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I hadn’t had a bipolar episode since 2011 and it had been extremely rough. It had me wandering the streets of San Diego, in and out of county and outpatient hospitals, and lasted roughly 3 or so months. By 2015 I thought I had it under complete control and that no perfect storm of triggers could possibly cause me to have another one. I was wrong.

The holiday season is extremely stressful for me now because my husband has a very large extended family and from Thanksgiving through Hanukkah and Christmas, they book us solid with events that we must drag our toddler to. The closer it got to the last family party, the Hanukkah white elephant gift exchange, the more drained I felt. I had to put on this happy exterior even though being an introvert in a room with this many people freaked me out. I had hurt my back a bit picking up my daughter in a strange way and was on some pain meds. I was also drinking a lot of wine that night. I was extremely stressed and tired of all the festivities. I just wanted the holidays to be over and for it to be 2016.

On New Year’s Eve day I remember going to whole foods to buy some champagne and some nice pastries for New Year’s Day. I had decided to put legwarmers on over my gray jeans. I walked to the restroom and on the way out, a wedding was taking place in the eating area. I watched the wedding feeling so much joy, almost too much joy, and returned to my husband and daughter near the checkout lines feeling exuberant, full of love. I felt that 2016 was going to be the best year for us. My mood had totally changed from the night of the white elephant party.

The next few days were all a blur. I remember getting up early and watching the Alphaville “Forever Young” video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1TcDHrkQYg) and thinking it was so spiritually significant because in the video, all the characters are ushered into space by the band (who seemed like higher, angelic beings to me when I watched it) and are given the ability to live their best lives for all eternity. I put it on Twitter with the caption “Happy New Year.” I was up late, I called my mother at 1AM. I couldn’t go back to bed. I started getting strange thought narratives in my head and I didn’t realize I was slipping but my family and my husband did. He stayed up with me and we watched The Great British Baking show and John Hughes movies, but it was too much for him. I wasn’t tired at all and he needed sleep. He called his father to come out and watch me while he tried to get some rest. With my father-in-law there I took out my husband’s 33 1/3 My Bloody Valentine book and wrote all over it. My husband told me I was having an episode and we agreed he needed to take me hospital.

I remember my father-in-law and husband taking me into the hospital. I remember having to wait in a room with them and then change into scrubs while they took my clothes and purse away. I remember being very upset and only wanting to talk to certain nurses. I remember having X-rays taken. I remember being told to get in a wheelchair and being taken away from my family and up to the psych ward where they gave me a shot of Haldol, which I hated.

I had to wear scrubs until my husband visited and brought some clothes and a sports bra. The doctors and nurses started me on a new regime of meds, and some I didn’t want to take but did. As I began to get more cogent, I told them I liked one of the meds they put me on, Geodon. It seemed to be working and didn’t give me the nightmares that Risperdal or Seroquel did. I still stayed on my Lamotrigine, too, the med that had worked so well up until this episode.

The thing that I could not stop doing in the hospital was reorganizing the bookshelf and tearing up magazines. I kept making my own magazines out of some art magazines and National Geographics then I would run back to my room and assemble them in an order I liked.

I was in the hospital for about a week and a lot of it is a blur. I remember one nurse yelling at me that I couldn’t be on the floor walking around before 6AM. But what was I supposed to do with all my manic energy? I remember my husband bringing me a macaroons and a sparkly sweater to wear. Another younger patient made a comment about my breasts so I stopped wearing it. I remember doing my laundry and then one pair of my favorite socks went missing.

I remember the food. The food was the best part. Mealtimes were how we all kept track of time. They were the only truly stabilizing force in the psych ward.

I remember Zoe, the trans woman who told me she was anally raped and was on so much Xanax. She and I played foosball together and pick videos of songs to sing karaoke to. Besides the food, this was the other best part of the hospital. At least we got to sing and dance to songs that made us happy.

My husband came to visiting hours every single day while his parents watched our daughter. I kept asking if she was walking yet. I was so afraid I would miss her first steps.

I remember the doctor telling me I could go home finally. It was early January.

My husband came to get me. He’s an adjunct professor whose semesters hadn’t yet started so he was able to be with me at home while I adjusted to the meds. I remember binge watching Project Runway together and him telling me I was just talking talking so fast and so much still. I remember asking him to drive me to a newsstand where I could get French and Italian Vogue so I could continue ripping them up to make collages.

My husband went back to work and we put our daughter in day care part time two days a week. The second day she came home and started to walk.

I see my therapist multiple times a week at this point. She keeps me on the levels of meds in the hospital.

