This book is a memoir about my experience living with bipolar disorder. It chronicles the time period before my diagnosis, receiving the diagnosis, starting treatment, and the two years since I began treatment. I have attempted to make it educational as well as humorous. My goal is to raise awareness of this mental health disorder as well as increase compassion and correct common misconceptions.
This book is a memoir about my experience living with bipolar disorder. It chronicles the time period before my diagnosis, receiving the diagnosis, starting treatment, and the two years since I began treatment. I have attempted to make it educational as well as humorous. My goal is to raise awareness of this mental health disorder as well as increase compassion and correct common misconceptions.
Awakening
As if stirring from a deep sleep, I emerged from one state of disorientation to another. From a world of muted sounds and soft colors into one of bright, harsh lighting and loud noises. My senses were overwhelmed. The colors were too bright; the sounds grating. There was a strong smell of meat cooking. I had no idea where I was.
“Excuse me,” someone said from behind me. Unthinking, I moved to let them pass.
I was standing in a doorway, holding open a glass door and letting the wind blow into the dining room of a Nation’s Giant Hamburgers.
How did I get here? What am I doing? Why am I here?
I blinked under the fluorescent lights and caught sight of my reflection in the windows. Hair disheveled, a tie-dye T-shirt, plaid pajama pants, slippers, and a bathrobe…why would I go out looking like this? As I came back to reality, I began to feel self-conscious, began to notice the stares and whispers of the customers.
Pieces of the events that led to my flustered entrance floated through my mind, but they were neither connected nor chronological. My memories were feelings more than thoughts. I remembered feeling desperate, afraid, angry, sad, violent. There was also a palpable sense of remorse. How could someone remember feeling all of those emotions in the span of an hour without recalling the accompanying events?
It turns out the answer to this question was more complicated than I ever expected. Mania, depression, psychosis. These were terms I would soon become familiar with, but on this windy winter night, I did not possess the knowledge or vocabulary to put words to what I was experiencing. I was left only with a combination of fear, uncertainty, and a sense of time lost.
Re-emerging from wherever your mind takes you when it pulls you away from reality is shocking and uncomfortable. Learning why and how this happens can both pacify and terrify you. But you will become accustomed to living in a simultaneous combination of two extremes…
Chelsea Beck wrote her memoir The Brightest Darkness to help raise awareness of mental illnesses and to increase compassion for its sufferers. She is very much the healthcare worker, gently carrying readers through her life with kindness and compassion. She stops at both the joyful and grim parts of life, coming to terms with her bipolar disorder and sexual orientation.
Growing up in a happy family and an affluent Bay Area neighborhood, Chelsea had little to worry about in her life. She spent many of her formable years in Catholic school, which unfortunately resulted in a hefty dose of internalized homophobia that would linger for years. In college, Chelsea experiences a traumatic event that triggers the building mania and depressive episodes that would then go unchecked for a long time.
What shines about The Brightest Darkness is Chelsea's compassion for others. She makes a strong point about the failures of the healthcare and justice system and how it lets so many fall through the cracks. Wealthy white people are more likely to be acquitted and treated while people of color often end up incarcerated. She has a supportive family and friends and is one of the lucky ones.
The Brightest Darkness is a short and entertaining book that touches on a lot of the stigma surrounding mental illness that often leads to misinformation and mistreatment of its sufferers. She comes to terms with her past attitudes towards patients in her care considered the "crazy patients." Her experiences with bipolar disorder make her feel more connected to these patients because of what she has gone through.
If there is one lesson of the many to learn in The Brightest Darkness, it would be to always treat people with kindness. You never know what someone is going through. If you or a loved one has struggled with a mental health condition or want a better perspective on the topic, Chelsea Beck's The Brightest Darkness is a perfect place to start.