The therapy session where I learned I had bi-polar disorder

What it says above. The first of my feel something Friday posts.

The magazines in the waiting room are boring and old enough to be walking and talking if they were counted in months. Psychiatric pharmaceuticals, Optics today, and Adolescent Angst. Its possible I made up some of those titles. None of the providers in this dusty yellow Victorian House subscribe to entertainment weekly or People Magazine. They are too nerdy, high minded, or both. My shrink certainly is. I unwrap the raspberry tea bag and zone out in front of the shelf of too small mugs.  The mugs are chipped and stained, the 1992 Vermont Public Radio fundraising drive faded, the pair of cartoon chickens close enough together so they share two feet. The one I choose is brown polka dots.

The office is more than twenty feet at its long end, larger than my and has multiple windows on two walls, all of which are darkened by dust clad vertical blinds. I sit on the left hand side of the brocade couch and my doctor sits in his chair across from me. It has molded to him like a Birkenstock, hollows for his bottom, a grease spot where his head rests.  It is brown leather, midcentury in style with knee rests so his feet are invisible. There is a blue box of Kleenex on the middle of the couch, I pick it up and slot it onto a side table between slerexiagauard and my spider webbed mug. I make sure it is in hand’s reach for his next patient. I have never used it. He pulls out his yellow pad, flipping through pages tucking the ones from the previous session behind. I see the blue ink smudged on his hand, the universal sign of lefties. His writing slants down, the lines a suggestion ignored. Blank page for me.

The surface  of my shrink’s desk is completely covered with Pisa like files, small cardboard sample boxes and hundreds of yellow pads. There is a cheaply framed poster on the wall over his desk, Kopp’s Eschatological Laundry list.

It has 43 items but I can only see to number twenty two until the file mountains block my view. “Progress is an illusion. “ 

The framed photos around the room are birds and flowers, small and pale, with my poor distance vision they could be anything or nothing. Not one of the 17 images have a top or side of their frames in line of with any other painting. When I first walked in four years ago I wondered if his office was a diagnosis tool for OCD. Years later I still mentally straighten them each session, but feel confident that OCD is not the three letter code that plagues me.

I take a sip of tea. Lukewarm, Fruity. Decaf. Pointless. When I put it back on the table Kleenex hits the floor. 

“Kleenex is a brand name.” I say “ But we use it more widely. Like Xerox, or Q Tip.”

“Hm.”

“I used to know so many more examples but I can’t think of any.”

“How was your week?”

“Tissues. It just sounds wrong, but probably less wrong than cotton swab. I’m not sure I would even know what a cotton swab was if I wasn’t thinking about it right now.”

“Any late night visits?” He asks me.

He knew me before my marriage, my dad’s death, and my steady employment. We’ve met every Tuesday evening for four years while I wove the threads of me into something resembling an adult and as they unraveled again.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Does that mean yes?”

I have become a stalker. I am not anyone’s stalker in particular but generally I stalk. I spend the early mornings after the restaurant closes on people’s porches. People I know a little but want to know a lot. I don’t usually ring the bell or knock.  I know this is wrong.

“I can’t stop.” I tell him. “I go home. I make a chamomile tea, whose benefits must be a generationally promoted fallacy.” 

“Let’s stick with this generation.” He says.

“Then I am walking down the street or getting into the car before the tea is cool enough to drink.”

“At their best, what do you get from these journeys?”

“I’m not sure there is a best.”

He nods his head towards the list. Number 14:

“You can’t make anyone love you.”

“Does that include myself?” I ask him

“Does it?” Is his non-answer.

We are forty minutes into our fifty minute hour and I am thinking I need a new list of herbal teas. Dr. K is thinking something else. He rises from his chair, leaving it slightly rocking and walks the two steps in his gum soled shoes. He performs the magic trick of pulling my file from a stack. “Hm. Hm. Hm.” His blue ink pointer is doing its job.

He looks at me, eyes bright. “You have bi-polar disorder.”

He slaps the file closed in satisfaction.

“What?”

“You have bi-polar disorder. We have been proceeding as if you have uni-polar disorder. But with your spending and your night journeys and your insomnia I am confident that you have bi-polar disorder.”

This is the third time he has said it.

“I didn’t think shrinks just pronounced stuff like that. Shouldn’t we have danced around this for a while?”

“I told myself to wait three months before I brought this up and it has been three months and one week.” He is not dancing.

“Well that is certainly enough time.”

He ignores my sarcasm. “For me it is. I’ve seen you 197 times. It’s time to get you started on the correct medications. I want to put you on two medications.” “One for your floor” He gestures at his knees. “And one for your ceiling” He holds his hand at his shoulder. His range is so small. My moods are at least from the oak floor to the cracked plaster ceiling. I reach for a Kleenex, pushing the squeeze ball onto the ground where it rolls under the couch. 

“How do we know?” I ask. I am drizzling, tissue to my eye corners. Now I have a name for what I feel:  sluggishness with no rest, my energy no outlet, a life so bright and so dark that there is never the nuance of shadows.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for drugs.”

”Thirty three.” He points at the poster. “All important decisions must be made with insufficient data.”

“I want to give it a week. Or three. 200 sessions is a nice round number.”

“I’ll just write the scripts. It’ll take a while before you even feel anything.”

I don’t know what data I am looking for. 

I already know the truth. Now I have a name for what I feel:  sluggishness with no rest, energy no outlet, a life so bright and so dark that there is never the nuance of shadows. I have bi-polar disorder. 

And more than that it has me.

When there is no image that fits perfectly it is best practice to use a kitten photo.

On Fridays I plan to write about Mental Health. Mine obviously but maybe also yours? If you are willing to have me interview you about your experiences please let me know.