Does Mental Illness Have to Destroy Your Relationship?

This is part five of what happens after you’re out of the psych ward (ok really, it's me) and start dating. It’s also what happens when your boyfriend doesn’t know you have bipolar disorder and your bipolar disorder isn’t exactly ‘stabilized’. Read parts one, two, three and four to get up to speed and get the juicy background details.

I’m in Mu’s apartment babbling about extraterrestrials hovering overhead ready to beam us up; dancing, arms wild, head back in a ‘pre-beam up’ ballet. I am passionately paranoid, monstrously manic and uncomfortably compassionate. He sees this and his protective boyfriend instincts kick in. He somehow gets me into his car, gets me to the hospital. Cement parkade. Punches the blue wheel-chaired stick man on the metal button. Through automatic doors. To emergency.

But I have been given a Mission. I am here (the human link) to help the aliens help save humanity. So when I see the ER nurse with the chipped tooth and the gummy smile walking towards me – I know I must escape. I dart and run but am tackled with lightening speed and invisible clutches. Left wrist, right wrist and I am tied to a gurney by leather cuffs and flopping like a fish gasping for air fighting for my freedom.

The nurse: “You’re the husband?”

“Yes. Yes.” He lies.

Then, “Did she take Ecstasy? Meth? Smoked marijuana? Anything? Has she stopped any meds?”

He shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders.

“She’ll be okay.” She watches as I slip into sedated submission after a needle has been punched and emptied ungraciously into my ass. “We’ll keep her at least overnight. Call us in the morning. You can visit then.”

He squeezes my hand. Kisses me, kisses me again and goes.

Next morning: a quick visit – I’m too groggy to speak. I tell myself, with little conviction he’ll come around in a day or two. But he does. He visits often and calls most nights and 8 weeks later: discharge. I am calmer, clearer, but still very shaky.

The shock of Mu’s silver hair pops into my hospital room doorway. “Hey. Hi. Hi sweetie.” Hug. A big bear hug. I drink it in, giving over my weight to his embrace. He takes my hand, takes my bag and drives me home. He stays ‘til dark, but doesn’t stay the night.

Weeks crawl by: we eat out, watch movies, have sex but something is different, something is off, like my Joni Mitchell CD that skips but only every once and a while. He takes two days to return my calls instead of one, has dinner with mutual friends without me, makes solo plans to see our favourite band.

A cloudy spring day and we’re sitting on patio chairs at my place on that tiny patch of backyard. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” I pick at my thumb nail and avoid his gaze. “I should have told you it was more than depression I was dealing with. I thought I was okay.”

“Victoria, you are. I mean,” he rummages for words, for the right words, tender words in this self-conscious conversation. He shields his eyes from the glare of the bright backlit sky. “I mean it’s okay. And don’t apologize.” His hands rub mine.

“Victoria…I…,” His face is soaking into a bright difficult red. I’m not up for this. I just, I wish I was, really. I do. It’s it’s not you it’s just…”

“I know…I know.” A thick drum of silence. He tries to glue his gaze to mine. But I refuse. I just nod my head and he holds me.

When he walks away an empty space opens behind him. It swallows the air, him: sucking all the oxygen. It’s taking everything - my lifeline – pulled taught – snapped; leaving me balancing on my wobbly lawn chair.

This wasn’t his fault. Or mine. It was…bad timing. Part 6 here.

© Victoria Maxwell 2013 (Excerpted from her show ‘Head Over Heels’)

For information on booking Victoria to perform this or her other shows, please visit www.victoriamaxwell.com or email her at victoria@victoriamaxwell.com