My Spring of Surrender
How my husband’s unexpected mental health diagnosis knocked me flat and helped me rise again.
First Experience with Mania
In March 2023, my husband Justin experienced his first manic episode. Don’t know exactly what that means? I didn’t either. In fact, I had NO IDEA what was happening until weeks later, after he’d been admitted to the hospital and (spoiler alert) was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 disorder at the age of 43.
In the early stages of his manic episode, I didn’t know he had this diagnosis or even what mania was. I just knew that my husband was acting weird. He was being way more outgoing than usual and more confident in himself. Cocky even, which is not at all his typical personality.
After avoiding social media for his entire life, he suddenly started an Instagram account and began prolifically sharing about his favorite bands and audio equipment. He was staying up all night working on creative projects and was unceasingly upbeat and energetic. He was happy. Too happy, in fact, and it was freaking me out.
At first, I thought he was having some sort of creative awakening. Then his behavior became so unlike him that for a few days I thought he was having a midlife crisis and was going to leave me. It wasn’t until he started having what seemed like war flashbacks (even though he’s not a veteran), began tearing our house apart and urgently rearranging things because “the colors weren’t right,” and eventually began talking in rhymes and regressing into a child-like state, that I realized something was terribly wrong.
But still, I had no idea what I was dealing with.
After spending an incredibly frightening day trying to calm him from these relentless obsessions and figure out what was happening to the man I’d loved for over 20 years, I knew I needed help. I called his parents who live nearby, and they took him to their house, where his behavior became angry and increasingly psychotic. We made the decision to call 911 because we didn’t know what else to do. He was taken to the emergency room, spent a night there, and then was transferred to the behavioral health ward at a local hospital.
Several more surreal and terrifying days followed, during which he didn’t recognize me, was rambling nonsensically and nonstop, and seemed tortured to his very soul.
He was eventually given an emergency dose of antipsychotic medication, which calmed his agitation and brought him some relief. It was several more days (which seemed like years) until I spoke directly to a doctor, was given his diagnosis of Bipolar 1 and heard for the first time the term for what he had experienced: an extreme manic episode/psychosis.
Adjusting to Bipolar Life
That was three months ago, and so much has happened since then. Justin came home from the hospital much improved, but still in a (milder) manic state, which was very challenging to our relationship. As the mania gradually dissipated, he then slipped down into a heavy depression which left him lethargic, unfocused, and unable to engage with music or any of the things he most loves in life.
This progression is very typical and expected with bipolar, but it is all very new to us and has been exhausting and overwhelming to navigate. This experience and his diagnosis have changed our life forever.
This all sounds incredibly extreme, and it is, but overall, somehow, we are doing okay. Justin is recovering slowly and steadily, and over the last few weeks, his depression has begun to lift. He and I can communicate and connect much better now than when he was in mania, and we’re working through things together as a team, day by day. Our relationship has survived, and he is safe and not in crisis anymore, and those are the most important things.
We have a lot of support and resources, and we're not alone in this, but it is truly the most challenging thing I have ever faced. I've been stronger than I ever thought I could be, and I've had to surrender my lifelong tendency to control and fix and reach a whole new level of acceptance and faith to keep going.
We've made some major life changes pretty abruptly in support of Justin’s recovery: ceasing some very old destructive habits, drastically reducing the stress levels in our life, and getting really serious about boundaries and direct communication with the people we love. Even though this has turned our life upside down in a way we never could have predicted, in a way it's a blessing, because it's forced us to burn away a lot of the bullshit in our life and focus only on what is most essential.
Sharing Our Story
I’m sharing all this here right now because it’s time. It’s time for me to start sharing my voice and my experience and putting my words out into the world again. Even though it’s messy and disjointed and disturbing and I have no idea what I’m doing, I want to write about these feelings and this journey because that’s what I need to heal and to find myself again.
This is just a snapshot, a rough skeleton of what these past months have been like. I’ve been journaling prolifically, just to stay sane, just to get it all out and try to make sense of all the conflicting feelings, reactions and impulses I’ve experienced. I don’t have a plan for how to “best” lay out this story to you or how to organize my turmoils and triumphs into neat and tidy essays.
But I’m going to try. I’m going to try because it’s important. Because Justin and I both want to be honest and brave and tell the world about what we’ve been through, to soothe our own souls and perhaps help someone else who is struggling.
This experience has lit a fire in my heart to educate people about manic episodes and what they look like. I can see now that Justin was exhibiting clear warning signs of escalating into mania and was checking all the boxes for symptoms of bipolar, but at the time I had no idea what was happening. I keep thinking to myself that we all know the signs of a heart attack. Why do we not know the signs of someone slipping into psychosis?
(I think the depression side is easier, people have some idea what that looks like. But mania is tricky because at first it can seem like a positive thing. It was like, "uhhh, my husband is not himself... what's wrong?... well, he seems too energetic and too happy and too confident in himself and it's weirding me out..." -- didn't seem like something I would logically call up a doctor about).
I have faith that Justin will continue to lift up out of his current depression and get back to a place of equilibrium that he can hopefully sustain. I'm trying to focus on the long game of our life and do the best I can to patiently manage what arises day by day. Right now, we’re focusing on the basics of self-care, allowing our hearts and bodies to heal and rebuilding our life together one day at a time.
Mental illness touches all of us, but it’s something we don’t talk about enough. There is so much to learn, and so many ways we can help and support each other.
For me, this journey is just beginning, and I truly don’t know where I’m going.
The fact that I can accept that uncertainty (most of the time) and still keep moving forward gives me a spark of hope that I want to keep nurturing. Words have always been my friends, my nourishment, my stability. They have never failed me and I want to keep trusting them now, as I walk tentatively into the light and do my best to share my steps and stumbles. Thanks for being here with me.
(You can listen to me read this essay aloud on my YouTube channel.)
I love this piece and I'm so glad you wrote it.
As you know, I also went through a 'year of shit' that started with a falling out with family, moving twice under duress, enduring two miscarriages, and a thousand other indignities that seemed to rain on us far longer than seemed possible. Reading your essay brought back so many memories of that time.
I too found a diary to be a kind of lifeline. One of the hardest things about these sorts of 'bad luck spells' (there really should be a better word for it, but I digress) is that everyone around you seems to expect that there's a predictable arc of BIG BAD THING HAPPENS and then you GET THROUGH IT and, right after that, everything returns to equilibrium, back to normal, move along now... In reality, as Cody says, chaos begets chaos and bad things seem to have a special talent for breeding hordes of unholy descendents -- in the middle of dealing with this-or-that crisis, the roof leaks so you can't get to doing laundry and you're wearing two day old socks, the house is a total mess so you're letting the dog out a lot to keep her out of the detritus and she's barking too much which results in a nasty phone call from your neighbors, you lost patience and hurt someone who doesn't deserve it, you forget to pay a bill and it goes to collections...
At some point during that bad year things just started getting worse and worse in such stupid and unbelievable ways that I took a bunch of snippets from my diary and spun that into that 'seasons' themed essay -- I found it to be incredibly therapeutic to be able to put all those terrible things down on paper, in sequence, even just as a way to send it to all the people in my life whose sympathy I felt I was unable to ever earn because in their minds the BIG BAD THING was over and surely equilibrium had returned. I feel like you will gain the same sort of value from writing here -- and I am so here for it :)
Also right there with you on using life experiences like this as a catalyst to cut away a bunch of unhealthy cruft from one's life. One good thing about these times is it brings that sort of editing into crystal clear focus, and that has deep, lasting value.
Love to you both. I am in awe of your strength, as always.