I just posted another picture on Facebook of another table I just built with Daniel. It’s beautiful, has the beautiful imperfections that will forever remind me of our special time together creating together. We are no experts nor novice. We are self-proclaimed MacGyvers. We enjoy the excitement of thinking up the structure and the methods. We have built three tables so far. I get the likes and the comments on Facebook that comfort me, the table looking gorgeous means I’m doing something right, I’m doing something wonderful, I’m doing something within the realms of normal.

I don’t really know what normal means, everything about the way we live our life seems out of the norm if TV and mom friends are to be the benchmark to gauge. Truth be told, the tables are a reminder of an escape from the slip off normalcy. 

I live in fear. Sounds dramatic in those four short words. The reality is a little less drama but intense nonetheless. I live in fear of the next episode. There are no true one hundred percent proven methods in avoiding those episodes. Only the signs of it creeping up like that annoying cousin Bob who might visit but never really says for sure until he’s ringing the doorbell and you’re sighing ,”Fuck.”

Recently I felt the signs, my heart was racing, I was restless, my mind would not cooperate where I needed it desperately to. I started panicking that it was coming, that cousin that visits and takes over the house was coming. The anxiety over the anxiety made my tear ducts stopped even though the tears needed to push through,it couldn’t. An episode was definitely coming.

 I could hear Daniel but I couldn’t respond. I’d gone inward again.

“Babe, are you ok?” He said

I stayed silent trying to process.

“Amy, do you need something?” He asked gently again, knowing clearly what was happening.

I came out of it in about two minutes and I told him I was freaking out because I thought I was about to spiral into a hypomanic episode. I was afraid, afraid I would have to stop all the good things I was already knee deep into, afraid I would not be able to come out of it in a timely manner to resume all the things I wanted to do, I was afraid I would miss out on time with the children. I wanted to be present, not just physically but entirely. He knows the drill and suggests something that has been tried and tested, so far at least, to help in these instances.

We started to build a table. We drew up plans and we shopped for the wood and we started building another fucking table. The third one this year. All reminders of my episodes. I would watch him measure so meticulously and cut the wood, his movements so graceful and measured and sure. It gives me calm to watch him work. My heart sinks also knowing he takes over the household solo when I’m like this. The children,food, cleaning, laundry, everything. 

In building the tables, I am tasked with finger wagging and problem solving. Then sanding and finishing is where I shine. In those moments, my mind buzzes are interrupted by movements and building. Hyper focus is one of the more favored flavors to choose if I got to choose in hypomanic episodes. So we have learned to channel it into creativity.

 Sometimes the tears find me while I’m in the zone sanding for the twelfth time. There is no escape from this torture of not knowing when the episodes will come or when they will go. I panic the minute I feel an inkling of their arrival. It’s like having the fucking annoying cousin Bob you didn’t want in your house. These episodes, they always pass, but in the mean time, it drives me nuts going through the anguish of it. My whole body crawling with a million spiders, my brain buzzing like the pressure from it might just implode into my boiling core, my chest pounding like a jackhammer, my heart shriveled and sobbing. Sobbing because it’s not fair, sobbing because it is the way it is just because it is. There isn’t a way out, no escape. The entrapment is paralyzing knowing I cannot do anything but finish building this table even though I ought to be with my children or I ought to be cooking dinner, or I ought to be Netflix and chilling with Daniel. I can’t help it, I need to build this table. I’ve been lucky these last three tables lasted about as long as the episode did. 

I had anxiety over what I would do if the table finished before the annoying Bob left. Intensifying what was already heavy on my brain.That was like that time I practiced and practiced with the chocolate truffles, the fudge episode, decorating with houseplants episode the house is full of them, more than I can care for. The time I needed to refinish a whole bedroom set with chalk paint. They ended early and I was in torment for days before it was over. We had to figure things out as we went and so far building had my torment to the minimal. The tears on the sawdust as I sanded reminded me an end was coming and I would feel normal again. 

I live my life in fear of hypomanic episodes because they are painful and they are torture not knowing when they will come and how long they will stay. I build through them. As I sit at one of the tables we built, where I write daily, I am reminded I survived those episodes and I will survive ones to come.