The thing about drinking is that it’s fun until it’s not. Lowered inhibitions are mildly dangerous when you’re a drunk at a college party but an entirely different animal when you’re a bipolar mother of young children.
An argument with your husband turns into a glass of wine, which turns into seven glasses of wine, which lead your mind into darknesses too dense for light to cut. And when the wine consumption occurs after said children’s bedtime, there is no longer anyone in the room to remind you that tomorrow is worth experiencing.
Suicide is something I think about every day. Not in the hey-let’s-do-this way, but more like I consider the opportunity, then pass it up for something better. Living. It’s part of the deal; existing with this illness means trying on that hat and putting it back on the shelf. I try to avoid alcohol at all cost. I tell people it’s because it makes me so sick. What I really mean is that I avoid it because it blurs the images of my kids’ faces, distancing me from the intensity of their attachment to me, weakening the tethers connecting me to this good earth. It makes a way out seem too reasonable, better for everyone. The pain ebbs, worsens, until nothing matters but silencing it all. Drunkenness covers me like a thick coat of paint, slows my breathing, makes facial expression near impossible.
It’s our youngest child’s first birthday, my husband just said that things between us were so bad that he’d leave me if not for our kids, and I’m more intoxicated than I’ve been in the nearly three years we’ve been parents. I’ve been unmedicated for the better part of more than three years to protect pregnancies and nursing babies. This moment, right now, is my low. I’ve never been more frightened, or not. Maybe I mean lethargic. In this moment, I care about nothing. I need help. A man in a cape. A magic potion. Something resembling a sunrise, a glimmer of light in a lover’s eye. A poem. A good story. Anything.
And then I sleep. Dawn uncovers a sliver of hope in my chest, and also on my throbbing hangover. I am concurrently ashamed and relieved. Today, it’s a dear friend’s birthday. My tiny girl repeats me saying thank you. She says, momma. Over and over. And over and over. I may not believe in God, but I can’t shake the feeling that somebody’s trying to make today a gentler place on purpose, trying to remind me of something important.