“I will definitely quit smoking,” I told Linda, as I struggled to match her pace. It was my
second day in Montana and the first time I had seen a mountain. Linda kept her strides
long, her calves flexing and contracting with ease through the unmarked path.

“Isn’t this amazing!”  Linda’s gentle voice shone contentment. “I never get tired of hiking
the Beartooths. Little different than Green Bay, huh?”  She looked back, cheeks flushed
through her olive skin. “How ya doing?”

I paused, leaning against a boulder. “Uh, I’m hanging in there.” Linda smiled and kept
moving.

Though my heart beat double time, my lungs wouldn’t open any wider. I kept climbing
anyway, scrambling on all fours, pulling myself up with tree roots, watching carefully for
which rocks were suitable footholds and which were better to send me tumbling down
the mountain, if tomorrow that were more to my liking. Despite my wheezy lungs, my
heart spread warmth I hadn’t felt in months. Sweat cleansed my body of last night’s beer
and began to release the last six months of grief.

In truth, I was relieved not to be accommodated. Since December my friends had been
walking on eggshells, careful not to mention Matthew’s name. As if saying it would
remind me of what happened. Remind me?  That’s all I thought about. I breathed it in
and out all day long, my heart reminding me with every weak beat. I was tired of
changing therapists, trying to find one that fit. I was tired of my family’s frustration that I
wasn’t better yet. I was tired of being that girl whose boyfriend had killed himself.

When my Aunt Linda heard the news, she sent a condolence note on a thin white card
with an orange and yellow nature scene. After the tidbits of family info and the customary
“I’m so sorry,” she closed with the first exchange to raise my interest in months. “If you’d
like to come to Montana for the summer, we have an extra room for you. New scenery
might be nice.”

I had never been to Montana, and since I was spending most days buried in my down
comforter, I accepted.

My first summer home from college, Matthew and I waited tables together at a pasta
restaurant. We fell in love over the Spicy Garlic and spent the summer drinking wine on
his roof. Every morning, Matthew played songs on his guitar, and every night we made
love before falling asleep, limbs entwined. Come fall, I returned to college in Iowa.
Matthew struggled against his tendency to fade with the seasons. I gave him emotional
mouth-to-mouth for three months from 300 miles away.

December 3rd, the anniversary of his engagement approached. Matthew became
overwhelmed with his patterns of self-destruction. This time he sank beneath the surface
and did not come up for air. His last words to me, in a suicide note I received through the
mail, read I love this world and the people in it, but I cannot love myself. I dropped out of
school, drank more beer, smoked more pot. Summer was approaching again. Time for a
change.

“What do you want to do after this?” Linda paused, waiting for me to catch up.

“Have a beer.”

People like to believe, “If only I didn’t have to work/go to school/take care of my kids, I
would watch more movies and read more books.”  After three weeks of a fruitless job
search in a state where I only knew three people, renting one or two movies every night,
reading one or two books each week, I was no longer under that delusion.

Just as I considered serving unlimited salad bowls at the Olive Garden, I got an
interview at Walker’s Grill. Walker’s occupied the garden level of a historic landmark, the
old Chamber of Commerce building. Bill, the owner, toured France every year, sampling
wines and sending cases home. (“Before I die, I’m going to drink a five-figure bottle of
wine,” he told me once.)  I wore a button-down, light cotton shirt with my dark-rimmed
glasses to the interview. The shirt’s shade of blue soothed my nerves and the glasses
made me feel smart. I entered the restaurant with a Midwest work ethic, an eagerness
to learn, and an air of fake confidence.

“How long do think you can commit to this job?” Bill asked.

“Indefinitely,” I replied, blinking slowly.

“I’m the only one who’s here indefinitely,” Bill squinted. I shifted my gaze. “My point is,
we don’t hire people who will only be here for six months.”

“Um, at least a year,” I offered, which wasn’t totally a lie. I had no plans past the
summer, as I was incapable of looking that far into the future.

After the interview, I returned to the cozy 1940’s bungalow on one of the “tree streets,”
a few blocks from Montana State University. Linda sat at the dining room table, head
bowed, sorting through stacks of paper. Her dark hair was clipped in short waves, curved
neatly around her nape. She looked up from the mess. “How’d it go?”

My brain buzzed with clips of the interview. “I think it went well but it’s hard to say. They
asked me a lot of questions and I remembered to ask questions back so I looked
interested. I tried to make a lot of eye contact to seem confident but I just don’t know.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. I could feel my heart beat through my fingertips.

“You should send a thank you note.”  She rummaged through the pile and found a stack
of cards. “Here you go.”

Three days later, I got a phone call.

“Hello?”

“Hi Tara, this is Gala from Walker’s Grill. If you’re still interested, we’d like to offer you a
job.”

I had mornings to myself at Linda’s house. I’d come up from the basement, eyes blurry
with sleep, and pour a cup from the French press my Uncle Paul had made that morning
before riding his bike to work, off to fight the polluting oil companies. I splashed in some
water and microwaved the mug for a few minutes, added cream, then sat down at the
antique oak table. Sunlight streamed in the east windows as I read the Billings Gazette.

Montana was run by large landholders, and the state had only voted for one Democratic
president since 1968. I tortured myself every day reading the opinion page. Misguided
souls preached “no state sales tax” despite Montana’s poverty ranking as the highest
outside the Deep South. They called for an amendment to privatize public ownership of
water, one the state Constitution’s founding principles. And they loved their guns.

“Teddy, weeeee!  One, two, three . . . teddy, wee!”  Linda and Paul’s son sat on my bed
sending a brown teddy bear spiraling above his head. My dad had given me that bear for
Christmas two years ago—the annual present he picked out on his own, apart from the
meticulously foolproof list. When I started spending most nights at Matthew’s
apartment—much to my father’s dismay who promptly kicked me out of the house—I
brought it along. Matthew’s parents found the bear when he was in the hospital, and
they tucked it under his arm as he died.
“Dante, it’s time to get ready for swim lessons. Can you put Teddy back please?”

It was Tuesday, one of the afternoons I watched my six-year-old cousin. Dante ran to
retrieve the bear from its crash landing on a pile of dirty laundry. “Ooga-booga,” he
replied, giving Teddy one last spin onto the bed.

