Dear Daniel

Dear Daniel,

For all the noise they make, my parents haven’t got the first clue how to handle a child or an adult child with bipolar disorder. Which is sad considering they have two of them. My mother thinks a pill is a panacea of sorts. Take it and things are automatically all better. Which just simply isn’t the case. Even I have trouble coping with my illness at times. Not the pill part. I don’t have trouble with the idea of taking medicine. It’s like brushing my teeth or taking a shower.  Or doing my steps. I just do it.

Am I still prone to hypomanic highs and crashing off of them? Yes. Staying balanced is a constant battle which requires you to be ever vigilant, and on the lookout for symptoms that could sneak up on you without you even knowing it. Which happened to me.

I’ve had a relatively GREAT year. Lots of contracts, 4 books out, 3 bestsellers, two festival awards. Wrote 5 books. Wrote 2 screenplays. 1 teleplay, and a treatment. Graduating from therapy. Speaking before the board. Starting a group writers blog about mental illness. By The Seat Of Your Pants. Mentoring young writers struggling with mental illness. And a possible television show? GREAT friends. My first 70K novel. This list goes on and on.

But stress is stress. Good or bad I’m affected monthly and by the weather. So, when I got sick and couldn’t get better Pam stepped up and took me to the doctors three times in 2 weeks.

And then it happened, the bottom fell out. I was overwhelmed. The third trip to the doctor’s was enough to do it. Here’s the thing, yesterday all I wanted was tlc. What I got was a decidedly mixed bag. On the one hand there’s Missy.

She had a day planned with her mother. She wasn’t able to come over. But she took every call. Whether I was crying, normal, or just a mess. She called my mother who had no clue as to how to handle the mixed episode and ran serious interference. I needed my mother to kind, tender, and nurturing, what I got was 50 shades of crazy. I woke up at seven and decided to do a movie marathon and I kicked it off with my favorite Bond movie, Casino Royale. I dozed on and off through it. Took it out, put Polar Express in. Dozed on and off throughout it. Woke up for the last twenty minutes. My mom announced we were having Christmas at the church reception hall.

Because nobody has the balls to stand up to my cousin who invited two more people to an already overcrowded house for my family’s Christmas. If I’m not careful my mood and Brenna are on a collision course. My mom offered up candy that I bought for the house to the church. Told me Christmas would be at the reception hall at church and when I told her I was giving the girls their gifts at church she asked how I was going to hide it from Brenna.

Excuse me? I’ve got a relationship with Rebekah, Bridgette, and Mary that I don’t have with any of Brenna’s children. I made overtures towards her kids that she could have picked up and ran with. She thwarted it at every turn. She only has herself to blame.

My mom kept telling me when I cried that she didn’t want her Christmas ruined. I wonder if it occurred to her there was a reason I don’t particularly care for spending time with my family on Christmas. She doesn’t care about anything other than the ‘perfect holiday’. She really doesn’t.

I mean she loves us but if she had, she wouldn’t have dragged me out of the house with a tornado watch on when she knows how deathly afraid of them I am to spend time with people I don’t necessarily feel up to being around.

I needed her to choose me. But she couldn’t be bothered. Her initial response was, take her to the hospital. She wants me to helpless or healthy and gone. It is true what they say, you can’t go home again, and after Nashville I plan on doing something about it.

Sincerely,

Amy McCorkle