We were college sweethearts...I met him before the very first day of school and had no idea that this tall kid on the front steps of the student union, this unreservedly and unabashedly open hearted boy was going to, one day, be waiting for me at the altar.  He was wearing a blue and black striped button down and a pair of worn out jeans.  I couldn't tell from a distance that he looked like the young John Cusack in "Say Anything."  The year was 1988, right before that film came out.  Some might argue I looked a little bit like Iona Skye from that same flick, but my nickname on campus quickly became Julia Roberts due, I assume, to my long, wavy hair and radiant smile.  I was happy because I had finally made it back to school after a grueling year bedridden from a virulent staph infection that almost killed me.  I had been a track star at my previous college, perhaps contracting the MRSA in the locker room or dorm, but back then nobody was familiar with this kind of infection and I was not treated properly, which brought me to the brink of leaving this world much too soon.  I fought back hard and in the end, to the shock of my doctors, especially the experts at the Mayo Clinic, where I flew out in desperation and returned home just as sick as before, I finally kicked the staph back into submission through my own methods.  These strategies involved rigorous exercise despite a systemic skin infection that was equivalent to a third degree burn.  I also changed my diet and forced myself to get up and believe I would live, and I focussed my fire on returning to college in the fall.

So here I was, having transferred from my old school, needing a place where there was a great hospital incase I relapsed, eager to begin my life again.  If anyone saw my skin that day as I walked towards the quad where my future husband stood on the front steps of that huge, glass gathering place for the students, they would not believe I had ever been sick.  The doctors warned me that I would be covered in scars if I ever recovered but they were wrong.  My skin shed off my body so many times I couldn't tell you, leaving a fine, baby-white layer of the most perfect and poreless skin a girl could ever have.  It was fragile skin too, but blemish free and hard won. To keep it from returning to a sickened state I constantly bathed in oil baths and lathered myself in creams all brought back from the Mayo Clinic.

When this boy saw me, walking alongside my cousin, Debbie, towards the student union, all he understood was that the most beautiful dark-haired girl he'd ever seen was approaching him.  He did not know that only a few months ago I considered myself the ugliest girl in the world, covered in sores akin to Job's nightmare sitting on top of an ash heap, scratching at myself until I bled, day and night, night and day, for there is nothing more horribly itchy than a staph infection and nothing satisfies that itch but the right antibiotic and they never prescribed me one.  I was not used to my new appearance and lived in constant fear that the staph would return and cover me from head to toe.  I didn't know it was staph back then, I simply thought that I suffered from some bizarre form of lichenified eczema, as the Mayo Clinic inaccurately diagnosed.

We must have been quite a sight, my beautiful cousin with her thick blonde hair that fell in natural waves and wide light eyes, and me with my long dark hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. We were  Goldilocks and Snow White--no wonder the boys liked us so much, everywhere we walked on campus we were noticed, yet I was surprised by the intensity of this boy, yelling at us from across the quad, shouting: "Debbie!  Debbie!  I missed you soo much! Come here! Come here!"  He did not seem to care or even notice that everyone walking across the green was put off by his incessant shouting.  He couldn't seem to wait until we got there, he just had to announce to the whole world that he missed my cousin and was beyond grateful for her return.  She threw me an embarrassed look as he continued to cry out:"Deb, I thought of you all summer!  Come here!"  he was motioning for us to meet him on the steps.  I immediately decided this must be a terrible case of puppy love and this nineteen year-old boy was so sick from it he was acting like an impatient five year-old, gesticulating, calling out, practically jumping up and down with excitement that my cousin was back on campus.