“Dante. March.”

“Okay, Tara-tory,” he replied, racing up the stairs. He pulled off his shirt, discarding it the
hallway before he reached his room. Dante was quite proud of his clever nickname. A few
years later, picking up on a buzzword in the media, I would become “Tara-rism.”

With Dante buckled in the backseat, we made the short trip to Rocky Mountain College.
After I secured a parking space, Dante slipped his soft warm fingers in my hand, and we
trekked across the blacktop. The sight of brick buildings and lush green lawns invoked a
twinge of sadness that I was no longer in school.

Inside the pool, the smell of chlorine recalled the excitement of summer vacation. Dante
joined his swimming group, and I sat on the bleachers with a copy of Utne Reader,
content reading to the hum of echoing voices, splashing water, and tweeting whistles.
Between paragraphs of “Four Weeks Vacation: a Campaign to Give Americans more Free
Time,” I glanced around at the other responsible adult figures. I wondered what they
thought of me. Did I look like a single mother?  The nanny?  The depressed niece whose
aunt pitied and brought into her home?  Dante waved from the sidelines, shivering in his
green and orange trunks, lips blue. I smiled back, happy to be the important figure in
someone’s life, if only for a few hours each week.

On other afternoons, I explored the parks near the house, soaking in Montana’s brown,
rocky landscape. Jagged bluffs surrounded Billings. Up the steep hill towards the airport,
I climbed car-sized boulders comfortably positioned at the edge of the cliffs. Wildflowers
grew between the cracks. Twisted pine tree roots grappled through the rocks in search
of water and security. I sunbathed nude in the protection of the rock’s walls, reading
Prozac Nation. Ninety degrees of dry heat beat down from the sun, radiated off the
rocks, and soaked into my tender flesh. The sun—steady, enduring, optimistic—relaxed
the tension grief had twisted through my muscles. My mind went mercifully blank.

At the Yoga Center on one of Billing’s oldest streets, I learned how to breathe. The
space circulated calm, gentle energy between its polished wood floors, uneven brick
walls, and slow chanting music. At the end of each class, in Shiva Sana, the instructor
would tuck blankets under our chins, lay an eye pillow across our brow, and gently
squeeze our shoulders, forearms, calves, and feet. During one particular meditation,
between gentle deep breaths, a bright blue image flashed under my eye pillow. I was
back between the sky blue sheets lying next to the searching blue eyes. My lashes
dampened, and my heart began to pound. Before I could grasp hold, the moment passed.

What took me from that memory?  Since Matthew’s death, I had wished, hoped, prayed,
pleaded, demanded, and bargained to recapture the sensation of Matthew. If he must
stay dead and I couldn’t find the energy to quit living, at the very least, let us meet
somewhere in the middle. I read books with titles like Hello from Heaven! filled with
testimonials of the bereaved communicating with loved ones. I stopped reading them
when the book claimed communication with suicide victims was not likely. Suicide deaths,
it explained, were trapped between this world and the next for leaving the earth before
“their time.”  I crossed “books written by psychics” off the list of helpful things to read in
moments of desperation. I wiped my eyes and disciplined my breath.

On free nights, I had dinner with Linda, Paul, and Dante. Linda would make curried
chicken in a clay adobe pot or polenta with saltissa, the sausage you could only buy at
Stan’s Big Dollar in my parents’ Upper Michigan hometown. We often had dinner guests,
which kept the household fresh: Kane, the son of a family friend, a medical student with
whom I had a one-week fling; Jeanne, Paul’s sister who was running for State
Representative and lived on a grasshopper-infested ranch (as discovered from behind
the safety of a car window); Marjorie, Paul’s mother who was unhappily transitioning to
assisted living. She was entering early stage Alzheimer’s but still had many sharp
moments.

“I heard you lost someone you loved,” Marjorie said to me one night at dinner. I was
taken aback, so used to people avoiding the death topic, suicide especially, at all costs.
“I buried two husbands but nothing like that . . .” she said. Her milky blue eyes searched
my face without pity, without judgment. Marjorie just looked sad.

During my training at Walker’s, Bill catalogued each ingredient in every dish on the
menu, describing the origin, kitchen prep, and cooking technique. I learned the five wine
regions in France and how the grapes transformed when planted in the US, then
Australia, then Argentina and Chile. I made a list of food description words and mixed
and matched them to the salmon, lamb, and pasta specials each night. Tangy and sweet
pork chop chutney; halibut in buttery, rich buerre blanc; bright, tart, blood orange crème
brulee. Our patrons were fierce regulars in the fourteen days morels were in season,
summer vacationers driving cross-country sent by the Sheraton, ranchers requesting
specially cut twenty-four ounce steaks. They listened intently to my descriptions and
trusted my recommendations.

“Hi Bill,” I greeted my boss early in the dinner rush. Conversation buzzed between
patrons among the dimmed lights, white linen, and elaborate floral arrangements. I
placed my tray on the bar and began arranging drinks in a circle. Bill leaned against the
bar, one cowboy boot crossed over the other.

“Not yet,” he quipped. “But I will be after a few more Martinis.”  He swallowed the rest
of his Cosmo and raised the empty toward the bartender. “I’ll take a Mandarin this time,
Jed.”

Two rounds of tables later, the night began to wind down. “Do you wanna go out after
this?” I asked Corrie. She looked up from the order she was punching into the
computer. “I was thinking about the Brew Pub.”

“I have to get Jake from my mom’s,” she hesitated, brushing back a dark curl.  “But I
guess I could have one drink.”

Corrie was a great mother, but she was still young. After working as a nude model for
art students in Missoula, she dropped out of college and moved to LA. By her second
waitressing job, Corrie was picked up by an agent who worked with after-school
specials and made-for-TV-movies. “I was the only fair-skinned brunette in a city of sun-
soaked blonds,” she told me. The week she met her agent, Corrie discovered she was
pregnant. Two months later and one boyfriend lighter, she drove home to Montana,
stopping every thirty minutes to throw up.

After work we drove the three blocks to the Brew Pub. Late night Billings was crawling
with drunken homeless people, most harmless, but it didn’t feel safe to walk. The Brew
Pub was a long space, with a polished oak bar in the center and high tops radiating
around it. We drank pints of Blond Ale. Corrie had one and left. I stayed for four more
as others from work joined the table.

