release_the_bats 12 Mar 2010 @ 11:32 pm
I have loved someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder. I am an experienced researcher in psychoneuropsychology and other areas of psychology, which helped immensely. When we met he was badly misdiagnosed, which became very clear to me early on (those intense and sudden “arguments” were illogical and betrayed signs of hyopmania.) His diagnosis was “generalized anxiety disorder”. He was unmedicated, had lived a horrific life – alcoholic abusive father, mentally ill but never diagnosed mother who was in & out of the biggest mental institution in the city regularly. His memories of her were sketchy – cooked & kept beer for his father well stocked. His memories of his father were far more vivid. His only other relationship scarred him so badly he never dated again. I have lived with Major Depressive Disorder my entire life. At times a good day was getting out of bed. A great day was getting out of bed and brushing my teeth. At other times I won scholarships & topped the Dean’s List (always with tremendous struggle because depression never left-it merely..well, that’s another story). When I met him I found him easy company: His quick wit, offbeat humor & keen intelligence made me laugh & was good medicine. But I warned him that people with GAD didn’t wake up in psychiatric hospitals having stumbled in after losing time. There was mutual attraction but the point was never pressed & we were both shy about it. One day after sharing a coffee, bundled in his big parka, he gave me a big, long hug, our usual parting gesture. Then another. Finally he turned to leave, took about 8 steps, then rushed back, gave me a chaste peck on the lips and ran away quickly as if terribly embarrassed. I was smitten. Our courtship was difficult to say the least. And not just the “turning on a dime” temperament. The excitement of falling in love was fuelling his mania. I had to learn to be vigilant for small indications he was beginning to spin out. He had to learn to listen to me – which was very hard for him – and take such observations seriously. I had to set boundaries, which I was always notoriously bad at. And we fought! We eventually started to live together. I had already been helping him set up psychiatric appointments with specialistsand accompanied him every time, most of the time being allowed to sit in. He rarely suffered from depression – more “melancholy” or “pensively sad” occasionally than seriously depressed. He was mostly manic – VERY HIGH manic. As bad as anyone I’d every seen, even in teaching hospitals. Most phenothiazines were like candy to him. He slept poorly but often drifted off with his head on my chest listening to the regular beating of my heart while I played with his unruly hair, both of which soothed him. One day I noticed my credit card was gone. He didn’t come home. I cancelled the card although very little had been charged to it – a case of beer for some friends. I phoned every hospital, every shelter, every acquaintance..I was frantic. Two days later I got a call from the only purely psychiatric hospital in the city: Did I want them to mail my credit card to me? I asked if he was there, if he’d been there. That was confidential. I raced down there in a taxi, walked into the ICU and asked to see him by name. They pointed to a room at the end of the hall. When he saw me he wouldn’t look at me. “Why didn’t you just let them mail your card back?”, he spat out., “Why did you come here?” It wasn’t anger at me – it was at himself. Manic people have very poor impulse control. The card was on my purse – it was an unthinking gesture. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I ruined everything. I know…over nothing! Just leave me alone, please…don’t make it worse!” He looked so small (he was not a large man) and vulnerable – fragile even – in his hospital gown. I took his head in my hands and forced him to look at me. “Why?”, I asked. “I don’t know!!” And I knew he was telling the truth. I held him close and kissed him gently. He looked confused. He couldn’t understand how I could take him back – how I could still love him? He started to weep openly. I hopped onto the bed, put his head in my lap and stroked his hair…I don’t think anybody had ever forgiven him for anything.
