One childs story

This post is the one that I have gone back and forth about posting. The post itself it written by a fellow student in S1 college lit class. The assignment was to get to know something interesting about your subject and then write a paper. S1 opened up about his medical struggle and honestly I was floored. I have not changed anything below except everywhere the student placed S1's name, I have replaced it with ++++ to protect his identity. The reason I have hesitated about posting S1's condition is because there are many of you that read this that are in the midst of TTC or adopting and honestly, I didn't want this to freak you out. Even though this condition has NOTHING to do with either, I didn't want to add fear to your already strained worried minds. This post will also show you why I feel so incredibly guilty at times for not knowing something was wrong sooner. We really thought S1 was imagining. He is frighteningly brilliant, extremely witty, very artistic, and has a very old soul. From the time he was very very young he has had the soul of someone that should have lived long ago. He has always far surpassed his peers on so many levels that at times he had trouble making friends. He would get frustrated if the kids weren't playing fair or if someone couldn't remember the rules. He is also a killer at Mon*ply. Nobody has ever beaten him..ever. So ---with all that said, here is S1's story as told by a fellow student in a writing assignment. (I will also add a little addendum at the end). ++++ seems like a normal kid. Well, aside from telling people he loves them and to meet them in his room after class. That’s a little creepy. Besides that though, he is a typical college kid. Goes to class, parties on the weekends, has a job. But people do not know about the battle he waged with his mind when he was a kid. One that haunted him for years until it almost beat him, had him pinned up against the wall with nowhere to go. To tell this heroic tale, I need to take you back to when ++++was seven years old. That’s when it all started.In the movie “The Sixth Sense”, Halle Joel Osmet saw things that no one else could see. Dead people. Everywhere he went. This is what ++++went through. Whenever he would go to bed at night, people came into his room. They would walk around, act crazy and belligerent, and scare little ++++. The problem was, these people weren’t real. No one else could see them because they were in ++++head. It started out as a few people just walking around aimlessly in ++++room, but every night more and more people started showing up. They had twisted faces, evil sneers, and eventually they would try to attack ++++. One night, one of these “people” hit ++++in the face. This was one of the reasons that ++++slept in his parent’s room until he was twelve. His parents just thought that he was having nightmares, bad dreams. They didn’t realize the extent of the problem. When ++++would tell them about the people, they would tell him that it was all in his head, he was imagining it. It was in his head, but they didn’t think or know that he had an actually medical condition. ++++wouldn’t find this out for years, but he was bi-polar. The years passed, and ++++learned to live with his condition. He would sleep in the day, watch TV. at night to avoid his “friends.” Once he got the hang of it he thought that it wasn’t that bad. He thought he had it under control. He made a routine of sleeping after school, doing his work at night, and eventually he never saw the people and could sleep at night without being disturbed by his own mind. That was until they came out of hiding and into the daylight. ++++was now a sophomore in high school. It had been almost ten years since he first saw the people in his room. He had just gotten his driver’s license, and was heading home from work on the highway. He was a cautious driver. Keeping his distance from the car ahead of him, following the posted speed limit, checking his mirrors. He was looking in his rearview mirror when he saw them. The twisted faces. The people were following him and they were gaining on him fast. ++++couldn’t believe it. He thought he had gotten over them, thought he had beat them, would never see them again. He was wrong. The people were coming up fast so ++++put the pedal to the metal and started zooming down the highway. The once cautious driver was weaving in and out of lanes at one hundred thirty five miles an hour. The people still kept up. When he made it home, he turned around, expecting a confrontation with the people. But they were gone, nowhere to be found. ++++was confused, frustrated, scared that they would come back. He knew that if he didn’t do anything about this, maybe he’d be safe for now, but one day the people would come back. It could have been that day; it could have been 10 years down the road. ++++didn’t want to live in fear, never knowing where the people would show up. So he told his parent the full extent of these “nightmares” and they took him to the doctor. He was diagnosed with being bi-polar, and was prescribed medicine. Now the people are dead, and ++++can live his life without having to look over his shoulder. Well...there you have it. I just wanted to clarify one thing. One physician also suggested that instead of bipolar this may be a variant of autism. With all the talk in the news lately regarding the increasing evidence of Autism in our children, I have been doing alot of reading and personally I am leaning more toward one of the Autism spectrum disorders than I am bipolar disorder but in any case S1 is my son and I love him more than life itself.