Leaving Cloud 9

by Ericka Andersen

  Like many couples, they thought maybe a baby could help. That’s never the answer, of course, but when you are hanging by a thread, you will grasp at any possibility.

  In another personal blow to his esteem, Rick found out he had a significantly low sperm count. He now felt like a failure at something that should have been a sure thing, something he’d known for a long time that he wanted someday. He had always thought a child would give him the family he missed out on as a kid. He’d fantasized about how he’d raise his child—nothing like the way he was raised. He’d imagined playing ball with a little boy and looking into the eyes of someone who had his own DNA. But apparently it wasn’t meant to be.

  In retrospect, their not having a child was probably a blessing in disguise. Having a baby would have been a happy event, but the child would no doubt have been torn apart later in the aftermath of their quickly dying relationship. On the other hand, the lost hope of a baby may have contributed to how fast Rick and Sabrina’s relationship came apart afterward. Without something to hope for, what was the point in trying to make it work?

  For a while, though, they both kept these thoughts to themselves. Rick in particular, being passionate and persevering, didn’t want the marriage to end.

  At the end of a particularly brutal fight, fueled by far too much alcohol, he threw a plate, shattering it on the wall. The next morning he woke up feeling sad, apologetic, and defeated. Soon after this, he came home with a black tattoo on his forearm. In elegant Old English letters it read, “Sabrina.” Getting the tattoo was Rick’s way of showing his passionate commitment to her, assuring her that he wouldn’t give up so easily. A tattoo is permanent, he was telling her, and so is our love.

  That grand gesture might have bought them another few months, but not much more. It was a desperate attempt on Rick’s part to hold something together—to prevent one more person from leaving him, from not loving him anymore. Without Sabrina, he was just a guy alone suffering from PTSD, depression, and a haunting sense of purposelessness. He couldn’t think of a reason to do anything much more in life. In the most beautiful place on earth, he was living in the ugliest shell of emotions there was. It was a tragic irony.

  Still, the two of them carried on the day to day, clinging to whatever shreds of hope they could find in their deteriorating marriage. Sabrina went to work, Rick racked up hours of insomnia, got a job he hated, and worked among people who didn’t really like him.

  He learned that you can live in Hawaii and never go to the beach. You can work in an office building and run into street beggars and eat at Subway. Hawaii is a paradise to those of us who plan lavish vacations, but for many of those who live there, life is just life. Rick rarely made it to the beach. The weather was perfect, but his life was just the opposite.

  Things got worse. Sabrina went home to visit family, but Rick spent Christmas on the island alone. He was convinced that her family didn’t like him and so refused to spend the holidays with them. That put her in a tough situation, and perhaps it was the last straw. When your spouse doesn’t get along with your family—a family you really love—the whole world can feel off kilter.

  Seeing beyond what had once been hope for a future and a family terrified Rick. When he said those marriage vows to Sabrina, he’d meant them—even though he’d only known her for two months, even though he was scared. He is fiercely loyal and doesn’t give up easily. He would have fought for this marriage. He would have held on to her despite the pain, the fighting, all the things that had gone wrong. He would have persevered through it all, with her name tattooed in black inky letters on his arm.

  But it wasn’t meant to be. After less than two years, it was over—another marriage collapsed in the dust.

  Rick certainly didn’t blame Sabrina for wanting out. He knew he was the biggest problem they had. But he simply couldn’t will himself to be any different.

  Divorce is like death. A part of your heart shuts down for good. You can’t recover the optimism or hope that had been there before, at least not fully—and especially when it happens a second time. For Rick, the sense of failure was excruciating. He had failed with his mom, with his first wife, with flight school. And now he had failed with Sabrina.

  All the emotional turmoil and self-doubt began to emerge into physical manifestations—more anxiety, panic attacks, speech problems, heightened insomnia, and depression. And to top it all off, he felt like a fraud walking through life in a normal person’s body. Although he looked and sounded like the all-American boy, he knew he was anything but.

  Was there a way out? If there was, he didn’t know what it was. He could do nothing but keep moving, ignore the pain, put on his mask, and try to keep breathing despite not knowing where the oxygen would ultimately come from.

  Thankfully, he didn’t abandon his psychiatrist or his medications during this time. He was still struggling down the path to the perfect cocktail. And sometimes it seemed that the meds weren’t doing any good, but months later he could look back and see small differences. He still wasn’t happy, but the line had moved up a notch. The happiness meter in life was a two instead of one—not much to hope for, but better than before.

  With his marriage to Sabrina over, Rick had no reason to stay in Hawaii. So he turned once again to the only person who had been a rock in his life. His sister was now living with her family in Washington State. Rick used the little money he had left to ship his car back there from Hawaii. He would spend the next month with Jenny while he figured out what to do next.

  CHAPTER 28

  ANXIETY ATTACK

  This is what it feels like to have an anxiety attack.

