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BIPOLAR in AMERICA: How Mental Illness (Forged and) Ruined My First Marriage
J.I.B.

The story begins with two manic episodes, wrecking into each other, in disastrous, predictable fashion. Begins with the consumption of five lines of Ketamine. Begins with a game of Twister, in a stranger’s apartment. Ends with me plotting my suicide via jumping in front of a bus. The story begins in unstoppable love and ends in unmovable disgust. Begins with two dysfunctional couples having children in the 90’s, Scioto county, ends with another dysfunctional couple ruining each other, Columbus Ohio. The story begins with me fucking a beautiful woman seven times in one night, the very same night we met, forgetting her name until suddenly remembering it after the 4th, marrying her 23 days later. Ends with that same woman unwilling to share a bed with me, or even be in the same room for too long. Ends with her dropping me off at a friend's house in the middle of the night, half my worldly possessions in hand. Ends with her driving off, hoping to never see me again. Begins with me as a reason to live and ends with me as a prison cell. Begins with me as a leech and ends with me as a smashed bug. Her as a giant boot. Begins with her as a deity and ends with her as an apocalyptic event. Begins with two unstable people, their naive attempt at building a metaphorical house out of good intentions. It starts with a mattress on the floor, a T.V, a tin can car that burns oil (all hers) and well under $1000 a month income (on average). Ends with that metaphorical house burning to the ground (more literal). It begins with a whirlwind romance. Ends in a plane crash (more literal). Ends in a hole in the ground (or a crater). Ends in shared suicidal ideation. Begins with two orphans coming together. Ends with two orphans coming apart. Begins with an incredible, life affirming realization that love and real human connection is possible, even in our superficial, vicious world. Ends in humbling disappointment. With realizing that most, if not all, love is conditional. Begins high. Ends low. With drowning after a long fall. Begins one way. Ends another. Ends with a joke, that’s been retold countless times, and isn’t really a joke anymore, but a segway to the moral of this story (if you can call it a moral). Begins one way. Ends another. Begins with two fires starting in a forest. Ends with them burning each other out. Ends with no forest. The air, unbreathable.

And now that we got that out of the way, it began in the beginning:

New Year's Eve, 2017. We were both at a party, at my mom and brother’s house (side note: I’m estranged from both my mom and brother now; another story, another column).

Location is everything.

She was from a farm town, the same county I was from - Minford, Ohio. The joke is, cows out-number human beings in Minford, but I don’t know if it’s a joke or a statistic. Unlike me, she moved almost as soon as she graduated high school. She had a lot to run away from and little to stick around for (from her point of view at the time, and maybe in reality). She packed her bags, dyed her hair, got several facial piercings, and started going by a different name. She rarely came back to town, and was proud of it (at the time). That we met at all, a statistical improbability. Besides the unlikelihood of her even being in that zip code, she was an attractive, vibrant, sociable 19 year old woman, it was New Years Eve (she had options). How or why did she end up here? And why on Earth was she interested in what I had to say? These questions can only be speculated on. She ended up spending her night with me, leaning against my mom’s living room wall, while I snorted Special K off and on with a tall, abnormally handsome man named Johnny (who I had also just met that night, the stranger whose apartment we played Twister at).

So far, this story isn’t unusual. Two young people meet at a party, and they hit it off (boring). But, it only begins in the beginning (begins one way, ends another). We ended up married, 23 days later. We ended up in Columbus Ohio, broke, hungry, and (always) nearly homeless. It’s impossible for this retrospective on our relationship to make any sense, if you don’t understand who we are (or were).

I want to do that in the form of a Cast of Characters:

Isabella (LAST NAME REDACTED): 19(F), Cosmo student. Mother, recovering addict. Father, drug addict, deceased. Brother, alcoholic, estranged (at the time). History of neglect and abuse as a child and adolescent. Little to no contact with her biological family (at the time). Has built a strong network of friends in the absence of a family unit. Carries a deep sense of alienation and general discomfort.

