Locked inside my head

It was another day in the life of a “normal” teenager. I put normal in quotations because what even is normal. I guess you could say I was a typical teenager. It was the summer after high school graduation. I was still trying to decide if college was for me or what I was going to do with my life. I visited a local community college to see what my options were. After that I was in route to see my girlfriend at the time and bring her some lunch. Earlier this day we had a fight and I wanted to make it up to her. Anyways, I was driving along and started to feel extremely paranoid. I started having intrusive thoughts that someone was following me. I pulled over into a gas station and the thoughts began to sound like voices. Voices asking for help inside the gas station. Then I heard what I thought was god or someone telling me to go inside the gas station and help these people. I went inside and asked who needed help and the people inside looked at me sideways. Like I was crazy for lack of a better term. I started panicking and went back to my car. The tears came and my breathing quickened. I was having a panic attack for the first time ever in my life. I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time so I called my mom to ask her for help. I believed I was having a heart attack or something and was dying. I told her about the voices and that god was talking to me. She told me to stay put and she was coming to get me. While on the phone with her a man walked up to my window waving money at me. I think he thought I was in trouble and needed it. Thinking about it now I wish I could thank that man. But I was too manic to even recognize his generosity. My mom arrived and transported me to a place called the stress center. Once I got there things become a lot fuzzier so the details are blurry. I’m going to try my best to describe my experience. The man that questioned me at the stress center was a big man with a deep voice. I truly believed he was god and he was testing me. Very scary delusion, thinking I’m sitting across from god. After our discussion they admitted me into the actual hospital on the psych floor. They ran so many tests to figure out why this was happening. From my point of view it felt like I had died and gone to hell. I was seeing and hearing many different scary things. I saw shadows and demon faces in my hospital window. At one point I thought the devil was in the room with me. The tv was sending me messages on how to get out of this hell. I started reading the Bible and praying. So many different insane thoughts went through my mind. It’s like I was locked in this alternate reality. Ultimately I lost touch with reality and became a completely different person. I’m sure my loved ones would agree with that. Their experience of the whole matter is completely different than mine. I’d like to interview them and get their point of view one day. The reason I’m telling this story is to put it out there for others to relate to and possibly educate others on what it’s like for me to experience psychosis. Which is what was happening to me. This was just the first psychotic episode I’ve had. All together I’ve had 3 episodes. Back to the story. After a week in the hospital I was put in the inpatient unit of the stress center. I spent a couple weeks there recovering and getting back to myself. It took a while to recover and my brain was never the same after that traumatic episode. At this point the doctors still didn’t know what was wrong with me. But this was the first sign of my bipolar. At the beginning we all believed it was a one time thing caused by stress and my drug usage. Sorry if this didn’t make any sense. Hopefully you learned something or related in some way. Life was never the same after this. This disorder for me is debilitating. Every person with bipolar disorder has a different experience. If you made it this far thank you for reading and reach out to me with any questions you may have. I’m not the best writer so please excuse any mistakes I made. Also I’m always here as support for anyone struggling with mental illness or just life in general.