A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND


Trying to explain manic-depression to someone who hasn’t experienced it is like trying to explain Mozart to someone who is tone deaf. But I’m going to try.

It was 1992. I’d just quit my job, bought a small used RV, and planned to spend the following six months traveling and writing. I’d saved a little money, had a handful of zero-balance credit cards for an emergency, and expected to work along the way from time to time as needed.

I’d started out in a campground on the Oregon Coast. A friend had asked me to check out a few properties to buy down there, and in the process I’d fallen in love with a little weathered turquoise beach house with several glorious Monterey cypress trees on the property. The realtor who had shown it to me felt like a kindred soul. It was an “as is” estate sale for only $39,000, and had “location, location, location.” I couldn’t resist it.

The next day, in great excitement, I called my daughter in Seattle. “Guess what?” I enthused, “I just bought a house!” I went on to describe it in great detail. Her silence told me she was more concerned than excited. “Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “I’ve got it all figured out. It’ll pay for itself. I’ll rent it out to cover the mortgage. It’s a terrific investment.”

I didn’t mention that I’d spent all my savings, and maxed out my credit cards to swing the deal. Suffice it to say I was operating in manic mode where the known laws of cause and effect as well as those of bank loans, mortgages, and maintenance costs on an old house seemed irrelevant and unnecessary. In manic mode I don’t need sleep, I talk too much and too fast, and my mind races in a dozen different directions. Anything seems possible and nothing can go wrong.

During the following three months I had to upgrade the whole electrical system and replace several major appliances in order to offer the place for rent. In addition I discovered that my conviction that I could negotiate a mortgage before the monthly credit card payments came due didn’t quite work out. The bank wouldn’t grant a loan on both the house and the property, but only on the property alone as the house lacked a proper foundation; it had been built directly on the sand. (An apt metaphor for my “business plan!”)

On the other hand I did find a reliable tenant with a steady job who loved the house. This fact lulled me into a false sense of belief in my own good judgment. Then several years later I was able to sell that house to the tenant for nearly twice what I paid for it. Proof positive that I’d done the right thing to begin with.

Drunk with that success and still operating in manic mode I bought a different piece of real estate for almost three times what the first one cost. Necessary repairs stretched my resources past the breaking point, and I ended up borrowing money from friends and relatives including my former mother-in-law. My first tenant made promises and excuses but failed to pay any rent and finally moved away in the middle of the night leaving rent in arrears, the house in shambles, and garbage everywhere.

My next tenant offered to pay the rent a full year in advance. He admitted he had a poor credit record but said he had just won a lawsuit. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

Instead of banking the prepaid rent I traveled for seven weeks in South America. When I returned I had to face problems with both the septic tank and the well water, and, ultimately, a lawsuit, which I lost. I should have realized at the outset that my jackpot tenant made his living by suing people.

The only good news during my landlady years was that no tenant turned either house into a drug lab. In retrospect I understand the irresponsible greed and irrational exuberance that has afflicted the real estate and financial markets the last decade or so.

In manic mode I make really bad decisions. Being in manic mode is like living in a prism, which intensifies the emotional energy that flows through it. As sunshine through a prism creates rainbows or can start a fire, so in manic mode things are either magic or tragic. Sometimes both.

My real estate tycoon phase lasted maybe five years. Cleaning up after myself, and straightening out my life and finances took another ten years during which I bounced from manic to depressive several times over. In manic mode I often hooked up with the wrong men many of whom were also manic-depressive. I used to say “I love the manic-depressives in my life.” I used to brag “At least they’re not boring.”

Manic-depression is now called bipolar; there’s Bipolar I and Bipolar II. Roughly speaking, the difference between the two is that those suffering from Bipolar I create problems they can’t straighten out themselves and tend to move in and out of institutions such as jail, or rehab, or the psych ward.

I have been diagnosed as Bipolar II. For me manic mode feels like living in a Technicolor movie where I’m the star. Depressive mode feels bleak; no energy; no hope; no dreams. It’s an unending dreary slog in grainy black and white accompanied by a what’s-the-use attitude. Maybe the catatonia of depression is nature’s way of compensating for the exhaustion of mania.

Earlier in my life I spent the better part of a decade during my marriage in a chronic depression. I didn’t get dressed in the morning; I didn’t open my living room curtains; I didn’t talk to the neighbors. I remained unavailable to my husband and children in some important ways. When I finally shifted into manic mode I asked for a divorce and became a real estate tycoon.


Before I had a proper diagnosis and treatment my bipolar states could last for months or years at a time, or be rapid-cycling where I shifted from one to the other without blinking which left my friends and family confused and often terrified.

