Lipgloss and Lamictal: A Bipolar Blog

“Ugh,” Nate said, slumping back in his chair. “There is nothing worse than melodrama tinged by improbability. You can’t believe how badly this sucks.”
Nate was writing. He was always trying to write. I stirred my paintbrush in the murky water and watched a yellow and brown flower bloom. He pointed at my picture.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
“A portrait,” I said. “We had to pick one person in class to paint. I can’t get the shape of his head right. His looks like a pear sort of, but rounder. It’s strangely attractive.”
Nate caught my eye and searched my face, like he was wearing one of those head lamps and crawling through a tunnel.   I focused on squirting paint onto the palette.

“I love you,” Nate said, gently. I nodded.
I painted a large red x through the painting, frustrated. 

 It was a Saturday night in April when I first met Nate. The library had become home throughout most of the spring semester. It beat lying in bed navigating through yet another anxiety attack.  The library proctor was always the same woman — fair skin, a more pronounced mustache than you might expect on a woman, and a box of Junior Mints in her hand. She’d count and recount the mints all night, stopping only to scratch at her massive wig, which was usually mounted backwards. Oddly enough, she was the reason I met Nate. It’s not often a complete stranger throws himself into the open chair across from you, lays his head on his ink-stained backpack, and kicks you under the table.
“Can I help you?” I said, staring at him, his garish clothes, and the equations written all over his hands. “Do you mind?”
The intrusion was the last thing I wanted; I had mentally sketched a box around myself before I left the house, willing my mind to make it real. I had been practicing this visualization with my therapist for weeks; she wanted me to leave the house more often, and offered the box concept to help me feel safe. Its efficacy was still open for debate. Obviously, this guy hadn’t noticed it. He sent his backpack sailing down the table, sat up and looked at me.
“It’s Sasquatch,” he said, raising his eyebrows up and down, grinning, and tipping his head towards the proctor. She was unaware, scratching her wig and chewing on a mint. I’d reached a new low. I was being hit on by a stranger wearing a purple satin vest and plagued by a facial twitch.
I started to pack my art history book into my bag. The book wouldn’t fit and his eyebrows were flying up and down like drunken birds, so I hastily grabbed the book and stood to leave. An open box of 48 tampons fell out of my bag.
“Aha!” he said. “I knew there was a reason I couldn’t make you laugh.”   

I had become so reckless in my life, so confused and self-destructive that I went to bed with him that night. Or tried to. The entire arrangement felt awkward. He ended up naked and pale on the floor twice, his limbs splayed like a starfish. His body glowed blue and red from the Burger King sign in the parking lot. My apartment looked right over the drive through. I was so used to hearing “Would you like to Biggie size that?” that I didn’t mind the constant flow of customers. In fact, the rhythm of the transactions soothed me: car pulls in, idles at the menu, voice comes on, order is given, car pulls forth, cash register opens and closes, bags are given, thank you is said (usually), and car drives on. If it’s kids, the wheels screech onto Rindge Drive and disappear with a few screams of intended rebellion.  Now, they annoy me.

Otherwise, I’d just usually hear the distant siren of a police car or the echo of a subway train. Noise didn’t bother me; it kept me feeling a part of things — not just an awkward, fringe-member of society but a legitimate, card-carrying member of the human race. But, Nate was hardly lulled by noise. Each time the speaker crackled, he’d startle and roll off the bed. “Don’t you get hungry smelling grease and salt all night?” he asked. “Man, my munchies would be driving me wild.”
On top of everything he’s a druggie, I thought. Great. 
“High metabolism,” he said, standing up, patting his completely hairless chest. “Get a load of this physique!” He flexed by the window, grinning, glowing under a salty halo.  

 The second time we tried was more successful. And the third, and every time after that. That summer we took an impromptu road trip to get away from Boston and stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon, scanning its vast theater. I felt in awe of the beauty in a way I didn’t expect.  Nate’s long arms slipped around my waist, and his hands moved up for a quick grope. No way was he about to feel me up next to the bus load of blue haired ladies assembling under the Visitor’s sign.  
“It’s a never-ending orifice,” he whispered into my ear. “It’s turning me on a little.”
“Stop it,” I said, laughing, swatting his hands away. 

