Brain on Fire (Ch. 3)

I step into the small convenience store located at the entrance of the Garland building after my appointment. It’s only a few feet from the elevator and can’t be more than 100 square feet. I usually get anxious waiting in large, open spaces alone, so I either pretend to be occupied on my phone or make sure I’m not the first to arrive. I slowly scan the two aisles while waiting for the Uber app to tell me my driver is arriving, pretending to search for something specific even though I already know I want the KitKat and Mamba I’m holding.

I check out with the two items just as the app pings. I jog quickly to the car because it’s raining. Rain always makes me laugh and think about my father. He used to tell me I wouldn’t melt whenever I dramatically ran to the nearest dry spot. I’ve always hated the rain. There’s something about my whole body being wet at once that makes my skin crawl. I still wash my hair in the kitchen sink or bathtub before getting into the shower on wash days.

I call Kenny as soon as I get into the back seat. Kenny is my boyfriend at the time, and he lives in London. My friends insist he’s not a real boyfriend whenever I turn down local men, but I really like him. A lot of that has to do with the way he sounds—his accent is a mix of Nigerian and British, and everything he says feels smoother because of it. I also appreciate his patience with me, which is probably tied to him being ten years older.

I met Kenny in Vegas during my brother Mario’s 31st birthday trip a month earlier. We had gone the year before and decided to make it a yearly tradition. I was at a party where T.I. was performing when Kenny approached me while I was loudly singing “Joanna (Drogba)” by Afro B., which had become my song of the summer. He asked me to sit at his table and then asked if I was Nigerian. I gave my usual response: “No, I’m regular Black.” I spent the rest of the trip glued to him.

Now, on the phone, Kenny asks me to walk him through everything that happened at my appointment over WhatsApp video. I tell him about my bipolar II diagnosis and how conflicted I feel about it. There’s a stigma attached to being bipolar, and I feel some of that hesitation myself.

“I don’t know how I feel… I mean, I guess it makes sense. Lee told me I’m bipolar type II with mixed features since I haven’t had extreme episodes,” I say. Some of the traits overlap with ADHD, so I can understand how Wendy may have misdiagnosed me. What I thought was just difficulty focusing was actually racing thoughts. I didn’t realize that some of my personality traits could be tied to something more specific. I used to joke that my ability to carry on multiple conversations at once was my fake superpower, even though people would tell me they were lost trying to keep up. I always thought my fast, nonstop talking was just me being long-winded or a typical fast-talking Chicagoan.

I tend to fixate on things and over-educate myself until I feel like I could teach a class on them. The night I adopted Kit and Kat, I watched two full documentaries about cats. As soon as I get out of the Uber, I plan to plug my phone in so I can research bipolar II without my battery dying. Almost immediately, I start finding descriptions that mirror my so-called quirks. My mother is also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but she has a long history of drug use, which makes it hard to separate what’s behavioral from what’s substance-related. I read that bipolar disorder can skip a generation, which makes me question her diagnosis and mine at the same time.

Dr. Lee prescribes Lamictal and tells me I’ll either love it or hate it. I love it. The morning after I take it for the first time feels like putting on glasses for the first time—you don’t realize how blurry everything was until you suddenly see clearly. I’m not exaggerating when I say I could actually hear and process music differently. I was merging onto the Dan Ryan from Garfield when the lyrics started to feel like poetry instead of just fast, catchy words. I finally understood why some artists are called lyricists. It sounds dramatic to say I could hear for the first time, but it’s the closest way to describe it. I always joke that I hear better when I read captions, but this felt real.

What I thought was a focus issue turned out to be racing thoughts, and suddenly everything felt quieter. I stopped overthinking every interaction and trying to predict outcomes before they happened. I stopped reading between the lines of things people said. My relationships improved—with friends, family, and partners. I could tolerate being around children longer without feeling overwhelmed. I didn’t need to drink as much in social settings to feel comfortable. At one Friendsgiving, no one noticed I had only been drinking water until I hesitated to take a birthday shot. Someone called me out, and I had to switch my glass. The list of changes goes on.

(Updated April 7, 2026)