He told her, that she reminded him of a cigarette. She’d burn up slowly and then go out like that. She made it harder for him to breathe. She made his head hurt, and sometimes she stunk. During one of the low times, where she couldn’t even drag herself out of bed to shower for a whole week… She’d light up, and then just as fast she’d extinguish until someone put a match to her again.
He hadn’t really been there for the highest highs or the lowest lows. He’d seen glimmers of them, but never the full extent. They didn’t know what to call it when she was younger. She was child they said, full of so much rage. She’d learned that anger and rage were two completely different things. Rage didn’t go away. Rage was a consent simmering of emotion, just waiting for the spark to explode. They said as a child she was uncontrollable. She remembered this, to an extent, but not really. They said as she grew older she internalized her feelings. He said she, “Never let anything out.” Hell, years of therapy had taught her not to. Go figure.
He had seen just a fraction of her emotional rollercoaster. He really had no idea. Even after all the time they’d known each other, more often then not it felt like they didn’t really know each other at all. She counted the times, thinking back after they had first diagnosed her. She’d failed all the tests at first, because when they asked her about all the usual she ignored it thinking of it as “Part of the summer schedule”. They asked her if she ever felt too happy, but to her it was impossible to feel “too happy”. Bi-polar. It made her think of polar bears and penguins. One lived on the South Pole and one lived on the North, but they couldn’t live together. There was no middle ground. Of course not. There never was.
She thought about back when she was younger…this rage they spoke of. She’d always been a moody child, she knew that, but she’d figured everyone was. Daddy was no different. Oh no, momma not only feel in love with a gear shifter, but she gave birth to one too.
She remember 8th grade manic then depressive. She knew the events that triggered it. 9th manic…depressive…manic. 10th Manic…depressive. (He once referred to it as the year everyone was depressed. Which gave her all the more reason to believe that everyone was like her) 11th Manic…depressive…Manic. He never even knew how close she was to the edge before he wanted to be with her. Never had any idea, because around him, she was a wonderful actress. Hell, he was the personification of her illness. He could make her sadder, angrier, and happier then she’d ever been, usually within a period of weeks. She knew that’d she’d been manic around this time a few years ago. Blamed it on other meds. Her life revolved around the fucking pills. Those who had seen her that night, for once, had a true glimmer.
This was she, the rollercoaster from hell. She laughed at everything, even when it wasn’t funny, because to her, it was. She didn’t sleep more then a few hours that night. Didn’t care. In fact she hadn’t slept well since it all started. He knew that eventually. She blamed it on change, and they believed it. Only one day and she let him see into the depths of her despair. And the only reason he knew, the only reason anyone knew, was because she didn’t say more then three words the whole day. Didn’t want to waste the energy it took to talk. And afterwards, well afterwards it should have been another bout of depression. But for some reason it wasn’t. She was manic…and pissed. She didn’t cry much. Only a few times. Figured she would have cried more, but when she’d told him she was done crying about it she had meant it. No more.
She internalized it. Running herself into the ground, literally. She ran four miles every morning. Didn’t eat much…didn’t feel the need. She didn’t sleep nearly enough, and she worked three jobs. Welcome to the Manic Motel. Run, run, run. If she ran fast enough, maybe she could outrun herself. No go.
Life with her was like that shoots and ladders game. Sometimes it was fun to see her climb up so high. Nothing could touch her. Nothing could hurt her. But eventually she’d take a wrong turn and slide back down again. She knew she dragged him through hell and back. She realized that when she was manic and more irritable then ever she lashed out at those she cared about the most. She also did it when she was low.
She wondered if maybe it had something to do with trusting them enough to love her no matter what or more to do with the fact that she didn’t want them to get any closer. Didn’t want them to see how crazy she really was. There were nights where all she did was lay in bed and think, should be exhausted but just can’t sleep. Mind going haywire with all the thoughts fighting for attention in her head. She’d get up and write, bike 6 miles and not even break a sweat. Go to see a midnight movie, not go to sleep until 4 in the morning sleep for two hours and get up to go again. She talked faster then too, usually around them. She figured it came from being so close…didn’t want to think about when it happened when they weren’t around. So she stayed around them as much as she could. He commented once on the fact that they were talking so fast he couldn’t understand them. They could understand each other. That was all that mattered.
He finally saw her burn out. Watched as she lost weight from unintentionally starving herself, watched her drown herself in her own tears, and eventually sit on the front step, shaking, not from the cold, but from fear. He asked her what she was afraid of and she desperately wanted to tell him. But, “Me” was not an appropriate answer. She had a lot of shit to shovel through. She knew manic and depressive symptoms could coincide, Shaving your head for example, when the next day you slammed your hands to your ears praying to go you won’t hear anything anymore, because in reality nothing is there and you know it.
Her mother came home to find her room tore apart. She was hurriedly throwing clothes into piles. Cleaning out her closet. Why this was so important she did not know, all she knew was that it was. Her mother stopped her and sat her down, startled to see that she was crying. She asked the obvious jeopardy question, “What’s wrong?” She gave the obvious answer, “What is, no one wants a manic depressive, passive aggressive, paranoid, access to borderline personality disorder teenage girl? For $500.” Her mother smiled and lit the match, “Who wouldn’t?”