John Ian Bush (the Notorious J.I.B.): M(ish)(23), poet, lit major, aspiring poet. Mother, mentally unstable (now estranged). Father, alcoholic, bipolar (now deceased). Brother, mentally unstable, occasionally violent (now estranged). History of neglect and abuse as a child and adolescent. Built a social network of artists and weirdos, instead of offing himself in the 10th grade. Carries a deep sense of alienation and general discomfort.

And maybe that doesn’t paint a satisfying portrait. Maybe that alone isn’t enough for you to suspend your disbelief (or judgement). It would help if you have an understanding of alienation. Of not just being alone, but truly feeling that way. If you don’t understand that already, I can’t get you there in under 10 pages, and if I could, you probably wouldn’t want to read it.

Maybe this next bit will get us a little closer:

There’s something to be said about how intoxicating it is, being wanted by someone you perceive as being better than you (especially when you think you're beneath everyone else). I have always thought I was beneath everyone else. She was the only person I had ever met (at that point in time) who made me feel like I didn’t have to be ashamed of myself. No reasonable person could expect me to be willing to let that go. I can only speculate on what it was she saw in me, but she saw it (for a season), and that was the important part.

After the night of talking, the five lines of Special K, a game of Twister, the night of marathon sex, the four days following, that I unexpectedly spent with her, in the room she was renting in Victorian Village, Columbus, Ohio (essentially a walk-in closet), the nearly immediate “I love you's, and the believing the “I love you's (I mean really, really believing them), we were at the courthouse, hand and hand, man and wife, taking a picture at that bottom of the steps - as happy as two pigs, rolling in their own shit (more literal). It helped that one of us had little regard for their own life (at the time), and had been considering suicide for months, if not years, before our meeting. It didn’t hurt that the other had no self worth, and had never felt this loved or understood (at the time). You can try to figure out who was which.

Now, you might be asking, didn’t someone try to stop you? And the answer is, of course, mother fucker. But as I mentioned, this story starts with unstoppable love (and ends in unmovable disgust). When presented with the notion that this was a bad idea, that we ought to get to know each other better, or even just try living together first, without getting the government involved, we all but sang the Brand New lyrics "You’re just jealous because we’re young and in love in their God damn faces (I don’t even like that band). It didn’t matter that what we were doing didn’t make sense. Nothing felt that good (until that nonsense transmuted into a terminal disease). If this was a sinking ship, we’d go down with it. Rocks in our pockets. Some real Icarus shit. We told each other that on a daily basis. I warned you, and I am warning you again, there will be drowning.

You’re just jealous because we’re young and in love.

After the court house wedding, we had a simple plan:

Step 1) Location is everything. I had to transfer schools, pack up my essential belongings, sell or trash the rest (mostly trash), and haul my ass to Columbus, Ohio.

Step 2) Completely derail both of our lives in a matter of months (unbeknownst to us).

We lived in one bedroom, in a big house, in one of the most expensive parts of the city (the most expensive city in Ohio). Stayed up most nights, slept late most days. Unemployed (in the beginning). Living off crumbs. A state of instability. Then came the disgust. Sometimes she didn’t want to get out of bed. Some nights I didn’t sleep. Panic. The crying fits. The hunger. The borrowing money we couldn’t pay back. Overwhelming sense of dread. Loss of sense of self. Not having enough gas to get to a job that doesn’t pay enough to afford the gas. Not being able to pay rent. Or food. Feeling trapped. Needing comfort. Needing space. Needing to get high. Needing to find a new place to live. Somewhere we can afford. Moving to a slum in White Hall, with a stranger from the Internet. Living in one bedroom, half the size of the last. No A/C. The heat. The disgust. The needing space. The needing comfort. The crying fits. The wanting to die. One fire burning another fire out, despite the love. Or because of it. The disgust. Unmovable. It began, and now it has to end. Me, a prison, her, a prisoner. Me beneath. A smashed bug. A giant boot. Began one way. Ends another.

