When the Cracks Start Showing
The signs of burnout, bipolar disorder, and chronic stress rarely arrive all at once. Mine arrived one responsibility at a time.
Some cracks don’t begin with explosions. They arrive quietly, the way pressure builds inside the walls of a house long before anyone hears the first pop.
That’s how my cracks formed — not from weakness, but from weight.
Before the morning everything shattered, there had already been a quieter breaking — one that started in those fog-drenched Washington years when time felt suspended and the sky never fully brightened.
I finally had a doctor then. Someone who looked me in the eye and said the truth no one else had bothered to name: bipolar disorder is lifelong. Not a phase. Not hormones. Not stress. A lifelong condition. It should have been grounding — terrifying, yes — but grounding.
Chapters One through Three are free. The rest are here for White members — or read the whole memoir on Kindle, $4.99.
