I was hospitalized seven months ago. Since then, I've done two months of IOP, started individual therapy, started eating regularly again, exercised, drank less, cut back on caffeine, tracked my mood and sleep, joined a DBT group, joined a mindfulness group, got diagnosed with Bipolar II, and got on a new medication; not to mention getting a new job, getting new insurance, going back to school, taking classes, meeting people, writing, and making things. 

I'm very lucky to be doing a lot better.

I've gotten to that awkward stage of being the happiest person in my therapy groups. While some people are talking about not being able to get out of bed, or having those, "I said something weird and my life is ruined" or "today I sat on the couch in a fugue state hating myself" experiences that I know well but feel weirdly distant from now, my problems have become, "I want to make something and am not sure where to start," and "I want to read too many books, how can I read all these books." 

I vaguely remember Virginia Woolf saying somewhere that illness is its own country. There's a biological reality to this too: our memories are state-based, and just like we forget our dreams when we wake up, we forget our illnesses as we get better. This is also true in the opposite direction. When you're depressed in that pull-out-your-fingernails-wrenching way  it's as difficult to remember happiness as it is to remember a June day in the dead of winter. And you can set up phone reminders and put your skill sheets on the fridge and literally tattoo a symbol for "this too shall pass" on your arm (I have).

But there's always a frightening sense that, eventually, you will probably have another bout of all of this, and it will feel like shit, and you may, once again, stop believing things can be better. Unlucky things happen: you'll lose a job, or get ill, someone will die or a war will break out. And the stress will test you, you'll find it more and more difficult to stay balanced on the bicycle of a regulated brain; you may fall off again.

I don't mean this to be pessimistic. I've never known as much as I do now. 

Anyway. I am so relieved to be doing better. I needed help for a long time. Life shouldn’t feel like walking on a broken leg, even if you have therapy skills that help you survive the pain. You should not be in burnout all the time, or feel like the emotions of happiness and calm are tiny islands in an ocean of self hate, worry, emotional lability, and suicidal thoughts. 

One thing that's different now is finally having a diagnosis, which is, for good or bad, a passport to accessing certain types of help quickly in the healthcare system. Another is having a good psychiatrist and being in the system of a good university hospital (something that is exceedingly rare, I think). When I think of how I lucked into getting all of this help and how many years and false starts it took to access it, it feels absurdly contingent. I am impossibly fortunate. And that's as someone who's broke but white with an education; what if I'd been generationally poor, marginalized in more ways, unable to speak the language, or living in the wrong state or town? It's difficult to imagine how hard it would be to survive.

The difficulty about mental illness is that it's a chronic condition that you manage. It's not something you cure. America loves the cure and hates the ounce of prevention: the only time we feel we ask for help is in a crisis, after exhausting every resource of your own. Disability justice activists have pointed out that disabled is the one category of marginalization that most of us not only could join any time, but probably will join, if we're lucky to live so long. But still, as a culture we call the precarious state of having a fallible body and mind that have not yet failed "able" and act like it's the norm. We set up everything so the minute you get the least bit sick, you fall off the rails, even though we are all living in bodies that are constantly falling apart, decaying, going wrong. 

I'm no longer trying to fix everything "wrong" with me. I'm not looking for a cure. I'm managing it, a lot by letting myself off the hook for all the impossible expectations I had of myself. I'm excited now to be someone who lives in one place and doesn't change my routine much, who meets life milestones slowly, who negotiates with jobs for flexibility or reduced hours. It’s worth it to keep feeling better. Even if I struggle again, I will stay on the rails.