Guest post by JB

My mental illness added a lot of memorable dates to my Mental Rolodex:

January 2, 2007—the end of the engagement
March 16, 2007—diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, Type II. The beginning of The Fire This Time.
March 22, 2007—prescription for Lamictal, the day we started dating again.

They don’t make anything to commemorate diagnoses of mental illnesses. There are no “Happy Anniversary!” cards, no party hats or banners or streamers. No happy horseshit, humorously deprecating cake inscriptions.

Nonetheless, I still “celebrate”it—mark the date in my head, take time out in the day [as if I could help it] to think about everything that led to that point, and—more importantly—all the things that proceeded out of it. My closest friends know, even, about the day. My best friend in medical school is especially good at keeping track of these things, with a certain flair for understanding what this day must mean to me. He indicates the note in the calendar of his Treo [“Jenny’s BP Anniversary”] and remarks, at lunch, “Let me be the first, and last, to wish you a Happy Anniversary.”

I smile, my new-ish this-is-my-smile smile. Whereas my old smile was wide and bright, fake, this one is new, almost a smirk. The left side of my lip pulls back and slightly up—a smile, to be sure, but sometimes only if you’re careful to look. I have a new dimple in my chin on that side from too much of this smile. See—I smile a lot, and for real. I laugh too. Even in these days, these two years of “I have a mental illness, but it doesn’t have me,” these almost-two years of “pop-a-pill and get some fucking sleep,” these two years of “are you sure you took your meds last night?” and “where do we go from here?”

I am fighting the urge to email my testing psychiatrist. “Remember how you told me I would succeed in medical school?” I want to write. “Remember how you told me bipolar disorder is the most treatable illness?” “Remember how you said I would be ok?”

“You were so right.”

So, on this day, I laugh about it and I cry about it, because I have to. Because you have to do both. As has been expounded by other bloggers in much more eloquent tones, the bitter and the sweet are foils for each other—each brings out the taste of the other. Like measuring kosher salt into the caramel I make in my kitchen, my tears bring out the pureness of my laughter and my half-there smirking-until-I-carve-dimples-in-my-face smile. The moments when we yell at each other or are too stunned by pain to speak, the moments when the hurt is suddenly sharp [like hitting your hand on the oven rack when you pull something out] only serve to enhance the beauty of the following moments—when we forgive or resolve; when in the middle of the night, his arms shoot out and draw me in, his lips at the nape of my neck; when he sends a text message the day after a fight that says, “I love you, ok?” [a code phrase, for us—a combination of” I love you, I’m sorry, I’m an asshole and sometimes so are you.”]

The Fire This Time, I call it, a nod toward James Baldwin [a man who knew a whole world of hurt] and his book “The Fire Next Time.” Because the Next Time isn’t enough, and never will be. Turning a corner around March 16th, 2007, I knew this was it. That The Fire This Time is all I get—that this life with these hues are all I have to work with. So it had better be good, and it had better be passionate. The Fire This Time is in everything: how I work, how I play, how I love. It’s the bitter, the sour, the sweet, the salty, the savory—it’s everything it can be and everything is has to be. It’s the love of a boy who stayed through the hurt; the laughter of the friends who are celebrating it with me; the concern of a parent who still can’t quite understand what bipolar disorder is and what it has to mean to me. The reassurance of one testing psychiatrist who said it would be ok, and my tearing-up half-cocked smile [the bitter and the sweet] when I remember his kindness toward me.

It will never be said, of this life, of The Fire This Time, that “everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” But that’s the point, I think. That’s it.