CHAPTER 97 THE DREADED BIPOLAR WORLD. ALWAYS
And why does this happen? Because my wife suffers from Bipolar Disorder or as it was originally diagnosis and called, which is really more descriptive, Manic-Depressive Disorder. The old name suits it, I think, but we have a habit of naming unpleasant things something else that makes it less informative. This disorder is periods of mania or periods of depression. Bipolar somehow gives the impression of some kind of split personality, which I supposed is true, but there are disorders of split and multi-personalities that are quite different from Manic-Depression.
it has had a profound effect on our lives, but also we need to speak about things that can strike us in life where we have no real control or choice. Bipolar is very horrible for the sufferer. It imprisons their personality inside a shell like a body inside a gibbet. Believe me, you do not want to have this condition.It is very difficult living with a manic-depressive. Most marriages where a spouse is bipolar end in divorce.
Of course, we didn’t know this back in 1961 when we married, nor when we were dating. We didn’t know about this until many years later, but I’m not where I want to discuss what brought on the actual diagnosis yet. We will wait until we get there. Anyway, although we didn’t recognize that she had any such problem in those early years, there were hints. There are so many things in our lives we miss and then when we know we wonder how we missed it.
For one, there were her letters. She wrote a number of letters to me during our engagement and I pointed out all ready how similar the content was, how she missed me and loved me and wished the time to pass quickly at work. But there were regular letters of a different nature, a constant stream of apologies for things I have no memory of today, but they were more imaginative that substant I believe.
Hi darling,
I love you very very much. I know that must be hard to believe after the way I acted at lunch. I wouldn’t blame you for hating me after all the times I’ve hurt you. Oh Larry I’m so sorry. I love you so much and yet all I do is hurt you.
Darling I don’t know what I’d do without you. I mean that sincerely. You make it worthwhile to live because as long as I have you I can take almost anything. If you ever left me I don’t think I’d care what happened to me.
Well Darling I’d better close for now. I promise you I won’t ever yell at you again. I’ll start treating you as I should: as the man I love, respect and adore; as the man I am going to marry, love and make happy for the rest of my life; as the man who has given me so much I couldn’t begin to repay.
Yours with all my love and sincerity, Lois Jean.
Hi Darling,
Larry, I'm sorry I wasted our time as I did yesterday but I guess you realize it was a case of pure unadulterated jealousy. I was so jealous of the fact that Sonya (sic) had arrived on the scene again. I don't consider myself the most possessive person in the world, but to me Sonya (sic) represents a threat to my future happiness. I know you'll laugh or get mad at me, but darling I can't help it...
Lois
Darling:
I'm sorry if I embarrassed you at the party Sunday night. I was only kidding you, but I know it must have sounded awful. Please forgive me, honey. I know I shouldn't have been so impulsive and I promise that it won't happen again.
Oh Larry, I love you so much. I promise that I will never ever embarrass you like that again. I feel so bad now, but I know that nothing can be done now except to watch myself in the future.
Once again let me apologize for my foolish actions. I just hope your folks aren't too mad at me.
I love you, Lois.
Hi sweetheart,
Gosh, I'm sorry I ruined your lunch hour today. I wouldn't blame you one bit if you were completely fed up with me. I'm really sorry I acted as I did. I hope you'll forgive me.
I can't wait until New Year's Eve...
I love you, oh how I love you, Lois
Hi Darling,
...Well maybe I'll be a little more cheerful and a lot less depressing at lunch tomorrow. You poor guy. You looked like you were suffering as much as I was. Well Honey, I guess you know what you're letting yourself in for. I pity you...
I love you, Lois Jean your future Mrs.
My lover, my world,
Thank you for the beautiful letter you wrote me. I can say that I never thought it was possible for me to make someone so happy (especially the one I love the most and who means the most to me). All these years I have always felt like I was letting people down, that I wasn't living up to what people expected of me. Now that you have cone into my life, I don't feel like that and I have ceased to feel like a hypocrite. I only hope I will never let you down or disappoint you. I will always try to do everything I can to prove how much you mean to me. I just can't wait to marry you...
Well honey, I really must close. I hope you don't have me committed to a mental hospital after reading this epistle.
Lois Jean
Darling:
I'm terribly sorry for the way I acted at lunch today. It always seems that I'm ruining you lunch hour. I can't tell you how much I regret this and really want to make amends for the way I treated you...
I love you, Lois
These were just a few samples and excerpts, but I never noticed the number of these or realized there might be some underlying problem. Most of the time I had no idea what she could have done.
We were at least fortunate that she has Type 2 Bipolar.
