One woman on how to date when you have depression.

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. “皮肤太难堪,” the nurse at the hospital in Chongqing, China, said to me. Though my Mandarin level is nowhere near proficient,…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. One day in 2011, Harper Spero was walking in New York City when she felt like she was going to collapse. The then-27 year…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. I remember sitting across from the psychiatrist in a dim and barely furnished office. She asked about my day, and then…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. I’m lying on the floor, mouth hanging open, drool collecting under my cheek. My eyes are wide and unblinking. If I could…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. Every day, I drag myself out of bed and go to open my front door to start my commute. Living with multiple chronic…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. Home with the flu recently, I found myself going through all of my papers, a task I’d been meaning to do for years. I…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. Polly Rodriguez’s life changed following a stage three cancer diagnosis — which lead to early menopause — at the age of…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. I'm 25 now, but I first got sick in the seventh grade. At the time, the doctors said it was the worst case of mono that…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. One day last January I went to bed after getting in a killer workout, feeling as self-satisfied as a fitness influencer…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. If you live with anything for long enough, there’s a chance you’ll get complacent about it. This is how I was with my…

This piece is part of Bustle's My Life With, which is all about removing the invisibility around living with a chronic illness. While Hollywood never seems to tire of sensationalizing dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple…

I learned that actor and writer Clementine Ford was living with multiple sclerosis when I met her at a writing retreat in 2014. I had just finished marathoning The L Word (the reboot is happening!) for the eleventy-millionth time, and I recognized…

People exercise for many reasons, and one of the major ones is for its mood-boosting benefits. But as someone who lives with co-occurring mental illnesses, I was skeptical as to whether these benefits would actually work for me. However, as I read…

I'm sitting somewhere I've been countless times before: on an exam table, getting my lymph nodes checked. I know the feeling of cool doctor's gloves on the places that I once feared. I anticipate the pressure on the scarred spot where two lymph…

I remember sitting up in bed on a Saturday night, my back pressed firmly up against the wall, covered in my own puke. It was my senior year of college, and I already felt a lingering sense of FOMO from choosing to stay in, rather than go out. I was…