Carling Mars has always lived with mental illness. Hallucinations, delusions, depression, mania, suicidal thinking: my goodness, has it been difficult. From terrible therapists and psychiatrists to destabilizing medication changes to hospitalizations, she's been through kind of a lot. Work went from upsetting to painful to incompatible with life. Some friends disappeared when she started talking about it.

But, in a shocking twist, life goes on. Making new friends, helping others, learning from the pain, falling in love, growing, becoming a better person; all these things (and more ) happen in these pages: some despite mental illness, but a good amount because of mental illness. It turns out that even a severely mentally ill person can have a life worth fighting for.