Stars in the Eyes
When I was a little girl of seven, I swallowed the “Prince Charming” myth whole. I cried watching the movie Sleeping Beauty, because I wanted my own prince to come. Then adolescence happened and I found myself a wallflower– not only at socials but in everyday life as well. Few friends and no dates. I had one good friend who was best friends with someone else which somehow negated our relationship. I was painfully shy and full of anxieties. College was a little better. I had my first boyfriend, a run of relationships that mostly went nowhere fast and, again, few friends. High school peers were marrying off. My brief brush with marriage to a Sri Lankan ended when he went back home, promising to return. He never did.
And then it happened, totally out of the blue and beyond my control, I fell in love with an older, West Indian woman at work. I became obsessed with a relationship that was never to be and nearly lost my job in the process. Unable to handle such feelings on so many levels, I went free fall into a downward spiral of depression and psychosis, commonly called a nervous breakdown. It lasted for years. But I still believed in love and Prince Charming (in this case, “Queen” Charming). For years I lived in the netherworld of mental illness, locked in isolation. I explored being gay but like my college relationships, all failed. I will never know the truth of all that happened between the West Indian woman and me. After testing many medications before arriving at the right cocktail, years of therapy taught me about my own fears of love and how to love. I was diagnosed Bipolar but treated as if I had Asperger’s as well, since I could not decipher what in hell’s name was going on in social relationships. I was not officially diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder until some 30 years later.
One day I grew strong enough to stand up to life. For the first time, I could think of what I wanted in a person and look for it. After all I had been through, I still believed in the “Prince Charming” myth. But he never found me. I found him. He didn’t sweep off my feet. I swept him into my arms. I understood him because he was Aspie like me. I knew if I did not make a move he never would. So, with heart-pounding fear, I asked him out and then he asked me out, and we bumbled along and married 4 years later, after I basically said “now or never.”
We remain happily married almost 24 years later. And so came “happily ever after.” But not exactly as I expected. For one thing there were fights which I hated. I had to learn that this was normal. Then, when my best friend died a few months after my father died, both of cancer, it hit me for the first time. There was no “happily ever after.” I realized that marriage either ended in divorce or death. Both dire. And that one of us was going to lose the other except in the unlikely event we both died together. How could I have been so stupid and not have seen this before??
Today my love for my husband runs deep and I realize I am closer to him than to any other human I have ever loved. I live in terror of something happening to him. As we both approach old age every good moment becomes a treasure I try to engrave on my memory. My husband has blossomed into an empathic, caring clinical social worker. He now expresses his deep affection towards me. Even I, who had a hard time recognizing love, can see this. He still teases me relentlessly. This is his way of showing love. I understand that because my father was the same way. But my husband delights in getting away with teasing me. “What joy!” he said one morning, as he played some mischief on me. “I love this “love thing’!” he said. I never thought he would say that or turn out to be so affectionate and loving. Just as I never thought I would find love. And when I looked at him with love in my heart that morning after the teasing stopped, he said, “What?” We still have trouble interpreting expressions and are still shy of eye contact even with each other. I said what I had read long ago that a child had written. When two people in love look at each other, stars come out of their eyes. A wonderful image that comes as close to “happily ever after” as one can get.
“Never, Never”
“It won’t happen again. Never. Never. Never. It’ll never happen again. No. No. No.”
The words to a song by Yusuf, better known as Cat Stevens, about a love affair gone awry. The words reverberate in my head repeatedly in true Bipolar style, as in true Aspie style, I listen to the song over and over and over and over again. My perseveration on the song fashions the words into a mantra, sending me full throttle into another state of consciousness, like the whirling dervishes of Istanbul who spin until they enter a mystical state. Since I no longer alter my consciousness with alcohol, cigarettes or recreational drugs (was too crazy to go that route), and since I am on anti-psychotic medications which keep me in reality, I have to use music, meditate and take refuge in nature to venture into my much-missed mystical states of being. The states today are washed out versions of the vibrant intensity I was accustomed to earlier in my life. But then, at age 28, my mind, never too strong to begin with, broke down and reality shattered into so many smithereens of glass. “It’s always a trade-off,” the experts say. But (and a “but” with a capital “B”) the psych meds hold me together and, most importantly of all, they allow me to love.
“It will never happen again. No. No. No.”
