THE SECOND

A deep dive into the complexity of bipolar disorder, as experienced by a woman who’s lived with it for most of her adult life.

Durda begins her debut memoir with a riveting scene set in 1989. The 20-something author was roaming the halls of a hospital, visiting cancer patients and bestowing upon them optimistic messages from God, as she believed that she was God’s daughter. She’d just fled the hospital’s emergency room, where she’d been brought after experiencing a psychotic break. It would lead to the first of her many involuntary confinements to a mental-illness ward. She goes on to tell of how her family moved frequently when she was young. In 1978, she attended the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and on her first day there, she spotted a young man named JD. They began dating years later, and when Durda became pregnant, a hasty marriage was arranged. Seven years later, during her fourth pregnancy, the author visited a new obstetrician on whom she developed an emotional fixation that lasted for almost two decades. But although the author describes many dissatisfactions, including a lack of self-confidence, she gives readers few other indications of the mental crises that lay ahead of her; then she writes about hearing what she thought was the voice of God. Over the course of this vividly rendered book, Durda tells a courageously honest and harrowing story that features insightful coping techniques. She describes her early hallucinations in chilling detail; for example, at one point while looking at her loving husband, she says that she saw him as a wolf: “His face had become lupine, his eyes glowed red.…The beast looked evil and menacing. It snapped its jaws together and sneered.” But she also delves into how, after decades of treatment in and out of institutions, she reached a point where her illness was under control. She concludes her book with a helpful list of coping techniques, including suggestions for healthy dietary practices, exercise, medication compliance, and building awareness of emotional triggers.

A remembrance and self-help work that will appeal to readers with bipolar disorder and their families.