Consequences of The Daily Home-Baked Goods

I am amazed at what my sneaky, hidden food sensitivities put me through.  Though there were other contributing factors to my challenges, I've found that what I was eating was a major cause.  So what did my daily dose of whole grains do to me?  Well, the worst of it would have to be suffering from Bipolar I disorder.  Gluten sensitivities don't just cause swelling in the intestines (celiac's disease) but also in the brain, which spells "mental illness" among other things.
Although I wasn't officially diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder until I was 23, I most definitely was suffering from it even at the age of 13.  For those that don't know, Bipolar I disorder is the most severe form of bipolar consisting of severe and prolonged mania and severe depression.  At the age of 13 I swung between both extremes, though there were long periods of relative normal balance.  Both my parents and I chalked it all up to the precarious hormonal changes happening in a young teenager, thus, nothing was done.
At the age of 16 I began to talk about and try to work through some major childhood trauma that I'd experienced and had begun to think was the cause of my depression.  Though I do think that suffering this trauma was a contributing factor, I'm sure now that it wasn't the main culprit.  In college, I sought counseling to work through these issues and I made a lot of progress and, honestly, became a totally different, more confident and secure person.  However, the bipolar was getting worse, not better.  I was beginning to suffer from psychosis (delusions, hallucinations) during my manic phases and eventually, during my last semester of my senior year, landed in the hospital.
Ending up in the psych ward was devastating and finally forced me to face the possibility of a mental illness, a possibility that I didn't think I could live with.  I became seriously suicidal at this point, especially after my parents came to get me and take me home.  The most forward thought in my mind was how useless I now must be, I could not comprehend how God could use me with my horrific mental illness and if I wasn't to be useful, if I was only to be a burden to everyone, then why should I live.  These were dark days, not only did I not get to graduate college when I had intended, I was facing what was to me the end of my life, the destruction of all the hopes and dreams I had.  Even if I didn't take my own life, even if I lived to be a hundred, my life was over.
Thus began my saga into the psychotropic drug world, I was put on this and then that and then taken off (per my request) and then suffered more major episodes and put on something else.  I hated the drugs almost more than I hated bipolar and sometimes I'd take myself off of my medication because I couldn't stand them.  Nothing helped me feel normal, most of the medications only made me feel like a zombie, completely dead inside.  On top of that, these medications were causing some serious weight gain.  I was miserable, nothing was working the way I needed it to.
The good news in all this, I went back to school to finish my last semester and get my degree and just guess who was now attending my school for his first semester.  Yep, I met the man who would, a few years later, be my husband.  Had I not had to leave school half-way through my last semester and come back to finish the next year, I never would've met Jeremy, we never would've fallen in love. God has a funny way of working things out, and I'm thankful.
Let me take a rabbit trail here and brag on my husband, we'll finish looking at the rest of the "consequences" in a part two post.  When I first told Jeremy about my mental illness he responded in way that no one else had and it blew me over, knocked my socks off.  We were just friends at the time and had only known each other for about 8 or 9 months.  When I told him about having bipolar, he just looked at me for a while, and then  said, "I can't pretend to understand what you're going through, how painful it must be, but I know it must be hard.  You know I'm here for you".  You have to understand, the responses I'd been getting up to this point were not at all that compassionate and sympathetic.  The best responses had been acceptance when no real acknowledgement of what I must be going through personally.  Other people's responses were more focused on how my illness would effect them, "is she gonna blow-up any moment now"?, "better keep my distance".  I was floored  that he would even consider that  I might not like having bipolar, that I might be experiencing a lot of pain from the fact.  Ever since he has been one of my biggest supporters.  Thank you, my wonderful husband!