I now know for certain that my mind and emotions, my fix on the real and my family’s well-being, depend on just a few grams of salt. But treatment’s the easy part. Without honesty, without...

I like my writing career and it’s progression, I’d rather be that slow moving tide that turns a mountain into a beautiful beach for all to enjoy, rather than a flash in a pan that...

I mean, that’s at least in part why I ingested chemical waste – it was a kind of desire to abbreviate myself. To present the CliffNotes of the emotional me, as opposed to the twelve-column...

He lifted his shirt, and on his back was the White Rabbit, wearing his waistcoat and looking at his watch. It was just like the illustration from the book. Only standing next to him, back-to-back,...

Joshua had always been able to get away with things—things for which he should never have been forgiven. He was a lot like James in that respect, for while my husband had bought his grace...

When my mind plays tricks on me I can deal. But when my mind plays tricks on my mind I can not tell what’s real

Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating...

She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because...

In the beginning I revelled in being so rebellious and bad. I had recently discovered the new age book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, which incorporated the power of visualization and affirmations....

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you...

Somewhere between love and hate lies confusion, misunderstanding and desperate hope.

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part...

When it comes to most true bipolars, consider this thought: Genius by birth, bipolar by design.

Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell....

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between…I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like...

They’re the perfect loving fam’ly, so adoring…And I love them ev’ry day of ev’ry week.So my son’s a little shit, my husband’s boring,And my daughter, though a genius, is a freak.

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When...

Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When “I” is replaced by “We”, illness becomes wellness.

I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave,...

Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I’m not ashamed of my illness. I’ve been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too.

I’d wasted so much of my life. So many of my days, and all of my promise, all of my dreams, lost to hospitals, to depression, to wanting to die. This wasn’t how it was...

It’s difficult. I take a low dose of lithium nightly. I take an antidepressant for my darkness because prayer isn’t enough. My therapist hears confession twice a month, my shrink delivers the host, and I...

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind...

Serving as the only audience for a man raised by crowds of admirers exhausted her. […] The buried thought that he might have found comfort elsewhere was almost a comfort to her.

But money spent while manic doesn’t fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you’re given excellent reason to be even more so.

Game is bipolar. One day he’s this way, the next day he’s the next.