I started reading this book over the summer, around the same time that I started on lithium. My psychiatrist recommended it to me, and the overall concept of someone from a medical background who also had bipolar disorder writing about the disease really intrigued me. I can honestly say that I've never felt so personally connected to a book or piece of literature in my entire life. There were portions of this that I felt I could've written myself, particularly a passage towards the end where she discusses whether or not she'd stop herself from being bipolar if it were possible. She wrote:

"So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; have had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty, and seeing things through. I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are. Depressed, I have crawled on my hands and knees in order to get across a room and have done it for month after month. But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know."


I wish that I personally could have articulated something that beautiful, because it sums up exactly how I feel. I hate being bipolar most of the time. I hate feeling as though I have a handicap that most people disreguard and many don't even see. I hate having to take lithium, wondering what would happen to me if I was unable to access it, fearing a lack of health insurance and what would happen then. I hate wondering if I'll be able to have children because of this disease, for fear that I'd both be a poor mother or have a complicated pregnacy due to medication or, god forbid, I'd pass the disease along to my child. I hate being judged, questioned, and analyzed. I hate the shame and embarassment that comes along with explaining myself to everyone else in the world.

But when it comes down to it...I wouldn't change who I am, and I wouldn't wish for a cure, for all of the reasons that she wrote above. I feel things more intensely than "normal" people, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. It makes life harder, but it also makes everything taste sweeter when it's positive. It makes the good wonderful and the bad unbearable. What's life without feeling, however, without raw emotions? Without feeling so elated that you can't sleep and are endlessly creative, or being so down and full of pain that you can't eat or think and the words blur in front of you so you can't even read properly? Without bouncing back and forth between bliss and beauty and twisted darkness? It is nothing. It isn't worth living. I may hate this disease, but I also feel so blessed to have it, because it has given me the opportunity to live a life that most people will never even experience a glimpse of. I don't say this to sound arrogant or to try and make myself feel special, I say it because it's true. I believe it whole heartedly. I can appreciate my life more because of it; because it has helped me to understand what life really is, and that you must live it every second that you possibly can.

I'm sure this book would appeal to almost anyone, bipolar or not. It's a very personal, yet highly intelligent look into the disease, and would prove enlightening for anyone who is curious about it. I think it would be a good read for those close to someone bipolar as well; I can honestly say that she does an amazing job relating what it feels like to her audience. She discusses her suicide attempt (overdose on lithium), the problems she's had with relationships and dating due to her illness, and the overall fears that she had about "coming out" to her associates and friends. It's a wonderfully written, brave, and brutally honest story. I admire this woman so much, and hope that one day I can achieve as much and be as brilliant as she is, despite everything.