Elis de Guerre

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.

I am nine months into marriage and already have regrets. I do not regret my choice of partner, or our choice to get married, but do regret who I was prior to marriage and what I did (or didn’t do) when I was single.

I have not been single during this time of year since 2005, my senior year of high school, and now, as a 27-year-old woman, I look into the next month or so of global celebration and see...nothing.

What if masturbation doesn’t work for you? What if you’ve tried fingers, vibrators, porn, fantasies, and even romancing yourself with glasses of wine, and you still can’t seem to get there?

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

You look fat in that outfit.

In a recent attempt at brutal self-examination, I opened my Apple Music account to see how many artists were recommended to me by men I’ve dated or slept with. There were well over 60, (making up the majority of what I listen to regularly).

[CN: PTSD, self-harm] I’m choosing this moment to remember that mental health awareness is about celebrating my victories as well as seeking medications for my biochemical imbalances.

Last week, my mother came home from work, found the shower faucet leaking hot water, and told me to "get my head out of my cunt, and start thinking about other things."

I never wanted children. When other little girls were playing with dolls, I played with stuffed animals. Even when I played house, my home was filled with plush puppies.

t interests me that I can immediately think of the gifts of anxiety, panic, and even my spurts of agoraphobia. Being tense in body and mind, living with fear that feels real even though I know intellectually it isn’t, experiencing the migraines, chest pains and choking sensations — these aren’t things that lend themselves to my happiness.
Yet the compulsion to stay at home, brought on by edginess and unease outside, keeps me productive. Anxiety makes me communicative, even if just through electronic means. The worry about judgment pushes me to write better, to edit more thoroughly, to answer the voice in my head saying “You’re not good enough” with a defiant “Then watch me improve.”