My last manic-depressive breakdown occurred seven years ago and it almost killed me. I finally reached the point where I said “I’m tired of the manic-depressives in my life; they’re too exhausting.” That was the day I stopped subsidizing the manic-depressive in myself and became open to treatment. Fortunately I found a good doctor and within a year or so with proper medication I started to feel alive again.

Nowadays bipolar can be managed with medications that are much more precise than the heavy-duty drugs which I resisted taking for decades because they used to leave my manic-depressive friends dry-mouthed or drooling.

The daily pill I take has changed life for me in ways both subtle and profound. I’ve stopped thinking that my dramatic mood changes were due to weakness of character or lack of will power. I understand that I was probably born with a biochemical imbalance, which should have been treated much earlier and not ignored or rationalized away. However I must accept the side-effects of increased insomnia, and weight gain. And I still have mood swings that are greater than the norm.

Overall, I don’t miss my house built on sand; I don’t miss being an overwhelmed landlady; I don’t miss the devastation of living with bad decisions; I don’t miss upsetting my family.

I do, on occasion, miss the full-blown intoxication of being manic.

IN PRAISE OF EPHEMERA

by Roberta Jean Bryant


I’m an ephemeral events junkie, and particularly delighted that my most favorite example is arriving a month early. Pink dogwoods are blooming everywhere. They look like clouds of pink butterflies settling on silver-gray bare branches. If I could sing I’d burst into song, but end up settling for, “Look, look! Isn’t it glorious?” repeated many times over while driving around in the springtime.

“Ephemera” is a collective noun used to categorize “anything short-lived or transitory.” Antiques Roadshow experts refer to “paper ephemera” such as ticket stubs, event programs, letters and such because they are often discarded and most do not survive the years with the same permanency as a blanket chest or rocking chair.

Flowers are perfect. They bloom and die in a relatively short time span. Butterflies and fireflies and houseflies; asparagus and artichokes and pizza; clouds and rainbows and hailstorms. The aurora borealis and shooting stars and comets. All ephemeral.

Friends and lovers can often fall into this category too – much as we might wish it otherwise.

One reason I love ephemera is that I’m forced to enjoy them NOW. There’s no such thing as, “Wait a minute,” or later when a sunrise or sunset is happening. Often you can’t properly plan an ephemeral event anyway; too many variables.

Nevertheless, I am planning my annual pilgrimage to Denny Hall on the U of W campus. There I hope to find the huge old pink dogwood festooned with its seasonal costume of rosy butterflies before they fade away as perfect ephemera are wont to do. I don’t want to miss the show.

THE IDEA FACTORY

by Roberta Jean Bryant


For many years I drifted, unconscious to the idea factory between my ears. I thought I was not creative, nor interesting; just the lazy daydreamer some teachers had told me I was. I struggled to be a good wife and mother to justify my existence. I read widely enjoying the ideas of other people -- other people obviously smarter, more creative, and less lazy than I was. I secretly dreamed of being an author – not a writer, but an author – a writer of books.

In pursuit of this dream I signed up for a twice a week writing class -- in part because I desperately needed to get out of the house two nights a week. I loved listening to the teacher and the real writers in the class talk shop. I struggled against the tides of my fluctuating self-esteem to get a few words on paper that I could reluctantly drag to class – perhaps to be read aloud.

Within several years I began to be aware of the idea factory in my head which churned out way more ideas for stories and articles and books and Reader’s Digest anecdotes than I could possibly ever have time to develop. The idea factory was open 24/7; it ran three shifts – daytime, swing shift, and the insomnia special. The idea factory was an equal opportunity employer. Ideas ranged from first-rate to pure dreck; they included children’s Sunday school stories as well as the occasional x-rated scenario.

It took me several more years to learn a useful discrimination -- to be able to choose the ideas worthy of the hard work that writing entailed. As it turned out I was not particularly lazy, just a fairly incompetent housewife. Housework wasn’t interesting. Writing, as difficult as it was for me in those early years, was at least an interesting process.

I discovered that marketing the things that I wrote needed the development of a whole new skill set; necessary skills and challenging ones -- especially the public relations ones that entailed talking to agents and editors at writer’s conferences. I had started out as recluse and loner, seldom talking to grownups. The idea factory kept me busy with new approaches to persuasion and publicity. I achieved a certain level of what the world called success.

Busy decades passed. I semi-retired. The idea factory laid off personnel and almost closed. I drifted through a personal recession and a bankruptcy of ideas. I continued to drift. Depression said, “Who cares anyway?”

As it turned out I did. Although I had small hope of it working again, I joined a weekly writing class at the senior center.

The idea factory is open for business. And hiring.