So we met him on the steps and my first thought was, "Who is this geeky boy?"  He was that odd combination of handsome and nerdy--his jeans were the perfect worn in blue, but up close I now realized that his striped shirt didn't fit him quite right. His face was angular, handsome, but his blue eyes were hidden behind a horrible pair of Waldo-esque glasses his mother had  hand-chosen for him.  He was tall with broad shoulders, athletic looking, but his wrists were super skinny, almost thin as a girl's.  He was all kinds of contrasts, yelling at us one minute to hurry up and come to him, but suddenly shy now, almost taciturn.  I did not know that he was shocked to meet me.  He focussed on talking to Debbie, catching up on her summer, letting her know again that he missed her deeply.  What he told me later was that a bell had gone off in his head, like some huge chime rung in heaven, and he just knew that I was "the one," the very one he had been waiting and praying for since he was fourteen years-old.  I was his dream girl, literally a girl he dreamt of on many consecutive nights and wrote down all the details about.  These prophetic visions were entrusted to his best friend who locked the writings up in a safe to be opened on that fateful day when he met the girl he kept seeing in his sleep.  That had been five years ago.  He had almost forgotten about the dream journaling and the girl with the wavy, dark hair that kept inhabiting his midnight hours.  Now he felt that he was staring right at her and everything finally made sense.

I was the one he'd been waiting for, saving himself for...for all I knew, standing before me, was the last American male virgin on a college campus in 1988!  For the eighties were a time of freedom, rock and roll, Bon Jovi love ballads, big hair, big dreams, pot, sex, tight jeans, keg parties, and adventure-- at least for those in their teens and twenties.  Every boy had a condom in his wallet and every girl was either on the pill or using the "pull and pray" method. Planned Parenthood was booming with student visits.  The morning after pill was considered an amazing new invention and many of my friends, after a drunken night they sorely regretted, went stumbling into the nondescript building a few miles from campus and begged the nurses for the pill.  This little capsule hopefully erased their indiscretions, giving them a second chance at youth...but back to my infatuated and virginal boy.  So there he stood, instantly besotted, convinced I was his soul-mate, future bride, the mother of his imagined children...and here I was thinking, "Something's not right, something's weird... but why am I so drawn to him?"  Of course I had no idea at the time he was bi-polar and looked at the world through an entirely different lens than most people.  I also would never have suspected that, due to his deep conviction to wait for the right girl, he'd never carried a condom in his wallet and any time he came close to giving in to his desires he let the opportunity slip away or, much to his relief, something interrupted the moment and he was able to hold off.  Later, he would tell me he was very grateful for this...that waiting for me was one of the best decisions of his life.

I suppose you will not be surprised when I tell you that my new admirer followed us back to Debbie's dorm and then later followed me to mine where he somehow managed to convince me to take out my violin and play for him, something I rarely did, not even for family members.  I preferred to play in private and, at that time, suffered from extreme stage fright.  Yet, somehow he coaxed and pleaded with me to play for him, so I did. And he LOVED it, begged me for more, while our friends drifted off to do other things.  Then he kneeled down to examine every single tape I owned (yes, that was back in the day of cassettes), treating my three-tiered bookshelf like a mini shrine to the gods of classical music--for that was my passion.  He called Chopin "Choppin" and "Wagner" "Wag Ner" but I forgave him,  finding the patience to somehow correct him without an edge. Later that night we played pool in the school's rec room and when I leaned over the cue and looked back to see if he was admiring the view, noticed his eyes shift away.  The more polite he acted the more I flirted, but I was surprised to see that even bumping my hips back into him as he leaned over to show me a proper hold on the cue brought only a muttered apology and a quick maneuver away.  Boys never did this to me!  How could this be?  I was used to so much attention...had I misinterpreted his friendship as something more than he intended?  Could he possibly be gay?  It never occurred to me that he was a gentleman, honestly, in that college world this kind of respect was rarely, if ever, given.

I wondered, later that night, as I lay in my dorm bed on the sagging mattress worn in by countless young romantics, if this newfound friend was going to bore me or become a true friend. Either way, I could not figure out exactly what made him tick. I'd heard the cliche phrase, some people march to a different drum, but this boy was marching to an entirely different instrument, and I'm not even sure marching is the right word.  While the world put one foot in front of the other and beat its steady rhythm, he was a more like a child sitting in a forrest glade in a patch of sunlight, whistling his own, private tune...then stopping to smile at me.