As high as Bill, I climbed into my car and started the engine, paying special attention
not to fasten my seatbelt. I drove a coppery-brown Toyota which badly needed new
brakes, shocks, and a muffler. Driving a beater was liberating. I had no fear of an
oversized pickup parking too close and dinging the door or the stereo getting ripped
off since the tape deck only played on one side.

Pulling out of the parking lot, I made a wrong turn off Third Ave. “Fuck,” I muttered. I
think I can go this way, I thought, avoiding the effort of a U-turn. I rummaged through
my purse to find a light for my Kamel Red and didn’t notice the orange cones
approaching. The car dropped off the edge of solid road into torn up construction
gravel, bouncing roughly. I continued to rummage through my purse until I found the
light, flicked the fuse, and inhaled the incense, before gunning the Toyota back onto
solid road.

“I’ve got the day off tomorrow,” Linda said as we each chose a page from the
Mandala coloring book. Her Eastern European immigrant/lesbian/artist friend designed
the books. This one was a compilation of Mandalas created by children around the
world. “I was thinking about going for a hike. You wanna come?”

“Sure, I’ll set my alarm for seven or so. Can you pass me the orange and blue,
please?”  Walker’s was closed on Sundays. It was good for me to have something
planned on those days – otherwise I might miss the daylight hours.

“I’ll knock on your door around eight,” Linda replied.

By 8:30 the next morning we were buckling into the black leather seats of Linda’s 88
Saab. “Where are we headed?”  I glanced over at Linda. She was replacing her
delicate metal-framed glasses with multi-colored, bug-eyed sunglasses.

She gauged my expression. “I thought the frames were fun at the time.  Now I’m
stuck with them.”  She laughed. “We’re going to the Beartooths but not through Red
Lodge. This spot is along the Wyoming border. It’s much more secluded….
Peaceful.”

We drove south past the smoke stacks of sugar beet refineries. There were only
about three towns between Billings and the Wyoming border, but there was plenty of
earth, the color of deep pumpkin, faded by wind and dust that stretched out to an
invisible horizon. When the two met, they melted perfectly into each other, creating a
soft purple haze you could only see if you relaxed your eyes, breathing into the beauty
of perfect union.

“So how are things going?”  Linda glanced at my copy of Veronika Decides to Die. “You’
ve been napping a lot lately.”

I finished my sentence and put the book down. “Okay, I guess.”  I paused. “Work is
going really well. I’ve been hanging out with Corrie a lot lately. Jacob is such a fun
baby – he loves going out to lunch with us.”  I paused and picked at my fingernails.

“Linda, what would you do if Paul died?”

Linda adjusted the volume on the stereo and thought for a moment. “Well, I’m sure I’
d be very sad. I would probably put a lot of energy into Dante, but I like to think I
could find another partner someday.”

“But what if he’s your soul mate?”

“I guess I hope there’s more than one match for each of us. Why should there only be
one?  Anyway, who says a soul mate has to be your spouse?  Can’t you find that in a
child or a friend or more than one match?”

“I guess I never thought of that.”  As I let her words soak into my brain, I stared at
the mountains slowly rising through the windshield. “Linda, do you know that when I
was young, you were the only adult who spoke to me like a person and not a little
kid?”

She patted my knee and we drove on in silence.

Two hours later we pulled onto a gravel road. The Saab bounced roughly between
potholes. Long pine tree arms brushed the car windows and scented the air. A few
minutes later, the trees receded and the skyline opened. Linda pulled along the edge
of the gravel opening, took the key from the ignition, and turned towards me.

“This is it.”  Her dark eyes sparkled in anticipation.

As we stepped out of the car, I strained my neck to soak in the mountains. Island arc,
continental collision, convergent plate, subduction zone, compression, reverse thrust
fault during the Late Permian to the Miocene describe how these mountains rose from
the earth; understanding those things made them no less magnificent. The brown
giants lined with pines sat quietly as monuments of endurance. The ground around the
mountains was dusty and dry, covered with sage and other tough brush. My heart
jumped as a small pinkish-gray lizard shot out its tongue and captured a cricket.

We began our hike through a field of tall grasses. Pickers tangled into the laces of my
tennis shoes; twigs and rough groundcover scraped my unprotected legs. I narrowly
missed stepping in a huge pile of dung. “This is also a horse trail,” Linda said.

As we ascended the trail, the landscape changed quickly from an open grass field to
thick mountain forest. The dirt path forked and Linda led me through a narrow ledge.
Holding tightly to rocks for security, we crawled under a narrow arch toward the smell
of moisture. The scattered sagebrush gradually transformed into bright green moss.
Fresh mint and lavender perfumed the air, and I heard the rush of moving water. Then
I saw our destination: a tall and delicate waterfall splashed over a boulder, trickled
down the rock wall, and landed gracefully in a small pool. The mountain walls on three
sides created a private sanctuary. Long smooth grass covered patches of earth, and
tiny flowers in purple, white, and orange bordered the edge of the pool.

Linda and I stripped down and stood under the waterfall’s shockingly cold shower.
The water washed the salty sweat from our hands, hair, and backs. Under the
waterfall, a thick cushion of moss carpeted the rocks. I inhaled the sharp, clean
mountain air, sending fresh oxygen to my brain. Linda took pictures of me from across
the pool, legs crossed, knees hugged to my chest, head turned toward the camera.
The pictures revealed a grin I recognized from another lifetime.

The basement steps at Linda and Paul’s house opened to a ceramic tile landing, with
doors radiating in all directions. My bedroom was across from the laundry room and
shared the floor with Linda’s massage room, the office where they were launching a
bike tour business, and a sauna. The morning of my birthday, I was buried in navy
flannel sheets and a gray-blue down comforter when I was unhappily awakened by
Dante’s voice.

“See you!  See you!” he chimed to the opening and closing of the sauna door.

He seemed to be playing with some imaginary Pokémon friends or maybe his guinea
pig, but after a few more refrains, Linda’s calm voice, neither irritated nor neglectful,
called out, “Dante, can you please keep the sauna door shut. You’re letting the heat
out.”