The smell of the drive through was too much for him to handle; so, at the end of the semester I moved into his place. His roommate packed to go home on the same day I moved in, and he needed someone to pick up half the rent. I figured I’d give it a whirl — the worst that could happen to me was institutionalization, which could happen with or without Nate. His plan was to spend the entire summer developing as some sort of artist. I saw the next three months as the last step on the line before I gave into medication. My sister was on Lithium and Klonopin. My mother on Paxil and Xanax. Dad took Buspar, and the rest of the extended family all ran similar residential pharmacies. I had spent years seeking shelter from the family psychiatric storm. My anxiety, however, was becoming relentless; everywhere I went I was feeling exposed and jumpy. I was always watching over my shoulder and worrying about bumping into strangers, though I never did. I was convinced that at any time I’d become the new mugging statistic - or worse.  At night, I explored bright red, bloody landscapes with murderers and woke covered in sweat. I always felt like I was running from something or someone, but to others, my pursuer was invisible.  I confided some of it to Nate, but not the full scope of my particular brand of crazy. Sometimes he’d just laugh, and accuse me of reading too much Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton. It was getting harder though, to always say I was OK when he asked. Something was going to have to give; he either had to know the truth or I had to walk away. I couldn’t be an actress on top of crazy, though most of Hollywood does it quite well.

In June, Nate told me he was going to write a book.
“What about?” I asked, doubtful.
“Us,” he said. ”It’s the perfect college love story, right?”
I said nothing.

Three days later, I woke at 5:00 AM. His back was to me. The room was just blooming with blue light. I couldn’t help but notice Nate’s ears, the way they were pointed, Spocklike. I never kissed him early because his breath in the morning was a mixture of coffee and tuna with a tinge of cat. Everything was tinged with cat; he had three, all named after various bathroom functions — Wee Wee, Poop and BB (for Big Bum). The apartment was a mess; his roomate left behind a tub filled with grime and a burned-out bong.  I got up to paint and unscrewed five tubes of oils. My easel was in the kitchen, underneath the Elvis clock with swinging legs. I tried to paint, but ended up weeping, wiping my end of dripping nose with the tip of my paintbrush. I noticed the eggplant vest slung over the chair and wonder how I ended up with a guy who wears a pirate vest and lives in an apartment smelling of cat pee.  Heck, it’s a miracle that I was even with a guy at all in the state I was in. I stood by the window, opened it, wondering how to throw SOS signals. Did I need help? It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I thought. I’d always been the strong one in the long line of family damage. But the symptoms were picking up speed like when you pedal a bike to the crescent of a hill, and then you experience the bliss of the freefall down the other side. Except there was no bliss here. Only fear of speeding up again.
Suddenly, Nate was beside me, his bedhead taking the shape of a tidal wave. His arms were warm and pulled me in. “Did you know the tip of your nose is purple?” he chided, kissing the top of my head.  He wiped a lone tear off my face with his thumb. Everything felt backwards. Hadn’t I been making progress, letting some of my walls down? I had even stopped utilizing the therapy-box technique with Nate. Wasn’t trust and vulnerability supposed to feel like progress? I felt cross-eyed and defeated.
“Are you having a thing with the pear head guy?” he asked.
“Ha, ha… funny,” I said. “I’m really struggling Nate. I can barely sit in class anymore. I’m terrified I’m losing it.”“
Shhh,” he said, after a brief pause. “It’s OK. We’ll get your meds right, whatever we have to do we will do. I’m not going anywhere…”

The sun struck the satin on Nate’s vest and threw a purple patch onto the wall. I hated that damn vest, but Nate, I was learning I could get used to. He gently kissed my hair, then my ear. ” So, you’re a nut job like the rest of your family, I’m OK with that. I’m not exactly normal, you know?”
I smiled at him, half listening, but I was thinking about what I wanted to paint next. In my mind, a white canvas opened up, unfurling like a giant flag. In the painting there would be a sky swelling with rain, a couple in love, red and yellow tiki lights, and perhaps a drive through somewhere. Things suddenly seemed more vivid. I was starving.
“I’m hungry,” I smiled, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. “How ’bout an early morning run to BK?”
Nate danced me around the kitchen table and bent me into a sweeping gesture he’d caught on Dancing With the Stars or some horrible reality dance show.

