Futures

This isn’t a post about writing. This is about me. It’s about my mom. It’s about whatever person comes after. It’s about the uncertainty of knowing what’s going on in your head and the effect of it you can only see after.

Around four years ago, I had a conversation with my future mother-in-law. I told her I was scared. That I had seen a psychiatrist for the first time and they told me that, if I manifest symptoms of bipolar disorder in the next few years, any child I might have could inherit it, too. I’d felt the sweet things we’d ordered stick like cat litter in my throat. I sat, biting down coffee, to ease the coldness in my chest.

“I don’t want a child to endure what I did.”

She looked at me the way she often did: with a soft heart, an intention to take in everything I was saying, and a will of steel.

She told me everything would be alright. No matter what, she’d be there to help. I breathed and let out a shaky smile.

“Two years. He said if I get through the next few years without symptoms, I’m free.”

I broke myself in May.

I took whatever I had in my life and watched from the rooftop, with minimal interest, as it shattered on a pavement five floors down.

I’ve been sitting on the fire escape ever since, watching rain and sidewalk sweepers and crows peck at those remains.

You wouldn’t be able to tell by how much I was broken by how much I worked. I ran the technology at a state library conference mid-breakdown. All of it. All 12-15 presenters every hour on the hour, with full check-ups on each piece of equipment and training sessions for anyone who needed it. Three days. 17 hours a day. Then, next week, I started the summer reading program at the library. I personally handed books to 800 children at the local elementary schools. I ran events for hundreds of kids a week. I did. so. much.

It did nothing for me. I spent my evenings looking at my hand curl in and out around my cellphone screen, trailing the cracks down its surface, catching my breath every time I saw a notification for my email, my work, my social media accounts. I tried not to think about where I really was: way up high with no parachute. Rusted metal digging in behind my knees. The acid bite of smog on my tongue. And that thing sitting below me, its cracked face waiting for me to realize what it was.

It says here you’ve been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Can you explain to me why that might be?

The cracked face with roving eyes. Panic wide.

Ah. I know you came in here looking to decrease your medication, but from what you’ve told me, I think we will have to increase it for a trial period of three months. 

Me. My mother. My future.

I really think it will help you.

Quiet behind my closed eyes.

By the time August came around, I had two new tattoos, new glasses, pink hair, and stronger meds. Meds I understood, now, weren’t just meant for depression. They were for bipolar disorder. They’d always been.

I’d always been.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this new perspective. Looking up, from way down low. I’m used to the drowning sensation of depression, a spark of elation that lifts me up above the clouds. The obsession that will keep me writing for hours without end. It’s been a long time looking from this direction. I just hadn’t known.

I won’t look back. What’s done is done. There’s only the future. There’s only one.