It was silent for a few moments before Dante began again. “See you!  See you!”

At this point I was wide awake, pissed to be roused so early on my birthday. I lay in
bed thinking of all the torturous ways I could get back at my cousin when to my
surprise, my anger quietly dissipated.

Late June. Humid. Matthew’s second story apartment, upstairs of a 1920s house. One
oscillating fan struggling to cool the room. “There’s something I want to play for you.”
Matthew watched me carefully as he slipped the reddish-orange disk into the stereo.
“I love this song. It always makes me think of you. I play it a lot when you’re not
around.”  I sat on the honey-colored couch, hugging my knees to my chest. Strumming
acoustic guitar vibrated from the speakers:

These notes are marked return to sender
I’ll save this letter for myself
One thing is always true
How good it is to see you
See you . . . See you . . .

I’ve heard that the dead sometimes communicate through the living:  the young, the
infirm, the insane. They are more pure, more base, closer to the elements. I never liked
that idea. It’s too Hollywood-meets-Sylvia Browne. On my twentieth birthday, I began
to understand that like most things in life, it was simpler than that. More subtle. At six
years old, Dante was open to suggestion. He didn’t self-censor the way we do as
insecure teenagers and anxious adults. He said the first thing that popped into his
head, and that day it happened to be a birthday hello from his cousin’s dead boyfriend.

As the sugar maples turned crimson and began dropping their leaves, December 3rd
crept closer – the anniversary of the day Matthew pulled his car into the garage,
blocked the doors, and let the engine run. All he had to do was breathe in and out. A
neighbor heard music blaring from the garage and broke in the door. Doctors stabilized
Matthew’s body only to discover his brain would never regain any upper level function
– no memory, no consciousness – what the doctors called a persistent vegetative
state. We had to remove his feeding tubes and watch his body slip into physical death.
Death by starvation. His mind, his essence was gone, but his heart still beat and his
lungs pumped air. “His soul is trapped,” my sister said after seeing him in the hospital.
“You’re doing the right thing by letting him die.”

I wanted to do something on the anniversary of that day, to not file Matthew’s
memory into the catalog of under-celebrated events in my life. But I could think of
nothing special that was creative and meaningful and understated enough to honor
the life I lost.

I made no plans that day and accepted an invitation from Corrie to find a Christmas
tree. She picked me up in her black Pathfinder with the bumper sticker Well Behaved
Women Rarely Make History on the tailgate. Jacob was strapped in tightly behind me,
red fleece bulging out of his car seat. He smiled and flailed his arms while I buckled in
the front.

We drove towards Red Lodge, my last trip to the mountains, in search of Corrie and
Jacob’s Christmas tree. As the Beartooths wound tighter, Corrie pulled onto the
shoulder near a flat patch of earth. Scraggly pines scattered the rocky ground.
As we searched the area, I thought about the lore associated with pines trees. In my
sorority, the pine tree had been a symbol of the present, its enduring green needles,
its roots that find water where no other trees can live, its one straight stem pointing
towards the heavens. In Chinese art, the pine tree represents longevity,
steadfastness, and discipline. Early New Englanders adorned militia flags with the pine
to symbolize hardiness and fortitude.

“How about this one?”  Corrie stood next to a tree not much taller than herself. The
tree’s branches were thin and few but its trunk was straight and its color strong. I
steadied the tree while Corrie worked the saw. After tying it to the roof, we climbed
back into the truck.

I glanced at Corrie in the fading light as the sun set behind us. “I’m glad I did this
today. I feel like I should be sad, but I’m not. I can’t really explain it. Maybe I’ve been
sad for so long that I don’t have anything left.”

Corrie searched my face, not sure what to say. “I wish I had known what day this is. I
would have done something.”  She leaned across the seat and hugged me tightly.
“There’s nothing to do,” I said into her hair. I let go of her grip and settled into my
seat. “I guess it’s just another day I have to live through.”

As the one year anniversary of Matthew’s death approached, I felt drawn to the place
we had shared our life, the place he was now buried. I wanted to be with my family for
Christmas, to celebrate my progress from the sad, tired girl whose heart pumped very
slowly to a girl who was reintegrating to the land of the living.

“I’ve decided on Minneapolis,” I told Linda. She stacked books into a box while I
packed away my summer tanks. “It’s close enough to Green Bay that I can visit when I
want but not too close that my mother can pop over uninvited. I want to live in the
city. I need a place that’s big enough to keep me interested. And Minneapolis is nice
because there’s a lot of green space.”

“You’ll love Minneapolis,” Linda said. “I lived there right out of college, on 34th and
Grand. Can’t you get reciprocal tuition in Minnesota?”

For my long journey home, Linda packed snacks of trail mix, hard-boiled eggs, and
dried dates (“I always get irregular when I travel,” she told me). As I pulled onto the
freeway, I soaked in the foggy blue mountains one more time, tiny in the distance, and
cranked up the Foo Fighters. It was warm for early December. Most of the October
snow had melted, and the smell of wet earth entered my cracked window. “And I
wonder . . . when I sing along with you . . .” I sang along with Dave Grohl’s angry,
nostalgic, mournful tune, “If everything could ever feel this real forever / If anything
could ever be this good again / The only thing I’ll ever ask of you, you gotta promise
not to stop when I say when . . . ”

“Shit!”  My car’s back wheels slid in slow motion, rocking to the left, rocking to the
right. I held my breath, as if to suspend the laws of physics, though my racing heart
told me it wasn’t working. I turned off the music and struggled to keep my car on the
road, praying a semi was not sitting around the turn. The shady curve along one of
Montana’s signature rocky buttes had blocked the sun from a lingering patch of icy
freeway. I had not noticed the ice until I felt a shadow cast over the sunroof.

A moment later, I was back in the rhythmic pulse of safe highway passage. For a time,
my shoulders remained tense, teeth clenched, brain on alert. But deeper inside my
chest, my heart gradually returned to its steady, enduring, optimistic effort. I had felt
afraid. I continued driving east.

Tara DaPra is an MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, Managing Editor for the literary magazine Dislocate,  and a freelance writer for the Rake.  She enjoys equal parts alone time to social interaction, traveling to places new and familiar, and petting her dog Sally.

