“Thank you,” I whisper into the phone before I hang up. I am sitting in a hotel across from the world’s saddest Subway with the world’s saddest Sandwich Artist. I walk in with red rimmed eyes and she takes my sandwich order in a monotone that could pass for mocking the depressed. 

 

I’m not suicidal but I just rounded up and called the suicide hotline so someone would listen to me cry. I don’t say a word. I just sob. It has not been this bad in years and I can’t understand. A few days ago, I belonged to myself. To my husband. Today, I belong to bipolar. Maybe I always have. I hurt him badly yesterday. I belong to a monster.

 

Before my husband developed allergies, I went through a plant phase. I wanted to fill our house with green growing things. I took pictures of happy green shoots poking up from the dirt. I smothered my favorite plant with too much water and learned plant surgery to save it from root rot.

 

In 2008, everything was fresh. We were learning about each other. Our experiences, inner thoughts, desires. Fifteen years later, he’s as close as a person can be without climbing into their brain. Sometimes, I press myself into him and whisper amoeba. 

 

He didn’t tell me he was a Seahawks fan until I was in love with him. I had never heard of the Seahawks but I got on board. Wore a jersey to bed. Developed a crush on the quarterback with an endless forehead.

 

We went to the season opener that year. Seattle was full of green growing things but the downtown streets were empty. I felt the hot smother of Los Angeles the first day I lived there - walking Seattle streets was like emerging from under a dirty, sweaty blanket. I started looking at houses when we got back.

 

It took eleven years for us to move north. We should have known from the beginning but I thought I would adjust. I thought I could be strong.

 

After only a few days, an emergency call to the psychiatrist. Why was I spiraling into mania? It was July. The days blurred into the nights. Throw antipsychotics at it until I’m not so fucking terrible.

 

People like me decorated the world but we did not make it. I have two degrees in Research Psychology. I know the research. We don’t even know how the medications work. Lithium was an accidental discovery. The surprise of swallowing an elemental salt until off the shelf wedding rings can’t fit my swollen fingers. 

 

They don’t know. But they wrote a book with the list of my failings that neatly fits into a box they can’t even define. I cry and ask the doctors to tell me why. They look at me, hands tied. Tell me they don’t know. That I’m strong. I’m trying. I send them a list of everything I’m doing. No alcohol. No caffeine. No stressors. Art therapy. Diligently taking medication. I beg them to think of more and they can’t. 

 

I cry and lash out until we talk about inpatient.

 

My weather app lists sunset and sunrise times. Barometric pressure. Humidity.

 

April. I am his third emergency bipolar patient of the day. We all need a med adjustment but mine can last for months.

 

The doctors know what they know. I finally talk to ChatGPT. The pressure. The humidity. The blurry days and nights. It’s killing me. Ruining my life. I haven’t worked in a month. The new medication means I’m not suicidal but I’m tired. We’re all so tired.

 

This is another place I don’t belong. The AI says I need a dry climate. Consistent pressure. Towards the coast because of the altitude. 

 

We are packing for the hot smother.

 

We are trading cozy rainy days with hot chocolate for iced coffee and texting pictures of the thermostat.

 

I hope we’re trading crying for sweating. Fights for whining about traffic. A drugged haze for an hour to go ten miles. 

 

We don’t know. I decorate the world but I do not get to make it. It’s time to stare outside the hothouse at the world I didn’t make.