At the age of 43, I had never had a relationship last more than a year. My colleagues in comedy suggested that it was par for the course in our business, and that paired with my psychiatric issues, I might never be eligible for lifelong commitment. But strangely, it was when I was hospitalized in a psych ward that I first found real hope that I could be married one day.

Back in 2010, I had been dating a guy for a few months. It was a fast romance, but he broke it off quickly and kindly when he discovered that I was having problems with what I thought was just bad depression.

After the breakup, I decided it was the perfect time to try a new medication, a mood stabilizer that my psychiatrist had recommended. Then I signed myself into a facility because I was a little scared of killing myself. “Seventy-two hours on the new med, and I’ll be good as new,” I thought to myself. “Then off to four shows in Chicago!” No matter how bad I felt, work came first.

At a hospital in Pasadena, Calif., I was speaking with a fellow jittery patient. He was in his early 50s and said that he had bipolar disorder. I was worried whether I would ever work again, so I asked him what he did. He said he had left a high-stress position in international law and now worked part-time at a used bookstore in the San Bernardino Valley. He had been on disability for several years and needed to enter a mental health facility about once a year for flare-ups of depression or mania.