Until a few years ago, I was unlikely to endorse psychiatric treatment as a positive influence on my poetry. Writing became a cornerstone of my identity when I was a little girl, long before the initial appearance of my mental illness, and my love of words has carried me through some rough times. I am unsure whether my experiences with bipolar disorder (manic-depression) enhanced my writing, but I can say that my poetry helped me live through these experiences.

I survived to write because I wrote to survive.  I’ve heard many times that a certain amount of emotional instability is associated with an artistic temperament, but it is unknowable whether poets like Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, or Sylvia Plath could have written more brilliantly if they’d received adequate treatment for their disorders. Much has been written about poetry as therapy, but little investigating the effect of therapy on poetry. I talked to a number of local poets and artists who’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness and all agreed that their creativity was essential and therapeutic, and most agreed that it would have been impossible for them to live and work without some form of intervention.

Had I not received help, I would not have survived several near-fatal suicide attempts, and I would not have been able to enjoy my present recovery. I’m pretty sure that if I’d died, I would be writing less poetry.

During my sophomore year at the University of Iowa, I found myself in a tumultuous and confusing world that I had no name for. I dropped out of school and went back home to Omaha, Nebraska, where I sought help from a psychologist who diagnosed my problems as schizophrenia. Engaging me in an unhealthy and highly unethical relationship, he convinced me that any medical treatment for severe mental illness “masked the deeper problem” and was “a coward’s way out.” After three years of intense therapy (which he originally claimed was enough to induce a “cure”), the yank and shove of my emotional states only worsened. Though I wrote constantly, little remains–I frequently burned my work as a prelude to suicide attempts.

1980, my 22nd year, was a series of firsts for me: My first psychotic episode and exposure to psychiatric medications, my first involuntary commitment to a state hospital, and my first ECT’s (electroshock treatments). All marked the true beginning of my 25-year battle with what I called “The Normalocracy,” which governed the consensual reality most people shared.

My role in life, I believed, was to experiment with the tension between the “real world” and the “sub-real world” I inhabited alone, determining the destiny of the Universe. One fall day, I set fire to a pile of boxes in a public park, symbolically destroying the world so I could recreate it. However, the Normalocracy defended itself with the local police, who locked me up in a hospital before my ceremony could be completed.

I was forced to endure injections of Prolixin, a powerful antipsychotic medication, and I spent eight months in its suffocating grip. I desperately wished I could escape the wet blanket of sedation and be someone–anyone–else, a situation I later described in the following poem:

Wishing I Were Anyone Else

For example, that man I pass on the street,
his grey trench coat pulled tight around his ears
like a shell, shielding him from the urgency
of my wishes. His tall form is a clipper ship
in full regalia–he’s both ship and
the sailor in the rigging, pitching in a gale,
each essential to the other.
I’ve grown tired of my tiny island.
Or the woman at the checkout with her cart of
beans and bread, green tea and a pint of Rocky Road,
counting out her coins and smiling
though she gets no change.
I’d take her battered shoes,
tight and worn, for this lead
that drags my feet.
Or my friend with her long dark hair
and glistening eyes, her widow’s peak pointing
to the purity of her complexion,
and though she has pains in her stomach, I’d gladly
exchange those to taste life as she
tastes it–a sip of coffee, round and full, a
symphony in her mouth that I no longer hear.
Her spoon clinks on the edge like a little bell–
a reminder that the present is as clear as that.
I wake every morning to a day fuzzy with fog, trapped
in the soggy net of this medicated mind, and not even
coffee can speed my thoughts, which fall singly
like the maddening drip of a faucet.
Maybe if I wish hard enough I can change.
Then I’d be anyone else but me,
out here walking in the mist past the houses
with their squares of yellow light.

(A Chaos of Angels anthology, 2006)

My first therapist claimed that pills and hospitals could only “take my life away,” and unfortunately, this rang true for many years. No matter how I struggled with side effects of various medications, recurring symptoms arose whenever I discontinued the pills.  When ill, I heard voices in my head shouting at me: “Liar!”   “You phony bitch!” “You’re bullshit!” These hallucinations drowned out my own thoughts, ordering every move I made and commanding me to “off myself.” My vision was impaired by a shifting curtain of colors where dark figures advanced in the periphery. I smelled a strong odor of blood, felt bugs crawling on my legs. My tiny shred of consciousness cowered inside the rubber shell of my skin.

Besides these psychotic symptoms, I had episodes of mania, characterized by overwhelming awareness, acute perspicuity, and joy so intense it was almost painful. I spoke continuously to myself and nearby others, unable to stop the torrent of words, and sometimes the voices in my head began coming out my mouth. My thoughts careened at incredible speeds in this vibrant and shimmering world, and I had no use for food or sleep.

Several manic episodes involved law enforcement personnel. I was arrested for disorderly conduct several times and for stealing the Fire Chief’s squad car from the Omaha Fire Department. Racing down major thoroughfares with lights and siren blaring is an experience I’d be reluctant to give up, even though I spent three terrifying weeks in a maximum security cell at a county hospital.

Had I been allowed pen and paper, I’m sure I would have written some semblance of poetry. During these episodes, I wrote so compulsively that my behavior was categorized as “hypergraphia,” the relentless push to scribble everything down. But I could only produce fragments which, upon examination, fell to pieces like shattered glass. I truly felt more creative, but my disinclination to revise or finish anything gave me little advantage. The longest fragment that has been published follows:

Eating Ourselves

I tasted my arm last week in an arm sandwich I ate just
before going out the door to play in the pond outside where
fish are bigger than the trees and their fantails stream in
the breeze like the breath of death–caught a whiff on the
stairs. It smelled like buckwheat flap jacks and antifreeze.
I could not help but laugh, for the last time I poured
antifreeze on my buckwheat flap jacks, it spilled on my
trousers and opened a curiously wide hole there into a
moonlit place behind someone’s garage. The children were
watching each other, rapt with fascination, as they defecated
in a performance-style show based more on quantity than
quality. I guess we’d all like to be in that picture with
our sticks in hand, poking the faintly steaming mass and
making faces. Such art cannot be sold in the store where I
work. We do not sell that there. We only sell skullcaps
for the workers, overflowing with guitar strings and posies
that force their way up from the roots of all people’s
sorrow. We sell those for 25 cents a piece, and they sell
like hotcakes that have burned so thoroughly they make better
mortarboards themselves, though we don’t sell those out of
season. What brings me back to the point I get lost from is
a sense of embarrassment about my pride, or pride about my
embarrassment, all of which is based loosely on the
profoundly human notion that my nose turns slightly skyward
every time I introduce myself. I’m a bear talking backwards
in the night.

