On a yucky gray, typical Pittsburgh afternoon, I drove
down Halket Street towards Forbes Avenue and the Oxford Building where I was
scheduled for an appointment. I had
cried most of the way, and I called my sister and a friend for moral
support. I needed it. The way became more depressing as I drove,
and it wasn’t in my imagination. The
sidewalk in front of the ancient apartments on the University-side of Halket
Street had been torn up and was being relaid.
Construction tape and netting intruded into the right lane of traffic,
narrowing a road which was already inadequate to accommodate the amount of
traffic that traveled to and fro on it.
Patients from Magee Womens Hospital, employees of UPMC, and students
from the University of Pittsburgh drifted in and out of traffic with little
regard to the fact that cars usually win in one-on-one matchups with
people. I longed to pull into a parking
lot and turn around. I might have if
they weren’t all under construction.
A year before, I
had begun to consciously record when my moods hit and recognize how I controlled
them. I was impressed with my abilities
to manage myself, and I thought I could continue to do it alone. This spring, I caught myself self-medicating
with alcohol. This summer away from
home, I caught myself, despite all of my preventive measures, formulating a
plan to poison myself on a sunny afternoon, having completely forgotten that my
family existed. Two weeks later, I
determined to put the experience on paper as a lesson to my children. Two weeks after my return home, I shared that
story with a friend. Fourteen days
later, I left a message asking for an appointment. One month after that, desperate because I was
headed for one of those lows, I finally found a place that would take me.
Turning right on Forbes, I pulled into the left lane
and passed perhaps the most run-down section of Forbes Avenue: an ancient Arby’s which seems perpetually
filthy and a Marathon gas station which never seems to have any cars at the
pumps. I waited for the pedestrians in
the crosswalk before easing my car left onto McKee and then immediately right
into the dingy garage underneath 3501 Forbes Avenue. I stopped the car in front of the valet
station, and the valet held out his hand for the keys. I didn’t want to hand them over. I briefly considered crawling back into the
car and reversing right out of there. I
even pictured it in my mind and decided I’d probably break an axle on the drop
from the curb to the street. Instead, I
put the keys in the valet’s hand and climbed the ramp into the lobby of the
building. Except for the fact that one
elevator was under construction, the lobby showed signs of being
hospitable. Anonymous waiting bystanders
sat patiently on cushioned benches along the garage wall, and the sun streamed
in through the windows fronting Forbes Avenue.
I joined a small crowd clustered in front of the two working
elevators. I hate being in elevators
even one second longer than I have to, but when I climbed into the elevator
that day and pressed the three, I almost wished it might get stuck on two.
My feet would have preferred to stay on the elevator,
and it took force of will to push one in front of the other and toward the
dingy gray door of the clinic. Unlike
the spacious lobby, the third floor seemed to telescope with each turn leading
to a narrower hallway of dead end. The
white walls had long ago ceased to be white and now took on the earthy tone of
handprints from years of unknown passersby.
Reminding myself with effort to breathe slowly, I opened the door and
went inside. The receptionist smiled at
me and handed me paperwork. I turned to
sit down in one of the padded metal chairs in the waiting room. Two women at separate ends of the room cried
silently. The man at one end held his
head between his knees. The woman across
from me spoke animatedly to the empty chair next to her. My whole face tightened and the space behind
my nose grew hot as if I might cry. Was
this really necessary? Did I really need
to go?
My chest seized up and my lips threatened not to work. The thought of confessing that I needed
something more than willpower to fight the coming darkness terrified and
angered me. Couldn’t I do anything I
wanted? Wasn’t I capable of conquering
all things with ambition (if you listened to some) and through Christ (if you
listened to others)? Ah, but there’s the
rub. Sometimes, conquering means doing
it all yourself. Sometimes it means
asking for help. I glanced at the people
sitting there. If they could do this,
surely I could too. But this train of
logic certainty didn’t keep me from considering, if only for a moment, running
out of the waiting room when they called my name.
A therapist in street clothes ushered me into a dark
narrow room where he sat in a swiveling desk chair that didn’t have enough
space to allow an entire rotation without hitting either the desk or the book
case. Sitting in a chair that face the
bookshelf (there wasn’t enough room to face the therapist), I forced myself to
repeat my story for a man who didn’t completely look at me, didn’t speak, and
whom I didn’t completely trust. To be
honest, I felt more like I was repeating my story to David Burns’ Feeling Good and The Bhagavad-Gita As it Is. I
grudgingly told about my six week cycles, their predictability, their strength,
and my enormous frustration that I, who plan and control every aspect of my
life to the degree that some friends call me a contingency-contingency planner,
had to sit before a stranger and recount the aspects of my mood that I couldn’t
control. I confessed that I had moments
of hopelessness when I forgot everyone
in my life and contemplated throwing it all away. I explained that I knew I was loved, but it wasn’t
enough. Even as I admitted these faults,
most of me wanted to turn around and succumb to the low moments rather than
bring them out into the open. I never wanted to come here.
But I went anyway.
I went because the highs are so high that my family
flees from me, because with their residual anxious edge they were threatening
to take my drinking from social and relaxing in function to escape. I went because the lows are so low that I was
afraid that someday I wouldn’t be able to find my way up again.
But more importantly, I went because I am more than the highs and the lows. Yes, I am the highs and the lows, too, but I
refuse to let them eclipse the rest of me:
the mother, the wife, the friend, the artist, the writer, the thinker,
the very slow runner, the terrible parker, the loud but slightly off-key
singer, the lover of laughter, and the addict of a good story. I went because I am more than bipolar and because
I love that part that is more.
The medication began to help immediately, and that
made me angry because it showed that I really couldn’t just control everything with sheer willpower. And it made me tired because I could suddenly
deal with issues I hadn’t dealt with before.
They were new. I wasn’t healed,
cured, or without any symptom, but I could manage. I was better in the form that I was not as
bad. Instead of ignoring my children, I
could listen. And what I heard broke my heart.
“Mommy, don’t you have time to play today?”
“Mommy, don’t you think you worry about this a little
two much?”
“Mommy, can I just have a hug?”
And now I could do those things. They exhaust me, but I do them. And I was astonished by the change. My family wants
to be close to me! They ask for and
enjoy my attention. My friends enjoy
being with me. They have as much fun as
I have. Maybe people have always been
this way, but when my world was so filled with worry, when emotions had to be
guarded against because they burn and threaten to sink me completely, I had
never felt, never let myself feel, love and companionship before. There was always a barrier, always safety-glass.
But a few weeks after I began the medication,
something began to change. Instead of knowing I was loved, I began to feel
something—a strange tightening in my chest, a lift of the shoulders, a pricking
in the corners of my eyes, a closing throat, a burning sensation high in my
nose. At first these sensations didn’t
make sense. Should I cry because the
grass is green, too green, or the sky is blue, too, too blue? Gradually the feelings began to
separate. Tears didn’t come all the time
any more. But the lift of the shoulders
happened more often, and when my niece blocked the door on my visit and cried, “No,
Auntie Beth, stay!” I felt the warmth spread in my chest and a smile that
started from the catch in my throat and not the prefrontal cortex of my brain
spread across my lips.
I didn’t know I was loved; I felt I was loved. And I am committed to being that loved one, returning that affection. I am more than bipolar disorder; I am me.
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