When I was younger- one of my coworkers randomly would go from 0-100. One time she randomly snaps at me- I go "what are you bipolar or something?" She didn't say anything, just walked away. Except.. what I lack in emotions I make up in observation-and I was right. Another time she told me she was gaining weight because of meds she was on- so I said -that's lithium that does that- you still look good though and smiled. She looked at me. Laughed. "You are so weird" she tells me. We became friends afterwards. I even stopped her from impulse shopping couple of times.

Fast forward now- I am not as insensitive. And my best friend has bipolar. We are with our other friends- big company. Someone is talking about their boss. "Oh she is totally bipolar- she either hates you or loves you. So bipolar." I look at my friend. They don't say anything to the speaker. Just to me "can we go? I want to go home" I say sure. We leave the party and start walking, talking about other things, they make fun of me because I am weird, we laugh. We get to the point where we have to separate to go to our respective homes. I tell them- "hold on, one more thing before you go" and kissed them on a cheek.

At that point if I could go back and slap the younger me, I would. I didn't realize how incredibly insensitive we can be with our words and not even know it- until that moment- when I had to leave my friend and I wasn't sure if they were ok and I didn't know what to say to make it better.