(Another Chicago Magazine, No. 31, 1995)

I wrote dozens of these “muse-ments,” a new genre I developed that “looks like prose but tastes like poetry.” I focussed my energy on the physical sensation of mind flowing to pen and pen to paper, an activity I’ve always found soothing–linking loops and curls to open new worlds with every word. But these exhilarating periods were often followed by depression–an anvil of sadness burdened my chest, rendering my vision grey and fuzzy with tears. I wrote little poetry in this state, but the theme of darkness and death asserted itself many times in my work. An example is my poem “Nine.”

Nine black maids in an empty corridor–
these are the days that have passed.
Threes are the threads that sew them together;
a father, son, and someone’s ghost
are on the road tonight,
eating by matchlight,
sleeping in the ditch.
Each darkened maid could have had a spouse,
each father’s son has a ghost of a chance,
but I have gone too far these days–
dampened my matches, lost my ditch.
The thick black snakes choke on their tails;
I eat myself and cannot swallow. Three
bites, and I take nine breaths,
one for each life I’ve lead.
I’m on the last one.
Nine months in Mama’s belly,
nine years ducking my father’s fist,
nine years since he became a ghost,
nine years more he’s haunted me.
Father, son, and someone’s ghost
are on the road tonight
and I cannot last one life more.
One more night of rain,
one more bite of flesh,
one more night waiting
to be murdered in my sleep–
I lose count.
The alchemy of my imaginings makes Hell
seem so deep; the cycle turns, with no
shadow and no sleep.

(Visions International, No. 53, 1997)

After all this, it may be difficult to understand my objection to the medicines I was required to take. Often, my court-ordered outpatient commitment involved injections and close supervision by mental health authorities. I was threatened with incarceration if I did not comply with their wishes. The tumult of my symptoms was unpleasant, but familiar. I knew of no other self. And the side effects of the older medications nearly destroyed my life–extreme weight gain, a need to sleep 16 to 18 hours a day, drooling, incontinence and a stifling sense of boredom. My curiosity and ability to write vanished, every emotion dulled by this chemical lobotomy. I was in a double bind–damned by the disease I was told I had and damned by the side effects of the “cure.” But I refused to compromise and so spent many years bouncing back and forth between illness and soggy “reality,” between bland complacency and defiant “noncompliance,” with one foot in the gutter and one foot on the curb.

In the world of money and responsibility, I lived my twenties in poverty, unable to keep a job for more than a few weeks. I was homeless for several winter months. I worked a string of lowpaying jobs as nurse’s aide, janitor, bus girl, manual laborer and shift worker at several factories. I donated plasma to afford groceries.

Finally, when it became clear to others that I was not capable of supporting myself, my father filled out the forms for Social Security Disability benefits. I reluctantly signed my name. Within a few months, I received label “disabled.”  Although I was told by several doctors that I could never return to college because I’d “never be able to concentrate,” I
finally graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, nine years after I’d started my education in Iowa City. Despite numerous dropouts caused by illness and hospitalization, I also earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the same school and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Montana in Missoula, where I met my husband in 1990. Mike has been a steady companion since then, patiently weathering the storms of my repeated episodes. His loyalty and support have offered a stability that has long been integral to my recovery.

From 1978 to 2000, I averaged two to three hospitalizations a year, some for a week, others for months, and had little time for “real life.” But my condition has improved remarkably in the last five years, partially due to new medications with fewer side effects. I’ve finally “evened out,” which has proved essential for the growth and discipline of my work.

I also contribute in other ways: I regularly co-teach poetry and writing classes in a day treatment program for mentally ill adults, act as mentor for a recovery education course, and work part-time as a “Residential Sanitation Specialist” for my own cleaning business, “Maid in Montana.” I’ve found I can induce the playful inventiveness of my muse-ments through meditation without the looming threat of becoming ill. My creativity is under better control, despite the romanticized notion that these two terms cannot coexist. I am finding great rewards in producing more quality work than I could possibly have done before.

Wordsworth’s quote comes to mind: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” When I was in the midst of a  maelstrom of symptoms, there was no tranquility in which to reflect on the emotions. I feel I owe a great deal to my experiences with bipolar disorder. The screaming highs of a world drenched in beauty and the wrenching lows of a dark and sinister universe form a frame of reference from which to write. Living on the edge of “reality” has been a gift.

Gabriel Heatter, an American radio commentator, said: “Life is never so bad at its worst that it is impossible to live; it is never so good at its best that it is easy to live.” I believe that being in touch with the best of Heaven and the worst of Hell fosters compassion for humanity, and communicating this to others is the highest form of love. I sense that I’ve finally “come out on the other side,” as I sought to do in recreating the Universe.

Poetry has helped me make this transition, and I continue to gather strength from the power of words–the enduring bond that links us all.

Zan Bockes earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Cutbank, Poetry Motel, Visions International, Phantasmagoria, and The Comstock Review. She has had three nominations for a Pushcart Prize.

“Shit, Dad’s home,” Frannie giggles nervously at the dining room window. “Carol is that your green Pacer,” she asks even though she knows the answer.

“Yes, why?” Carol, 26,  can’t help but act like the oldest. Even when something’s wrong she tries to act above it all.

“’Cause Dad’s ramming your bumper,” Frannie announces.

A lightening-quick change happens in the faces of my barbecue-eating, 12 brothers and sisters. Their wild jokes and laughter shift into nervous chatter and sharp comments-like a food fight only everyone’s throwing sarcasm and no one’s listening. I check on my Mom, who’s bowing her head and wiping her mouth politely – our only calm before the storm.

