I needed that for my own psyche, but I also wanted to offer my story up to whoever might find something useful in it. I’d never felt so much pressure on myself to get a story right. I wanted to make sense of that overwhelming tangled mess, and I turned to my art to shape my experience into a graphic novel. Desperate, I succumbed, and set out into the dark, tangled forest of meds, blood draws, side effects, and big learning curves.Īfter a years-long arc of frustrations and triumphs, recorded in stacks of sketchbooks and journals, I found a tentative stability that became increasingly reliable. When I fell into a crushing depression a few months later, I realized that no matter what happened to my art (my passion, my livelihood, my identity), my survival depended on stability. Acutely manic, powerfully overconfident, and terrified that medication or even stability would kill my creativity, I refused to take meds. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly before my 30th birthday.
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