Things were spiraling down rapidly. One event after another, events that arose emotions I could not easily stomach, I was going down fast, losing my calm. I was lost at sea of dark emotions of confusion, sadness, anger, jealousy, and fear. I found myself caught in this consummating fire of my dark passion. Once again.

Life seemed perfectly calm and peaceful. Everything was in place as if I have reached the pinnacle of eternal bliss. That highest point of spiritual maturity that everyone seems to be after nowadays, I was there. I thought I had established myself on that solid ground, I thought I had mastered the balancing act. But no. It only took one small event that set me off, pushing me off the dangerous tipping point I had been positioning myself upon.

Receiving healing prayers after mass, requesting Stephen counseling Ministries, talking to my mature neighbor and my close friends, praying the rosary every night, praying to Jesus day and night, and crying, crying, and crying until I could not cry any more, all helped me get through the last couple of weeks that was resembling more and more like depression. Everyday, I was reaching out for something in my desperate moments of fearful falling. A kind soul here and there grabbed my reaching hand pulling me up back to the safe ground. An elderly leader from Stephen Ministries gently put his hand on top of my shaking hand as I was crying uncontrollably. He was 77 years old, a professor from a local college, perhaps teaching at the department of Psychology. He calmly talked about his disabled daughter with a severe birth defect. She cannot urinate or pass bowel movement on her own, she has to be wheeled around in her wheel chair. She is in her forties now but she has guided him, offered directions for his life paths, through her need for him to become her protection for life.

As he chronicled his journey with his daughter from East Coast to Montana and back to Maryland, I realized that I, too, have that disabled girl inside me. Perhaps I could call her Lily after the name of this blog site. That girl, my Lily, always lived inside me suffering her condition of bipolar disorder since her very young days. That unstable girl was the one that made me move from one continent to another, from a mainland to an island, from one State to another, from one job to countless others, from one marriage to another. She guided me, sometimes to the right direction, but many times to the paths that led me to sink into deep holes. All those paths, whether good or bad, have led me to be here in this place where I still struggle to overcome the burning fire inside me. It wants to destroy me. It wants to devour me whole. But my Lily with her bipolar disorder has been a great teacher. She helped me experience life with greater depths and heights. She took me on a life journey like no other. Most of all, the immense pain of bipolar disorder led me to reach out to Jesus, my ultimate healer.

So here’s to many more years of my life with Lily, the greatest teacher that I ever had.

“Bipolar disorder can be a great teacher. It’s a challenge, but it can set you up to be able to do almost anything else in your life.” ~ Carrie Fisher