A personal account of living with treatment-resistant bipolar I disorder, CPTSD, anxiety, and trauma. Explore the physical, emotional, and mental realities of depression, the challenges of survival during December, and the resilience required to endure when hope feels out of reach.

I am learning the girl I once was. Her face, her hands, her voice appear in old photographs, in journals with ink bleeding like bruises. She startles me. Her mania hangs in the air like smoke; her suffering is sharp, unyielding. I read her pages and shiver at the clarity of her terror and courage.

2317 days ago, I woke up from a drug induced coma to the face of an unknown woman with crystal blue eyes, brassy yellow hair and gray roots. I don’t remember speaking to her. I don’t think I could. But I vividly remember the shock in her face when she looked down at me after she adjusted something over my head. She gasped and then exclaimed, “Oh thank goodness honey. We didn’t think you were going to make it.”