Today it stormed, a last snowy wonderland in March.  About mid-day, after the snow had turned to sleeting rain, there was an unexpected and singular CLAP of thunder that rocketed through our house.  I was resting in bed with bronchitis when this happened and I was momentarily stunned.  My cat leapt out from under my covers and hid under the bed.  My youngest daughter ran into my bedroom her face alight with the mystery of it all.  She told me that she'd been standing at the kitchen window when the sky shimmered and filled with an amazing white brightness and for a moment she wondered if she was experiencing some kind of "magic" that only she could see.  Then the dream was broken by that rending blast of noise from the heavens and she knew that everyone else was experiencing it too.

I cut from these thoughts now to the story of my life. My family lives the metaphor of this storm.  My husband is bi-polar and his moods are mercurial as this March weather.  Sometimes we all wake up and he is crazed, like a mad March whiteout that shuts down all the schools.  The day before no one could ever imagine that such a storm would pay a visit. Though the headlines on all the stations rant on about the impending gloom that will soon hit the city and outlying areas, the roads currently seem so clean, and the wind is blowing nicely, and the ocean is bright and blue under a near-Spring sky, so it is honestly hard to imagine one more blowout from the heavens that will blanket our world in thick, suffocating drifts of white.  Yet, at 5:30 am, a call from the school wakes me up and an automated voice tells me that I will finally get to sleep in late.  Yes, the whole town is closing down for this last gasp of winter.  I don't open the shades to watch because I already know what to expect, I can hear it wailing down the road, a windy, pounding storm of thick flakes...and I am happy, I am hunkering under the covers, relieved.

But I am never relieved when I awake to my husband's whiteouts.  He can rise from bed with a scowl and the mercury in my heart plummets.  Who knows what triggers the bi-polar madness...but it surely swirls around us all, gathering in heavy clouds of cold flakes that soon press down upon the home, shutting us down so that we can barely function.  It is his storm...but it becomes our weather system and we are the ones, me and the children, who have to find a way to shovel our way out.

How does it begin?  What triggers it?  It could be fear...somehow fear is always a part of it. Or it could be the mistake of forgetting his meds, or playing with his dosages, or trying to titrate down on a med. It could be that the part of his brain that processes emotions is like a crazy weather station and all the charts are wrong and the weather man can not even begin to describe what is happening, he's forgotten all his training, and no one knows anymore if it is winter, summer, spring, or fall.

It could be, like it has in the past, that he's been drinking and mixed alcohol with the powerful anti-psychotic meds creating a cocktail of disaster.

So he awakes angry because he went to bed angry.  I am usually the focus of his storms.  The sun has gone down on his rage...but what does he rage about?  I was once his beautiful bride, his wife of twenty two years, kind, compassionate, ever-protective, but then, something I said, or did, something very small but very huge in his eyes, has triggered his wrath. It could be that I spent ten dollars over our budget for the week on a class trip for the kids that came up unexpectedly.  It could be that I didn't kiss him in quite the right way, "Your heart wasn't in it enough, but you still are the best kisser in the world."  I will feel his hand grab the back of my head and shove me closer, his tongue prying into my mouth, attempting to make me show "more feeling."  But if I pull away from his control then I am "abandoning him." It could be that one of our teenage kids gets into a spat with the other over something as small as a cup knocked off a dresser and before we know it our whole house has erupted into their father's fury, as he attempts to "bring order" back to our home, which in bi-polar terms could mean smashed glass everywhere and violence...but I digress, that is another story....which I must save for when I have the energy to share it.

Storms come in rapid cycles.  Sometimes it feels like ten March storms, one after the other, before the snow ploughs finally arrive, the roads are cleared, and we can get out.  When my husband is angry our cat is the best predictor of his weather.  All he has to do is enter the house from a long day of work with a sour expression and the cat knows...he skitters away and hides.  Or like that unexpected burst of thunder, when my husband suddenly explodes at one of us, the cat flies for safety.  And we do too...

I can not even begin to list all the times and ways we have fled. I have cleared our home out so fast sometimes I impress myself.  I have lived for months on end with my car packed, ready to go at a moment's notice.  There are hotels I am familiar with, and safety routes, and enlisted help waiting.  Ultimately, though, it is always a lonely life and one without much hope.

