AN IMPOSSIBLE LIFE

Wasden offers an account of navigating life with bipolar disorder in this memoir, co-written with Siddoway, her daughter.

The book begins in a hospital emergency room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2007, where Wasden’s husband, Mitch, took her in for a mental health evaluation. There, the doctor asked her if she wanted to die: “I didn’t want to be alive, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be dead either,” she narrates. “I just wanted out of the pain.” The narrative then alternates between her relationship with Mitch and the six days she spent in a mental hospital. Later, she was prescribed medication that worked for her, and she confronted the stigma that came with a mental illness diagnosis. There was an added feeling of despair in her journey, as her father also struggled with mental illness and eventually died by suicide in 2011. Four years later, after a family argument, the author attempted suicide; shortly afterward, her son went to live with his aunt and uncle, and she and Mitch separated. A friend introduced her to dialectical behavior therapy, which involved cultivating mindfulness, tolerating negative thoughts, regulating emotions, and finding ways to communicate better with others; she found that DBT yielded positive results. She later worked to rebuild her relationships with her husband and others and to pay off some of her significant credit-card debt with a new job. Overall, this multilayered book is incredibly potent as it delves into heavy subjects with impressive nuance. It centers on the author’s experience with bipolar disorder, but it also reads like a love story at times, showing how the author and her spouse made sacrifices to support each other’s dreams. One scene that particularly stands out features Mitch taking the author to get chocolates at Target, so she would have a treat to pair with her medication. Later, when the author asked him why he stayed with her, he responded, “I remember the girl I married. I still love that girl, and I hoped one day she’d come back to me.”

An important and emotional read about mental health, family, and hope.