Because when they embark, they will have each turned a corner.
And everything will be as it was, only very slightly different.
acknowledgements
Let me begin by saying that while this story is about a woman with a mood disorder who learns to live without medication, that is not intended to be prescriptive. Being a person with a mood disorder myself, I can assure you that I would not have had the stability to exist within the constraints of a “normal” job without medication, nor am I able to function now without regular therapy. This is not a book about how pills are bad, but about finding the acceptance we need to feel both well and alive.
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder during my first month of law school; I had known something was wrong since I was a teenager but, as a method of survival, I had chosen to turn a blind eye. Everyone has bad days, I told myself. Then I met the man who would become my husband, who did not deserve my bad days, and suddenly my broken brain had to become someone’s problem. I made it my own, but only superficially: Just give me some pills until I’m fixed. I had received no treatment before then, though my symptoms had long been medically identifiable. I self-medicated to soothe my raging disquiet, suffered through days of bedridden depression, called it all coping. But once I met the man who would be my husband, it wasn’t enough to live by putting out my own fires. I needed a version of myself that could withstand life with the rest of the world.
The fundamental truth about mental illness, however manageable or grave, is that it is difficult to coexist. People often ask me how I know the difference between what’s in my head （between whatever chemical imbalance might be lying to me on any given day） and what’s real, but the truth is that I have no choice but to accept that what’s in my head is what’s real. My clients’ pain was my pain. Everyone’s pain was mine, and I lacked the proficiency to carry it. Eventually I left law school, and due to some fluke administrative error, my pills ran out. I wouldn’t be writing this if not for the fact that my psychiatrist did not refill my pills, nor did his receptionist answer their office line. Panicked, I stared at the empty bottles. I went to bed. I stared at the ceiling. I got out of bed. I sat at my desk and opened my computer. I wrote a short story, and then another. For four nights, I didn’t sleep. I started writing obsessively, compulsively. I wrote because it was something I could do, because the pills were gone, because I couldn’t sleep.
Then something happened. I stopped having violent mood swings. Now I was constantly thinking of stories, worlds, characters, plotlines. I would write eight hours a day, then ten or twelve. I wrote like my life depended on it, and I think maybe that was instinctual, atavistic, because it did. I found a therapist and told her sternly, perhaps fearfully, to watch me; to let me know if I ever needed pills again, and she agreed. I relaxed a little bit. I wrote book after book after book, four million words of fan fiction, graphic novels, film scripts, anthologies of stories. For the first time in my life I wasn’t manic or depressed, I wasn’t bracing myself for the next up or down, I was just telling the truth in the shape of fiction. I was using my stories to help other people understand their own.
Eventually I thought: I can’t go back to an office, I can’t go back to pills. Maybe I can do this instead.
And because so many of you have picked up my stories, I was able to write this book.
Which is of course to say thank you, which I will continue to say many times. Thank you to Aurora and Stacie, beloved CPs and editors, for being early readers and supporters of this manuscript. Thank you to Mr Blake, who lets me use and reuse our love story to write new ones, and who sat through my rambling hypotheses on quantum theory. （My husband is not Aldo, nor am I Regan—he is an incredible and gifted teacher, and he is also the artist in our household.）
Thank you to Nacho, more important with every book, for saying the right things, and for occasionally pushing me outside my comfort zone. To Elaine and Kidaan, for embracing not only my fiction, but my voice. To Little Chmura, who is forever bringing my stories to life in a way no one else will ever understand. To my family, whose support should probably not be surprising, but who always seem to pop up to cheer me on when I least expect it. To my mom, my sisters KMS, my mother-in-law, for letting me fill your bookshelves, for always making me feel my stories find a home in your hearts. For distant toasts and reassuring messages; for believing that I will make it, even when I’m not so sure. To my therapist, who did not react adversely when I said, “uh, so there’s a guy in my head fake-smoking and he’s been sitting in there for like, a week.” You helped me find Aldo, and health.