I started doing a lot of psychedelics. She started hanging out with new friends she didn’t want me to meet. Friends that she wanted to be hers and hers alone, because she needed something to be hers and hers alone. I tried to understand that. She wanted me to stop touching her while we slept. Then she wanted me to stop touching her at all, when it didn’t involve fucking. And when she stopped fucking me, I knew we were in some real trouble. Then she didn’t want to sleep in the same bed, then the same room. She started staying at her new friend’s house, she was gone most nights. She told me not to text or call, so I didn’t, until I couldn’t stop myself. Then I waited for a reply, even when one didn’t come (think, sad dog waiting at the door for their owner to return). I think we slept in the same bed five times the last two months of our relationship. Those five nights, we fell asleep crying or angry or confused to the point of physical illness, or a combination of the three (maybe that was just me, hard to tell). She rarely saw me without it ending with me crying, and her visibly irritated and leaving. This was the routine.

We ended up moving again, an apartment, the outskirts of Columbus, a 30 minute walk to the nearest bus stop, another hour and a half bus ride to my campus. It was around that time she stopped coming home entirely, and I slipped into a period of inactivity. I spent most days in our new one bedroom (the smallest yet) alone. I didn’t talk to anyone, because that would invite questions like How are you? (Answer: really fucking bad), or Where’s Isabella? (Answer: as far away from me as she can possibly make herself). I tried to read and write, but I was too dissociated to do either, so I watched T.V. Eventually that stopped making sense too. I essentially stopped doing school work, rarely went to class. Partly because I couldn’t get there and back, partly because I was too depressed to leave the room. Besides, maybe she’d come by to get some clothes, and I could see her, even if it’s just for a minute. Even if she’d be mad that I’m there. I subsequently nearly derailed my academic career.

I spent a lot of my time and energy begging her to come home (Think a small child asking their mother not to go to work in the morning). She’d refused, of course. She’d make it clear she was annoyed with me, reminded me she told me she didn’t want me to contact her. That she needed space and I don’t give it to her. I once asked her if we were still together, if she still lived at the apartment (Answer: My stuff is still there, isn’t it?). I think she was trying her best to run me off with cruelty - beat me down until I decided I had enough and left. If so, that method was a miserable failure. I had spent my childhood being told how worthless I was, she was going to have to try harder than that. I don’t know if the acid I was dropping was making it better or worse (yes I do, worse).

Once I got her to agree to come and see me. I was getting picked up that night to go back to Portsmouth for Christmas. She wasn’t coming with me (I asked her if she would, she made it clear she’d sooner die). I think we both knew it was the end of this thing we were doing, and that it could only truly end with a massive explosion. I think we were both waiting (we didn’t wait long).

She came in, barely said a word to me, and went to sleep immediately. After several hours of working up the nerve, I started looking through her phone, hoping to find an excuse to blow up on her (or find something that would push me over the edge, so I could finally summon the courage to jump in front of that bus I mentioned in the intro). I found it, the excuse, whatever it was (I can’t remember).

Here’s what happened: I woke her up, asked her about the messages I found (I don’t remember what they said). She screamed about me going through her phone. She locked me out of the room, started packing a bag. I begged her to let me back in, as if the rest of the house was being eaten by a starving giant, and my life was in actual danger. The next thing I remember is getting picked up several hours later, taking six grams of mushrooms on an empty stomach (I hadn’t eaten in two days), and riding in the back seat, all the way down 23 from Columbus to Portsmouth. It rained the entire fucking time. I hoped with all sincerity that we’d get into some sort of wreck, that would kill me instantly, while sparing the other two people in the car. I figured she’d forgive me at my funeral, and I would have considered that a major win (at the time).

