I’m not ashamed to say that I cried.

“So, what do you want to talk about today?” the thin Asian woman across from me asks. She asks this twice a week because I see her twice a week. Twice a week, I sit on a gray sofa with red accent pillows and talk for 50 minutes. She listens, often interjects and asks questions.

I deactivated my Twitter and Facebook three months ago. I told myself it was because I needed to concentrate on writing, and social media provided too many opportunities to distract and distance myself from the work. I’m compulsive and obsessive by nature, so once I’m into something, it takes a lot of work not to…

I wasn’t the least bit interested in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend when I first happened upon it on the CW. If the title didn’t completely turn me off, I didn’t understand the premise. How could an entire series be built around a woman basically stalking her ex and then randomly singing about it? It just seemed weird and…

Many people look for different ways to minimize the time they spend on their devices, but for those of us who manage mental illness or mood disorders, “adulting” can be particularly overwhelming sometimes. Over the last few years, I’ve found a few apps that help me get through things.

The new World Trade Center in all its grotesque, sanitized and bleached whiteness still makes me a bit sick. I remember the towers before the planes hit; I remember the smoke and grief that wafted into Brooklyn after they fell.

Last week I watched Demi Lovato’s YouTube documentary, Simply Complicated, chronicling her well-publicized drug problem and eventual bipolar diagnosis. I remember when Demi first went public after a tabloid-filled meltdown; I was impressed by how she never hid behind the veil of “exhaustion” or tried to act as if it…

Today was one of those “Barely get dressed” kind of days. Today was one of those “You gotta get out of the house” kind of days. Today was one of those “You can’t let the world drain you” kind of days. Today was a “Leggings off the floor, relatively clean T-shirt and closest sneakers” kinda day.

Terrible made-for-TV movies are my anti-drug and have been since I was a child. Back then they were often called “Movies of the Week” and were usually based on true stories. The “based on a true story” tag was used liberally because often that just meant, “Once there was a person who lived in a place,” and that was…

It’s always been difficult for me to distinguish between grief, exhaustion and depression. They all have the same creeping, phantomlike, hunted-and-haunted feeling. Like something is always behind you or following you. Or like when you walk into a spider web, and then for the rest of the day you feel like there is…

I’ve always loved to dance. I’d spend hours transfixed whenever dancers from the ballet or Soul Train were on TV. We were poor and immigrant in Stillwater, Okla., so there weren’t that many opportunities to see anything live. We also couldn’t afford dance lessons, so there were no recitals or classes for me. I would…

Some people just aren’t built to be rock stars. The big audiences, the grueling travel, the long stretches away from home, living out of suitcases and a new city almost every night … it takes a lot out of the most stable among us.

Often, after an intense therapy appointment, instead of sitting in my car, folded across the steering wheel before I have the strength to face the rest of the day, I make a detour to the T.J. Maxx on the way home. I don’t always buy anything; I just wander the racks and flip through organized chaos, waiting for my…

Editor’s Note: Trigger warning, this post talks about the subject of suicide, and was written before the death of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington.

The salon was busy when I walked in. There was the chatter of stylists gossiping with clients, the whirl of hair dryers and the receptionist laughing into her cellphone. She paused the conversation to ask if she could help me.

The last few weeks had been good; the fog that spent the last year following me had risen back into the clouds, and the unsteadiness of anxiety seemed less promise and more memory. I was lulled into a comfort. Good news had begun to flood my life, and instead of questioning my worthiness or turning the news upside…

The other day, I decided I was going to take a “writing day.” I had heard my writer friends speak of this often. They wake, have a cup of coffee or tea, eat breakfast, change their clothes, and then either sit at a desk or take themselves to Starbucks to work. They treat their writing lives like a 9-to-5 gig. This…

Waking up to tragedies of some measure has become the norm over the years. Lately it feels as if every day there’s another hashtag created to expose our worst fears or break what’s left of our hearts.

I go to stores at 3:15 on weekdays.

Literally anything can give me anxiety, from a car that takes a second too long to turn over, the gym at its busiest hour, a doorbell ringing, the refrigerator light—anything. Today’s source of anxiety is a text message my friend and big brother, Roger, sent last night: