For a long time I thought of myself as nothing more than a conglomeration of mental health symptoms.

I felt like bipolar disorder sucked up my soul and stole my true self right out from under me.

I made a comment to a friend yesterday about “being fixed” by therapy. She reminded me that I’m not fixed because I was never broken. But for a long time I have felt broken. I felt like a shell of the person I used to be; a victim of the parasite that is Mental Illness.

As I get properly medicated and go through intensive therapy to learn how to handle my Mental illness, I feel like the groundhog coming out of hiding. The real me is showing up again, and it feels incredible. My personality is no longer overshadowed by my mental illness. Instead, I am a whole person who happens to also have a mental illness.

I have to fight daily to think of myself in this more positive way. It’s far too easy to fall in the downward spiral of despair-talk.

“I’ll never get better.”

“I’m crazy.”

“There is something fundamentally wrong with me.”

But my friend is right. I never was broken, and I never will be “fixed.” But I can feel whole again.