The moment of truth for me came when he had his first psychotic break. I woke up one morning and he was gone.He showed up two days later covered in mud and confused. I’d been sick with worry. I called an ambulance but he became openly hostile (though he was NEVER EVER physically violent with me or anyone else, he could cut you with words…that ugly argumentative belligerence so typical of mania or rising mania.) The police were dispatched and he was handcuffed and made to ride in a cruiser. Ugh! I will tell you there is almost nothing worse in the world than seeing the person you love most in life-someone who is part of your soul (because this happened several times through the years) completely delusional with 2 200-lb security guards leaning on him while someone else fastens him to a hospital bed with big leather buckles in the 4-point position. Straining until the veins on his head were popping, he was under the impression it was a secret black-op mission and I was the spy who turned him in for reasons I never understood. I was terrified, horrified – no training or research had ever prepared me for this. I bent over to kiss his forehead and he spat in my face spewing a string of vulgarity at me that I’d never heard him use. (He later claimed it was impossible he had used that language with me; he refused to believe he was capable of it. I said I understood he was in a world of fear that didn’t correspond to reality.) I wept softly outside his room. He didn’t want me there. The nurses said I wasn’t welcome if he didn’t want me there. I left my University windbreaker with his name written in it and a note saying I loved him. It was the 5th month we had been living together. That was when I made my decision to not cut bait. Many wonderful (and often horrible) times ensued. Years..Overdoses on anything he could get his hands on to ease his anxiety (I eventually bought a small safe to keep my own drugs in to prevent this). Once he was almost unconscious in ICU for 12 hours. 2 hours later, after rousing to full consciousness he’d been moved to a room. One hour later he flew into a psychotic manic state yelling into the phone he’d been taken prisoner, ripped the IV out of his arm so violently that long blood streaks lined the hall he ran down in hastily donned jeans and hospital gown and tore off into a stairwell. The nurses assured me security had been alerted and would catch him. I shook my head with tears in my eyes and said, “No they won’t”. “Sure they will – they’re waiting for him and it’s 2 am.” At 2:30 I was standing in a hospital parking lot yelling his name into the darkness. Three days later he turned up at a psychiatric hospital, confused and unsure what had happened. We were never married in a church, but we did exchange vows and rings, with a friend as witness. I told him I promised that no matter how ugly things got I would not run away; I would never abandon him. I asked if he could honestly say the same thing. He did. I know friends who exchanged traditional vows (which i believe our sentiments sum up) in a church ceremony who were divorced after having childlren when my man and I were still going strong. Through a severe depression and some ugly family and chronic physical problems, he was always there for me. He was attentive, sensitive, and free of any machismo or need to do anything but BE with me. I loved him like my own life. I’d been betrayed by men before. With him *I* noticed beautiful women. He didn’t even take a second look. I once asked if he ever thought of suicide (a place I’ve visited many times). His answer was, “No – I”d never kill myself. Never. But I do believe that when death comes, it will be the only cure for what’s wrong with me.”
An understandable opinion: The constant merry-go-round of medications, the combinations, the side-effects, the drugs for the side-effects. His mania was extreme and intractable, and I don’t need to remind anyone who has loved someone with mania how long it can take to get an even mildly adequate combination.) He had to take leave from work. It was a difficult time. But there was something wonderfully childlike in his wonder at just being loved. He doted on me when I was sick – and often when I was well. He was unashamed to go buy me tampons or ask if my period was troubling me…it didn’t matter to him. It was just part of what love meant. He always had my latte ready and every morning without fail greeted me: “Good morning Sunshine! NOW the sun is officially up!”
There was something zenlike about him just being in the moment all the time. I learned so much from him. I learned to have a real relationship – an honest, vulnerable, no holds barred relationship.
Two days before we were finally financially able to manage our own small one-bedroom we were packed and excited. He had been dong much better for a year – back to work, far more stable, in a CBT group, trying meditation with me. He still had terrible panic attacks. He still had to be very careful. He still slept poorly. You can only take so much medication. But it was better. No more disappearances, no more frantic “where could he be” nights for me. That night we barely slept and woke up early. He was joyous, danced with me, delerious with finally “being able to properly provide” a decent place for us. But no sign of mania whatsoever. Just happy. We had breakfast and took a nap so we’d be fresher to meet the realtor that afternoon. I fell asleep with his arm around me and his breath on my neck.
An hour an a quarter later I woke up and found him dead, in our bed.
He was still warm.
I dragged him off and furiously started compressions with a phone under one ear calling an ambulance.
Hours later, those terrible words.
“I’m sorry ma’am…there’s nothing else we can do.”
He was 38 years old.
The official cause of death was sudden unexplained cardiac arrest.
“Fibrillation – it happens to us all sometimes. Usually the heart gets rhythm back again. Very rarely it doesn’t.”
A little over a year has passed since then – that first year during which I almost never left bed and wanted to die. I took a lot of sedatives to dull the pain enough to live through. I miss him. I MISS HIM WITH MY WHOLE BEING.
I don’t believe in a soul that survives death. I wish I did. Most days I feel like I”ve been in shock for the past year. That I’m just realizing he’s not coming back this time. Like part of my very self has been ripped out. I’m not sure who I am anymore. I see his beautiful face lying cold in that horrible coffin. I cry every day. Perhaps one day memories will be a consolation, but right now they are like acid – like stingers spearing my heart mercilessly.
I don’t regret one single moment. One night of worry. One huge fight. One horrific episode. Nothing. He taught me to look at the world with the wonder of a child – not childishly, but with a childlike heart. He taught me so much. I felt so loved. I had something, if only for a brief time, that some people never know their whole lives.
In memory of my beloved husband, and dedicated to anyone who knows the intense joy as well as the frustration and pain of loving (and being loved by) someone with bipolar disorder.
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