F31.81, In Partial Remission

I am a nurse with a god complex and a cracked halo.
I fix people for a living.
I keep them breathing, hydrated, hopeful.
I tell them they’re safe in bodies they no longer trust while my own is a demolition site with good lighting.
I can find a vein on the first try, chart a crisis in complete sentences, talk a stranger out of relapse, before my own thoughts come looking for me.
I save lives before lunch and remember everyone’s birthdays.
I check on my family, my patients, my friends, the ones who say “I’m fine” in that tone I invented.

Then I go home and write about it.
Every shift becomes a stanza.
Every wound, a metaphor.
Every miracle, a first draft.
I call it art so it doesn’t sound like screaming.
I am ambition with a pulse.
I am high performance incarnate.

I do favors I don’t have time for.
I answer messages I don’t have energy for.
I take on every task because saying no feels like dying.
I look like stability because I rehearse it daily.

Until —
I start to stretch thin.
I start talking about the five books I’ll write, the seven careers I’ll start, the thousand versions of myself I’ll become before this high burns out.
I speak like prophecy.
I move like caffeine on fire.
I am unstoppable — right up until I stop.

And then the crash comes.
Slow.
Cruel.
Unannounced.
I stop answering the phone.
I stop answering to my name.
I stare at the laundry pile like it’s a math problem.
I write my will in a Google doc called “miscellaneous.”
I fantasize about vanishing politely — a clean exit, a note that says “Don’t worry, it’s just me unexisting for a bit.”

I’m scared to call my family.
Scared to lie.
Scared to tell the truth.
I lie there, unmoving, with my dog pressed against my ribs like a heartbeat that refused to quit.

I still show up.
I cry between patients.
I hand out meds with hands that shake.
I chart progress I don’t believe in.
I tell someone they’re going to make it because someone has to.

And then —
I crawl back.
Not reborn.
Not radiant.
Just breathing.
I clean one dish.
I wash one strand of hair.
I write one sentence that doesn’t hurt.

The world calls it recovery.
I call it round two.
People tell me I’m strong.
They mean well.
They mean you look functional again.

And I smile, because they need that story.

But inside, I’m whispering the truth:
I’m high functioning.
Until I’m not.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder three separate times before I finally believed it. The first time, I deeply denied it. The second time, I rationalized it away. The third time, I looked at the wreckage of another crash and realized — they were right, and I was tired of pretending they weren’t.

Even now, years later, “in partial remission,” stability isn’t the absence of pain. It’s learning how to live with the whiplash. It’s waking up in a body that doesn’t always follow your orders. It’s balancing brilliance and burnout, compassion and collapse, nursing others through their worst nights while quietly trying to outsmart your own. This poem isn’t about being cured. It’s about surviving the days when “doing fine” feels like a lie that still gets you through the shift. It’s about finding grace in the small returns.

I dedicate this piece to everyone fighting this fight:

To those who’ve been misdiagnosed, doubted, or dismissed. To those still learning to name what they live with. To the high-functioning, the half-healed, and the still-here. You’re not alone in the quiet between the highs and the lows. You’re not broken — you’re surviving in a language only the brave ever learn to speak.

Keep showing up.

🫶🏻✨

— Missy Matchstick