Written between 2013-2014


Part 1:

Written before restraining order, when my life was divided into times when I either fled my home after an assault or to escape one, or chose to stay away for an extended period (as I did one summer) to recoup from a sexual assault:


I am writing after a sleepless night...I dread returning to a home that is not a home for me.  I dread rooms without peace.  A place where shadows mix with light, and the light is the voices and footfalls of children. And the shadows...they are the detritus of dark thoughts and dark intentions that derail youth.  What is a mother to do...this was the house she built for her babies...and this is the house that wounded them.  What is a wife to do when she is never understood, when she is resented for taking time away to strengthen herself. What is a woman to do when she gave everything for a family...and the family is broken.  I know the inner scars of my children with the same familiarity as my own c-section scar, a thin, white line that marks an emergency that cut through all my layers of muscle to yank out life before it was too late.  I know my children's needs, their vulnerabilities, their strengths, perhaps even their call, just as I know when they are hungry or sick, need a tender touch, or a boost towards the goal.


Part 2:

Written after Restraining Order, now able to live (somewhat) peaceably in my own home:

Today I am sitting on my daughter's bed in a quiet home.  It is a late afternoon in spring and I can hear the birds chirping in the maple tree outside her window.  The house has settled into a kind of peace.  I wouldn't say it is total because my mother-in-law lives in the apartment below and she resents the boundary I created for my family, the legal protection that removed her son from our home.  She no longer speaks to me and since I filed the emergency restraining order has managed to avoid interacting with me, even though we live at the same address.  In the last few months she's spoken with her grandchildren only a few times and if they want her attention they must seek her out.  She also owns the home (we rent the upstairs apartment) which makes it a very uncomfortable situation.

I am trying to get my life in order, find work while also continuing to push my writing out into the world, screenplays and a novel.  My children need frequent counseling appointments and support to finish up the school year.  Everything is trying to settle into a new order.  It's as if I re-broke a bone in order to set it right and the pain is great.  The healing process may take longer than expected too.  The outside world isn't always patient or understanding of the courage and perseverance it takes to remove abuse and fight for peace.  The road is full of potholes and unexpected fallen branches from the years of storms that ravaged our family.  We just have to keep going, despite the rough ride.

I doubt myself all the time...maybe that's normal, but I am going to keep on going, because the alternative, going backwards, is just not an option.

I wrote this post some time ago:

Today is not an easy day...I am starting to see more clearly, like that feeling when you surface from a pool, pull off your goggles, feeling that pop of the suction around your eyes, and suddenly there is no blurred underwater glass, but clear-as-day vision and a breeze that makes you blink. I am seeing that I am suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

I am in love with a man who is so ill he cannot stop hurting his wife and children.  Even when he wants to stop he can not stop. This is a man who has sexually assaulted me more than once, and the last time was not that long ago.  This is a man who supposedly helped me heal from a date rape situation I experienced years ago at college.  I say supposedly because now I wonder if there was any real healing that came from his words, or his touch, or his care, if he can turn around and do the same thing to me again and again?

I cleaved to him because he taught me that my no meant no; I closed my eyes against his chest and took a deep, ragged breath of gratefulness when I was twenty years-old and he was only nineteen, because he convinced me I was safe...but what does that word mean when SAFE can turn to terror once a ring is on your finger and you are living alone with him.