Three weeks later, I talked her into coming to pick me up from Portsmouth, drive me to my friend's place in Bexley. I was going to rent out the friend’s basement for the duration of the next semester. The place was two and a half miles from my campus, doable on foot (little did I know, the streets were going to be covered in snow all winter long). She came with the guy she moved in with after leaving me (the friend she had already been staying with). They had already started dating, or did soon after. He rode in the passenger seat. I knew he was coming, she wouldn’t agree to do it without him. It was the last humiliation of this whole fucking mess; a self inflicted injury. I don’t know what my thought process was. I think I wanted to see her, even if I looked like a salted slug riding in the back seat. I felt very strongly that she was ashamed to have ever been with me, and I was equally ashamed that I was myself. She dropped me off at the curb. She pulled off. She hoped to never see me again. In fact, she wished she’d never met me at all, for both our sakes. She told me so several times in those last months. She meant it as a kindness, like I’m sorry this has happened to you.

And what else did I (we) expect? We bet everything on a sudden, burning feeling of I will die for this (like what suicide bombers, mass shooters and missionaries experience). A feeling of I love this person the way I’m supposed to love myself. But then you realize you don’t know how to love yourself.

It reminds me of that joke that’s referenced in that book, that’s referenced in that movie, that I’m referencing for this column. A guy tells his therapist that his brother thinks he’s a chicken, and spends all day trying to lay eggs. The therapist asks if the patient has tried telling his brother that he, as a matter of fact, isn’t a chicken? And the man says No, Doc, I really could use the eggs.

And that’s where the story ends. Except it isn’t. We talked again, me and Isabella, and long story short, we became friends, good friends even. I trust her more than most people. I knocked up one of her friends from high school six months after we split (another story, another column), and we got a disillusionment a few months after that. Had my pregnant girlfriend snap a picture of me and my ex wife on the courthouse steps, our divorce papers in hand, both of us smiling. Two pigs, still covered in shit, but at least we were aware of how disgusting that was (I call that progress).

It was all nonsense. Nonsense and unbelievable. How we met, that we met, that we got married, that we spun out so hard and so fast. That we allowed ourselves to do something with such a ruinous, predictable outcome. That we hated each other then. That we don’t hate each other now. How we’ll always love each other, but in a way that doesn’t mean living (and dying) for each other.

When we split, my friends came through for me, my teachers and mentors came through for me, and in the end (as corny as it may sound) I came through for me (and I’m a real one for that). I choose to do the difficult work of cleaning the shit off my shoes and moving on, instead of letting myself suffocate in the fire we started. A lot more work than offing yourself, but ultimately more rewarding. I understand, I’m lucky to have a support system, and not everyone does. But we all have a self. Maybe what you should take from this is, you have to come through for yourself. Even with a support system, you don’t have a fucking chance if you don’t (and that’s a J.I.B. grantee). Often, the only unconditional love you’ll find is from you.

Or maybe the point is this: it isn’t true that you have to love yourself before you can love others. But it sure as fuck helps.

You can follow J.I.B. at J.I.B. on IG

A SHOT
Dan Flore III

it’s not Spanish Harlem

it’s not a deep dark blue night
some angel daydreamed

it’s not that late

I’m not gonna stumble out
onto the the New York City streets

I'm nowhere near that time and place

I’m not feeling happy

but I am taking a shot
of the same stuff I drank then

it’s only a shot

but it’s all I’ve got

You can follow Dan Flore III at Dan Flore III on IG

Sucking Magnets
Alex S. Johnson

Hum and spin of particles on a
search and enjoy mission
To wreak interplanetary wrongs they
throng together vibrating sweet violin strains at the
level of cosmic soup
The roots of the tree of the knowledge suck
the base of the Aleph like golden
magnets
Stained with the mark of Cain's disability
to pull back from the ledge
A bustle slopping ass cheeks over the hedgerow
coffins sloped down London High Street in neat procession
Pulling down Major Tom in his
tin can Aeschylean tragedy
The incest hive reverberating with the twang of
mesmeric attraction and repulsion
Never mind the man behind the shower curtain
Psycho sexual satiety, please don't drop the soap
We're data synthesized into surges of power
brownout eyes turgid with doped desire
wide awake nightmare on lust's funeral pyre

You can follow Alex S. Johnson at Alex S. Johnson on FB