“Sure,” he grinned, gently leading me back to bed. ”So…would you like to Biggie size that?”

The ninth floor is famous.
Of course, the doors are locked
And the patients wander in hospital-issue pj’s.
Each pair of eyes is
Glazed over with some
Recipe of illness –
Lithium and
Some pure misery thrown in for good measure:
(A cupful with a dash of madness.)Depressed people can be so damn bold
And raucously funny.
I mean, what else did we have to lose?
We sat in a room together oblivious and playful,
With color books and oil paints scattered
Around, simultaneously laughing and crying.
And that day I did my best picture yet,
A rabbit in a hat,
Pure magic!
Magic that I could have used that Thursday,
When I yanked up my skirt and crawled under my desk
In nylons and DKNY heels
To call my dad and put on lip gloss,
Forgetting my boss was right down the
hall,
and I hadn’t locked my office door.
But, I had pink orange lips, glowing like a sunset,
My hands were shaking
Searching in my bag for a Xanax
Listening to my dad say,
“It’s all right. We’ll get you some help -
just hang in there.”
On all fours I began to crawl out from
My hiding place and I looked up slowly,
One notch of a totem at time, right
Into the face of my boss -
Smug in brown polyester trousers, a Snoopy tie,
A bewildered smile.

I ran out, threw my briefcase into my black Chevy,
Chewed down some highway miles and McDonald’s fries,
And checked myself in to the 9th floor.
Devastating, right?
“But, Dad,” I said later that day,
“There are some really cool people here.”

My favorite was a rocket scientist driven mad
With brilliance and Integers,
Together we colored pictures
of Barney, ate Saltines  and choked down laughter –
Both basking in the combination of our madness:
Both enjoying a few long afternoons off of work.

The telephone cord barely stretches all the way from the phone on top of the faux wood desk to where I am crouching underneath. I peer up and out as discretely as possible and wriggle the cord gently, trying to avoid toppling the small sculpture of empty Diet Coke cans onto my open appointment book. That’d be a cacophony I just didn’t need.

“Dad, hold on,” I whisper into the phone, feeling my anxiety climb each passing second. Right before I had climbed under the desk I’d glanced quickly at the clock, which read half past two. The first influx of students was about to arrive at the after school program I co-directed. I dreaded their arrival so much that I could already smell their advance in the air, an unsettling combination of chalk dust, aerosol hair-spray and chewing gum. The thought of them — teenagers, in singles, pairs and groups — was turning my stomach into a wash machine. There was nothing to do but hide. Changing the hands on the clock would halt nothing. I called my father; I was out of ideas.

“Dad?” I ask, repositioning myself for maximum invisibility. “You still there?” He had put me on hold. I could hear the elevator music from his company’s phone system.
I scan the framed Harvard University and Mount Holyoke College degrees where I had hung them on the wall 2 months ago, when I took the job. I was hoping to draw some confidence from somewhere. You can do this job, I remind myself. You’re more than qualified. But, I had excused my acceptance letter to Harvard away just like I’ve done everything else positive in my life: it happened in spite of me, it was an accident, a charitable offering, or — the admissions staff was drunk that day. I picture the usually-solemn committee around a conference table, all of them are three sheets to the wind, spinning their crimson-crested blazers like lassos, taking vodka shots from plastic tumblers emblazoned with the school motto “Veritas.” Or, perhaps it was simply a slow year for them; they needed to fill some seats. (This never fails to make my friends laugh. “Hinsley?” they say, “there’s never a slow year at Harvard…”)  But the negative stuff, the foibles, mistakes, humiliations and failures? I OWN those. I have practically built an interactive, multi-exhibit experiential museum now open to bus groups and field trips.
Yes - you too can cough so hard when you’re eight years old that you repeatedly pee your Brownie uniform, leaving wet ass-cheek imprints on your chair - causing all fellow students to laugh for weeks! Ever wanted a group of chortling, rich teenage boys to dramatically back up to ensure they have “enough space” to catch your big ass on a ropes course — because you’re bloated from 3 months of steroids to keep your lungs open? Awesome! Step right up! And coupons on Tuesday!