I excused the first attack.  I excused the next one.  They were spaced out by some years.  I forget how many times now...I think four?  He recently said he remembered four times he attacked me in that way.  The mind loses its clarity under high duress, but I will never forget the last time.  It was only a few months after my dad died...during my most vulnerable season of my life, when I felt the lack of protection of a father.  I am no kid...I have kids of my own, but I still would have turned to my father if I could have after this last attack.  But he wasn't there.  He was buried.  And I was without a cover, a shield, a father's defense.  And I realize now that I never turned to my father when he was alive for two reasons.  The first is that I was ashamed and excused away the abuse.  My father never really wanted me to marry this man and I did not want to seem like a fool or a failure in his eyes.  The second reason is that I had a very complicated relationship with my dad...he had serious psychological issues of his own...but I am confident that he still would have helped me if I had told him.  I did call him only weeks into the marriage (when I was twenty-two years old and still living at college), letting him know that my husband hit me.  My mother got on the phone and heard this too.  My dad begged me to annul the marriage...but I did not.  He got on the phone with my husband and made him promise never to hit me again.  My husband gave his word. And then broke it...time and time again.  Yet, each time he broke his word many many months separated the incidents, sometimes even years...and I often felt like I must have done something to cause his wrath, that it was somehow my fault.  If I had been a better wife?  If I had not spoken my mind so freely?  If I had, had, had...I don't know.

I am intelligent, have a college degree, have won numerous awards in my lifetime...I am a professional musician and a writer...I am a successful mother and have many good friends.  In the professional and social circles I move in, I experience the respect and favor of others...yet, and yet...

in my most private life I feel that I live a kind of hell.  The hell of loving a man who is the father of my amazing children...loving his family too...but unable to fully break with his abusive ways. After the last sexual assault I went to my mother and my brothers and I asked for help.  Not much help came.  Sometimes it takes a strong rope to pull a woman and her children out of abuse.  The rope has many threads, some are financial, others are psychological and emotional support, and then there is the thread of unconditional love and a non-judgmental attitude.  There are more threads than this, but it would take a while to separate them all out and decide how to describe them, give them each a name.  All I know is that this cord is very strong, truly a life line, and can change the course of history for a family, especially the children--the next generation.

When I talk to other women who finally escaped an abusive relationship they all had the help of their families.  Money, shelter, love were all given.  Many also had the help of a protective man.  Nobody does it entirely alone.  It is one thing to shift just your own life, another to shift children as well. There are legal issues, protection needed, sometimes you must even hide.  Coming up for air, getting your bearings, all these things also need support. Post traumatic stress syndrome is very debilitating...for example, since I am still living in my war zone, I have not slept well for weeks now, not since I left a safe place I go to on occasion.  I go to bed in deep anxiety and awake never knowing what I will face. Even my sleep is troubled, full of tight muscles, nightmarish dreams, and a sense when I awake that I got not one hour of rest.  The fatigue is truly overwhelming and makes it hard to function during the day.

Last night, for example, my husband had a stormy response to a small purchase I made...a  thirty dollar mattress cover for my son's bed, a padded one, to help him get sleep, because his mattress is cheap, broken, and he gets poor rest on it.  Until we can buy the new mattress I thought I would get him this softer support and I knew we had the money in our budget for it.  My husband admitted later that his anger was not related to money...he just felt angry because I did not consult with him on the purchase.  He'd already bought an unpadded cover and felt insulted that I bought the padded one to go over it.  And why did this insult him?  He said he felt that his choices weren't valued and that I, in a sense, disrespected him for buying the new cover.  He said he knew he was entering a bi-polar storm and could not stop it...his voice grew louder and louder, there was no reasoning with him.   My son ran out to him with his hundred dollar birthday check from his grandmother and handed it to him, wanting him to take it, hoping that by giving away his gift his father's wrath would subside.  This was such a sad moment for me, to see how my son would do anything to protect his family and calm the storm...to end the strife over a cover he never asked for and now would probably feel guilty about sleeping on!

The storm continued and, though my husband gave the check back to our son right away, he had to be pushed by me to calm down the kids and let them know that his wrath was an illogical response...and he knew this, that the rage made no sense, but he still could not make it go away.  He awoke the next morning in a dark mood, as usual, entering the depression part of the cycle.  The meds he is on right now only contain the worst parts of the storm, but they do not stop the storm from happening.  There are deep rooted issues going on that he would have to work through in order to become a healthier man with a happier family.

