“I just need to mail this off, I’m sorry we just have to do this one thing before we go to the park ok girls?” I was already guilty for working on something for so long that I hadn’t had much time for them. It was finally completed and I was in celebration mode, I wanted to send the first draft of my book to my best friend. It took so much for me to get here. The hypomania driving me into creativity and then dumping me into the deepest grittiest depths scraping all the skin off my body as I fell, wounded and alone. Relentlessly hopeless and in pain, I was ready to destroy the pages that made the fantasies of scribing my memories onto. I fought it all, I stood through it all, the guilt and shame of explaining to my daughter who was so infatuated with my ambition that it was over. I stood through it all and scaled my way out of that ravine. The writing came back, this time sans the chemical imbalances. The pages were filled and filled and filled. I came through to my first end. My first draft. It was cause for fucking celebration in my head. I lived my life as mommy, as wife, as daughter, as organizer for my daughter’s activism campaigns, what shred that was left of me was a sliver so lithe I wanted to hold on to it. So I did. Now I wanted to share this with my best friend who nursed me through it. 

On the drive there I notice my husband Daniel’s face not entirely pleased with this weekend plans interruptions. I press and I press and I press on all the buttons, that his calm composed self confesses he didn’t want to spend the day doing more of my thing. We’re almost at the mailing store and I was annoyed this was even an issue.  “We’ve spent all this time on it, every night, I’ve sat with you. Don’t say I don’t care,” he was annoyed and defensive. I respond with more profanity and frustration and berating and guilt tripping. He responds with an elevated tone. I went inward, my head buzzing and my eyes hot, the tremble in my feet and my fingers have found their cue. My mind goes blank of any anger or emotion, I didn’t care about mailing the book, I didn’t care that he was upset, I didn’t care that the children’s weekend would be interrupted. It was done. I didn’t care anymore, no anger, no guilt, no disappointment. Silence took over, as if my mouth would not move to the thoughts in my head for the thoughts made busy with my limbs pulling the lever to open the car door as the car was moving. My body pushed forward, caught by the seat belt, that my absent minded mind failed to release prior to the stunt. I was thrown back into my seat as Daniel slammed the brakes. He breaks down in tears. He knows I won. He knows there is no reasoning with me anymore, the threshold had been surpassed into oblivion. 

I would retreat into silence for the next six days. Tears would never find my cheeks though I willed it, for the lead on my chest was too heavy to bear. He would lie next to me in bed once he settled the girls into activities or into bed. He would read my draft to me to see if I would like revisions made. He would bring me meals of which many a time he brought back down once the reasonable time had passed for food to be sitting in the open uneaten. He would talk to me as I sat silent, he would watch my shows with me. He would rub my feet as that would be the only thing I could tolerate of his touch. He would let the children into our bed because he knew I needed physical affection and touch and in these moments I couldn’t get it from him. Not for lack of love for him, I needed him so very much to feel at home, I needed him to be where I could feel safe in his shield. He was my love, he was my home but sometimes like in this episode, his touch repelled me, like a million ants on my skin, like nails to the chalkboard. My children would let me hold them like we did when they were babies, the smell of their skin comfort to my soul. Reminder of my being, of my purpose. 

I lay in bed at night, over messy hair and our sweet girls, I see him waking up occasionally to check on me, put on my fuzzy socks in case I forgot to get them on before. At some point I tell him I might have dinner downstairs instead of in bed. After dinner he bathes the children and tucks them in. “Want to sit outside?”he suggests gently. I was already downstairs so I agree, we go out to a fire pit already going as he brings out two cups of hot apple cider. He sits next to me and I bury my face in his chest. We sit in silence. All is good, it has passed. We are good, a soft kiss on my forehead as his hand rubs my arm confirming this. Our romance is not conventional, it is in the silent moments in the back porch, the laying in bed with me even when I make all signals that my body repels his. It is an understanding of my unpredictable fall into depression from triggers to intense emotions. We have come to an understanding about the sickness that plagues my mind. Our love is deeper than lip service, deeper than service, deeper than any argument that could be had. In the following days the honest words explaining the trigger and a plan to nip it in the bud next time would be discussed. Concluded and dropped, in honesty. Our love is of angst, of passion, of romance, of patience and of devotion.

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