I go to a David Bowie tribute and dance with friends and still feeling somewhat elated, but not as elated as I did going into the hospital.

My husband has to monitor my spending because I’m not out of the woods yet.

I go with my husband and a friend to the Art Institute and take too many selfies. I go with my husband and daughter to a rock shop in Evanston and I feel like everything is perfect in the universe. Everything is glorious and wonderful. I’m still manic, I can feel it, but it’s less and less now.

February and March are a slow and steady decline. My psychiatrist tapers down one medicine a little bit but she adds Lithium because she didn’t think the mania was dissipating quickly enough. I remember feeling okay and having a brief window of feeling like myself. Then the anxiety and depression hit.

The anxiety came on first. A friend visited from out of town and I remember my husband and the baby went to see her and some other friends and I just kept feeling waves of anxiety and that my personality was becoming subdued.

This anxiety started getting really awful in March and I began having horrible feelings about myself and my daughter. I thought I wasn’t a fit parent, I wondered if I should have even had her in the first place. It’s all I can think about, how I am screwing her up or how I will screw her up. Anxiety is like the score in a movie — -always on in the background and sometimes much louder than others.

My therapist doesn’t want to reduce the Geodon any further. She tells me it helps bipolar depression and that it’s normal after mania to swing the other way and dip down into a somewhat depressive episode. Bipolar depression is so much harder to treat than unipolar depression because normal antidepressants can actually trigger manic episodes. She prescribes me some Lorazepam to help deal with the anxiety. She doesn’t know how long this episode can last. Nobody does. It’s not reassuring to hear this and it makes me sad.

I can barely sit down at a computer, let alone write anything creative and this makes me sad.

Sleep is also an issue at this point. I am so anxious that it either takes me hours to fall asleep or if I fall asleep at a reasonable hour, I’m up at 5:30 and can’t really go back to bed.

But eventually the thoughts about my being an unfit parent have stopped. I’m not as anxious about my daughter but I still have waves and pangs of anxiety.

On Easter Sunday, a friend of mine gives me Melissa Broder’s So Sad Today (http://www.melissabroder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IMG_2573.jpg) and says that although there’s discussion of her depression and anxiety, she thinks it’s a good read for me. I devour this book and love the frankness with which she talks about, yes, under the anxiety is the depression, which is exactly what I’m going through. It makes me feel hopeful and also connected to other writers with mental and emotional illnesses. So many writers are open about their mental illness that we don’t have to hide or brush it under the rug. We can embrace and work with our illnesses because while they leave us tender, vulnerable, agitated, or soaring high, they are what makes us us. They are part of our shared narrative and humanity.

I have coffee with a friend and tell her I appreciate her hanging out with me when I’m depressed because I feel I have nothing good to contribute to the conversation. She just scoffs and waves her hand and says that that’s just the depression lies talking. That I’m a worthwhile person and friend and to just get those thoughts out of my head.

Sleep is still elusive. My husband tells me to think good thoughts. He tells me that every night I get some sleep. My therapist fills a prescription for Trazadone, which doesn’t work for me. Then she fills one for Ambien, which sometimes works.

In mid-April, my therapist prescribes Seroquel to help with anxiety and to help me sleep. This is the worst medication I’ve ever been on. I feel completely dead and flat, and moreover, this medication gives me suicidal thoughts. I began to think about Virginia Woolf and Robin Williams and understood why people would end their lives to stop the pain. I couldn’t sleep at night and I was crying, “I want to live, I don’t want to die,” to my husband. After a few days, I stop taking the Seroquel.

The following week, my therapist wants me to try Latuda because she thinks I should be improving on the meds I’m currently on and it isn’t happening fast enough. My quality of life isn’t where she wants it to be. After a few nights of taking Latuda, my mood improves so much. I still feel the anxiety, but I feel overall happier. This might be the one that’ll get me out of the depression!

Despite the turn for the better, I feel awful for my husband. I feel guilty all the time. I hate making him anxious and sad as well and I ask him if he feels saddled with me. I hate that my depression is affecting him and putting a strain on our relationship. He reassures me that these thoughts are all in my head. That I’m a great mom and great wife. He loves me and isn’t going anywhere

I keep having to tell myself that there is no set timeline for my depression to stop. I’m so thankful that I’m out of the manic episode, because that was scary for me and everyone around me. But depression is such a huge beast and so difficult to get through. I know I can feel myself breaking through here and there, and those are the good days. I know I will pull through it.

There’s such a stigma about mental illness. I hope that by reading this, you will see that those of us who live with mental illness are incredibly strong-willed and resilient. We are just people carrying heavier loads than most realize.