And I end this post many months later with these new paragraphs tacked on:

And in order to work through these issues he would have to commit to intensive counseling, be willing and able to take an honest inventory of his own mental state, and also stay accountable to someone who could help him reign in his violent, combative behaviors that destroy the peace and equilibrium of his family. Ultimately, the marriage could not progress in any way, shape, or form without total restitution. Sadly, all these facets of the healing process are beyond his reach at this time...and perhaps forever.

Stormy people riddled with demons are the ones who need help the most and yet often are the last to seek it.  That day so long ago was not an easy day...but this day is a different one (perhaps no less easy).  I filed an emergency restraining order which was renewed for 60 days.  I also filed for divorce.  So much has happened since I wrote that post...I will have to fill you in soon.  The bi-polar storms still rage but for now I am out of the pathway of the maelstrom...and thank God my children are too!

Today I can say I love a man who hurts his wife and children, yes, I love him enough to draw a legal boundary that protects the people he cares for from his own madness. And I love myself and my children enough to say no to the insanity that was tearing us all apart. There is always a cost for freedom but I am willing to pay it for a breath of unadulterated, fresh air.  I try not to count the costs or let them tangle me up in fear because all that matters right now is trusting God for the pathway out of this hell we've all been living in.

I am taking this journey one step at a time, like a dogged soldier, marching up and out of the trenches with my bayonet pointing forward, bullets whizzing about my ears, the battle raging on every side, trying to keep going without showing fear as I head for a combat free zone I believe exists on the outskirts of all this madness.  I won't stop heading that way, even if I am hit in the process.  I trust somehow I will succeed and if I don't, I will die trying.  It may sound melodramatic but there are no guaranteed outcomes in this process.  If a judge decides to lift that restraining order I don't know what will happen.  I hope it won't be lifted and we will make it...I can't even imagine his wrath and what punishment he will desire to inflict upon me if that restraining order is removed.  How dare I send him away!  How dare I put him through hell!  I can see it now...

So I trust that God would not give me the strength to go if there wasn't going to be a victory in the end. The kids and I deserve to be safe...truly safe.

  

                                    "The road to success is always under construction." Steve Maraboli

It is January.  The streets tonight are slick with the fresh, cold rain that fell all day.  In the flickering light of a sixty-year-old street lamp outside the local library, I stood and stared at the water forming in a large puddle behind my parked car.  I saw dazzling reflections surrounded by darkness, the zig-zag of yellow light moving on the surface, a few dark leaves, like forgotten promises from fall, still floating there, and nothing of my own reflection. It was cold. I needed to go inside and return to my work.  The rain began to fall again, pelting the top of my hood, like tiny fingers tapping. It was time to draw my eyes away from that dark mirror in the back parking lot, from the ever-widening ripples, the fizzle of heat on water. Hope is like that, isn't it?  You don't always see your own eyes peering back at you, but in the stormy-wet mess left at your feet, in the confusing patterns of ever-moving light and dark, there can be a kind of beauty.

I am going into the library to write.  It is the pattern by which I live.  I slog through all the responsibilities of my day until I can get to the library door, to the house of books, stacks of dusty and new, or those long rows that flow from forgotten to memorable, to dearly beloved.  I have discovered books here that I once took to my bed as a child, with an apple and a fake cough, missing school in order to enter their worlds. And I have located books that aided me in my lengthy searches for historical information that fuels my novels and scripts.  Most importantly, I have found refuge in a certain carrel that works likes the blinders on a horse, helping me to stay focussed on the work at hand, while still allowing me the occasional glimpse to my left out the narrow window.

In summer, this window affords me a most entrancing view of an enclosed garden tenderly cared for by one of the older, Indian librarians.  I've seen her moving there in her bright sari, clipping and pruning like a red and gold flower amongst the lesser blossoms.  In autumn it is awash with the loss of all those leaves and petals, and by winter it is stoked to the top of the stone wall with snow, its bushes crouching like small animals hunkered under all that white. Tonight the garden is dark.  I can see nothing but the black panes reflected back at me, my chair pushed out with my coat draped over the back and the sweep of my hair, the side of my face.  I am looking and all I see is a girl who is a woman who is a girl who just wants to succeed.

