By jb

One of the most interesting things about meeting new people, and starting new parts of your life, is that you get to see yourself through new eyes. I imagine that some people don’t like it, but I find it intriguing.

My most embarrassing–and perhaps most endearing–quality is that I have a seeming inability to pull shit together. I’m that girl–the one whose backpack falls open on the street, the one who always manages to forget something, the one who stands on the street in the rain while a car drives by, sending a 4 foot spray of water halfway up her torso. My med school friends Jacob and Joe take a good amount of pleasure just in watching my life; they don’t hide their laughter, and–halfway up the lecture hall, dripping wet and late–I find myself laughing too.

On Friday, I was going through my morning ritual of rummaging through papers to find that day’s lecture slides. I couldn’t find my biochem notes, and searched for three or four minutes before I found them crumpled up at the bottom of my backpack. I did my best to flatten them out as Joe and I laughed. “You’re a mess,” he said. “A mess.” And I am.

But I wasn’t always this way. I remember, once, I was walking through my high school hallway with a friend, and she looked at me and said, “You smile, and you look like you have it all figured out.”

And I thought I did. Preparing to go to the college of my choice, dating the
most wonderful boy, making good grades with lots of friends: I did think I had it all figured out. But somewhere along the way, I lost that poise and
perfectionism. I broke my back, I made some Bs, I slept through a Calc 3 test and finally allowed myself to skip a class or two. Sometimes, I thought my mind had cracked, and when I was sad, all I wanted to do was sleep or get better, but when the sadness went away, I thought my life was back on track.

I remember visiting my therapist as a sophomore, in late spring, and wondering why I was there. I was happy, wasn’t I? I had things figured out again, didn’t I? I thought I had come to terms with losing my job, and I thought things would be perfect again.

I can’t pretend that I am much older, or even much wiser, than I was then. But two years up the road, I realized that things didn’t have to be perfect, and that this is my life, and I love it. I don’t mind being a mess–it’s just what I do, and it works for me. As long as I have people laughing with me, I’m fine. It’s when the laughter stops that it gets scary.

Yesterday was the sixth month anniversary of my first dose of Lamictal, the drug I take to control my bipolar disorder. It is the sixth month anniversary, also, of the day I hit my eye on Joey’s bed during a tickle fight and he decided to stop saying “I don’t know” and “Maybe” and take me back as his mess, his bipolar wreck of a girl. The day we started laughing again.

He’s been visiting the last two days, and we have been doing our thing–lying together watching the B-52s on YouTube. Loading the dishwasher while singing to the Village People. Eating too much ice cream. Sleeping in a bed where we thrash around and steal each others’ blanket space, and roll onto each others’ pillows and turn in circles and talk incoherently all night.

Waking up, pulling the covers back to my side, I smiled knowing that this fitful oppositional sleep is the best sleep I get, and it’s the sleep I want for the rest of my life.

Loving him is the best thing I’ve ever done, even if I do it as a mess, even if I fucked it up a million times. We cannot laugh about the past, and I am bipolar, and I will be medicated for the rest of my life, and I surely am a wreck, a shambles, a hilarious mess–but as long as we can keep laughing at the present, I’ll be fine.

Originally published here.