There's Grey, Black, White, and Black and White

     While sitting around with Pink Velour and Co., one of the wives asked me, "So, you've been drinking a lot lately.  What gives?"  "It's nothing, really.  Just a bad week."  FishMomGrr doesn't like that answer.  She also isn't around enough to really know me.  She doesn't know that sometimes I don't hang out with them because I spent the entire day drinking, or lying on my couch crying.  She doesn't know that sometimes I go over with DaVinci to watch the game with everyone, but end up playing with my dogs behind the house anyway, because I cannot be cooped up in that house with all of them, and I really need some sunshine and fresh air and to get all this energy out of me.  Actually, only DaVinci really gets it, and only because he's been around for so long, and he lives with it.  People who don't live with it, like myself or like DaVinci, don't understand bipolar disorder.  Nor do they understand that it gets people differently.  Even people who know someone who is bipolar, which I hear a lot, say to me, "Oh, well, that's not how so-and-so is."
     REALLY?  Because I thought all of us crazy people were the same.  I hear, "Well, my mother-in-law is bipolar, and she's really bad off.  She can't even handle a job."  I hear, "When my cousin got diagnosed she had to spend a weekend under observation.  Have you ever been locked up?"
     I have a job.  I have a job because my mom is my boss and she knows.  She doesn't get it, but she has an idea.  She knows there are days when I can't sit upright because I've cried myself into dry heaves.  She knows I wear long sleeves even in summer because I claw my arms up trying to hurt the pain.  But she doesn't understand how I feel.  I have a marriage because I have a husband who tells me that as long as I'm not crying, I can go ahead and drive for a few hours, so long as I promise to come back.  He tells me it's okay to not go into work today because I might try to drive off a bridge on my way in.  He wrestles me; and has taken me and my dogs for a walk in the middle of the night because I was too "up" to sleep.
     Once I told someone that I had been diagnosed as bipolar, and her response was, "Do you sometimes feel invincible?  Do you have a regular cycle of feelings of hopelessness countered with despair?"  She was asking me textbook questions over dinner about how I feel.  Well, no, I don't feel invincible.  I'm unstoppable, though.  I'm amazing and I kick ass.  I do everything right, and when I do something wrong, it's hysterical.  And during a low point, I vomit at the thought of making a decision.  I have run away in my pajamas in the rain during the night when I lived in the 'hood because DaVinci didn't understand what I was trying to say, and he wouldn't say the right thing back.
     My sister, the nurse who has known me my whole life who was also once institutionalized for six weeks, doesn't get it either.  A week went by and we didn't speak, so she called to check if I was okay.  I was hysterical because it was the middle of the day, and there were over 200 channels with nothing on, and my socks didn't match, and for some reason I kept getting mail for someone who doesn't live in my house, and all my clothes needed to be folded, and DaVinci was having dinner with a friend from back home and didn't even ask if I wanted to go.  She asked why I wasn't at work.  "Because I'll drink bleach before I go back to that hellhole."  Granted, my job sucked some major balls- enough to call the IRS after I quit- but know I was also a little dramatic.  I even looked up how much bleach I'd have to drink to get sick but not die.  It wasn't all that much, and I almost did it.  She said, "3xE, everyone has bad days."  A bad day is a stubbed toe, or a forgotten bank account password.  A bad day is not let's see how many red lights I can drive through without an accident.
     Of all the problems I list when I'm feeling out of it, none of them are actually the problem.  I know that.  DaVinci knows that.  It's taken him a few years, but he's learned that much.  He has sworn to try to keep things as consistent as possible for me.  He tries to do the same things every week (on this day, we visit friends, on this day we eat out, on this day we bathe dogs, etc).  I've gotten to where I can kind of feel an episode coming on.  I give him a bit of a notice, and he doesn't mind if I cry.  He still gets very frustrated, but he so rarely gets mad at me anymore.  Depending on how I feel, he'll leave me at home to go hang with the group solo, or he'll grab some couch and watch Harold and Maude with me, again.   
     So, as of now, I have decided to stop mentioning the craziness to people.  I'll lie, like I have before.  Food poisoning, death in the family, stray dog bite, the flu.  I've lied to bosses who think people can work when they're "sad."  I've lied to professors who don't understand that cutting myself is not, in fact, a cry for help.  When a friend asks why I hadn't been around, I must have been ill.  If I've been drinking, it's because my mom needs a drinking buddy after she's fired someone, every day for a week.  Uncrazies don't speak the language.