What happened that led to you being diagnosed?

Last year I went through an episode that lasted from February to October. It started with deciding I wanted to quit my job and move to Australia (I live in the UK) luckily I had family and friends that stopped me from quitting my job but it got to a point where I was emailing landlords looking for a property in Australia, finding quotes to move my pets over and applying for jobs without any real plan of living there.

Then came the depression where I barely left my house for 8 weeks and had to take more time off work,it's a miracle I still have a job, and finally I went on a spending spree that ended with me and two friends in Corfu for a week. I'm now on meds for Bipolar Type 2 and things are looking a lot better.

I feel like I have nobody to talk to about my diagnosis, my friends all think I went through some depression and that I don’t show the signs of being bipolar. I'm just curious what everyone else's experiences are before they were diagnosed, did you know something was wrong or did it feel normal to feel that way? What led to you being diagnosed ?