Suspended Sentence

by Janice Morgan

  “Yes, lately I’ve been getting into a crisis situation again,” she told us. “I’ve found a new boyfriend, and for a while, it was great, but now—I’m finding out he just doesn’t understand what I need to take care of myself.” One of her most immediate problems was getting enough sleep. She was a morning person who’d agreed to start living with a night owl who thought nothing of turning on the TV in the bedroom when she was already asleep, waking her up. He didn’t see why she couldn’t adapt to his schedule and sleep when he did. He also didn’t understand her illness or what she needed to do to stay well. Without reading about the illness or listening to her, he wouldn’t know that for a person with bipolar, being sleep-deprived is NOT a situation you want to get into. It’s one of the triggers that can bring on a manic episode.

  “Zach doesn’t think I have any illness. He says I’m fine,” she went on. “But that’s because I’ve been taking my medicine and trying to keep a healthy lifestyle. But now I feel if he’s not going to accept this about me, if he’s not going to allow me to take care of myself, then I need to break up with him.”

  From what Joan had told us in the past, I knew she’d had more than one partner similar in attitude to Zach. It was a pattern. Once she started feeling better, she would get involved in a new relationship and, for one reason or another, leave behind the regimen that would keep her well. Since Laura was one of those who, with selfcare, could “pass” for neurotypical most of the time, even people close to her didn’t realize that she had to manage a serious illness every day. Her previous Texas boyfriend certainly didn’t. He’d told her she wasn’t sick at all, didn’t need those fancy medications. She should just eat right, exercise. Besides that, she needed protection, which he was happy to provide. After she stopped taking her meds and became more anxious and unpredictable, he advanced to thinking it was a good idea to lock the doors of their house, so she couldn’t get out and “get into trouble” while he was gone. Joan tried to warn Laura that her boyfriend had some control issues, but from there, the situation rapidly went downhill. “I kept getting more anxious, and my boyfriend was getting more controlling. It felt like I was starting to live in some kind of horror movie,” Laura said. That’s when she knew she had to get away from him, permanently. At least the new predicament with Zach, though similar, wasn’t nearly as bad as that. Not yet.

  “So now,” she said, looking anxiously at Joan, “I’ve temporarily moved back in with Mom, and I’m trying to be strong to deal with all this … but, you know, it’s pushing me over the edge. So if I act a little strange, a little over-dramatic, it’s because I’m way over my stress threshold right now.”

  I was sitting close by, and as Laura spoke, her hands spoke, too. Her fingernails tapped on the table in front of her. Her hands curved arcs in the air to convey frustration. In a way, the long, tapered fingers with the red nails didn’t seem to go with the rest of her, dressed as she was in jeans and western boots, her hair cropped like a boy’s. But when her fingers exploded outward with barely contained anxiety and emotion, we all felt the tension. Probably Joan brought her here tonight so she could release some of her distress, get some comfort. Just when it seemed Laura might be able to find a little happiness and security in another relationship, things were going off the rails again.

  “I do NOT want to have a meltdown,” Laura said. “I know how horrible that is. And I can feel one building up inside. It’s like a pot that’s about to boil over.” Those red-tipped fingers flared out again before tapping on the table in front of her. “But I’m just not going there.” She repeated like a mantra, to calm herself: “I have to take care of myself now. I have to do what’s right for me.” What that meant in this situation was that she needed to get a separate residence away from Zach and resume her therapy sessions. The relationship could wait. Maybe Zach would understand, maybe not.

  We all felt drawn to her, but what Laura was saying was scary for me. Like her, Dylan also had a stop-and-go pattern in his wellness regimen. Like most, he had a love/hate relationship with his meds, so there was always a reason for why he’d stop taking them at some point. Then, too, the physical expression of Laura’s anxiety reminded me of times I’d witnessed in Dylan the same about-toboil-over behaviors, only he was a lot louder and bigger. With other people, he would try to keep himself under control, even under duress. But with someone he was close to, he’d be more likely to bluster and fume his way through, letting out the tension. Sometimes I wondered if he even noticed he was going overboard. Probably not. Not when he was talking ninety miles an hour; not when he couldn’t stop to listen for five seconds.

