Depression for me lasts months and disrupts every arena of my life. 5 days is a miracle and it’s difficult for me to express to you how I feel about this gift. it has blown my hair back.

Regardless of severity, my depressions have 4 distinct phases:

1. The girl falls into the well.

2. The girl at the bottom of the well.

3. The girl slowly tries to get up and out of the well.

4. The girl emerges from the well to commune with the sun.

What was different this time?

It was a short time at the bottom.

Intellectuals call it a nadir. It is critical, this piece, to spend as little time at the bottom of the well as possible.

So then, it was easier to start climbing up and out.

The relief compounds. I couldn’t start climbing out if not for the short time at the bottom.

So then, my momentum compounded.

Since that was gifted to me, a few key flips on the brain chemistry switchboard happened:

• went on 2 short walks focusing on the trees

• did 3 small things to prove my shame wrong (all social and relational)

• talked to a client, made a proposal, shared it (it was received positively)

🔐 The turnkey: I was forced to leave the bed and express myself

Intensity and focus are part of public speaking prep. I had to give a talk in 3 days. For 50 mid-career very smart people in a fancy FiDi office building who were probably just there for the free food.

To prep, I needed to crystallize some main ideas that would be engaging. Get Perplexity to help me outline and pace the topics. Make the deck on Canva.

Another gift: my husband asked to hear the talk.

We rehearsed twice. I gave the talk the next day, nerves and novelty creating a little pressure cooker.

The girl at the bottom of the well clawed at the walls, gave it one more pull, up, over its stone lip.

She landed softly on the grass. It was over.

I think that’s why I returned to baseline in 5 days.

I don’t know exactly, but that’s my guess.

I want to bottle up this BRAIN CHEMISTRY DOMINO EFFECT and Robin Hood it to all human beings. Is that what I’m on this planet to do?

I’m SO grateful for the INTERNET (talk opportunity came via LinkedIn, Perplexity helped me with the outline when my brain was seized, Canva is a godsend wow, plus this little diagram below which I had favorited on my phone).

This thing is an evergreen resource for me, and I hope it helps you too:

fighting fern ⚆

_boop*zine by _{manic pixie real girl} ☄︎ ^{september 2026}

*Berkeley’s goop

Gwyneth Paltrow is one of my role models. I mixed her incredible concept for aughts-era goop x my deep longing to make zines again, from my middle school 90s era.1 And obvi booping people and pets is so cute 🐽

It’s been 2 months since we moved to Berkeley, CAL. Some enthusiastic field notes:

1. korean superette cup of nengmyeon JESUS CHRIST

   

   Quite possibly the most innovative Korean thing-with-a-twist I’ve ever experienced. Nengmyeon is one of my favorites if not #1 favorite korean dish. Combine my summer obsession with the sheer boldness necessary to eat in public while walking and my gawd

2. fava EVERYTHING HERE IS GOLD

At this moment, if you put a gun to my head and said “Pick the ONE restaurant you are allowed to eat at for the rest of time” it’d be this one. Tasty, healthy, the ingredients vibrate with karma and chakra and prana like they are wont to do in Berkeley. Added bonus: they are upfront for the liberation of Palestine, and all other oppressed peoples of the world.

I especially love the salmon bowl and mango lassi.

3. of all places the tinned fish selection + specialty foodstuffs

These people know wtf they’re doing. We love tinned fish and their selection is just great. The octopus one! VERY guilty pleasure since they’re so intelligent and play with their mirror reflection and all that, ugh.

I plan on coming here to pick up a niche wine or fun snack for gettogethers

4. rialto cinema elmwood the vibe + their filme-uh~ prrrogram-uh~

5. special mention: fresh-faced Cal undergrad walking around with his pillow and a new friend during orientation week

Wish I’d taken an actual photo but I was too busy tallying up all his precocious confidence, vast untapped potential and infinite number of side quests up he has ahead lolcry you GO babes <3

local fern ⚆

My entire life, people have told me I’m too much. Not always in words. Mostly via body language: pregnant silences, judgmental sideways glances.

And I believed them. Because most people have an easier time keeping a lid on their emotions. Outnumbered, I assumed they’re right — “being emotional is bad”. Growing up, I learned ever more nuanced ways to call myself “bad”: stupid, irrational, childish, unsophisticated, draining, toxic, difficult, unnecessary, self-centered, loser, not cool.

Worse yet, I subconsciously paid it forward to others around me who were simply expressing their uniqueness, living out loud a little.

Then at age 25, I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. I was in grad school, and a particularly intense situationship had unraveled. A brutal depressive episode followed. Dredging up some self-preservation, I somehow dragged myself to Student Health.

They gave me a sheet of paper with 10 questions on it, printed in Times New Roman 12 point font. Comically normal for what it was measuring for. Then, an overworked Masters of Social Work student informed me “You are probably bipolar.”

I’d always suspected something was wrong with me, that I was a bad, damaged person. Now it was official.

During a different time, in a different culture, for a different person, the diagnosis could have been a helpful tool. A gift, even. I see all that now.

But in New York City in 2010, I was who I was — a painfully sensitive, creative, Korean American girl with strong, unpredictable emotions. I had immigrant parents who loved me, and also inflicted abuse, done harm and passed down their deep trauma. Because hurt people hurt people, no matter how well-intentioned.

Fast forward to 2025. A lot has changed. During my 15th year of living with this diagnosis, I see so much progress. Where I live in the U.S., more people are going to therapy. More widespread education (albeit of varying degrees of quality) about mental health.

There’s still so much shame and taboo surrounding bipolar disorder, but it’s not nearly what it was in the 1950s. I’m slowly, tentatively, allowing myself to feel more, be wholehearted. To move through pain rather than push it down.

There is more space. Space for me to work through some anger, frankly.

I don’t know who I’m talking to… society at large, people from my past, or most likely, myself. Probably all of the above.

Shame breeds in darkness, silence, and isolation. Manic Pixie Real Girl is where I flip the lights on (with a dimmer).

I can definitely be a lot. But I’m not too much. And neither are you.