Grace and Grit

I. ++++Twelve

That first time, I did not recognize my illness as “other.”

It was inevitable, like getting taller, or falling in love.

A lovely despair descended like a black-velvet envelope,
not unlike the first hit of a drug, deliciously dangerous.
Like tasting a rich, foreign dessert for the first time, I let it dissolve on my tongue
with a mixture of terror and longing.

II. ++++Thirteen

Bright red ribbons of flesh, magical,
danced before me like hair bows,
+++++++++++++++++++maypole streamers,
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Christmas wrapping.

I was still a child.
I reveled in the brilliance, the headiness, the potency.
I was mad with power.

Like every first explorer, I vanished
before anyone noticed I had left.

III. ++++Fifteen

The name I was given at birth means “industrious.”
Like a factory worker with black lung, I sunk with the realization
my industry could not save me.

Still, I tried harder, studied harder, prayed harder. I scrubbed the grit from my nails
and thanked the meager, buzzing lumens of the dying incandescent bulbs.

No one seemed too alarmed, so I thought I was passing. Sallow-cheeked
and haunted, I started to see you as Something; I called you Depression.

(spring)

I had never seen so much green before or since.
Blinding emerald, radiant jade.
I couldn’t get over how normal everyone acted, pretending
their eyes were not exploding with sparks and spikes of color.

I see a photo of myself from then; my eyes were a luminous obsidian,
a Band-Aid pasted high across my left cheek.

IV. ++++Seventeen

I graduated four years after Columbine,
two years after 9/11. The beginning of an era.

Sometime between the beginning and end of high school, my peers
grew out of their flirtation with mental illness.

How could I explain
that cutting, starving, vomiting, praying, boasting, isolating, lying
were means to appease a disease I did not know I had?

I fell in line with the other “weird” kids,
many who turned out to be just fine (“dramatic”).
As for the rest of us—we turned out
+++++++++++traumatized, brilliant, gay, ill, or dead
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++(or some combination thereof).

But those days are gone now. The graduation stage I skipped away from recedes in the distance
like a bad hairline or a sunset in the rearview of a convertible
you never owned, just heard about in a song.

(summer)

You are given a name.

There were overstuffed chairs, lemon yellow.
There was a humming aquarium in the corner, its filter a soothing bubble.

An awkward ginger psychiatrist flitted around like a hummingbird.
He could have been any character from a detective novel. An amused recess of my mind
was already constructing a story; how I would look in the Technicolor movie adaptation, fainting
when I am interviewed about how I escaped.

The soft click of the door (my mother was late) snapped me back.

Clearing a throat that did not need to be cleared,
ginger suspect #7 named you, made a formal accusation:
“Bipolar disorder. Manic depression.”

My mother waved a hand in front of her face with annoyance,
brushing off an imaginary fly as if having children were an extended stay
at a resort in Panama, my father having forgotten to board the plane at all.

But you, my illness, the main suspect, were casually propped in the corner.
You were a 1920s film star, slicked back hair, pinstriped suit, smugly lighting a cigarette.

The unmistakable metal flick of the lighter.
The barely audible hiss of the flame.
A cloud of smoke. The camera panned to you.

V. ++++Eighteen

I got drugs. We all pretended nothing changed.

Memories from this time are like fast flickers on a slide projector,
each click and thunk advancing a new scene.

Summer days of endless bugs swarming beneath my skin,
[change meds]
draining my bank account, 27 new pairs of pants I did not want or need,
[change meds]
flecks of snow swirling in my eyes, like living inside a snow globe or television static.
[change meds]
Fledging from the nest.

VI. ++++Twenty

A sunny day.
I felt gentle, undulating heat, my feet striking the pavement,
almost annoyingly ordinary. I thought about next week; I wondered
if this was what people called “hope.”

I did not know I would relapse.

In six months’ time, for reasons I do not know, I would stop taking the drugs.

I did not know I would sit rocking on the edge of my bed, teetering
on the edge of a knife blade, my fingers surfing
a perfectly balanced wave on a pile of pills.

Like so many bipolar patients, I would find myself facing the inevitable,
recurring nightmare of being Schrödinger’s cat.

A moment was coming in which the hull of a finally stable ship would upend again.

VII. ++++Thirty

I was a doctor by then.

Lucky to have lived that long
and never had such a great loss.
My grandfather had been the sun
around which my family orbited.

In his cold, waxen face, I saw that my grief had no anchor.

It was both more intense and less painful
than years of bellying up to the chemical bar in my brain
and begging for relief.

VIII. ++++Today

I tuck a message into a bottle, toss it into the waves
toward my future self.

When it washes up on the craggy shore of wherever I find myself,
I will pull the waterlogged cork with a soggy pop, and read:

“You have been here before; you will be here again.
You are author and audience of your own story—
a tale of both grace and grit.”

Emily Boshkoff is a writer and practicing child psychologist. She has personally experienced mental illness (bipolar disorder) starting at age 12, and is immensely grateful for the gift of psychotherapy and medication. She also believes that experiencing intense emotions as a result of her diagnosis has shaped her into a writer and a better therapist. She is honored to be featured in Please See Me and loved working with the editorial team on this project. She loves living and adventuring in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her wife and son.

Header image Love Sorrow Self Portrait by Natalie Brescia