Rapid Cycler

Anne Pinkerton

Music 1, Gustav Klimt 1895

Word Count 1196

Over the years, he said to me more times than I can count, “You’ll never understand.” This phrase irritated the shit out of me. I was dedicated to proving him wrong, but he was right. I never understood. 

I read extensively and talked to others who either experienced the same or knew/loved those who did. I peppered my therapist with questions at each session and talked with his psychiatrist the one time he let me in the room. I learned to identify symptoms and explored treatments with him. I tolerated side effects — not happening to me exactly, but near me — with the patience of any dedicated wife. He suffered; I suffered. But I could never actually be in my husband’s head, and therefore, could never truly, properly understand. 

“Bipolar disorder” entered our lexicon when we’d already been together for more than a decade; he was thirty-eight years old. That was late for a proper diagnosis, and he’d already had several labels slapped on the problems in his brain: major depression, panic disorder, and social anxiety, starting when he was fourteen. These were all coexisting — overlapping and distinct — muddying the underlying issue. “Manic depression” really was a better name. It was so descriptive, and I appreciate that efficiency. He was manic, then he was depressed, then back again — the mood swings described in the starkest, most opposing terms. I’m sorry we gave it up for the more clinical-sounding term. 

Whatever the moniker, the explanation provided relief to him. And terror to me. 

I had admired and sometimes even coveted what appeared as raw dedication and drive. He could no more withhold his need for writing music than his need for breath. It never occurred to me in the early days that staying up all night playing guitar and being unable to hold a regular job was anything other than the sign of a true artist. 

And I loved the true artist of him. Music was the most genuine love I’d known, and therefore, I was drawn to those who could create it. With a focus I never witnessed before or since, he worked and worked and worked on songs, he learned all of the instruments (with ease), and recorded himself playing all of the parts. The end results were always surprising and consistently incredible. I was glad when a friend said, “I think he’s a genius,” because I assumed I was just biased. 

Later, I would learn his lack of sleep and hyperactivity could translate to “out of touch with reality,” his output and demeanor “grandiose” — terms I learned to associate with the disease after reading books, studying online, and subscribing to a newsletter called bpHope, the “hope” part being what I latched onto when I was afraid. I would ultimately be grateful he wasn’t so impulsive that he had sex with lots of other people, spent all of our money, or gambled away our home. Because I learned that it could be like that. 

Somehow, his brain chemistry also elevated his long-term memory. “You were wearing that red flannel shirt when we went to see Guided By Voices on October 13, 1995,” he’d say. Or, “Remember that time we were in New Hampshire the year after we got married, and the thunderstorms were so loud, we couldn’t hear each other talk inside the cabin?” I didn’t — it was 15 years previous. Recollection was, for him, like a magic trick. It took a long time for me to realize there were things he wished he could forget. 

The only career other than musician that he ever really considered was being a history teacher. Because, of course, he remembered all the dates, all the details. 

And he was funny. When he was “up,” he’d be witty as hell. Students likely would have loved him. I’d laugh at his banter and anecdotes until I practically fell off the couch. But there came a time — after I knew what we were dealing with — when I would respond to his pacing and frantic talking by saying, “You’re being chatty, baby.” It was our signal, because it was kinder than my telling him he was going off the rails. 

In between his spells of prolific creativity and bursts of personality, he sank. He didn’t want to go to a friend’s barbeque or a concert I’d been eager to see. He didn’t want to leave his bed or shower or put on a clean shirt. He wanted me to stay with him, on the couch and in the dark, the TV our only companion. I made excuses for him when I attended parties without him, which became most of the time. “He’s really busy practicing for tour,” I’d say, or “He’s got a stomach bug.” 

My husband suffered tremendous migraines, during which I pushed my thumb into the base of his skull. He threw up at the drop of a hat. He lost track of where his body was in space, knocking into door jambs and slicing his fingers with kitchen knives. He got gout, which made his big toe swell so badly, shoes wouldn’t fit and even a cotton sock hurt too much to bear. Pain made him more depressed; depression caused more pain. 

He began to make sinister comments: I should send him to the glue factory, his brain was broken, he was useless, I was the only one who would ever put up with him. “It’s like squirrels are juggling chainsaws in my head,” he said to me one night. I laughed until I realized it was no joke. 

“Rapid cycler” was a term so apt he used it to name a record; it became like a second name. Because his mood roller coaster was fast: it soared upward and was thrilling. You just couldn’t trust it to stay there. A trough was always right behind the swell. We both braced for it. But there was only so much that bracing could help us avoid the terror of the unpredictability. 

I designed the cover of that record with the chainsaws and cycling in mind, illustrating my sense of the creation and destruction within him, an array of whirring, pointy blades. A picture of a feeling. But I wondered if I had really captured it at all.  

Pharmaceuticals did to him what he said compression did to a music mix: they shaved off the lows, but it also cut out the highs, squeezing his existence into a humdrum midrange frequency. He missed the high-hat cymbals but not the sub-bass, so to speak. And who wouldn’t?

I loved his weird, difficult brain. I loved its energy, memory, imagination. I envied the intelligence it held and the humor it brought. And I hated it just as much, as passionately as he did. Because his brain’s capacity for despair was equally boundless. The two sides were too severe — fire and water, blazing and drowning, over and over. There’s only so long someone — or a marriage — can keep burning and dying out like that. 

Clinically, my brain is unexceptional. I’ll never devise anything as stunning as he. But what I ultimately understood was simply that I was lucky, grateful even, to never understand. 

Anne is the author of the memoir Were You Close? a sister’s quest to know the brother she lost (Vine Leaves Press, 2023). Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Modern Loss, Hippocampus, and “Beautiful Things” at River Teeth Journal, among other publications, as well as the anthology, The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink.