Bipolar Me

My husband, who is also my caregiver, has been away this week, visiting his mother in Florida. There have been times in my life when I could not handle being alone for a week so I would make the trip with him, which involved different sorts of triggers and stresses. There have been other times I have been up to it and this is one of those times.

We prepared carefully, though, in case a bout of depression struck while he was away. First on the list was food. Sometimes when I am very depressed I eat nothing but cereal straight out of the box and peanut butter straight out of the jar. Even though mac-n-cheese is one of my go-to comfort foods, there have been times when I did not have the wherewithal to microwave a cup of even the nasty kind.

Grocery shopping is hard for me too. It sure takes a lot of spoons. But we found a spoonful enough day and made the trek. Our goal was to get easy-to-make comfort foods, plus fruits, nuts, hummus, veggie chips, salad, granola bars, yogurt, cheese, and other vaguely nutritious foods. We got way more food than I actually needed for a week alone, but a lot of it was frozen and would keep.

I helped my husband prepare, too, doing computer stuff like booking his flights, printing out boarding passes, checking regulations on what he could have in his carry-on, and ordering new sunglasses for him. I helped him find a carry-on bag that was the right size. And I drove him to the airport at dark-thirty in the morning, which caused me some anxiety and some unpleasant symptoms when I got home.

Thursday was a particularly big day for me. Since it’s my day off from work, I had scheduled more activities than I really should have – showering, dressing, lunching with a friend, an appointment with our tax lady, and an interview with the local paper about my recently published book (!). It occurred to me that I might have to reschedule at least one of these, most likely the tax appointment, if it all seemed to be getting to be Too Much. But lunch was delightful, the tax appointment was a breeze, and the interview was rescheduled owing to really scary weather. And when it occurred, it went really well.

Other than that, my routine was fairly, well, routine. Do my transcription work, work on my blogs in between assignments, feed and water the cats and the stupid mouse my husband is trying to nurse back to life after a brief encounter with the aforementioned cats, a caregiving duty I did not want and was only convinced to do because he had named the critter Dilbert.

As for the dancing boys? I suppose I should say that I keep the numbers of some strippers in my desk just in case hypersexuality sets in. Really, though, it’s a running joke we have whenever one of us goes away. More like a fantasy, really. Or maybe a memory. There have been times when I was manic enough to gather a gang of girlfriends and go to such a show.

But this time, stability and sustenance were the name of the game. And of course, remembering to pick Dan up at the airport tonight. With Daylight Savings Time in effect now, maybe it’ll even still be light when I do.