Dear Future Depressed Fern,

Holy fuck. You were in a dark, deep, black hole for 2 months and 6 days. You spent about 6 weeks struggling with disorganized thinking and inability to speak/express yourself. You weren’t catatonic like that 2021 episode, thankfully. But there were a lot of quiet dinners between you and B, lots of saying “I don’t know” and not being able to make the simplest, lowest-stakes of decisions. This was definitely in the Top 5 of worst episodes.

Yet a few weeks ago, you started to see the light. Three weeks ago you started to feel good. At this moment, you feel great. How did this happen? How did we let it get so bad?

Let me remind you.

You stopped taking your medication

Remember how you and B wanted to try to conceive, so you stepped off the Depakote and Seroquel with your psychiatrist and therapist’s green light? Well that was not a good idea.

It was until it wasn’t, rather. You were okay for about 1.5 months, using every tool in your toolkit to try staying stable and not get hypomanic. But a couple months in, your mood started elevating quickly. We know this because you couldn’t sleep longer than 4-5 hours to save your life. You were doing the best you could: taking your sleep stack (magnesium, inositol, and apigenin); bought pricey blue-light blocking glasses to use for laptop work, doing grounding meditation every morning without fail.

None of it worked because there’s something chemically atypical going on in your brain. Particularly the way your body handles stress, dopamine feedback loops, and serotonin. For some people, lifestyle adjustments and practices help but they don’t cut it. You are one of those people, although it’s taken forty years of nightmarish depressions —including this one — to admit it and accept it.

Let’s give flowers where they’re due though: you lasted 7 months off-meds. You didn’t need to be hospitalized. That’s because you live a charmed, quite privileged life by any measurement. Staying out of the hospital is something to be proud of. It shows diligence and dedication that you were in a more-or-less contained hypomanic episode for over 3 months!

But don’t ever go off your meds again.

What happened next, you wouldn’t wish upon even Hitler

You experienced a severe, near-catatonic, mildly psychotic depressive episode. For over 2 months.

It was like someone punched the lights out of the language centers of your brain. Your brain was suddenly like a knit sweater that unraveled, yarn exploding every which way in a tangled mess. You could barely speak. Texting people a single line of response took almost an hour due to fighting the shame, guilt, and worthlessness that were uprising in you.

At the worst of it, your brain was screaming that you don’t deserve to live, and that you make life a nightmare for everyone around you. The only way out was through… suicide.

Hi, there. I’m conflicted about paywalling anything that might help someone feel or live better. And, I would love to pay the bills as a writer/author someday.

My current thinking is I might paywall any post that mentions suicidality and other shadow topics. This is for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t want to read about that during a casual scroll-through.

If you want to be privy to my boundless heart-mind, you’re welcome to become a paid subscriber (you cute weirdo).

If you want full access but cannot afford it right now, please write to me at manicpixiereal@gmail.com. We will figure it out.

Otherwise, there are plenty of stories and tools I’ll offer free. Thank you so much for being here.

Read more

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.