The front door slams shut, and the entire dining room shuts down. Barely a peep except for stiff movements: Magdelene,17, gulps her milk.  Luke, 21, puts his head down, buttering a roll and eyeing his wife, Kitty, to take her elbows off the table. Eddie, ”the tease,”  20, pinches 15-year old Mark’s earlobe, trying to make him laugh. Frannie, 18,  keeps blinking her eyes like she’s got a twitch. Sweet Hope, 13,  chews on a drum
stick; while thin as a rail Grace, 25,  makes the sign of the cross.  Terry, 23, hides the empty Tab can underneath the table; her twin, Paul,  folds his arms across his chest
like Mr. Clean, as if he’s going to dare my Dad to lay another finger on him. Once I overheard Terry, say that of all us kids, ‘Paul got the worst of it from dad.’ When
Paul was my age  (11), my Dad would take him into the basement and beat him with his belt.  No one really knows why and I was still in a high chair when it happened, so heck, if I know.

I reach for my Mom’s wrist, slipping my pinky finger underneath her elastic watchband.  It barely fits, but I hold on anyhow.

“Hi Dear.”  My mom always breaks the silence. Dad sways into the room, blood vessels climbing up his nose like a vine. His bottom lip hangs loose; his tongue
licking his lips every few seconds. A long, manicured finger balancing his linen sports jacket over his shoulder. A pale-yellow dress shirt and matching yellow necktie look
wet from the thick wet summer air. He stands at the head of the table like Captain Von Trapp taking roll call with his bloodshot eyes.  Beads of sweat pop up like a contagious
disease on everyone’s tight faces. I bet if you took an X-ray of all the stuff going on inside of me and my brothers and sisters, you’d see howling and screaming and trembling inside. And if we weren’t such a polite family, you might have people scratching and clawing and punching, and maybe there would be a stabbing or even a gunshot. But we’re a nice Catholic family that has good manners and says the Rosary every night after dinner.

So even while my Dad’s drunk and on the verge of something dangerous,  we sit up straight in our chairs;  elbows off the table;  cloth napkins on our laps, chewing baked beans and barbecued chicken with our mouths properly closed – doing our best not to tip the scales of our father’s mood.

As he starts his mouth-to-mouth kissing ritual around the 16 chairs, I smell the mix of garlic, wine and Listerine. While his lips make contact with the lips of my siblings, I quietly pray that he’ll kiss my Mom and at least say, “Hello,” or “Good evening, Mother,” even though he hasn’t looked at her, since he staggered in from one of his long lunches with one of his priest friends. As he makes the sign of the cross on the foreheads of the
three wiggling grand kids, I watch my Dad and wonder: why did he marry someone that he doesn’t want to talk  to?

“Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.” I walk out of the dining room, before he can put his moist, puckered mouth on mine. I wait around the corner with my back pressed up against the paneled hallway wall,  as he moves closer to the only unkissed person in the room.  My whole head listens, hoping for my Mom to be treated like a wife and not a “bloody American.”  But nothing. No kiss. No hello. Just hollow, empty air as he
walks past her white swivel chair and disappears up the creaky wooden stairs to their bedroom.  I’m never getting married.

I peek into the dining room at heads shaking and eyes rolling. His moods are as mysterious as a lost civilization.

“Fine, how are you, dear?” My mom’s quiet sarcasm lets everyone know she’s OK. Conversation builds again. Nothing wild. You can tell even the bravest of the bunch don’t want to wake the sleeping giant. I walk back into the dining room, sit back in my seat and
watch my mom scoop out coffee ice cream from the five-gallon tub from Baskin-Robbins.

“I can scoop it, Mom,” I whisper as nice as possible.

“That’s OK, sweetie. You go ahead and finish your dinner.”

I lean onto her round, jelly-like arm and kiss it right where her muscle would be, if she had one. I peck at her arm with kisses, hoping they will erase my Dad’s silent treatment. Only God knows why he punishes my Mom with glares and silence. If it were up to me, I’d choose that he not speak to me and treat my Mom better. But the worst part of all is that the longer his silence, the more dangerous things get.

~

After eighteen days of not saying a single word to his wife, my Dad’s crazy-person temper finally boils over at exactly 6:45 pm on a Monday night.

“Why the bloody hell can’t someone in this house fill up the Goddamn ice trays when they’re done,”  he barks as he yanks the plastic trays out of the little freezer at the bottom of our brown fridge.

He’s red-faced again from a three-hour lunch today with his good buddy, Father Anthony, a Jesuit from the Catholic Charities Office. Most days, my Mom calls Terry, who works at my Dad’s travel agency, for a report on my Dad’s lunch : Who did he go with?  What time did he leave?  What time did he get back. The length of his lunch let’s us know in advance whether we should walk on eggshells or run like hell before he gets home.

“Tina, run down to the basement and get your father some ice out of the freezer,” my Mom says.

I don’t want to leave her side.

“ Never mind, Christine.” He always calls me by my given name. And then he’s back in my mom’s face waving the empty trays.

“Would you mind telling me why dinner is not on the table? It’s half past six,” he yells.

“Well, I’m sorry dear….,” my Mom apologies in a cracking high- pitched whisper.

“Is it too bloody much to ask? What the hell have you been doing all day, WOMAN!,”  his neck veins bulge out as he inches closer to her.

“WHAT AM I RUNNING HERE, A BLOODY HOTEL?”

My mom says nothing and keeps molding the raw meat loaf. Both our are heads bow low;  hers sad and hurt. Mine rushing angry blood; his shouting hammers my temples. And then I explode,

“Why don’t you leave her the hell alone!”

All at once, there’s a flash of light; a burn on my cheek and then my buckling knees.  I lay on the sticky yellow linoleum kitchen floor, as my dad’s tight mouth yells down at me, “I beg your pardon?”

I’ve fallen next to Sam’s red plastic bowls. His black dog hair floats in the almost empty water bowl.  I crawl out of the kitchen, as quickly as I can, not begging my father’s pardon. Still dizzy from his mean hand, I climb up the three flights of stairs to my room and
examine the blotchy right side of my face in the mirror above my dresser. A red-reflection of defeat.