“Yeah, yeah, yeah - what’s going on Hacco?” my Dad says, as he clicks back from a business call. I smile at the name he’s called me for years, a reference to the fact that I came out of my mother’s womb coughing and hacking like I’d spent nine months smoking two packs a day or a hanging at the local hookah bar. My mother had nothing to do with my incessant coughing; she kept her womb as sparkling clean and disinfected as she kept house. I was premature, unexpectedly breech, and born with a “mucus plug,” an abundance of phlegm and an overall purple-blue pallor – in short, I didn’t go home with my parents for weeks.

“Dad, I can’t stay here,” I whisper into the phone, sticking my head around the corner of my desk, scanning the hall for my boss. “I need to find an excuse to leave.”
He says nothing. I’m sure he’s running through an already-exhausted set of options, yanking his tie away from his collar, his blood pressure rising and nose subsequently turning red. He’s used to this drill. Every new job’s just another cog in a large, faulty wheel. Three good weeks or so and then blam! I’m hyperventilating on the morning commute into an old McDonald’s bag I’d yanked from under the seat.

The Center’s students are beginning to collect out in the hallway. I can hear book bags hitting the wall in solid fwumps, “fuck you’s” being tossed around like hackysacks, and mildly-pornographic sounds signifying a last minute make-out session behind the coat tree. I am supposed to be out there supervising, attempting to stave off conception or murder. But I can’t. I’m terrified, weak and seeking an escape hatch.
“Dad, I can’t do this anymore. Everyone here hates me. No one even tells me about meetings anymore.”
“That’s a good thing!” he says. “Who needs more meetings anyway?”
“…and I think the owner and the other Director are talking behind my back. I swear they make faces at me. I think they want me to quit so they don’t have to fire me first.”

My skirt is twisted around my waist, and I’m watching a brand new run start in my nylons. I reach up and blindly pat around my desk drawer for my new MAC lip-gloss, some clear nail polish to stop the run, or my Xanax bottle. I can’t believe I’m squatting under my desk wearing a charcoal-grey business suit. Thirty years-old and I’m a professional stow-away.

“Dad, I am about to walk out of here and drive my car into oncoming traffic. That’s my fucking plan.” I’m start laughing for the same reason I am crying. As much as I am hurting, breaking open inside, I am still trying to lighten the mood with hyperbole.
“No, you’re not going to do that,” he says. “What time do you get out of there?”
Now the tears are really flowing, and all at once I’m snorting, shaking, and laughing, applying a sunset-hued lip-gloss, popping a tiny green pill, wrestling the last Diet Coke out of the 12 pack by my knee, and watching the clock. Dad, save me, I plead silently. Please. Bring me a doctor’s note and pick me up. Call and say I have to leave; I have a sore throat. Can’t parents still call in for their 30 year old?

My father clears his throat and says he’s going to call my psychiatrist and see if he’ll take me after work. I remind him I don’t get off until 8:00 pm.
“Shit,” he says. “Well, you’re just going to have to leave. I’ll call Dr. Muffson. Just hang in there, honey, OK?” I am crying, the anxiety is getting worse. The hoots and hollers from the hallway keep startling me, causing me to hit my head on the underside of the desk. The Xanax is probably a sugar pill, switched at the pharmacy by some drug-seeking tech. Even worse, I suddenly hear my boss, Joyce, ask the teaching assistants and some students if anyone has seen me. Of course, no one has.

“Dad, listen. I am here on the floor in a $400.00 suit, popping Xanax and the kids are just starting to come into the school and I have three parent meetings this afternoon. How can I do this?” The tears run into my mouth, a salty endless pool; my anxiety rises like a thermometer thrown in scalding water.
I know he doesn’t know what to say, and inside I start to scold myself for worrying him. How can I be so freaking selfish? I know there is nothing he can do for me. Even worse, I know if he could do something – anything — he would. I don’t deserve this kind of concern, I think. I deserve everything rotten I feel inside –the incessant fear, the intense self-loathing and shame, the anxiety bubbling like blisters.
I begin to calm myself by think about dying in an accident on the way home, or just lying down across the front seat once I hit the highway, closing my eyes, humming with the radio and hoping for the best. Or the worst. I am so tired.