She is willing to bend her whole life to the goal of writing.  She's been doing it since she was five and first dictated a story to her Russian grandmother, then signed her own name at the top.  She's been doing it every day, in some form, from that day forth to this one, whether it's observing the world around her, like that puddle gathering in the dip of the asphalt behind that house of books, or words gathered out of the books themselves, or even just the gathering of meaning and experience from the rhetoric of life.

Life...her marriage is slowly shifting away into failure, endless arguments and bi-polar rages, a husband both troubled and troubling, children frightened and needing, and she is the one who must hold it all together.  She tries.  She really tries.  And she returns each chance she gets to her seat in the carrel, because it is by these words she carefully places on the page that a life can be built for others, not just her own family (so desperately needing), but the lives of those who might sit in a theater one day, digging down for the popcorn,while their eyes look up, aglow, or curling up on a bed with a good book, taking that bite from their own apple, and surrendering to the magic.  Is it arrogant to hope she might create magic for others?  Or is it simply her call.

Strife surrounds her.  She is tired of "Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent." She is pressing hard for change.

To drive from her house, whose walls vibrate with discontent, to the quiet interior of her book-lined place--is a straight route.  Sometimes the road is under construction, pot holes widened by winter storms, orange cones pointing out the new obstacle course, officers pink-cheeked in the cold, directing the flow around...always around.  There were days she had to take five different turns simply to go a few miles and get back to her carrel.  Other days certain sections had been restored and the path was faster.  To write a few chapters could take a year if you divide those chapters by the time spent helping her husband in and out of psych wards, or the tears spent on his relentless rages and repentances.

Leave. Stay. Leave. Stay.

The kids want what is familiar, even if what is familiar is the racket of sorrow.

She wants to hope that love can be restored, like the ink on an ancient manuscript.

He wants her to make the magic happen in the library so that he can be released from his workhouse woes.  He will read her stories in an hour and ask for more...it took her nearly a lifetime to write them and more frustration and trouble than he will ever realize.

She is not complaining.  She is trying to adjust her eyes in the dark.  To see who is looking down into the gathered water in a hole she must step over or around.

Who is this girl? This woman? This writer?

The library door shuts and opens behind her because she is determined to find out.  

It is the depths of night, the well of 3 am, the bottomless, bucket-less, dry hole of the insomniac.  I am thirsty but I do not drink.  There are no brackish waters at the bottom of this restless place.  I am not an indecisive person. I've always known my own mind...but tonight I lie awake with all my unanswered questions, and my mouth is dry but I don't even reach for the cup of water on my headboard...because I am too tired.  Too tired to think my way out of the maze of my life because thinking requires taking hold of a desire, like fingers wrapped around a fraying rope, and then the inevitable tug of muscles as I pull that rope up, out of the well, and discover that my desire for a better life is nothing but the broken end of a string with the smashed bucket at the bottom.   Because I want things.  I want a better, truer, happier way of living. I know what is right for me...but I am afraid of what that choice will bring, not just for myself but others....

For I've been told and shown over and over that if I leave there will be a suicide.  I've pulled down the nooses and screamed and pried my fingers in a mouth to get out the pills, and I've pulled a man much heavier and taller than myself out of a highrise window (probably by sheer adrenaline), and I've listened to him sitting behind a locked bathroom door sharpening a knife over and over for an hour and seen the cut marks all over his arm the next day...I've listened to the endless threats...I've known he's gone to the ocean at 4 am and considered drowning. He often disappears in the night, sometimes walking for six hours straight.  It could be the depths of winter but he won't stop until he gets to that cold northern water...and sometimes he drives, who knows where, for hours and hours, he says he just goes, hits the road, keeps moving somewhere along the empty highways of pre-dawn.