I can’t say that. My first major manic episode was ignited by a flaming crush at work that catapulted me into the fractionated world of psychosis for a very long time. Some thirty years later I am unsure just how far away that world is. It is not unusual for love to trigger the first manic episode in Bipolars, and I had another when I met the man who was to become my husband. This time the psychosis lost the war– because the love was reciprocated and nurturing– the most stable thing I had ever experienced. And (big “and”) because I was medicated. Though it felt like another break with reality was encroaching on my psyche, it never materialized and has not since.
But there have been close calls now and then. Writing my memoir of madness while working part-time, I would go to my job with all the raw feelings I was writing about whirling around inside me and, seemingly, outside me as well, as though stamped on my forehead. The memories and flashbacks bubbled up from deep inside like a lava flow of feelings. But no breakdown.
Mania is not the only state that flirts with psychosis. So, too, does the underbelly of the beast, depression. Loss of loved ones and caring for my dying mother brought me perilously close to the precipice again but extra medication kept me on the sane side of psychosis.
Even now any highly emotional experience (and being bipolar there are many) can shake the foundations of the self. Beholding great beauty in ecstatic encounters with nature, profound connections between thoughts and ideas, connecting deeply to another person—all these can send me reeling into space wondering if I can make it back to earth. These are all dangers I engage in somewhat recklessly for they make up the majestic magic and mystery of life. Friends and family I have helped keep my feet on the ground, but my husband is my real anchor to reality. Should something happen to Tom, well…
No. Unlike a dead love affair, I can’t say the descent into madness “will never happen again.” As I drift in and out of tantalizing trips into mania and try to flee the inevitable free fall into depression, I hang on for dear life and will not let go.
Enjoy the song sung soulfully by Cat Stevens, “MaybeYou’re Right…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUnxkW4zeM4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
WELCOME!!
Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness. While not a lesson plan it documents my therapeutic journey to finding love against all odds. Useful for therapists, and for patients with Bipolar Disorder and/or Asperger’s Syndrome. A scholarly, autobiographical case history of my story was the showcase article in vol. 13 no. 1 of Psychoanalytic Inquiry in 1993.
For the full length narrative non-fictional account click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for a short bio, a full description, and to purchase my book.
About MOONSIDE…
Learning to love is an ongoing process and I am writing posts on new lessons learned.
All the original abstract painting is posted to advocate for Bipolar Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome– for it is those very handicaps that feed my art. The more realistic nature art is dedicated to raising consciousness for animals and the environment. All other art work is purely for your enjoyment.
Finally I have also posted selections from my nature writing and poetry. My nature essays were published in a small paper in upstate New York for a year and a half. The poems have appeared throughout my life, coming and going as they please.
This is an award free blog.
All work on this blog is under copyright and may not be used by anyone, for any purpose, without permission.
A Reluctant Tenderness: Asperger’s Fear of Love
June 21, 2012
It is the first heat wave of the summer. For me, that means high anxiety bordering on panic. Not terribly together to begin with, I become totally undone in the heat. Nuzzling up to my husband in bed over morning coffee alleviates some of the gloom and doom. Today, the longest day of the year, is a day I dread, as a child of the longest night.
Tom gets up and brushes his hair. For the first time in all the time I have known him, he offers to brush mine. “It will feel good!” he says. Just in time, I override my almost instinctive Aspie reluctance to try anything new and say, “Okay.” He comes over to me and gently runs his two brushes through my hair. It is hard to say whether it feels GREAT due to the physical act itself or because I feel the love in his hands. I see love all over his face, now wrinkled in a tender smile. As he brushes, he says my hair is beautiful. And to think I almost said no to this. It took me years to learn to overcome my fear of closeness. A battle I still fight.
How did we, two Aspies, get to be so close? We have had 25 years together and gone through some pretty rough times and some pretty tough losses. Maybe the losses have made us more aware of mortality, our own and the mortality of the other. The future is no longer an endless expanse of space reaching up to the sky. It never was. Youth suffers from an “optical delusion of consciousness,” to use Einstein’s words out of context. I now make much more of an attempt to savor every moment with Tom. Of course, I often fall way short of that high aspiration. Partly it is due to my being Aspie, and partly it is a limitation of human nature.
I am infinitely blessed to have Tom in my life, a feeling I have had during most of our time together. It surfaces much more intensely these days. Tom struggles with his Aspieness as well. He shows more love to me while in his “during-the work-week mode.” I understand this now. We both need lots of alone time. It has taken years to learn these lessons but, oh, have the results been well worth the struggle!
Despite our limitations, this moment in time, born this morning, is one I will add to my treasure chest of memories, which I hope will always be there, tucked inside my heart until the day it ceases to beat.
MOONSIDE 
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