by S. Hinton-Miller
On a frigid February night, I stood with my head pressed against the windowpane on the top floor of the hospital rubbing the tears flowing down my face with my fists. Even though I yearned for the ability, there was no jumping out of that shatterproof casement. Years before, I’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and though my
In 2027, GRACE & GRAVITY will be edited and published by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Submissions for Volume 12: Grace in Justice are open through November 15th.
doctor prescribed medication that would normally keep me out of the mental ward, sometimes it stopped working.
Before I was diagnosed, I used to write. I wrote poetry, songs, and stories. My writing was good, too. I had begun to get some of my work printed in newspapers and magazines. I was extremely proud that one of my poems was published by my university for placing in the college poetry competition. But then I got married, had children, and later, I got sick.
It was not the physical kind of sickness, but a psychological illness, which few people understood. Bipolar disorder is not only when a person feels especially up or down moodwise. Severe bipolar may cause hallucinations and delusions to the point that the person will see, hear, feel, and believe in things that do not exist. That’s what I have.
My symptoms seemed miniscule at first. Symphonies I had unintentionally constructed in my head played for my ears alone, and although it was unusual, in a strange way, I felt special. However, the symptoms got worse. Walking beside bushes, I heard demons laughing at me, but I couldn’t see them through the cover of bright green foliage. I imagined my friends would try to convince me that the sounds were birds, but this, I could not believe. I feared that I may have become schizophrenic, so instead of telling others of my plight, I kept it to myself. Only my husband and my doctor knew, and they knew only the tip of the iceberg.
I heard the whirring of long, shiny helicopter blades buzzing over my house as the image entered my brain. Soon, I became hysterical as I was sure it would crash on the roof, killing everyone in my home. I would hear the scratch and scrape of gashing claws of dangerous beasts just outside my room as, in vain, I pulled the covers over my head wishing for sleep. Beep, beep, beep, blared alarms through the darkness that no one else could hear.
I saw things, too. Out of the corner of my eye while walking through the halls of my young one’s preschool, I saw a group of black and white Holstein cows grazing. But when I turned my full attention to the herd, the cows were no longer there. Then, there were the bugs. Imaginary black spiders ran up my arm as I screamed, “Get them off, get them off!” and nearly wrecked the car. More ferocious creatures hovered just out of eyesight, figures that swiftly evaded my desperate searches for them.
During this time, I lived in a suburb with my husband. After a total of six miscarriages and a D&C, I was finally able to conceive my kids. One of my children had not yet been diagnosed with autism and ADHD as the other had, but they were showing several of the early signs. When our kids were almost three and seven, we made a huge mistake, and got a young puppy who probably had ADHD as well. A life that seemed arduous because of my mental problems became next to impossible to bear. I had my children’s autism and ADHD to take care of, our crazy dog, and to top it off, various apparitions in my head. Further, my wonderful husband was a busy man, and not always able to help when needed. One day, while he was away for work, one of the children lit the carpet on fire, sending bright orange and yellow flames dancing in the family room.
I lived in constant fear that my children would get hurt. I felt responsible when they went into a store and started screaming and hitting themselves while biting their arms. I was the one responsible when they took off from the store and ran into traffic. It all rested on an extremely unnerved me. At one point, I looked out at my almost-three-year-old and the puppy playing together and realized that I no longer wanted to live with it all. I wanted to die. I cracked.
My husband got home at around six o’clock and found me in our unlit bathroom crying on the floor. I didn’t know how long I had been crying and couldn’t answer when he asked me where the kids were. Even for me, this behavior was abnormal, so my husband found someone to watch the kids and drove us to the hospital.
When I arrived at the emergency room, the nurses took me back for psychiatric evaluation as they didn’t want my constant sobbing to set off the other patients in the waiting room. The assessment took hours before the doctors decided I was a hazard to myself. I was officially checked in and sent to the sixth floor of the hospital. In the psychiatric ward, I once again burst into tears and was given a drug that made me fall asleep.
In the middle of the night, an intercom woke me up booming, “CODE RED!” When I realized where I was, I started shaking. Underneath it all, I was lonely and wanted to be home with the people who loved me best. Especially my kids. For a long time, I pondered hard about my need to have a purpose in life. Then it came to me. My past writing gave me a purpose. I remembered reading children’s books to my kids and thinking, I could write that!
I thought of my children as I went to the main desk to ask for a pen. I have to write! I felt with a ferocity I had been missing for so long. Maybe, if I could get to writing again, I could go back to who I was in my college days. Perhaps I could be more. “Tired?” the nurse questioned as she reached under the desk and brought out some typing paper. I fought hard against bursting into tears once again and instead thought of my children. I smiled, said, “Thank you,” and walked away.
Once the crying stopped, I made a painting in occupational therapy that I called “Sadness,” because it was how I had felt. It was a river scene that looked closely at a brown rock resting in a rush of purple, green, pink, yellow, and blue water. Dark blue settled underneath, and it appeared to be crying, caught in the violent flow of the racing water. Days went by, and every time I picked up my pen and paper, I sat and thought about what I should write. How I should write. Staring at the pages, I would look at the painting—its feelings spoke to me—and realize I had no way of conveying them into words.
After some time, and thanks to the new pills, frightening things no longer darted about my vision. Though I hadn’t written a piece and still felt horribly daunted by my emotional instability, the doctors felt I was better, and I was allowed to go home. Here, even though I was starting to get my self-determination and familial compassion back, I couldn’t think of what or how to write. Friends who were writers would say, “Just write!” but no matter how much magic was inside the pen, none of it flowed for me.
Then it was as if the haze lifted. I had a dream that I was ascending a long, dark stairway toward cool, bright light. With each step closer to the top of the staircase, I felt my head stabilize and I could feel the fresh breezes I had been missing. I could smell life again and it smelled like the ink inside a pen. When I awoke, I remembered what a dear friend of mine had said to me after my stay in the psychiatric ward: “If you show your own strength, it helps those around you.”
I knew what I had to do. I picked up a pen and paper, and with my kids in mind, I started to write.
S. Hinton-Miller has always loved storytelling. In childhood she won awards for her interesting alteration of style starting as early as first grade. With her embrace of writing in college humanities, she continued to win competitions with her poetic narrations. However, it is when she recounts events from her own life that the significance of her writing comes through to the reader. She lives with her husband and offspring in Maryland.
