Bipolar disorder affects 5.7 million American adults a year.
Defective
Law student, Maggie Hovis’s, dreams crash when she learns the truth about her dramatic mood swings, uncovers generations of family secrets, and loses the man she loves. Can she confront her diagnosis of bipolar 2 disorder and embrace life? Or does being “defective” preclude a life filled with happiness, success, and love?
EXCERPT:
I got really pissed off when I read the description of depression. It was so sugar-coated. The webpage defined it as “a depressed mood, loss of pleasure, low energy and activity, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, and thoughts of suicide.”
Obviously, written by an over-educated, politically correct shrink. Not wanting to shock everyone in the library, I controlled my urge to scream out, This asshole should spend a few months inside my brain or let me write the damn definition:
Depression is a daily battle against an enemy that controls your only weapon—your ability to think. It’s a paralyzing pain of no known source that engulfs the entire body and soul. At times, violent self-loathing manifests as a fiery orange rage that surges through veins and arteries. As self-hatred gouges every cell in your body, a mortal enemy, named Uncontrollable Thought, commandeers your brain space.
This enemy, at the minimum, will try to convince you that you are God’s biggest and only mistake. But most of the time, Uncontrollable Thought stabs against the inside of your brain with taunts designed to convince you that your death would make the world a better place. Also, the saying, “an ocean full of tears,” is a gross understatement.
After that, I slammed the screen shut and huffed to myself.