  But from what Laura said, I gathered there were often two struggles going on simultaneously for people like her. First was trying to deal with a tricky, debilitating psychic state. Second was trying to deal with the person right in front of you, who didn’t necessarily understand what was going on for you internally. It took skill to ride the bull, and usually someone got left in the dust. But the main thing it took was self-awareness—and that was even harder to hang on to than the bull.

  I knew parts of Laura’s story because Joan had told us, but now she told the whole story herself—what she had been seeing and feeling during the psychotic episodes that began when she was in her late twenties and a young mother. Laura hadn’t even been diagnosed yet with a type of bipolar when she experienced her first psychotic break. It happened after an argument with her husband in a restaurant. When she ran to the restroom to try to cool down the blaze in her head, she suddenly saw red blood instead of water running from the faucet. Terrified, she screamed repeatedly and had to be taken to a local hospital. In the late 1980s, there was no psychiatric care at all in rural areas like ours, so she had to go to Nashville and eventually to Memphis for long-term treatment. Her children were taken in by her husband’s relatives because he felt he couldn’t work full-time and take care of them alone.

  Months later, she eventually recovered some stability, but by then her marriage had broken up, and her kids were estranged from her—the “crazy woman.” She had to start over. At least by then, she had a diagnosis and a treatment plan. There was an explanation for what had happened, even if it wasn’t exactly comforting. When she felt strong enough, she decided to move to Texas and look for a job, make a fresh start. That’s where she met the man she fell in love with, the one who didn’t understand that she had a chronic illness, that she needed to keep herself well by, among other things, taking her meds.

  I already knew the part about Joan agreeing to take Laura in—with rules—when she called from the Texas lock-in disaster. Her mom had seen it coming. “Geez, if your boyfriend locks you in to keep you safe, doesn’t that tell you there’s a big problem coming on?” Joan asked, shaking her head. Now, both of them were in complete agreement about that one. When the distress call came through, Joan had told her daughter she would welcome her back home, but one of the rules was this: “If you try to commit suicide again, you’re not doing it in my house. I can’t stop you, but you’re not doing it in my house. Do you understand?” We already knew that Joan’s own mother had taken her life at home when her daughters were still living there. She’d swallowed a whole bottle full of sleeping pills. So now, Joan’s attitude toward her daughter’s illness was strict: I’ll help you as much as I can, but you have to want to help yourself—and look for what you need. At least now there was some small assistance for mental health in our area, unlike twenty years ago. Laura and Joan searched together for a place that could provide the services Laura needed: Medicaid, a psychiatrist, meds, counseling. That’s what she found at Chesterfield.

  As Laura gave her own version of these events, Joan sometimes touched her arm lightly, as if to steady her. I could picture them together years earlier, imagine Laura as Joan’s expressive little girl, a five-year-old with blond curls and a vivid imagination. No one would suspect what destiny awaited her. Decades later, her blue eyes were still bright, now surrounded by the inevitable crinkles brought by years
of an unpredictable life and turbulent emotions. She talked about being an educated person, having ten years of college and about “what I had once been,” as if so much of her had been lost somewhere. We were all reminded of that terrible sadness, the awareness of what such an illness can take from you, and the courage needed to combat that. Laura had to hold on to that courage now. We were there to listen and to encourage her; it was a rare privilege. For all of us, she was a heroine.

  “This illness, it’s not a death sentence,” she said. “But it is a life sentence. And you have to deal with it every day, no matter what comes.”

