So, I've been around this site for well over a decade. I have come and gone, but I always come back here to post sometimes because this was always a safe space for me. I just want to let you know that if you're struggling, if you feel you cannot win with your mental illness, if you feel like you're falling so hard you can't breathe, if you're in the middle of that insane manic episode that robbed you everything for the hundredth time - there is peace coming soon.

I used to come to this site in my worst shape ever. Extremely depressed or extremely manic, not knowing what it would be like one day to the other, or what hospital I would end up in because I couldn't get a grip on reality. It was SO bad for SO long that it took 10 months in jail, and then 18 months in rehab to finally realize that my mental health was directly affected by my substance abuse which I didn't even take into consideration. That with correcting my sleep apnea, and now getting a full 8 hours of sleep was the beginning of my success.

Sleep is so important to those of us with bipolar!

This week has been groundbreaking. I finally have my own place waiting for my husband to come home after being apart for three years. I cried in Lowe's today when I was buying a hammer and nails to hang a mirror for my bedroom. I cried because I have been decorating my place and making it a home. I have a home now after being homeless and losing everything.

I was even banned from this site at one time - that's how bad shape I was in. I can't even believe i was that was even me, or I was even that person.

But there is hope in your bipolar haze. There is hope in your despair. I am living proof. Send me a message if you ever need to talk - one thing I learned in recovery (sober 2 and a half years now), it's that you only achieve what you have only by giving it away.

Today this is my freedom - My new safe space for evenings: