You deserved better...

It's easier for them to believe that something is wrong with you than it is for them to believe that something wrong happened to you. - Najwa Zebian

One day I told myself.

Let them see your madness.

Do it.

The mad ones will love you back.

- Samira Vivette

Sometimes closure arrive two years later, on an ordinary Friday afternoon, in a way you never expected or could have predicted. And you cry a little, and you laugh a little. And for the first time in a long time... You exhale. Because you are free. - Mandy Hale

When I had my first manic episode at the age of 29, I was working full time as a manageress at one of the best restaurant in town, frantically trying to complete my masters with a supervisor burying me in research, and by day, trying to resurrect the shambles that had become my father's restaurant, radically in debt loaning a substantial amount of my own money to try and save it.

It was no wonder my brain went into overdrive. Manic. To cope.

For that is what it has become for me. A mind going into overdrive to try and do my very best. And usually far too much. Like Icarus. Readying for a crash. Thump. To an unforgiving earth.

My second, my fiance left me. Abruptly and without warning. And with nothing to my name except an opal and garnet engagement ring. My mind, body, and soul reeled in offence, and I once again landed in a psychiatric hospital.

And now, once more. My mind scrambled. Became undone.

Living with my father and desperately chasing after his love. Cleaning like a fiend in his home. Showering him with little gifts and tokens of affection. Usually met with undercutting snide remarks at my expense in front of his usual entourage.

And it all came to a head with a shoe.

I was staying with my grandmother for a short spell and my father phoned her to say I had left a shoe in the yard, fallen from my bag. It was one of a pair of my favourites. Designer shoes they were, passed down from a wealthy aunt.

And when I returned home, there in the muddied grass lay still my shoe. My juicy orange thong of a pair that I have deeply treasured for many years now, saving them for special occasions.

I struggled to sleep that night. And I struggled all the more many after. Fiendishly writing. Fiendishly seeking emancipation from this room in my father's home. No matter how I had decorated it in little sculptures and photos and my silk roses. The image of the shoe left in mud and grass burning bright in my mind.

For all I had toiled in the garden seeing to a barren patch that received no rain... For all I had mopped the floors of the spills of his chilli sauce... For all I had soaked and scrubbed the drying dish towels to rid them of his mustard stains... There my shoe had lain.

And when the police were called to cart me away, I checked myself, independent, into the nearest hospital, not to give a single soul the benefit of the spectacle.

But truly, these descents into madness (and in this case, intense fury)... They do not happen in a void. Call me just another hysterical woman.

And yet, in my hospital stay, something miraculous happened. I thought on all the relationships I had ever been in, believing so fervently that love had to be earned, with a mother prone to depression and a father incapable of real love. But no more. Suddenly it dawned on me like the glorious light of a new day... Or perhaps by the light of the full moon... Love should simply be given. Abundant.

And my soul sang a song of freedom.

I was no longer slave to a lifetime of past hurts. But well and truly free.

And with that a lightness came upon me. My saving grace. This newfound freedom. The juicy orange designer shoe left in mud and grass an image that brought a smile to my face.

And I realised no. My madness has not arrived in a vacuum. I was not entirely to blame.

And should society not treat those, me, and every last one, all of the sensitive souls, with a softer sensitivity?

All the same, indeed, I have found freedom in my singing soul.

But have no fear. You will find your tribe. That accepts you, madness and all. And for all your hurts and your traumas, you will be free one day. It will be unexpected. But it will be liberating. And you will never look back.

Freedom drawing by Luci Trajterova