3/9
i'm thankful to return to the old form, because i need the rhythm of it, the mantra. i'm thankful for the sound of the rain pattering on the roof. i'm thankful for the warmth of the furry blanket that d bought us when we got this couch, which is so warm and comforting.
i'm thankful to mark this letter so it won't show up in the public archive and to temporarily unsubscribe d, so it's not in her inbox when she gets access to her computer.
i'm thankful that d has been in the hospital since early wednesday morning, getting treatment for what her doctors believe to be bipolar 1.
i'm thankful for the diagnosis, even though it's scary, because it provides a framework for understanding something which, without it, felt inexplicable, a horror movie twist, an act of god, or just the death of our relationship, like we were living in two completely different realities.
i'm thankful to remember never being afraid of horror movies involving aliens or monsters or serial killers when i was younger, since they always seemed so removed from daily life, but feeling terrified by those movies where everything is normal except suddenly a person becomes different without explanation, a rupture, a mask coming off.
i'm thankful, when i have had to tell people in m life about what i am experiencing, i have had the metaphor "i feel like i'm in a horror movie" to use as a shorthand, even though i don't know if it communicates that thing i am feeling. i'm thankful that i have spent the last couple years getting my mental health stabilized, so that i have the strength i need to do what i need to do to care for her right now. i'm thankful for how trivial all the struggles i have faced with anxiety in the past feel when weighed against this thing. i'm thankful for perspective, even if it is a pyrrhic victory.
i'm thankful that d is in the hospital, even though it breaks my heart that she is in the hospital, since the days leading up to the hospitalization were a clear sign that i was not equipped to give her the help she needed at home. i'm thankful that she is relatively safe, even though the environment of the hospital is so stark and scary, and she is surrounded by people who are dealing with their own scary problems. i'm thankful, having had the immense privilege of never interacting with an institution that takes away people's freedom (even though this one is doing it "for her own good").
i'm thankful, as a chronic oversharer and loud talker, that she gently reminds me when i'm visiting her to speak quietly and not use personal details that could be used to identify and endanger our lives or those of people we know, for social engineering. i'm thankful to recognize one of the really fucked up things about her life there, which is that paranoia is a symptom of her illness, but it's also a rational reaction to the kind of institutional environment she's in. i'm thankful to have hidden my horror when she described the chocolates i had brought her as "currency," like cigarettes in prison. i'm thankful to give her all the currency i possibly can, since it feels like one of the few ways i'm able to reach through the locked door of the ward..
i'm thankful that during visiting hours yesterday, we were sitting in the day room, which is painted yellow, and talking about how yellow is a nice color, the color of the kitchen in the house we lived in when i was a junior in high school, and then learned from someone else, who had been in the ward years and years ago, that it's yellow because that was the best way to cover up the from when the ward allowed cigarettes, to hide the ghosts of smoke and ash. i'm thankful for how gentle the nurses have been when deborah has tried to take me back to her room, which she's not allowed to do.
i'm thankful that she has her own room that she can go back to whenever she needs to be alone and that in that room there's a button she can use to call a nurse. i'm thankful that she has a counselor and group therapy and a psychiatrist and nurses in the ward. i'm thankful that yesterday she introduced me to two other patients who she told me are her friends, who look out for her and who she looks out for when it comes to other patients (men) who might trigger them or make them feel worried. i'm thankful that during visiting hours yesterday, we worked on jigsaw puzzles with her friends, one with a cezanne-ish still life of a fruit bowl and, when that was too hard, a simpler one with samuel l. jackson holding a lightsaber.
i'm thankful that i can bring her a polaroid of miso every day, which she keeps in the chest pocket of her scrubs. i'm thankful to remember the night before we went to the ER, when she was holding a stack of old polaroids and flinging them at me like throwing stars as she ranted about my failings. i'm thankful to remember her throwing the "healing" crystals she had just bought, which, from the remove of a couple of days, seems like a too on the nose image in a literary story, but was purely terrifying at the time, the only time there has been violence in our relationship. i'm thankful to remember how miso sat in my lap then, which is something she almost never does without coaxing.