He is a father...but that makes no difference to him.  He is a husband...but the demons are his bride.  Truth is he doesn't love much because he scoffs at all things of value, thumbs his nose at God, says nothing matters, that he is an asshole loser and will die an asshole loser.  His mother still prays for him.  He runs her heart ragged with worry.  She fears him too, his dark moods, his bi-polar storms.  She's been known to barricade her door against him with stacks and stacks of water bottles, plus bolting every lock. She lives beneath us in her own apartment and once, when the kids were desperate for her, she would not even open her door for them she was so afraid.  What is he a ghoul, a ghost, a demon incarnate?  Or just a very sick man.

I want to be done with the sorrow, the weight of it, the constant watching of him, the buffering of his relationships, how I stand between his mania and the children, between his cold-blooded rages and his own flesh and blood.  I am tired of calling his psychiatrist who has no answers beyond her dosages and her pat little sessions with him and his blue-eyed charm.  I know she thinks he's not half bad.  I know she thinks it takes two to tango.  If only she could have her clothes ripped from her body, feel his blows, have her most private, most feminine self violated, have her soul demeaned.  Would she like all the glass in her house smashed, from her favorite art work, to her children's belongings as they scream, right down to a big jar of honey, now a heap of gold with glass fragments in it, smack in the center of the floor? He is searching for a hammer, to finish off the glasses...would she care?

And I don't leave because...dare I say it...because I fear deep down for our lives.

Is it wiser to hold the monster at bay with my bare hands until the children are grown and safer?

Until they have left this dark house with its ragged shades and clutter and flickering half-light.  With its unvarnished floors, and broken-hinged drawers, with its non-functioning stove, only two burners igniting, their flames shooting too high in places, to the sticky handle of the '90s fridge with its magnetic poetry crammed in lopsided stanzas of jibberish hope? There are rotting things at the back of the fridge. I don't want to get them out.  It is dirty work.  I confess I am afraid.  I confess I feel alone.

I pull up the shades.  I let in the light. I sweep and mop the floors trying to create a shine. Only a pleasant smell is accomplished.  I pry my drawers open with my fingertips.  I don't complain.  I cook in a small oven on the countertop (I have for over a decade).  I rotate my pans so that they don't burn food on one side or turn black in places.  I clean the fridge with bleach.  I stand before the poetry and leave it alone. Sometimes a word falls and catches on my shoe.  I walk around with it until I finally pull it off.  It might be a simple thing like: light. Or complicated like: eternity.  Once it only said: she.  As if that explained everything.

I don't want your pity.

I grew up much better than this.  My home was bright, durable, ordered by hope and plans. I had security of immeasurable worth.  I had love... shelter. I knew the path ahead.

Now I feel suffocated by this madhouse, by this exhausted day stretching out into an endless night.  And there are brief rests between the rapid cycling darkness...but in these rests I cannot rest.

I lie awake writing this. To no one.  To the wall. To anyone who will listen.

Just the other day I heard of a woman in a nearby town.  She was in the process of a divorce.  The ex killed her and their twin sons.  Then he killed himself.

Why? Why?

I holler this down into the well and my voice echoes round and round and back out at me.

It is a cry against dry stone.

That is because I am dry and without tears.

I don't have the luxury of grief or grieving.

I must survive so that I can extricate my children.

I must get them out whole (though damaged).  Damaged is better than dead.

You can't heal in the grave.

I am afraid.

And I am parched.

But I will keep going.

I will get the right help so I can dig the well deeper.

And once it refills with that cold, clear and refreshing deluge, I will lean out over the lip and reach a hand down, past those blind grey stones to the empty center where a rope hangs, and I will pull it up and reattach my own bucket.

That is my gift--refilling the wells, fixing the container, and pulling up my hope so I can offer a drink to others.

I will drink first and then serve.

That is my plan...arrived at in the dark, before the alarm goes off.

Dig. Drink. Serve.

