Seven A.M. I wake up in the dark. There are so few hours of daylight—the sun will start to fall at about three o'clock in the afternoon, and it will be fully dark by four. It is hard to want to leave the house, or work, or live, in Minnesota during the winter months. The suicide rate goes sky high. All over this snow-blanketed city, there are people who lie in bed well into the flat gray afternoon, turning this way and that, slogging in and out of sleep. They may drag themselves up around dinner, when a spouse or partner comes home; they may attempt to dress, or they may not. February is the worst for me, but it's not February yet, and today I am hoping to spend the hours of light at my desk, trying to pretend the lack of sun isn't pressing in at me, pushing me into catatonia, a failure of the will to live. And so:
Eight A.M. I go into my kitchen. Take my handfuls of meds. Take the supplements they tell me will help. Take anything they tell me to take. I eat the food they tell me to eat; a little protein, they say, takes the edge off the anxiety, the ever-present morning fears. I go into my office and turn on the light box, which blasts a blinding fluorescent light into the room. I stare at it, drinking my coffee, for the allotted half-hour—enough to block the depression, with luck, but not so much that it will trigger mania. The balance in winter is hard to strike. All these years, every winter I've slipped into a mixed episode, a devastating depression coupled with the frenzied, chaotic energy of mania. This is what we are trying to avoid. I am not certain I can. I doubt it. But I have a little hope. And so:
Nine A.M. I sit down at my desk to work. I'm not writing well, but I'm only writing for myself. This is to make me feel functional, a feeling I lost during those years of total disability, so that at the end of the day I can feel good about the fact that the day did not pass me by. They want me to be functional. My doctors' goal, ultimately, is for me to return to a normal life—well, not return, for I've never had such a life, but to build the skills that will help me function at a level acceptable to me. They know that my functioning may have been damaged by the severity of the episodes over the past few years. I'm still holding out hope that I will return to those two good years when Jeff and I were first married—the constant parties, the spotless house, the boundless energy, the endless, unstoppable work. They have tried to tell me that I might not have that, and even that it might not be desirable; they are trying to explain to me that such a life may be exactly what triggers the episodes. But I don't want to believe it. I believe that life is normal. That, to me, is functioning. I don't listen when they say I might have to adjust my expectations for myself. To me, this sounds like You will have to accept failure. You will never be good enough again.
Ten A.M. to six P.M. I work like a demon. I work, and work, and work. At the end of the day, I don't know what I've written, or how much. It almost doesn't matter. What matters is that I am still writing. I am still able to get up and do my job every day. Every week the doctor asks me if I'm working. If I am, he's pleased. If not, he worries. For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write. I stare at the computer, type a few lines, delete them in increasing despair. I believe my mind has dried up, that I will never write again. Most people would call this writer's block, and that's partly what it is—if only it didn't also signal the beginning of something else, to wit, the loss of my ability to function. When my mind leaves the room, the words are the first things it grabs on its way out, leaving me at my desk, terrified, hating myself, dreading what's next. And so, today, I write as if my life depends on it, because right now it does.
Six P.M. I go to the gym. They tell me the gym will help stabilize my moods—the adrenaline and the dopamine rush that exercise triggers will level out the rises and falls, interrupt the cycles that can lead me into and out of episodes and extreme moods. They tell me it will make me happier. They tell me it will decrease the ever-present, crippling anxiety. And that's what it seems to do. The only trick is talking myself into leaving the house. I've been in here peacefully all day, maintaining my marginal grip on the world outside of my house and head; but now I have to get dressed and go out into the freezing cold dark. I force myself out of my chair, bundle up, and drive to the gym, skulk into the workout room, onto the treadmill, glancing around me to see if anyone's watching. On good days, they aren't. On bad days, I know they are, and I am terrified of them. Dr. Lentz says no one is watching. So I say to myself, chanting along with my footfalls as I run in place, No one is watching, no one is watching, all's well, no need to worry, level the mood swings, increase self-image, protect against episodes, you need to be here, and I finish my run—and I am elated, out of breath, feeling alive, feeling at peace. It works every time. When I do it every day, the peace builds up, and I go through the day not quite so crippled by anxiety as I usually am.