  The whole world caves in until it’s all pressurized around just your face. The weight of everything you’ve ever felt in life collides into one moment so heavy you can . . . not . . . lift . . . it. It’s like trying to bench press ten times your body weight—a board topped with bricks that’s going to crush you in front of an audience. Nothing matters except getting out of there. Run is the only word you still know. And you have to do it before the bricks come down and make you disappear completely. Your heart feels like a bouncy ball being slammed into the back of your throat over and over and over.

  Sometimes you know when it’s going to happen. Other times it hits you like a dodgeball in a game you didn’t know you were playing. You were just trying to walk across the court to get a Coke when someone lodges one right at your throat.

  Panic spreads like a million tiny spiders infiltrating your veins, and you want to melt into the floor. It’s like when you’re at the dentist and they’re drilling your teeth and you’re thinking in your head, I wouldn’t care if I died right now—just to get out of this situation. It’s irrational and stupid, but the thought is still there. Get me out of here at whatever cost.

  And then all the other stuff piles on—all the stuff that made you start having panic attacks in the first place. Nothing anyone is saying makes sense, and there you are again, hiding behind the couch as the police come in to find you, to take you away from your mom. There you are again, your mom collapsed onto the kitchen drawer pulled halfway out, with blood dripping onto the Tupperware from the razor slice in her wrist.

  Mommy! That’s the only word you know. Your little-boy eyes still look out with a deformed vision of reality, terrorized forever by her seemingly lifeless body next to empty bottles, nearly naked and drooling, hanging onto life in a pool of a seven-year-old’s tears.

  Thirty years ago is ten minutes ago. Thirty years ago comes back every day. It comes back when you meet someone, when you talk to a group, when something goes wrong, when you do the wrong thing. It comes back when you drink, when those sad old drinking songs hit your ears. When someone looks at you the wrong way.

  Your outlook on the world is so tainted that every sunshine is clouded by darkness. You believe that every good thing comes with a price and that you deserve nothing because she got nothing. You believe that because she gave you nothing and took everything from you.r />
  Mental illness is almost impossible to comprehend when you haven’t been there. It’s terrorizing, debilitating, and as real as the ground you’re walking on. Cute quips like “think positive” aren’t the cure. Your mind lives in a darkness that’s difficult to escape. Even when things are good, they’re just “good enough” because on those days the torment is quieter.

  Some people are born with it. Others may have a predisposition. If you are prone to mental illness and you grow up being traumatized from birth, you’d better believe it’s going to develop.

  It’s hard to know why Rick’s mental illness didn’t settle in until after he left home. Maybe it was only then that his brain had a chance to process everything that had happened to him growing up—and then the depression really sank its teeth into him. Perhaps then every sight, scar, word, drug, and moment of abandonment collided at once and created this monster of mental illness.

  If he had caught it earlier, sought help, had a clue it was even happening, a whole lot of heartache might have been prevented. He might have avoided the demise of relationships, wrong career choices, lonely nights, months of sorrow and confusion, uncontrolled rage and irrational paranoia, judgment and blame.

  He didn’t know that he was suffering from bipolar disorder. That diagnosis wouldn’t come for a few more years. But now, looking back and assessing the mood swings and the extreme highs and lows—mostly lows—it’s obvious that the disease had set in by this time. The moods and anger felt out of control in his mind—as if a sea tide of emotions could turn into a huge wave or recede at any moment.

  He didn’t know what it was then—certainly didn’t know enough to figure out a diagnosis. Even in the 1990s, mental-health awareness wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. Once again, he just assumed that the way he felt was the way life was—hard, confusing, full of pain and anxiety for which there was no remedy. He assumed some people just weren’t lucky enough to be happy.

  And happy people are hard to understand when you are depressed. Low-key, let-it-roll-off-your-shoulders people? They’re like aliens. Rational, nondefensive, positive people? They’re not people you could ever be friends with; they wouldn’t understand. They don’t get it.

  Mental illness is lonely, but often the last thing you want to do when you’re suffering is reach out for help. There are plenty of support groups, plenty of people who understand. But for all the people showing up for those meetings, there are thousands more sitting at home alone— drinking, crying, blaming, loathing, judging, dying.

  It’s hard to show up to a support group. The strongest people are there. The others can’t bring themselves to participate.

  When you have a mental illness, especially if it’s paired with a social anxiety disorder, making friends is like climbing Mount Everest. It’s almost too hard to even begin to try. How could anyone possibly understand you—your moods, the ever-present darkness, your past too horrific to recount, the things your eyes have seen?

  The heroin addict in him that never found life, the would-be drunk that claws its way through his words—if they knew the real him, he thought, they wouldn’t like him.

  He wasn’t Sylvia—but some parts of him were. He was literally made of her. Deep down he felt he was her. He was her seed, and she’d poisoned him all the way through, so badly that he hurt and hated everyone who got close.

  Rick’s particular form of bipolar disorder, he would eventually learn, is low and level—not ever really high. Sometimes it’s low and lower. Sometimes the only thing that sustains him is his wife’s face, his son’s laughter. Even though he says he has more in life than he ever dreamed he’d have, it’s still just “good enough” because his stolen childhood and the resulting mental illness shades even the brightest happiness. His joy at the laugh of his baby is tempered by self-loathing. The most beautiful Christmas morning is still saturated by memories of terrible Christmas mornings in the past.

