It’s been a big year with several big triumphs. The show I’ve been working on for three years finally premiered, and I got engaged to the best girl in the world. I’ve never felt more lucky, proud, and loved…but I had another, more personal and harder won victory this year, and I’d like to talk about that first.

This is about mental health, and it’s long. Minor trigger warning for things related to that.

I do these posts every year, and have since 2011. (read them here if you’d like!) Some years, including last year, I wasn’t sure if I should continue doing them. The posts encouraged a narrative that I disagreed with as much as I desperately sought to live up to it: that my accomplishments and my youth gave me value, that I was always on the upward climb, that burnout was an easily-resolved footnote, that I was young and sharp and fine, I was fine and I would always be fine.

It was as short-sighted as it was unsustainable. The truth was, something was wrong and had been wrong for a long time.

At the start of the year, and when I made last year’s comic, I was already close to hitting the wall. I had thrown myself into work, and the show, and I was losing myself in it. I wasn’t sleeping. I no longer felt any connection to my own body.



I was doing everything right, I thought: I was working out, going to therapy, taking breaks, I had an incredibly kind and patient partner who was always there for me. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just, through force of will, make myself okay.



I was burning through energy stores that I didn’t have, and I knew it but I couldn’t stop. There was something in me that wouldn’t let me. I identified it commonly in my drawings as a fire. I’d felt it for years, at varying levels of intensity, but now it seemed that it was burning out of control and it was going to take me with it.

It made me feel like I was living my life in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight - usually fight. At first, my fierce and stubborn temperament was a benefit in the environment I was in. It was clear to me that showing weakness, even for a moment, would be the end. But it was hard to know when to stop fighting, and fighting takes its toll.

The show was everything to me, and it was hard to see beyond it. I was keenly aware of how lucky I was to be a showrunner, but I also took the success of the show and the wellbeing of the crew incredibly personally, and so the guilt of letting everyone down convinced me that I was not allowed to be happy in the role - that it would be irresponsible.



I was so tired, but the fire was still there, and it propelled me stubbornly forward even as it consumed everything inside of me. I thought I could fix everything if I just tried harder…and if I didn’t fix things, no one would. I lived in constant dread of the one small slip or mistake that would ruin everything forever. I carried it all, in obsessive detail, in my head, and eventually I stopped being able to turn it off.

Admitting that something was wrong would mean that there was something wrong with me - that I hadn’t done a good job, that I wasn’t cut out for this, that I had failed. So despite all the red flags, I just kept pushing through.

And my body started to fail.

For so long I’d put all my personal value in my success, as much as I knew that I shouldn’t. I had climbed so high, never really stopping to rest, and I was so scared of falling - I didn’t think I’d survive it.

I didn’t know that falling was exactly what I needed.



I won’t get into exactly what happened - maybe another time. But it was brutal, and swift, and merciless. This was it, the thing I’d been most afraid of. I was going to be assigned the label of “difficult woman,” another one who just couldn’t take the pressure.

My self-image shattered. But the truth was, there hadn’t been much left of it to begin with.

And finally I knew what I had to do.

There’s something strangely calming about the fire outside becoming hotter than the one inside. I got back up, put on nice clothes, and stood my ground.

It turns out there can be freedom in the falling, and strength in the breaking.

And finally…I sought out help.







I saw a psychiatrist and finally got a diagnosis I’d needed for a long time.

Everything fell into place.

The diagnosis alone was a huge relief. It offered context for my racing mind, twitching fingers, the long sleepless nights, the pervasive dread and surging panic, the darkest hopeless lows and vibrating burning highs. I wasn’t just falling apart. This was something I could face, and manage.

I went on medication.



I had always been afraid of medication. It was easy to romanticize the fire in my brain, and internalize the pervasive notion that it was what made me strong, interesting, creative, and that medication would take that away. It took being pushed to my breaking point to realize that it wasn’t worth it.



It would have been worth it anyway, but being on medication has in no way lessened my capacity for feeling or creating. It’s made creating easier - it’s made my feelings stronger and more sure because I know that they’re real. I can see myself again. The face in the mirror is mine. I know what I want, and what I need, and I trust myself for the first time in a long time. The joy of creating has come back.

It was not the diagnosis or the medication alone that helped me get better. I was carried through the darkest parts by the strength of those around me - my awesome and powerful coworkers, the women who kindly mentored me when I sought them out for advice, and the care and love of the most wonderful girl in the world.

And finally, I could see the sun again.

I’d seen the sun before, but it was different this time. I’d made it through my worst fears, and it hadn’t killed me. I could do it again if need be. A bad situation had worked out all right in the end, but even if it hadn’t, I would have been okay. I wasn’t reaching my expiration date as a young creator - I was maturing, building the strength, real strength, to live the rest of my life.

This isn’t a resolution, a happy ending - it’s the beginning. I will still struggle, and fall, and break, again in the future. There will be highs and lows, and the fire is something I’ll have to carefully manage for the rest of my life. But the places I’ve been broken will not break so easily in the same way again.

It’s been a hard year, an ugly year, a long year.

It’s been a good year.

On to the next.