Bipolar highs and lows are hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand. There are days my mind races so fast my skin feels electric. I feel I’m on the razor’s edge of falling to my death, but I keep going with great abandon to the outcome. I write and have great creative moments. I speak so fast even my ears can’t process it. I think to the outside world I appear eccentric. I told a co-worker once my mind is like the CNBC. You have the person talking in front of you, but I have something more on the right and a newsfeed rolling across the bottom. I’ve had surprisingly good professional success being able to manage my brain’s data explosions.

The feeling of never having enough excitement or enough love has taken a toll on my soul. I’ve spent years upon years managing men to fill the voids. I give them what they want and they pretend to love me. I am fully aware this is a transaction, but I am again and again willing to suspend reality to indulge my broken mind. What’s worse…I’m a lesbian (told you, hot steaming mess).

It’s recently been especially bad. I am in an incredibly toxic marriage. He’s a heavy drinker and has his own mental health issues. I’ve struggled to end this marriage for 16 years. I don’t know how to say enough. I don’t know how to say I want to leave. I’m terrified of my family’s reaction to the news I am gay (I came out at 15 and ended up in something like conversion therapy).

I take medication but the mania the last few months is overwhelming me. I try and control the desires and the bad habits but I can’t of late. I know I need to tell my psychiatrist about this but I’m not good at that. I’ve been seeing a new therapist and I’m writing this down in hopes I can more easily tell her about my issues. She's young, I might just be the catalyst to a new career. Here goes nothing.