Embracing Imperfection: from Mental Health Provider to Mental Health Patient
I picked up the orange pill cannister and studied it. It contained a month’s supply of tiny, white pills, and my name was printed on the label.
I used to be a patient caregiver at a psychiatric hospital; how did I end up needing psychiatric care myself?
I guess it was the only logical result of years of mood episodes, a bedbug-infested camper van, and a panic attack in a hotel room in Houston.
* * *
For as long as I could remember, I’d always had seasonal mood fluctuations: down in the winter, up in the spring. Having grown up in central Pennsylvania, where it’s dark and dreary for six months and sunny and pleasant the other half of the year, I became accustomed to alternating between feeling full of life and completely deflated.