Yes, there are two types of Bipolar Disorder, designated as Type One and Type Two. What is the difference? It is mostly a matter of which side of Manic-Depression is dominate. If the Manic is the stronger then it is Type One.
by Bradley Cooper, is suffering from Bipolar Disorder. Although I do not think they specifically identified it as Type One, the behavior is obviously that. The picture begins with his being released from a Mental Institution where he had been kept for 8 months. His life at home is punctuated with semi-violent outbursts and he is constantly threatened by re-admittance to the Mental Hospital. (This movie was filmed in and around where my wife grew-up, by the way.)
Type One is where Manic behavior tends to rule and there are more chances that a person suffering this will hurt themselves, hurt someone else or get into trouble with the law. In the Type Two Bipolar that afflicts my wife the depressive state takes command. Her depressions would be very dark and sometimes lasted for days. There were periods she couldn’t even get out of bed. Like many people having bipolar, she wouldn’t admit to having any mania; however, it was present and it was years before I could really recognize it. One problem with the mania is the victim often feels good when manic and believes this is a normal state. Believe, even though the manic episodes are described as mild or hypomanic, they can cause problems as we will see later. The trouble with her depression was she was misdiagnosed, as is often the case with this disorder, as suffering from clinical depression and even when she did finally receive medication it was antidepressant medicine and had a detrimental effect on her Bipolar Disorder.
Here is one description of so-called Hypomania:
At first when I'm high, it's tremendous ... ideas are fast ...
like shooting stars you follow until brighter ones appear... All shyness disappears, the right words and gestures are suddenly there ... uninteresting people, things, become intensely interesting. Sensuality is pervasive, the desire to seduce and be seduced is irresistible. Your marrow is infused with unbelievable feelings of ease, power, well-being, omnipotence, euphoria ... you can do anything ... but somewhere this changes.
Yes, it can change into full-blown Mania:
The fast ideas start coming too fast and there are far too many ... overwhelming confusion replaces clarity ... you stop keeping up with it … memory goes. Infectious humor ceases to amuse. Your friends become frightened ... everything is now against the grain ... you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and trapped.
I have seen my wife experience both these states.
The thing to remember is “Bipolar is something the person has, just as when a person has cancer, it is not the person. I will note that I have met a number of people now within what we can call the Bipolar Culture. Almost everyone I have met whose spouse suffered from this disorder is divorced We have fought it together and we are approaching our 60th wedding anniversary as I write this.
GENERAL WARREN VILLAGE OUR NEW DIGS
We quickly settled in at 18 Fahnestock Road, General Warren Village. Our address was Malvern, Pennsylvania, but we were on the outskirts of the town proper. General Warren Village was a fairly large development running up the side of a hill along Route 30.
It was a few miles west of Paoli and a few miles east of Frazier, almost midpoint between them. These are all towns in Delaware County. The development begins at an old and upscale bed and breakfast restaurant called The General Warren Inn (pictured left).
Although the Inn carries the name of Joseph Warren, a major general in the militia in 1775, he had little to do with either the Inn or the area it is located. Joseph Warren was a popular Boston Physician, who choose not to pull rank during the Battle of Bunker Hill. Instead he fought as a volunteer and a private. He was killed by the British atop Breed’s Hill on June 17, 1775.
The inn itself was originally named Old Grog. It was renamed as the Sign of Admiral Warren Inn during 1746 to honor a British hero named Sir Peter Warren. The dedication of the inn to Joseph Warren didn’t occur until1825.
General Warren Village claimed to be the only area community to have it’s own bomb shelter, which was one of the bragging points made by the Developers. I don’t know if they meant “only” in Chester County, in Pennsylvania or in the nation. I’m not even certain they ever finished the shelter. I remember they once had a billboard along the Lincoln Highway stating this fact of a shelter though. Bomb Shelters had become big items in the late ‘fifties and early ‘sixties, especially after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.
The existence of this community bomb shelter inspired a story I called, “Atom and the Eve”. My question on all this bomb shelter
ballyhoo was, “How long would we have to stay there and what would the world be that we’d come out into?”
I began the day of birth seated against the shelter wall. The morning was quiet. Outside the sky looked a great glassy blue without a cloud to mar it, like summer skies use to be. I imagined smelling new mowed grass in the fields and the long uneven rows where the mower passed. It’s a long time ago that any mower passed.
The shelter is a long tube slanting toward an open door through which I saw the sky. I got up, walked pass the book shelves and through the portal into the cold. Now my great glassy sky was only a small shiny patch on the tattered cape of clouds.