i'm thankful for another one of those ironic literary story images, which is how on wednesday morning when she woke me up from shallow sleep because my mom had convinced her to let me take her to the ER, and how as i was packing a bag of stuff for us to take with us, miso picked up a dollar bill in her mouth and was carrying around, which i showed to deborah and was like "isn't that funny" and she laughed for a second. i'm thankful that when i left the room, she gave miso a credit card so she could take a photo of her with the credit card in her mouth, but then forgot about it, such that when i got home later that day, i found the card shredded by tiny teeth into scraps all over our living room floor.
i'm thankful, since the day before we went to the ER she quit her job, which she was so good at but which was in an environment that was so hard, and we don't know if she'll be able to get a job like that in the future, if and when she's able to work at all, that i have a comfortable income for the place we live and that i have been diligent about saving money over the past few years, because of my own fear of poverty, which i have carried around since i was very young. i'm thankful that my job is at a good place and that i am valued there and that they have been patient with the time that i've needed. i'm thankful that i have good insurance and that she has decent insurance now and will soon enough be on my good insurance. i'm thankful to hope that i have the strength to help ground all of the hopes and dreams that she built up like towers in her mania without destroying the hope and the excitement that were tied up in them.
i'm thankful that they have given her medications to stabilize her mood, which seem to be working a bit, a medication that makes it possible for her to sleep, which she wasn't really doing for weeks. i'm thankful that this was, to me, such a clear early sign of something being wrong, since in our relationship, i have always been the insomniac and she has always been the person who falls asleep immediately and stays that way as long as (longer than) she wants. i'm thankful for all the moments on a saturday afternoon where i caught her falling asleep on the couch, that i called her, with so much affection, my "sleepy girl." i'm thankful that the fact that at the heights of her angry mania she accused me of munchausen by proxy, that i wanted her docile and managed it can't erase all of those happy memories i have, of the times when i know that we loved each other and were happy.
i'm thankful to understand, in the current absence of it, how much safety our love has given me, how much confidence and joy. i'm thankful that i have these notes, which provide so many examples of the happy times that we've shared in the nine years we've been together. i'm thankful to be able to go back to them at any time to feel that love, and that hopefully someday she will be able to too.
i'm thankful that though right now, i still only see occasional fragments of the person that i love, i do see those fragments at least, that the person i fell in love is not completely gone. i'm thankful that when, on the phone, she was asking me to bring her panties but not wanting to say the word "panties", she said, like a jeopardy clue, "what you wanted to call our cat if we had a cat" and i laughed because she was remembering a joke i had told her years ago. i'm thankful that the she pressed the petals of the pink carnations i brought her on the first day (flowers which they trimmed and stored in a plastic urine container, the only safe vase available) into the pages of her notebook and yesterday showed me that, which she couldn't verbalize through the fog but which i took as her trying to say that she appreciated them, and me.
i'm thankful that the first night i came home from the hospital and i wasn't yet ready to pass out, i watched things that reminded me of our love, that we shared in it and that were happy and good. i'm thankful for the "PDA" episode of the office, which is about michael and holly's physically exuberant love, and for the episode of pen15 about never, and for hyori's bed and breakfast. i'm thankful to have miso here, since even if the chores associated with her add up when i am the only one doing them, her presence is comforting. i'm thankful that in the hospital, d has a little stuffed dog her best friend gave her and she says when she pets it, it feels like she's petting miso.
i'm thankful to know that it is still very early in this journey, since even though that cleavage is still so fresh, it means that there is so much. i'm thankful that there's nothing physically wrong with her, that she didn't hurt herself or anyone else. i'm thankful for the book loving someone with bipolar disorder: helping and understanding your partner. i'm thankful that my mom was able to convince d to go to the hospital, and i'm thankful that i know it's been a silver lining for my parents that they've been able to help me in a way that i've never really needed their help. i'm thankful that i have good friends who care about me. i'm thankful i have these notes, and you. i'm thankful to live life the way i have written these notes, the only way i know how, taking it day by day by day. i'm thankful to hope there are good days yet to come, and to try to find the pieces of goodness i can in the days that aren't.