By nine o’clock I’m still hurt, but hungry, so I tiptoe downstairs past the second floor making sure my father is in his room for the night.  The door is closed. I inch down one more flight, and head towards the voices coming from the dining room. Sitting around the now-cleared table are Kate, who just got home from her nursing class; Mark, who’s sliding pennies across the dining room table-some kind of hockey game with coins; Magdelene, doodling in her biology text book; and mom, sitting in her usual after-dinner position at the head of the table, eating Ritz crackers out of the box and sipping a steaming mug of Sanka.

I walk towards the dining room table and lean on my mom’s bare round shoulder. Black coffee breath slips out of her mouth, as she slides the crackers between her lips, first cupping one in her hand like a magician and then sliding it into her mouth whole, pretending she’s not really eating anything. She puts her other arm out to hug me, and then pulls me onto her lap. Her round girdled, body feels like I’m sitting on a rolling hill.

I bury my face into her soft neck.

“Aren’t you a little old to be sitting on Mom’s lap?” Magdelene hates me, I’m sure.

“You’ll get your turn”, Kate teases Magdelene.

“Real funny, Nurse Ratchet. She’s just whiny because Dad smacked her,” Magdelene blurts.

Kate leans towards me. “What happened?”

I pick my head off my mom’s neck, since I can feel some sympathy coming on.

“Dad came home and was screaming at Mom in the kitchen and slamming the ice trays all over the place. And I just said, ‘Why don’t you leave her alone,” I explain.

“You mean, why don’t you leave her the hell alone,” Magdelene corrects me.

“You said that?’’  I can tell Kate is proud of me.

“And then Dad slapped me really hard across the face,” I say.  I feel my mom pulling little balls of fabric off of my green Izod sweater and I wait, holding my breath for a big hug; or a kiss or for her to say,  ‘Awwwwwww, my baby.’

She reaches over her crossword puzzle for her coffee cup and says, “He didn’t hit you that  hard.”

Still on her lap, elbows leaning on the table, everything turns thick and heavy like someone buried me in sand at the beach.  Unable to move, I stare into my Mom’s coffee mug – an oil spill, greasy with cracker crumbs sinking into the dark decaffeinated water. I see people’s mouths moving, but I can’t hear them-not even my mom, who’s back to playing Harry Houdini with the round buttery wafers.  As I climb off my mom’s lap, I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my sweater.

“Get a tissue will ya?” Mark flings one of his pennies at me. I walk out of the dining room into the first floor bathroom. As I shut the door, their voices become muffled like a cartoon. I sit on the toilet lid with my dirty sneaker resting on the plastic toilet-paper holder. I
swallow and tense my face and bite my cheeks – anything but cry.  As I walk out of the first floor bathroom, I slip past the dining room trying not to be caught by the troops. I was hoping to be a hero in today’s war – win a Purple Heart.

As I sneak up the backstairs, I hear my mom calling me, “Tina….Tina, did you go up?’”

I can’t talk to her right now. I might make a big deal out of something – breaking an unspoken house rule.  And it’s pretty obvious there’s only enough room in the house for my Dad’s ‘big deals.’ The rest of us will just have to wait.  So I keep moving up the 36 stairs to my bedroom, pretending it’s not a big deal and trying my best not to feel a thing.

There is a wooden plaque on the mantel in the den that says, “The greatest gift a father can give to his children is to love their mother.”  We have these kinds of nice plaques all over the house.

Some hang on the paneled walls throughout our house and some just lean up against stuff like a dying fern or a left-over Christmas card from last year. We also have statues everywhere that my Dad picks up on his religious tours. When I look up from my place at the dining room table, I feel like I’m eating at a monastery. There’s a stained glass Madonna; the wooden Saint Francis Of Assisi statue; a round glass case with pieces of
some saint’s bones in it and crosses galore. When I look right-into the living room- I see portraits of my parents wearing their robes from the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher. (A Catholic organization in the Holy Land dating back to the time of the Crusades.) The oil
paintings look like two people I don’t recognize – some holy nun and dignified priest wearing robes with a large, red crusader cross. The wooden crucifix that hangs on
the living room wall between the two caped crusaders, is a constant reminder to anyone who enters our house: This is a very holy place.

“Sweetie, your father asked me if you were upset with him about something. Is anything wrong?”

These kinds of questions feel like someone has pushed the pause button on me.

“No. Nothing’s wrong,” I say, holding my face and neck very still, so it looks like nothing is wrong.

I watch my mom mix the batter for tonight’s corn fritters.  It’s quiet except for the metal bowl scraping on the counter. It sounds like there are crumbs trapped underneath the bowl. With each turn, a grinding sound. I imagine the little bread crumbs from this
morning’s toast screaming to be saved from this torture.

“He said you just put the phone down when he calls without saying a word.  That’s not nice, sweetie. He’s your father. You can’t just not speak to him,”  she says, as she licks her battered knuckle.

I look away. My whole body feels like a huge foot that fell asleep. I stand up trying to shake myself awake, while my mom covers the silver mixing bowl with wax paper and puts it in the refrigerator. I walk towards the empty counter to check on the bread crumbs- now black suffocated grains.  I want to fix them and put them back together.

“Hi, Mom,” Grace shouts from the foyer. I hear the volume of her screaming baby, Teddy, getting louder, so I pick up my basketball off the kitchen chair and slap it hard.  Over the crying I shout,  “I’m going to Chevy Chase Playground to shoot around for a while.”

“That’s my basketball girl,” my Mom says with pride.

She pats me on my arm, like she’s patting the batter for the corn fritters and then reaches to take the baby out of Grace’s arms. I bolt out of there, running nonstop through the hallway, out the front door, until I hit the freedom trail at the top of our street.

With every bounce of my basketball down Brookville Road, another why passes through my brain. Why does she defend him all the time?  Why does she blame me?Why doesn’t she yell back at him? Or tell him to leave? Why does he hate me?

No answers come.

So, I just keep dribbling.

Tina Alexis Allen is an actor, writer and director. Most recently, Tina starred opposite Teri Garr and Paul Sand in “God Out The Window,” which she wrote and directed. Currently, she is finishing up “Lucky 13”, and is in development on  the screenplay version of this memoir. Up next, she will perform her one woman show, “Irresistible,” in New York City. Look for Tina (dressed as a doctor) playing basketball in the upcoming NCAA commercial airing on CBS during “March Madness.” Tina lives and loves in New York City.