Hey....

It's awfully dark in here, inside my head and heart, and I could really use some insight and encouragement.

I have never been this sick and it has never taken this long to get well. I'm so frustrated with the super-slow "two steps forward, three steps back" nature of this particular healing.

This string of episodes started last February. Yep, of 2016, with a ten-month mania that eventually lost me my job and so much more, and which crashed me into one of the ugliest and deepest depressions I've ever experienced.

I've been hospitalized three times already.

Honestly, I just feel like this Black Dog Darkness--which barked its way in last November--is never going to go away. Like it gets HARDER to deal with [depression and mania] as I age, not easier. I'm so discouraged. And frustrated. And guilty for how it affects my husband and son.

What's WITH that? I'm not a dummy (though I really feel like one lately!). Shouldn't it get easier as I learn what works and what doesn't? Is this a hormone (read: "perimenopause") thing?

It seems like everything I've ever known about my own disorder has gone out the window and suddenly I'm nineteen and newly diagnosed all over again.

I'm getting desperate.

Thoughts?