If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the almost fourteen years we’ve been friends, it’s that living with bipolar disorder isn’t a one day at the end of March thing. It’s an every day of every month thing.
Dear Fran.
It’s World Bipolar Day in a few days, and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. This letter is my gift to you. For World Bipolar Day, yes. But really for each and every day. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the almost fourteen years we’ve been friends, it’s that living with bipolar disorder isn’t a one day at the end of March thing. It’s an every day of every month thing.
That’s something not everyone realises. There are reasons for that. You have better days and worse days, and are more likely to engage with other people on your better days. You choose not to share everything with everyone all the time. It’s also true that the impacts of illness on your life are not equally obvious to others. As well as bipolar you live with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. We hang out together every day, but I’m generally unaware how badly the pain and fatigue are affecting you unless you specifically mention it. The same can be true of bipolar when the symptoms are less than extreme. The fact that you present well on a given day doesn’t mean you’re not dealing with the realities of illness beneath the surface.
Your life is lived on a precipice, balancing your energy and mood and pain on the one hand, and on the other hand your meds and therapies and all the other work you do to stay as well as possible. Do you remember a while ago when I commented on how you well you were doing?
“You’re living your best life,” I said.
“Thanks to my meds,” you replied. “And thanks to sixty-four years of working my ass off to get here.”
You were right on both counts. The meds are important but they’re not enough on their own. I learned that in the first six months or so of our friendship. When we met you were in wild mania. That was a ride, for us both. It took me a while to recognise how unsafe it was for you. You saw it first. You and your psychiatrist. He was a good match for you, even when you didn’t like what he told you! Together, you agreed a change in medication. Your mania receded, overshooting into the deepest of depressions. You saw it coming. You warned me and your other friends. You knew how hard it would be, and gave us permission to leave before it got too bad. Most of us stayed. I stayed. That winter was both less awful and far worse than you predicted. But we saw it out. Sat it out. One day, sometimes one hour, at a time.
In the epilogue of our book you said “[Marty] did not reach down a hand to pull me up from my dark hole. He came down and sat with me while I began rethreading, bit my bit, what could be mended.” That means a lot to me because often that’s all I know how to do. Yes I help with practical things — we work well together! — but often the only gift I can offer you is my presence. Anaïs Nin expressed it well. “I weep,” she said, “because you cannot save people. You can only love them. You can’t transform them, you can only console them.”
You say you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. I take that seriously. But I know also that I can’t keep you here on my own. I can only lend my support, my energy, my heart, to help you keep yourself as well as possible. As safe as possible. You have a great support team, meds that work for you, and strategies and techniques you’ve learned over decades of illness. I’m proud to be part of that team — Team Frannie — but like everything else of value, that’s not by accident. I found an old note from 2017 where you said “You are in close, but only because you fought for it.” Yes I did, and always will. You let me in, and I’m not going anywhere.
Thankfully, it’s been years since you were in prolonged episodes of mania or depression. There have been occasions when you’ve veered off the central path, as it were, but you’ve brought things back to centre. The ability to recover the middle ground is a sign that you’re better able to manage your illnesses. It isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen by luck or chance alone. To paraphrase a line generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the price of stability is eternal vigilance.
Those not on the inside, as it were, see someone living life, engaging in the world, seemingly unaffected by illness. It’s a sad indictment of these times that someone who’s lived with debilitating and life-threatening illness all their life can have their diagnoses dismissed, simply because they don’t present as ill enough to be believed. Belief is the first and most fundamental gift we can offer anyone courageous enough to share their reality with us. That’s as true of illness as it is of trauma, abuse, or anything else. I believe you, Fran. It never occurred to me not to.
Our friendship doesn’t depend on how well or badly things are going for you. We’ve navigated some pretty dire times in the past fourteen years, and shared times of delight, success, and joy. It’s all equally valued and valuable. And our friendship isn’t all one way. You’re there for me every bit as much as I’m there for you! I may not have a mental health diagnosis but I have my dark times, my doubts, my insecurities, as much as anyone else. At such times, you remind me who I am and what I have to offer. As you told me once when I was doubting myself, “You wrote a book. A whole fucking book. Don’t you give yourself credit for that?” On another occasion, you reassured me, “You’re just fucked up, like the rest of us.” That’s a reminder I cherish!
On World Bipolar Day and every other day, I’m happy and proud to be your friend, Fran. To have you in my life and to be in yours. There are no guarrantees. As you wrote fifteen years ago in Lessons of the Night, illness doesn’t go away. “I still have chronic fatigue syndrome. I still have fibromyalgia. I still have bipolar. I manage them. They don’t manage me. They are part of the package instead of who I am.” That essay is an extraordinary testament to your spirit and the realities of living with illness. It deserves to be read by everyone wanting to understand. It helped me to understand.
I hope you never again experience the wild mania and crippling depression you knew when we were first friends, but if that ever happens, I will be here. In the immortal words:
“You’re stuck with me now, Fran.”
“Like gum on my shoe.”
Your best friend,
Marty
World Bipolar Day
World Bipolar Day is celebrated each year on 30 March, the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh, who was diagnosed with bipolar after he died. The vision of World Bipolar Day is to encourage understanding about what bipolar is — and isn’t — and to banish stigma from the face of the planet.
Photo by sq lim at Unsplash.
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