I am resting in the calm before the storm, and it feels divine. Don’t jump your thoughts ahead, just stay in the moment of stillness and quiet and enjoy. Lately the weather has been such that whiskey calls my name, but I have not taken to drinking, I just tell the voice “not today,” and I move my brain onto the next moment, filling it with different thoughts.

My brain is unwrapping memories. The first one is when I was twelve, the image of a red velvet couch in a hotel, one that I ran past barefoot, as two boys sitting there laughed. It was a funny sight, to be sure, but one of my more terrifying moments. I didn’t know if someone was following me. Someone I was running from. Someone much older who “got too friendly with me.”

I don’t know what transpired for the boys to know it wasn’t a laughing matter. Had my mom talked to them before she found me? I was hiding in the bathroom, because I thought he wouldn’t follow me there. I know the boys spoke to us when my mom and I passed by again, I think they may have said “he just got on the elevator.” After my initial panic, their words would help me register that I was safe.

There are some studies that indicate that traumatic childhood events could be a contributing factor to developing bipolar. I don’t know that it matters all that much how I came to be a person with bipolar, as long as I embrace the vigilance involved in keeping it at bay. So far, I am doing well taking my medication, pretty good with my sleep regimen, but need to work on my exercise and eating habits. It’s been my experience that being sober is enabling the medication to be as effective as possible.

I am unwrapping another memory, of me in a grocery store, staring at the shelves, suddenly realizing I am in a woman’s way. I quickly moved out of her way and apologized. She said “No need to apologize, you have just as much of a right to be here as I do.” In that moment I realized I was walking around this world as if I didn’t have a right to take up space. What a debilitating way to navigate life. Since then I have crawled my way out of that perspective. Sometimes I slip back, but I try each day to find my voice even if it shakes, to move through space as if I matter, and to value what I have to offer others.

It’s a strange and fascinating world. Had I not had that encounter, there was a much worse scenario awaiting me the next day. Fortunately, things unfolded as they did; I used my voice to say “I don’t love you that way,” and a profound journey of taking up space in this world began.