"I will continue with the next section of my story about meeting my husband at college...but in a later post.  Tonight I want to find a way to go to sleep by unloading my fears on this blank page.  For I haven't been able to sleep well for two days now.  I am nervous because the storms I live with, the bi-polar storms, are oddly quiet right now.  My husband, Storm Boy, or SB as I've been calling him, is in a strange lull...but I am not fooled.  I should be happy, relieved, but I am not.  I know, that like the barely rippling surface of a Scottish loch nestled between green mountains, peace is deceiving, and lurking in its murkiest depths, down in the cavernous and mossy rocks no human eye can see, is a monster---something prehistoric, something mythic, something that uncoils its dragon-like links, blinks its myopic eyes, and heads slowly and surely for the surface.  This is the demon, the reptilian sorrow, the inevitable, rising leviathan that taunts us all...a humped home-wrecker, a cold-blooded throwback to some primitive time, when man wielded a club and lived by the adage: an eye for an eye."

I found this half written opening to a post, penned many months ago...and I sigh.  If a person could sigh with fear, then that is the kind of sigh I just made.  I've found a way to take a break, a long hiatus from the Loch Ness monster.  I've been staying for a month at a friend's house many hours away...but now I must return home or make a complete break from the creature that robs my sleep, my peace, and my joy.  My children want to go back to what is familiar, to their friends, school system, activities, even their house with its endless cycles of bi-polar/borderline personality darkness. They want what is familiar. They have never known anything else.  My children are almost out of high school. I ask myself, "Can I get through these last few years, get them safely launched, and then seek my own haven?"  Yes, it would be easier on some levels...but on others it would be very, very difficult.  I don't have a family support system and I have been a homemaker much too long. My resume dates back to college, though I have been working on writing projects that might bring in considerable income at some point.  I feel like a failure bound by her fears and a victor about to strike the final blow to her chains and run free.  I don't have the answers as I write this.  Of course, people always say, "You are the mom, the kids have to follow your decisions," but the decisions are more complicated than people realize.

I have a friend with four young children, a bubbly, outgoing, beautiful young woman who was in a very similar marriage for a long time.  She recently separated and is heading towards divorce.  She told me that no one can rush your decision, no one can understand the process it takes and, in an ideal world, no one should judge the way you fight your battles, because it's not their Loch Ness monster....it's your own.  She told me that many women said to her, "If my husband did that to me, I would have left a long time ago."  There were "friends" who implied she was weak, spineless, a doormat, indecisive, etc.  Then there were those people who encouraged her, held out a lifeline, patiently helped her work through each battle, and always knew who she really was--a uniquely strong individual that would land on her feet in the end.

If you look at my friend on the outside, she seems to have it all: glowing good looks, charisma, an optimistic personality, family support, talent, a beautiful home, healthy kids, a new job....but on the inside she is fighting the battle of a lifetime, trying to break free of an abusive and controlling man, create safety for her children, overcome doubts and fears, not give up.  You might see her driving around our wealthy town in her SUV, with her shades on and her blonde hair back in a ponytail, four adorable kids in the back seat...but the truth is she is a hunted woman, has a security box now at the bank with her greatest valuables in it (so her husband can't take them), a plan in place for her children in case he goes after her violently, a network of friends for protection, an important key hidden in the backyard, and the list goes on.   I just saw a picture of her on facebook with a female friend, going to a shooting range.  It looks like two women having fun, a Thelma and Louise type outing...but I know what lies behind the picture...I know why she might be training with that gun, especially as her divorce approaches.

It sounds crazy, but this is the life some of us end up living.  I once thought that only people coming from terrible backgrounds fell into this kind of mess...but my friend and I are the complete opposite.  We both had wealth, opportunities, a certain amount of order and peace in our homes growing up...then again, we both had a parent we struggled with, who exhibited some of the behaviors with deal with in our spouses.  In the end, these situations are not related to pedigree or intellect, but to a kind of blindness that blow after blow, turns to a brilliantly hard clarity one must live by....or die.  An awakening to a truth that Loch Ness monsters are real, sighted by a few individuals, ugly, bizarre creatures that taunt and haunt us, before they sink back to the depths from which they will inevitably rise again.

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.