Elis de Guerre

In the past four months, I’ve undergone a veritable dating hurricane. I ran out on my 10-month-old marriage in August. I texted my decision and departure to my closest friends, live-tweeted my flight from upstate New York to the New Hampshire seacoast, and have written extensively and publicly about separation, my estranged husband, and the terrors of emotional pain ever since.

There's a hot non-bromance brewing between new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci and Trump's Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus.

The first step isn’t to admit I have a problem. I don’t.

If you see me with my partner, you’ll more than likely think that I’m a straight girl in a heterosexual relationship — and there’s nothing I hate more. Being with a man seems to negate my sexuality, rendering it secret or private when I’m anything but.

Everyone has their inner critic, the voice in your head that whispers all manner of terrible things:

You look fat in that outfit.

The Kinsey Scale test labeled me a 2, or, "predominately heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual," one notch above "equally heterosexual and homosexual."

Raise your hand if you feel like you want to make new friends as an adult, but have no idea how anymore. Oh, good. It’s not just me.

Many people are aware of bipolar disorder. Most know it’s a mental illness that swings the brain between depression and mania. Most understand depression to be debilitating, a condition that combines sadness, despair, exhaustion, and lack of motivation. But most people don’t understand mania (which is experienced primarily by people with bipolar I) or hypomania (which those with bipolar II tend to encounter more than full-blown mania) — at least not fully.

Undoing a marriage costs five times as much as it does to tie one up with a bow, and the paperwork is even longer. I've cried so hard I've thrown up my dinner in a municipal lot, exhausted myself with memories to the point where 7 p.m. seems like reasonable bedtime, and contemplated spending my wedding anniversary alternating between taking a pair of scissors or a lighter to my wedding dress.

[CN: suicidal thoughts, self-harm] Why is it OK to minimize the symptoms of a serious, debilitating, chronic condition with no cure just because it’s mental, not physical?