Lithium has been a life saver.  My husband, shall we call him Storm Boy, or SB for short, so SB takes lithium now, after two years of trying to find the right meds, and this lithium in combination with another drug, keeps the sky from sleeting icy rain or tossing hail stones at my head. Still, even on this combination, I never know what to expect.

My children are broken hearted in some ways.  My youngest daughter, a teenager now, who still for a moment thought there might be magic in the world, has discovered that it's only lightening after all.  And my son wants a father to lean on during his teenage years. My oldest daughter is at college...she has been my wingman, or should I say wingdaughter, during all of these epic weather systems, but now it is time for her to get away from the drama of it all and forge her own life.

So I sit here, late at night, writing this first blog post, after a cold day holed up in my house, after about ten days of SB's rapid cycling (his psychiatrist tried to reduce one of his meds and learned the hard way not to do that), and I am tired.

I am tired of storms and snow.  I want Spring...but Spring for me only comes in fits and bursts. Like tonight, when he was calm and I rested my head on his shoulder in the dark of our room and it felt like home again...like the fact that he came home from a long day at work moving cars during the storm ( he works at a dealership), and still made us fried zucchini, his specialty. These are small things, but to us they are large.

I know that when he walked up the stairs this evening my son and I turned in fear, bracing ourselves...why was he home so early?  Had he lost yet another job?  Was he going to be angry tonight?  Our moment of peace felt robbed--we'd been watching a movie together, enjoying a rare time alone, wrapped in blankets, drinking tea, watching Joseph King of Dreams, a film that he's loved since he was a small boy...we were regressing together, bonding...and then SB entered the home, his boots pounding through the hallway, his coat thrown over a chair, his face grim.

"How was your day?"

No answer.

"Are you ok, honey, you don't look well??"

Still no answer as he leans over the sink pouring a glass of water.

My son and I exchange a look.  The look says: "Are we safe?"

I decide to leave my husband alone.  We listen to him turn on the shower.  Good.  He's going to unwind, get clean, maybe sooth his demons under the hot water?

It takes hours and hours of this soothing before he seems ready for bed.  He has his rituals for calming the inner whirlwind...currently he escapes into obsessively watching re-runs of old Star Trek episodes.  Well, that doesn't sound so bad, you might think...they are just shows, a harmless pastime...

Imagine a spouse that can watch Star Trek from 9 am until 1 am on his day off, without ever leaving his chair unless it is to get food or go to the bathroom.  Imagine the shades are drawn against the happy light of day, he is intensively focussed and no one can get a response from him to a question.  He is truly in the world of Star Trek, an alternative reality that helps him escape the triggers and pain of his current reality.  Now imagine that you go on with your life, running a household and caring for others, living, while your spouse ignores life, a life that should be a shared life.  And he is doing this, in a way for you, to save you from the storms erupting.  He is disappearing temporarily rather than choosing the permanent vanishing of suicide...his other constant preoccupation and companion.

There is so much more to tell you, but I am tired and it is very late...he is resting beside me as I write this, in a deep and peaceful sleep while I am setting my private angst down on the page and going to press publish.

Because I need to publish my inner world, like a garment turned inside out, so that others might process bi-polar through my experience of it and hopefully get more insights...for it really is a mystery, not even the greatest psychiatrists have any real and lasting answers.

Yet, where there is love for the bi-polar person, a great and abiding love, it seems by the grace of God, the storms are weathered.  I can not promise that the storms will not wear away our hope and reasons for staying...but for now, I have found a way to put on my parka, my mittens, my hat and scarf, my long underwear, my highest boots, my thickest socks, and sit in the blizzard, chattering and waiting for the winds to stop. I am trying to find my way to spring...I am still holding out for the good green shoots and the sun. Perhaps I am a fool, but if the situation were reversed and I was the one suffering from such an illness, I can only hope I would not be entirely abandoned.  The question is, how do I not abandon myself in the process of holding onto him?  The children do not want their home broken apart and they love their dad...but they fear his illness and what it does to their world.  It is such a complicated situation and I am not a satellite with the power to forecast accurately...I am simply a woman who loves a man and is trying to find her way through the ice and the hail and the snow to a greener time.