Adam, a brilliant man with a bright future and a promising career, had never told the girl who fell head over heels in love with him that he was sick. After she waited two years for him to leave his wife so their fairy tale could begin, and his divorce was in motion, he asked her to move in with him. Two weeks later, he was calling her a "spoiled little piggy" and ordered her to move out. So this book begins. Loving Adam is a hauntingly honest, clear-eyed memoir of what happened to Amanda K. Hirsch when the love of her life suffered a bipolar manic episode in the summer of 2008. She chose to tell this story, she says, "because of the countless lessons the experience taught me about what it means to love someone with mental illness, what it feels like to love without boundaries, and because no fiction could rival the actual events I lived through. Mental illness affects us all, in one form or another, directly or through the stories we hear from others, in the news, or on television. My hope is that this volume somehow helps you--or someone you love--cope with their story."