Navigating Bipolar Disorder: A Personal Journey of Art and Healing

you shortly before my 30th birthday I got my first and only tattoo my whole back and

I sat under the needle and I sat under the needle for five and a half hours straight it was awesome

intense cathartic I was being branded in a rite of passage walking on red hot coals through a flaming doorway being

transformed becoming even more badass beautiful and I knew from deep down that nothing would ever be the same as I

walked home in the snow in the cool air on the sparkling sidewalk everything was perfect exponentially perfect everything

was magical and intense and bursting with universal truth a few weeks later I was referred to a psychiatrist and she

had some interesting news for me she told me I had bipolar one disorder which I didn't believe so she took out her

copy of the DSM the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and we went through the symptoms one by

one talking a lot sleeping very little easily distracted feeling powerful and sexy and self-important it was like my

whole self was neatly outlined right there in that inanimate stack of paper it was like a gut punch like my whole

self imploded but I just knew it was true now I'm an artist and so I have to admit that part of me was intrigued by

the idea of being officially a crazy artist but along with my romantic idea of what

it meant to be a crazy artist was my terrified idea of what it meant to be a medicated crazy artist I'd spent a few

years on a psychiatric unit after I graduated from college working there and some of the patients there seemed really

flattened by their medications I'd been an artist and writer ever since I could remember it was my calling and now my

profession so if I was flattened who would I be what would I even do for work I couldn't imagine so I settled into the

idea of being a crazy artist and figured I'd leave it at that I spent the next two and a half months in manic overdrive

I seduced a few people and play dress-up out of my own closet and danced in front of my mirror for hours I started getting

impatient with my closest friends because now they were going way too slow for me and I made a bunch of new friends

who only knew me as a charismatic entertaining flirtatious blaze of energy it was dizzying and spinning and out of

control but I couldn't stop I couldn't even slow down I couldn't rein it in I didn't want to

rein it in that manic episode lasted five months and then the bright things dimmed and I stopped changing my nail

polish color every day and then I was exhausted and then completely depleted I found myself facing manias inevitable

companion and I was slipping backwards into the deep muddy hole of depression my head I was flailing and drowning and

desperate and that's when the doctor put me on lithium and I no longer resisted lithium made it official I was bipolar I

was crazy and not in an intriguing way in a bad way in a dangerous way I had trouble remembering words my skin

broke out and I gained weight my mood kept sinking I didn't know what was the depression and what were the side

effects of the medication and even just that was intensely disturbing I had always thought of myself as a healthy

person gritty and rebellious an underground cartoonist rebel and outlaw but I also swam and lifted weights and a

dark green leafy vegetables but now I had no idea how to take care of myself I felt like I felt like I was I

felt like I'd never get out of that muddy hole if there even was anything outside of that muddy hole because

that's what it feels like in the middle of a depression it feels like that's it like nothing will ever change

I borrowed hope where I could my psychiatrist told me that if I just waited the depression would end and I

didn't believe it but I knew that she believed it and I trusted her so I let her hope hang in the balance for me and

then there were a couple of memoirs Kay Jameson's an unquiet mind about her bipolar and William Styron's darkness

visible about his suicidal depression they gave me company when I was feeling so alone in my head they they nailed

with their birds my demons - with bullseye accuracy and they showed me that somebody

somebody could get through this and be creative and even in Kay Jameson's case on medications I wrote and drew

throughout my depression but didn't give credit to any of what I was doing as creative I drew a feeling that Styron

called infantile dread like a big old ugly baby that couldn't take care of itself

I drew what it felt like to wait for my rumbling rolling anxieties to fall and crush me what it felt like to try and

fail to find a sense of quiet I drew what it felt like to try to hide from myself in the prickly nest of my

own head curled in a ball on the carpet and under a blanket on the couch hiding when all I really wanted was to

disappear drawing was some comfort to me if briefly I was catching the invisible demons that were inside my head and

making them visible where I could see them pinned down on paper that depression lasted a year and a half and

when it finally lifted it was such a relief I really didn't know what it was like anymore to not be submerged under

that muddy water and to see the Sun and to feel the breeze however the meds I was on at the time weren't enough to

keep me from lifting and lifting even further and I could sense how close I was to being swept up into another manic

episode which for the first time I wanted to avoid so lithium was only the beginning of my

litany of meds at one point I was on side effect meds for my side effect meds about which I had a considerable if

backhanded sense of pride I was up down at both at the same time even when I felt good I didn't trust it when is

feeling good a good thing and when is it a symptom when is feeling happy too happy I

pinballed for the next two and a half years on trial and error and mood charts and attitude adjustments and the

steadfast support of my friends family and psychiatrist and four years after my diagnosis I stabilized

of course there's no cure so my next task was to maintain that stability so for years I was really private about my

bipolar we get so many messages about mental illness that were weak and broken and even violent I felt like if I told

anybody my dirty secret that they might be shocked at my big mental illness and they might not take it so well but I'm a

storyteller by trade and I wanted to help people if I possibly could the way those two memoirs had helped me and I

would do it in words and pictures a mood disorder is such an internal thing it's about emotions and ways of thinking and

pictures can get a the way something feels in a way that's intuitive and immediate and visceral so I wrote and

drew my graphic memoir coming out as bipolar especially in such a big public way was exciting and terrifying I

steeled myself to feel vulnerable and judged but what I found is that I have so much company so many people told me

about their experience with mental illness either their own or someone close to them all of our stories are

different but so many of our struggles are similar in particular that one demon the frustration of trying to take care

of ourselves I've been stable now for 17 years and I wish that I could reach back to my

younger self and I wish I could reach back to my younger self especially in those first

rocky years after I was first diagnosed I would tell myself that things were gonna be okay and that I would figure

out how to take care of myself and that I would even come up with a fishel system and just like any respectable

official system I would give it an inscrutable acronym and my system would have a mascot SMED Mertz

so this is what I would tell myself about what's med Mertz stands for s sleep sleep is your number one priority

M meds not everyone needs meds and they're definitely over prescribed but if you take meds like me take your meds

right okay eat what you eat affects how you think D see your doctor or otherwise stick with

whatever therapy is working for you mindfulness and meditation because calming your mind is hard and takes

practice e exercise just like with eat what affects your body affects how you think our routine routine is your solid

rhythm section so you can go for it with the melodies T tools plenty of coping tools so you can actually do all of this

stuff and s a solid support system because it's just too much for any one person to do on our own and that's med

Mertz okay so the main thing about SMED nerds is that all of these things are

integrated we tend to think of them as separate but they work together like spokes on a wheel and SMED words is for

anyone really diagnosis or no because we're all human and we all have mental health and we all go through times of

grief and anxiety and insecurity and just times that we feel off balance taking care of yourself is hard and

messing up sometimes is par for the course and most of the time it'll be okay or mostly okay or fixable

it takes diligence but also flexibility because sometimes there's a curveball like an injury or a friend in crisis

sometimes it's a choice like moving to a new city or traveling when you deal with jet lag or weird food and SMED Mertz

needs a little readjusting so stability doesn't mean unchanging it means balance very few people get to see my tattoo in

its entirety it's my whole back so I don't get to see it much either every once in a while I'll take a hand

mirror and I'll stand in front of the full length one on the closet door and I'll look at it I still love my tattoo

and it represents such a monumental turning point in my life a turning point that was so overwhelming and confusing

and scary and yet ultimately a great teacher because having once been so scared that I would lose my entire sense

of self what I discovered is that a stable life a balanced life actually feels like me

[Applause] [Music] [Applause]