  Joan chimed in. “Listening to Laura and helping her makes me realize what my own mother must have gone through.” Joan was always the strong mom among us, and we admired her for it. She was the widow of a navy husband who served long tours of duty across the seas all during their marriage. Where she got her strength, Lord knows, but she’d come through fire herself growing up. Her own mother had been battling a mental illness with no name while raising three kids—that must have been a big part of it. And now Joan was witnessing her own daughter going through some of the same episodes. The struggle was cycling through the generations, and Joan was standing at the center of it all, holding on. Better than most, she knew how to strike that balance between giving support to a loved one and keeping your own boundaries, your own sense of what’s right and what not right. She told us she’d had to learn that as a child, to survive.

  “And this group is so important to me,” Joan said, looking around at us. “To both of us.” She glanced at her daughter next to her and smiled. After all the tough things she’d told us in the past, I was moved to see how much emotional support she was giving to her daughter now.

  Sandra was in tears.

  “We’re glad you came,” she said. The rest of us nodded, listening in silent solidarity.

  “Well, I do know this,” Joan said with a steady voice. “With you all here, I feel I’m not alone. And maybe what I’ve learned can help someone else.”

  When the meeting was adjourned, some of us stayed to talk longer. Laura even smiled some; I could tell she was feeling a little better. Everyone thanked her for coming; she’d been heard. After our farewells, I went out into the cool night air, taking in some deep breaths to decompress. This evening had been intense. Out of the stories related in the group, Laura’s roller coaster ride with her bipolar seemed to me to be the closest to Dylan’s, although her case was more severe as she had slipped at least a few times into psychosis. Like her, he could be intelligent and rational, and could do well until he stopped taking his meds or got derailed by deciding he didn’t have to follow a rule that got in his way. Was he learning fast enough how to deal with his situation?

  Human stories like Laura’s shook me to the core, because my son could just as well have to face such crises someday: have a rough life, like hers, have to come back from a crash and burn, just like she did. I marveled at how brave both Joan and Laura were, and how honest and open their relationship had become, even through the troubles. I knew it was important for me to hear it all, to see what had to be seen and not get caught up in wishful thinking or denial. I needed to hear and remember everything these people were saying, so I could be prepared for whatever lay ahead.

  Driving down dark streets, I wanted so badly to get back to the light and comfort of my own house, my own life. I felt as if I’d just witnessed the opening of Pandora’s box under a full moon. Many demons had come flying out, ones I’d prefer to leave in there or not even know about. But wait a minute—didn’t they say that, way at the bottom of the box, hope was somewhere in there, too?

  CHAPTER 21: TWO STEPS FORWARD

  The arrival of summer brought with it a time of transitions for both Dylan and me, though we were in very different times of our lives. For my part, the end of the spring semester marked the conclusion of my eight-year stint as Chair of the department. I would serve until June 30, then change roles. Though a colleague had made this same move before me, it hadn’t been easy to make the decision to step down; it felt like letting go of something important. I’d be giving up a respected, sanctioned form of responsibility, of guidance. People defer to you as the Chair, ask for your advice, your assistance, your signature on documents. Your office is frequently visited by faculty and students alike. It’s as if you’re wearing an invisible robe, so deciding to remove it feels like a divestiture, a letting go of professional credits you’ve built up over time. Nonetheless, my plan was to return to being a full-time college teacher for two more years, then retire from the profession. I wanted to be open to other possibilities.

  Amid the flurry of activities closing spring term 2012, Dylan called to invite me out to dinner for my birthday. He wanted to do it with just the two of us, so we waited until the second weekend in May. It was nice: we were both celebrating the successful end of an important semester. For him, too, it was a major step. He had managed to continue with Drug Court obligations as well as getting reintegrated into college courses. It hadn’t been a smooth road, but he’d stayed on it. In fact, the semester had taken fewer hairpin turns than most of his previous college terms; sobriety agreed with him. Especially in his business and communication classes, which he enjoyed and which included interactive projects, he had done very well, earning A’s and B’s. This was definitely something for us to cheer about. Yes, the long winter was finally turning into summer. But how would it go? During the next few weeks, Dylan would be facing a transition, too, one he hadn’t always handled well in the past. I recalled the fateful May and June of a year ago.

