Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde

I will remember forever, my beautiful wife andI sitting in the psychiatrist's office in 2004 when she was first diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and him telling us that "this is why bipolar patients end up with no friends. No one can handle the down periods forever."

I literally chuckled and said, "I have a strong constitution. I can handle it. I love her dearly."

For nearly ten years now, I have handled it with as much grace as I could muster. The women in my wife's family have been cursed with the horrors of depression in one form or another for many generations. My wife's mother used to tell the story of Uncle Albin looking at Auntie Flora and smiling, "Yes, Mama."

I have tried to take that story to heart and to always respond, no mater how mean, distasteful or even abusive the comment with "I love you."

She lashes out calling me a liar, an adulterer, an abusive husband because she cannot understand or find her emotional center when it is taken from her by a stressful event or a holiday, anything out of the routine. She accuses me of choosing everything else over her. She cannot see or understand that when she is struggling, there is nothing else but her. No one can focus on anything else. Everything becomes about helping her find her way back to reality.

I consider myself a learned person. I am a voracious reader and have spent my adult life trying to understand this all better. I never believed the rhetoric about a dissociative personality disorder. She has to know how she behaves. She just has to. In the coming days, maybe hours, she will awaken from this monster and my lovely wife will return. She will not remember being overtly aggressive. She will not remember screaming at me in amplified rage. She will not remember stumbling around because she is so susceptible to the medication in this weakened state. She will want to move on. She will want us to move on and we will.

The words in that office echo in my mind, "This is why they have no friends."

Dr.Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde shall never meet...