Prompt: Pick a phrase important to you and write about it.
Following Frost
Robert Frost in his seminal poem, “The Road Not Taken,” ends the piece with the following: “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” I love this poem so much I had my brother read it at my wedding, knowing this notion of “I took the road less traveled” had been so key to me throughout my life, as I stood there at the altar 22 years ago; and indeed it remains woven in my life today.
When I was a young child, I always felt like I was marching to a different drummer. Outgoing, creative, always performing, my mother says it was like the oxygen was sucked out of the room when I was on one of my energetic highs. But then I would have these dark, low periods that no one seemed to understand, least of all me. As I entered my teenage years, I discovered booze and cigarettes, which I found I could use to manage all the angsty turmoil inside of me—somewhat.
I had no idea that what I was experiencing was the beginning of a serious mental illness, bipolar disorder. I saw no therapist or psychiatrist at the time. This was the early 1980s, I was living in a small, privileged suburb of Columbus, Ohio, where no one I knew was under the care of a mental health professional. I was left to my own devices to muddle through as best I could, drinking way too much than I should have, not really noticing that I drank twice as much as my friends, though that would become glaringly apparent when I enrolled in a small, elite women’s college in Massachusetts in the Fall of 1984. There I tried to rally mostly meekish, library-bound women into joining me on nightly forays out to smoky taverns, only to encounter resistance from most. So I learned to drink alone.
Fast forward to my mid-twenties, when I was living and working in Washington D.C. and I met and fell in love with a much older man, who ended up convincing me to quit my very rewarding career with the federal government and move across the world to Almaty, Kazakhstan. I had complete culture shock when I arrived, it was a run-down, dark and dirty testament to failed Communism, with large, empty cement buildings, outdoor gathering places where people had stolen the wood from the benches to burn for firewood, a place where I ate horse meat and once drunk on too much vodka almost ate a piece of dead goat’s head offered up by the town’s mayor to me at a neighborhood gathering. I quickly realized I was drunk, miserable, and homesick and soon left the country and the man.
Not knowing where else to go, I returned to my family in Columbus, where after a few sessions with a wise therapist, I was convinced to enter the Talbot Hall outpatient alcohol and drug rehab program. I was 28 or 29, I cannot remember exactly, but I know I was young, the only one of my friends giving up alcohol and weed at the time. I embraced AA with ferocious energy, driving to meetings all around town, drinking the coffee and chain smoking like there was no tomorrow. But I fell back in with my high school buddies, and started smoking weed, rationalizing that was OK as long as I didn’t touch alcohol. I would meet my former punk rocker husband at this time, and we fell in love listening to jazz on the porch of my home the summer of 2000. In a way, he was a lost soul like I was, and we had found one another at last.
We married in the Fall of 2001, a month after 9/11, and stopped by New York City to see the World Trade Center wreckage during our honeymoon travels. I dunno, it just seemed like the proper thing to do at the time, pay respects to the fallen. Then in true road-less-traveled fashion, I exploded into my first manic psychotic episode four months later, finding myself strapped in tightly to a gurney being wheeled down an emergency room corridor to a waiting ambulance, screaming for God while my husband stood by watching, tears streaming down his face. Welcome official bipolar type 1 diagnosis.
I’ve been on a road ever since of managing a dual diagnosis of alcoholism and bipolar disorder, meeting some similar souls along the way, me always trying to model a picture of resilience even on dark days when I feel highly frustrated with my condition and want to head down a path of self-pity. I have had numerous substance abuse relapses, but snapped to in 2017 when I was 50, giving up marijuana and alcohol for good and soon coming back to AA and earnestly starting to work on the 12 Steps. I recently celebrated my 6-year sober anniversary, something I’m very proud of and continue to build upon, one day at a time. My bipolar still flares up, despite rigid medication compliance by me, but I’m lucky to have an excellent treatment team and supportive family as a safety net.
I don’t know where my unique road plans to take me, I’m just staying in today, taking things as they come. I do sometimes fall prey to anxious thoughts about catastrophic future scenarios, but I’m learning to better manage that with my AA program. Yes, I’m on a dually-diagnosed road less traveled, but that has indeed made the difference. I view the world more compassionately today, with an inner wisdom bourn out from years of suffering. Easy does it is my mantra today, as I sit here at age 57, getting closer to 60 and all that entails. I may have stumbled and fallen down many times, but I’m currently back on my road, walking. And I think right now I’d call that a triumph.
