up to this person she "thought" was me to make sure of this. My marriage began falling apart. We tried for several more years, but I couldn't get past the fact that he didn't stand up for me, and he doubted me in the first place. I don't think he trusted me after that. So, my first marriage fell apart after 20 years, my first love was killed in a terrible accident at work. My children were what I focused on. I have fought with symptoms of being Bipolar over all these years. My therapists claim that I'm a very strong individual, but at times I don't feel very strong at all. About the time I ...Expand for more