A Mother Living with Mania.
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In the morning when the sun is fully in the sky, I start to drink champagne.
It’s been a long time since I slept, she is fully manic again.
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Sometime in the long dreadful nite she accuses me of things, ravages my short comings, curls into a ball on the carpet, and paces up and down while she tells me a story. She sings to me and makes me laugh and cry. We fight and I accuse her of not holding herself down, but she’s manic and can’t.
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For someone who just couldn’t stay that last long minute, I find her suddenly sitting at my feet…we’re watching the dawn. We take particular note of the birds.
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She tries for a long time to tell me in order to build a bridge; we are a long way from home now. Honesty so difficult in bipolar, the gift, the undercover guise. It’s only a way of returning. It’s how she comes back, I know.
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Then I can cry for her illness and then she will tell me Mum it’s really nothing. Something’s wrong, something will always be wrong. We’ll do this the rest of our lives.
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I can hardly keep staring at the sunlight hitting the carport roof. Compelling and blinding. I too am trying to come down. I am devastated and rebuilt all at once as again I come to understand.
I hear people driving off to work, taking routine care of life, busying themselves in a perfectly acceptable day. Not a life like that here.
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Sister is sleeping in my bed upstairs. She stayed with us as long as she could.
There is a circle where everyone holds hands and waves them abstractedly in the air.
Then I turn to myself as I often have and cry deeply for the sheer event of our peace and love.

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