  According to Drug Court mandates, since Dylan wouldn’t be taking a full load of classes this summer, he would need to have a job lined up. Arlo, his AA sponsor, provided odd jobs for him occasionally at his family’s farm and on apartments they owned, but that wouldn’t be enough to keep him busy or bring in money. So Dylan was looking around for something else, something more steady.

  “Well, why don’t you try applying at a restaurant or maybe at a store? There’s lots of jobs like that for young people in town,” I suggested.

  “No, that doesn’t pay enough, just minimum wage. Not only that, but I don’t look the type to do those jobs. I’m a big guy; I look too physical,” he replied.

  “Yes, but you like talking to different people, and you’re persuasive. I can see you working in a store, explaining the merchandise,” I countered.

  “Yeah, but I want to make a better wage,” he said. “I have plans.”

  “Oh?”

  “I want to make some money, enough to save, then get a vehicle,” Dylan said. “A friend in Drug Court says he’s been doing some masonry for $15 an hour, and the foreman is looking for more laborers this summer. So I’m putting my name in for that. Hope it works out.”

  “Enough for a vehicle?” I asked, trying not to sound incredulous. “Sure you’re ready for that? That’s a big step, and it’s going to be expensive.”

  “Yeah, I know. But if I have a job that pays, I can handle that, as soon as I can get my license back.”

  He explained to me that Drug Court wasn’t just about staying on the straight and narrow to avoid getting negative sanctions. The point was if you did well, you could move to a higher level. You could get a reward. Instead of being monitored all the time, you’d start charting your own course, taking on more responsibilities.

  “That’s how it works,” he informed me. I got it: the carrot and the stick. It takes both to motivate most people. All the same, a vehicle seemed to me a pretty big carrot. How would this happen? And how soon would he be able to get his license back to drive a vehicle? It seemed to me this would all take a while. My head reeled, thinking of all the hoops to jump through, but Dylan was all for charging full speed ahead.

  Later, I couldn’t help but think back a year last June when my son had been cultivating cannabis in his closet to make big bucks. Then, due to an alcohol incident involving a firearm, all hell had broken loose and he’d been arrested
. Just remembering it all made me want to reach for a nitroglycerin capsule to stave off an impending heart attack. “Hey, that was last year,” I reminded myself firmly. “Last year, Dylan probably thought he didn’t have much to lose. This year is different. Now, he has a lot to lose. He has to stay on his path or get locked up.”

  Clearly, we were both reviewing our options, setting a course forward. So how was it all going to play out?

  As June rolled in, I became excited about a trip John and I were planning for the last two weeks of the month. It would be part of our own celebration of my sixtieth birthday. We were going somewhere in Europe I had never yet been. At first, I was reluctant to be away at this time. “Nonsense,” said John. “You can go away for a while; you aren’t on 24/7 guard duty. You have to live your life!” Besides, John had already made the reservations; we were going. To assuage my misgivings, I called Mike to see if he and Linda could come down and stay in town for the time I’d be away. That wasn’t too difficult to arrange, because Mike had plans to do some more work on the memorial garden at St. Alban’s that summer. In fact, if he came at that time, Dylan could help out while he’d be there. Linda would come, too, and do photography in the area. I felt reassured.

  Before preparing for the trip, though, I had to apply myself rigorously to doing another type of packing. I had to begin the long process of leaving one office to take up residence in another, one floor down. The physical labor was only part of it: along with endless steps up and down stairs with armloads of boxes came interminable debates with myself about the contents. I wasn’t just moving stuff, I was paging through years and years of my professional life. Every day brought new decisions: Will I ever need this document, this book again? If I keep it, where will it go? It felt that just as I was dismantling my former office organization and rebuilding another, I was also peeling away layers of the past, lightening up for the next part of the journey.