Though I am somewhat hesitant to recommend this to others with anxiety and/or depression because of how it depicts Haig's lowest point right before and right after he was going to kill himself (but didn't), the rest of the book is an encouragement for living on in the face of your own raging inner demons, and just might be the comfort required to get through the darkness you may be living in now. A few times he included dialogues his present self could have had with his 24-year-old self, showing how he proved the illness wrong and lived despite it all. He has learned a lot about how to treat his body and be kinder and more aware of it in order to better care for his mind and he admits that medication isn't always a solution but it works for some people and anything that makes you feel more whole and human and stable and even happy- that's a thing that you need to take advantage of. There are numerous lists (I love lists) of: what works and what doesn't to make Haig feel better or worse (notably Facebook and Twitter are on both), what a panic attack feels like, the things some ignorant people say when responding to a depressed person, tweets from people shouting out their own reasons for staying alive, and even one detailing celebrities & historical figured who have admitted to personal struggles (including Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln).

All in all it felt like Haig didn't hold back, which was a relief. In the passages from his younger years, before and after his breakdown, he really lays out how utterly trash he felt without adding any superfluously optimistic language because the truth is when he was there, it didn't look like there was a way out of it, even with the hindsight of his survival. The honesty made me clutch the pages to my own aching chest and sigh over and again, so thankful for writers (and artists, and general humans) like Haig who dare to speak so thoroughly about their personal experiences allowing the little people like myself to have a bright light source at the worst times, and gentle friendly reminders during the better times, that both the good and the horrid are normal and I'm normal and I have to keep pushing when it hurts because depression shouldn't win, the anxiety won't last forever, fighting through will make me stronger and I have so many reasons to stay alive.