Chapter 45 Monk #2
“It could be the end of something.” She huffs out a humorless laugh.
“I read about this exoplanet that is falling apart as it orbits its star. They refer to it as a doomed world. It orbits the star so close that its surface is scorched. It’s vaporizing in space.
Sometimes I’m afraid if you get too close, that would be us. That I might destroy you, both of us.”
“You think this diagnosis destroyed what we had, but that wasn’t it.” I lock our gazes. “Bipolar isn’t our issue. Trust is. Or rather a lack of it. You not trusting me to accept this, to stay through it, and me not trusting you after what I saw that night.”
“You didn’t know.”
“If I had known you were going through this, nothing would have kept me away from you. What you experienced, it’s some scary shit.
The thought of you not even knowing what was happening in your own mind, in your body, how scared you must have been.
At least now I know, and this diagnosis can tell me what the challenges are and how I can help. ”
“You won’t always be able to help.”
“I know that, but I’d be with you. Do you have any idea what that means to me?” I tilt her chin up and kiss along her jaw. “Let me do this with you. Let me have you.”
She drops her head to my shoulder and grips my shirt, her fist tight around the cotton, anchoring us together.
“Bipolar has taken a lot of things from me,” she finally says. “Even though I’m terrified, I want you too much to let it take you away from me again. So maybe we could keep seeing each other as long as you—”
“Are you saying you do want this to be a relationship?”
“I’m saying you don’t have to worry about me being with anyone else.”
I frown, noting, but not understanding why she’s making that distinction. “Is there a but, an and, a qualifier? Why are you saying it that way?”
“I just don’t want you to think it can lead to… more.”
“What does that mean? ‘More’?”
“I know you, Monk. You try to come off all hard, but you’re a romantic. At some point, you’ll want the fairy-tale ending, the wife, the kids.”
“You don’t want that?” I ask, not challenging her idea of me because on some level it’s true. It’s the same thing my father said.
“I’m not doing that.” The look she levels on me brooks no argument. It’s set in her concrete will. “No husband. No wife. No kids. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Disaster? Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”
“You haven’t sat through the support group meetings I have.
Haven’t heard a woman distraught because she had an episode and her husband is divorcing her.
Using her diagnosis to get sole custody.
Telling the court she can’t be trusted with her own kids.
It goes bad fast. I never want that with someone I care about.
I want to leave the door open so he or she can easily walk away if things go south, because they very well may at some point. ”
“What you just described, this escape hatch,” I say, “that’s not love. Not how I understand it. Not how I want it. This exit plan when things get hard. This get-out-of-jail-free card when you’re manic or depressed.”
I cup her cheek and rub my thumb across the soft skin. “If you were sick, depressed, spiraling, they would have to pry me away from you.”
“I’m not asking for that.” She gulps and her hand trembles in mine, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. “I just want to continue as we are, but exclusively.”
“And if I find someone who does want a life with me, kids, the whole fairy tale, as you call it, we just stop? And you watch me go make a life with her? No hard feelings?”
I watch her face for any sign that a scenario like that would be hell for her, because it would be agony for me.
“Yeah, sure.” She drops her gaze and presses her lips together tightly. “When you need to go, you can. Can’t we just enjoy being in each other’s lives right now? Caring for each other and having great sex without… thinking about the future? It doesn’t have to be forever.”
She doesn’t realize. There’s no way she could know she’s the only one I’ve ever considered forever with.
“It would be different now,” I say. “You take your medication and you’re stable, right? And wouldn’t you know the signs if something changes?”
“It’s not always that cut and dried. I’m not sure I can ask anyone to take that risk.”
“Or is it that you don’t want to take that risk?”
“Look, we weren’t talking about commitment before you knew, so why should we now? We can just keep on doing what we were doing.”
“Because before, I didn’t know the truth. Didn’t understand what happened in the past. This changes everything.” I search the turbulence in her eyes. “If I had known, it would have changed everything then. We’ve wasted a lot of time.”
She pulls back and my hand falls from her face, hanging limply at my side, but twitching to touch her again when she stands.
“The last twelve years working out my meds, finding the right psychiatrist, the right therapist, learning coping strategies, figuring out my triggers—none of that was wasted time,” she asserts.
“And I’m glad I did it without the added pressure of maintaining a romantic relationship.
My whole life does not revolve around having a partner, and being single is not some holding pattern until I find love.
Against all odds, I’ve built a full, rewarding life with work I love and family and friends I adore. That could never be a waste.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Not wasted, but delayed.”
“We’ve both done amazing things since we broke up. Maybe we needed that time apart and weren’t supposed to be in each other’s lives until now.”
“I can accept that, but now that we are back in each other’s lives, maybe it’s divine timing.”
“Divine?” She laughs a little, lifting a skeptical brow. “I thought you’d left religion behind.”
“Not completely. I believe what I believe. I think, for example, that the universe has a way of guiding us. Pointing us in the direction we should take.” I sit back and link my hands behind my head. “Did you know Thelonious Monk had bipolar?”
“What?” Widened with shock, her eyes snap to mine. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, I know everything there is to know about that man. I’m not sure at the time they knew what to call it, but now it’s generally believed that’s what it was.
He was in and out of hospitals the last years of his life.
Erratic behavior onstage. Substance abuse to cope with his mental illness. The whole nine.”
“I like him even more now,” she says, managing a tiny smile.
“There’s this chaos in so much of his music. He didn’t mind discordant notes, allowed odd, extended silences, banged the piano sometimes in ways that feel random. You know you’re watching a genius when you see him play and the mind that music comes from has to be beautiful.”
I want to say what I really mean—that a mind like hers is beautiful, but I’m not sure she would believe me yet.
She might not understand that knowing about her diagnosis brings a measure of relief.
It assembles all the puzzle pieces I could never fit together.
It makes a new kind of sense that liberates the emotion I’ve felt foolish for holding on to.
I wasn’t a fool. She wasn’t a cheat, and what we had was real.
“So you were named after a famous musician who had the same diagnosis as I do.” Her laugh is tinny in the stretched silence, like she needs to speak or get lost in the space between us. “That’s quite a coincidence, huh?”
“Coincidence?” I stand and wrap my arms around her waist.
“I mean, yeah. What would you call it?” she asks.
I think back to the conversation with my father about faith and how it shifts and makes itself evident.
“I’d call it a sign.”