  Some people with severe bipolar disorder cannot even function in society. They will be up for days or unable to get out of bed for weeks. Thankfully, Rick never got to that point. He was always able to will himself up and out and to keep a job. But his mental illness still hindered his growth as a person and prevented him from realizing there was a better life out there available to him.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE DEFINING DIAGNOSIS

  Some people dream of a life with no strings attached. That’s exactly what Rick had after his second divorce. It turns out, though, that an unattached life is a lonely life, a life lacking love and humanity. In those days Rick depended on himself and no one else. He felt he couldn’t trust anyone, and he had become paranoid and fearful that one wrong move could leave him homeless, jobless, friendless.

  Living with no strings attached for so long meant it was exceptionally hard for Rick ever to let anyone in. And when he did let them in, they had to make allowance for the hardships he’d seen. They had to look hard to see past the hurt and into the heart, because the real Rick was not what shone through on the surface.

  At this point in his life, happiness had come only in rare spurts, in the form of short-lived romance and marriages, in the high-highs of the bipolar disorder, in the rare, joyful moments he spent in the company of children.

  While living in Washington, he found a haven in his nieces and nephews. They ranged from ages two to ten, and they adored their Uncle Rick. That title, Uncle Rick, became one of his most beloved. Inhabiting that identity was a saving grace that lifted his heart and soul in a way nothing and no one else could.

  Rick has a playful spirit and would rather spend all day with a fiveyear-old than in conversation with a roomful of adults. Children don’t judge. They operate in play mode and think you’re awesome if you can flip them upside down, play high fives with them, or feed them endless amounts of popsicles.

  As Uncle Rick, he could do all those things. He thoroughly enjoyed making them laugh, taking them to the store and buying presents, playing games with them. To this day, it gives him great joy to buy squirt guns and slingshots, balloon games and Legos. He loves nothing more than to arrive at a house armed with gifts to delight whatever children may be there. Then and now, you will hear screeches of “Uncle Rick” wailing through the house because every kid knows he is the most fun adult in the room. He is endlessly patient and genuinely enjoys spending time with them.

  So maybe it was those four kids that kept him together when everything else in his life had fallen apart. They were precious resources, filled to the brim with those lively attributes we so often lose in adulthood. Even for those without mental illness, growing up means growing out of those bright, thriving qualities children possess in spades. Jenny’s kids reignited those qualities in Rick’s brain when he needed them most and gave him what he needed to keep going. When depression wanted to win, the kids made it take a step back. It’s clear in retrospect that a miracle of the Lord was working in that house.

  At least at this point, he was battling some of his illnesses with medication and had been to counseling. He was aware that things weren’t right with him and had begun the long road to finding balance. But he still hadn’t been officially diagnosed with the more rare condition of bipolar disorder. It was coming—and everything made a lot more sense when it did.

  The nature of bipolar disorder appears to be genetic, with a number of genes involved in the process of creating possibly thousands of different iterations in children.1 There’s no single cause for the disorder, however, and it’s not certain that children of a bipolar parent will inherit the disorder. In Rick’s case, Sylvia’s clear struggles make a genetic connection seem likely. However, the condition is complex, and the trauma of Rick’s childhood, coupled with PTSD, made him a prime candidate for a bipolar condition that may have otherwise remained dormant.

  Bipolar usually overlaps with other mental illnesses—depression, anxiety, and in severe cases schizophrenia and more.

  A mentally ill person, like a physically ill one, must receive treatm
ent in order to live a normal life—and medications are part of that treatment. Sometimes you hear people say that they don’t want “drugs” to keep them stable or normal, but the reality is that those medicines are necessary. For someone suffering severely, it would be impossible to rein in any related addictions and irrational behaviors without medication.

  Just as it was a relief for Rick to find out he was suffering from PTSD, it was another kind of relief when a psychiatrist finally diagnosed him with bipolar disorder in his early thirties. The diagnosis came at a time when the arc of life was beginning to swing upward, living in Washington, DC—where he moved after the brief stint in Washington State—and having recently met the woman who would become his wife.

  Having a name for his problem meant Rick’s doctors could start treating it. But just as with the PTSD, the depression, and the anxiety, it can take years of experimenting and documenting to find just the right combination of meds to work for each individual person. Everyone’s body chemistry is different, so getting the meds right can be a tedious, difficult process for mentally ill people and for those who love them.

  When Rick was diagnosed, he felt a little silly for not having realized earlier that something was seriously wrong. But the myths about mental illness are pervasive. Since he wasn’t hearing voices or shutting down for months at a time or experiencing severe mania, he had no idea.

  The army’s therapists didn’t help either—just shuttling him through, simply labeling him with PTSD and discharging him. Treating mental illness can be complicated, and it would have been a great help for Rick to have received a more sophisticated diagnosis earlier and started treatment sooner.