“Dad,” I say, “tell Dr. Muffson this. If he cuts me open, inside he’ll see one of those mile long vacationland water slides with multiple tributaries, spiraling down like ribbons into a huge, silent pool. The slides only go down, like a death drop. There are no ladders. Everybody would understand then, Dad. You see? Everyone would finally get what I’ve been talking about, why I feel like this. Why I need to end it, finally.”

****

He hangs up to call my doctor. Just before though, he asks me to hang in there, just for a while - for him. The dark hands of depression feel like they’re yanking me towards the door, the car, and a bad decision, but I promise him anyway. There’s nothing I won’t do for a parent who is trying with every cell in their body to somehow right the past. To help heal some of the damage they imposed on the bald-headed, soft-skinned creature they had a major hand in creating, and to assuage the guilt they feel, the shame that serves no one.

I crook my arm up and tap around with the phone until I find the hook. Then, I carefully find a place for my open soda. I steel myself, and get ready to climb from my enclave. I throw my Xanax bottle into my briefcase, tuck my hair behind my ears, and take a breath, trying to exhale evenly. On hands and knees I emerge, amazed I pulled it off. No one will have any clue I was just holed up like a dusty, terrified fetus wearing DKNY heels. I can brush the lint off and slip into my professional role for an hour or so without anyone knowing the difference. I have spent my life covered with cat hair, so no one would even look at me twice. I place a hand on my chair to steady myself, in order to make the slow ascent to a standing position. Instead, I am looking directly at a knee. A knee clothed in brown polyester pants. I slowly tilt my head up and see the blue Snoopy tie that Rick, the Center’s owner, always wears on Wednesday, and then, up another notch to the behemoth shocks of nostril hair I always try to avoid staring at.
“Hinsley, um - everything OK in here?”
“I just — dropped something…..(just insert one, I cant’ remember what I said: contact lens/pen/lipstick) but I’m fine, going back to work now.”

At that moment, my co-Director, a vessel of a woman named Joyce, fills up the doorway to my office. She is looking monochromatic, as always - the most boring, dry woman on the planet. The best way to describe Joyce is - beige. “Everything OK in here?” she asks, looking at the owner, not at me.
“Not surrrree,” Rick drones, pushing his glasses back up the slippery slope. I feel vulnerable, too far from my desk-womb. “You know guys,” I say, “on second thought I am really not feeling well. Mind if I get out of here early?”

Again, they meet eyes. (Perhaps they’re having an affair? I shake the image from my head quickly) and don’t even wait for a yes. I grab my Coach briefcase, the jacket off the back of my chair, and the Diet Coke from my desk. “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll make it up with extra hours next week. Have a good weekend!” It’s only Wednesday, but I don’t care. I walk out into a blast of cool, almost dusk air, throw my stuff in the trunk, and drive towards the Boston skyline. I pull through McDonald’s, turn on the radio, and munch on fries all the way home. My dad calls on the cell and tells me I have an emergency appointment on Friday to discuss a plan of action. I already figured, which is why I “assumed” the next two days off.

****

The most horrendous day at that job hadn’t yet occurred, much to my ultimate humiliation. I am still considering whether to brandish that tale here in its full glory. But, I can offer you this: it got much, much worse. And days after that ultimately horrific day, I ended up institutionalized for a week. I guess that’s what happens when you attempt to defy reality and pretend that you can’t read the writing on the wall — even if you’re the one who’d been scrawling it there yourself.

In the end, what my hairy-nostriled or beige bosses thought didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I hung in there through school and work, day after day, for several years until I made an ultimate decision with my parents and doctors that I simply couldn’t do it anymore.

It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t need to be anyone else’s hero. I always forgot to wash my cape, and it was so matted with cat hair, washing wouldn’t help anyway. I learned that no matter how much I tried to not be me, no matter how many times I tried to stuff my velvet body into a Velcro box, that I would just get worse. As my world fell increasingly apart, it only demonstrated how finely crafted my soul’s progress was meant to be. I had been taking so many wrong roads for so long and my soul, or my higher self, knew there were better choices to be made. The question was, how long was I willing to live like this?