Eight P.M. I'm eating dinner when Jeff calls. My heart freezes in my chest when I hear his voice, then starts up again. I can hardly understand him. He's crying. Sobbing, really, hysterical. I drop my fork and it clatters on the floor. I stand up but then am paralyzed and can't move. My throat closes. I want to hang up. I want to help him. He's living in a hellhole, his—our—house is trashed, filthy, full of boxes and the detritus of the three renters who've moved in in my absence. He is hiding in a ten-by-ten room with windows that don't close all the way, and the icy wind gets in, and he shivers there, under the covers in bed in his clothes. His room is full of dirty dishes, he's compulsively spending money on things he doesn't need, things that arrive and are abandoned wherever they land, the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, towering stacks of boxes, a thick film of dust over it all. I've only been there twice since I left, and it made me incredibly sad and worried for him; he's slipped into the depression that has dogged him all his life and that was violently set off when we split, and now we are quite a pair, crazy as hell and deep in sorrow and fear. I stand frozen in my kitchen, waiting for him to take a breath, but he doesn't—Jeff. Jeff, you've got to stop for a second, I can't understand you, what do you want? Are you all right? And obviously he is not all right. Can I come over? he begs. And I say yes.
Nine P.M. Jeff is in a ball on my living room floor, rocking back and forth. I am terrified. I think he may be suicidal. I am numb. I cannot force myself to feel. I hate him for being like this. Finally, with an enormous effort, I make myself go over to him. I lie down on the floor at his back and curl my body around him. I say, Let's get off the floor. Let's go to the couch. Is that okay? And, his face tortured and red and wet with tears and snot, he nods and gets to his knees and crawls over to the couch. He lies down and I put his head in my lap. He is screaming in pain, incomprehensible strings of words pouring out of his mouth. Can't take it is all I hear him say. Need you, I hear. And then he loses the power of speech again and dissolves. I don't know if I should call an ambulance. I want him to be safe and I know if he leaves he will not be safe. But he won't let me call, and he won't let me take him to the ER. Finally I convince him to stay with me. His breathing slows. He nods. He falls asleep. I sit there with his heavy head in my lap, staring down at his face. I feel nothing. I know that I love him and want to help him, but we have grown so far apart. I don't know what to do.
One A.M. He sleeps heavily in my bed. I stand at the window, smoking, looking out. There is cloud cover—no stars, all black. I want to stay sane. We cannot both be mad. We can't end like this.
Two thirty-four A.M. I watch him sleep, his mouth open, peaceful at last. I don't know how, but right then I realize that we will make it. Our life will include mental illness, its absurdities and devastations, the laughter and destruction it causes, the level of functioning it allows. We will have to accommodate it. That is a great deal to ask. But it is the way it has to be. And I believe we are up for it.
Just not tonight.
Megan and I have coffee. I ask her what it's like to have a friend with bipolar. She looks at me, then at her hands.
"It's unlike any other friendship I have," she says. "In most ways, there's nothing different about it. You're just the way you are, and I accept that absolutely, and I don't think of you as crazy, and I don't feel like you're a burden, for God's sake, like you always worry about." She thinks a minute. Then she says, "But there's the one difference. With other friends, I'm not constantly aware that they could very easily die. With you, I am aware of that. I am always aware that you have come so close to committing suicide, someday it might happen."
"I know," she says. "But you might. You could. And so I have to try to understand how I feel about that. And this is how being friends with you is different. I would be devastated if you died. Completely devastated."
She thinks another moment, trying not to look away from me. She is trying not to cry.
"But I would understand," she finally says. "I don't mean that I'm giving you permission. I just mean that I really understand how deeply and painfully you struggle. I won't let you do it. But I would understand if you did."
But I won't.
I won't.
February and March are difficult. The depression deepens past the point where I can wrest myself out on my own. Dr. Lentz puts me in outpatient treatment for a few weeks, and I sit in my little groups, nearly comatose. All I know is that I'm going to stay out of the hospital if it kills me. Lentz changes my meds, changes them again, finally resorts to another round of ECT. Between that, the Herculean efforts of family and friends, and my own pigheaded refusal to give up, I manage to keep enough of a handle on reality to stay out of the psych ward. Finally, the snow begins to melt.
And Jeff starts to emerge from his own hell. As spring begins, somehow the two of us are able to build a little closeness, a tentative trust, enough that we can lean against each other, staggering around inelegantly, but somehow on our feet, and together.