Many tribesmen milled aimlessly in the square, waiting nervously for news and wondering about the patch of blue sky. Some raised moisturized fingers to test the wind. They smiled. There was no wind. The patch would be ours until a breeze came to shove it from us. Then the clouds would move back. It would happen. “The wind goes toward the south and turns about to the north; it whirls about continuously and it would return again according to its circuits.”1 At the moment the wind blew elsewhere and there was a split in the heavens.
The sun’s warmth still could not squeeze through. The earth was hard. It bruised the foot every step. Breath crystallized at my lips and hung like a gossamer veil. There was sparse growth in the fields. Not far away was snow that never melted. It lay the year through and was an ugly color.
Horace approached me. Horace is a tribal elder and president of the council. He is quite old, an unusual fact. Most of the elderly died underground, but Horace is strong.
“This is good,” he said of the blue patch.
I nodded, but I don’t believe in omens.
“We will have luck this time,” he said. “There will be stars tonight.”
“The stars are always there,” I said.
“Tonight we see them.”
“If there is no wind,” I said.
“Ah, no wind. No wind till late. We’ll see stars.” He paused to watch the sky. “It’ll be born by evening.”
Horace left to wait the birth. What else was there to be done? “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done.” I returned to the shelter’s inner-garden.
Excerpt from “Atom and the Eve” (1962)
In my collection Long Buried Things, 1968
General Warren Village bears the name of Major General Dr. Joseph Warren who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill, though he really died on Breed’s Hill. His death was the subject of a painting by John Trumbull called “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill” (how did he ever think of that title), which rallied the rebels and immortalized the General. The Builders of the village probably named it for the inn on the site more than the man. I am not sure why the inn was named after the General since he never left Massachusetts, like we didn’t have any Generals in Pennsylvania.
commanded a brigade at Gettysburg. You can cross part of the battlefield on Meredith Drive. He did survive being struck in the head by shrapnel, which fractured his skull. He also suffered broken ribs and an injured right leg when his horse, killed by the same blow, fell on him. These wounds ended his military career. Maybe if he had gone the final distance and died under his horse he could have won the honor of a tavern named for him. Of course, General Meredith was not really from Pennsylvania either. He was a Hoosier from Indiana.
General Warren Inn sat at the entrance to our street. It was originally built as Old Grog Inn in 1745. It was renamed the Admiral Warren in 1758 after Admiral Peter Warren. Admiral Warren was with the British Navy and he died at 48 years of age from an illness, not a battle. It was renamed the General Warren Inn in 1825, to honor an American, not a Brit. In 1786 the Penn family sold the land to Casper Fahnestock, thus the source of our street name. The Fahnestock Family (pictured left) almost doomed the inn during the 1820s when they forbade the sale of spirits. I have eaten at the Inn a couple times in my life. It is very expensive, thus why only a couple of times.It does sell spirits these days.
essentially looked alike except for the color. Ours was a light green. William Lutz next door on the east had a darker green. The Frank Andrews to our west had a white one. I wrote a short story inspired by this similarity:
Giles got out of the car. Driving was hopeless. He would have to get home on foot. He could still do it if he kept moving. He would cut across the open fields and shave off distance. There would be no problem. He had stamina. He would run.
The snow was deceitful. It made the landscape appear smooth; the open fields appear flat; the ground appear solid, but beneath the crust of the first field he crossed were corn stalks, broken and crushed from the last harvest. Giles had not run far when his toe snagged on a bent stalk and he fell. To protect his ungloved hands he had been running awkwardly with his hands stuffed into his coat pockets, so when he tripped could not get them out or arms up to catch himself. He fell hard onto his chest. Only the padding of the old stalks cushioned the impact and prevented injury, but snow slid down the coat neck and squeezed up the sleeves. It packed into his left ear. When he got up he was shivering and his face and hands burned with cold.
He dug the snow from his ear with a little finger he could no longer feel. His ear tingled sore to the touch. With a deep breath, he looked across the remaining field toward the woods beyond. He knew the way. He had jogged the route for exercise many times. It cut a mile off the road route. He was no Olympic threat, but he had jogged these two miles in under fifteen minutes, granted it had been fair weather, he could see the ground, the corn had been growing and he could run between the stalk rows, but still, he had strength and stamina and would be home in another half hour.
He ran, but could not make speed in the deepening snow and the mushy fodder crushed beneath it. He slowed to a walk. He knew on reaching the woods the ground would harden and he could run again. Slowing to a walk, he became aware of the numbness in his feet. They felt shot through with Novocain. He felt nothing.
Excerpt from “Runner in the Storm” (1962)
In my collection, Daily Rhapsody 1971)
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