"It explains so much," Joey said, and I glared at him. I'd been home from the hospital for a few days but I hadn't gone back to school…yet. I was still having trouble sleeping, despite the new meds. Seroquel and trazodone. That's what the sleep meds were called. They sounded so sinister, sort of. Like characters from some cheesy outer space movie from the sixties. Joey said maybe they needed to adjust the dose.
Whatever. I wasn't sleeping. I was sitting on the couch in flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt and watching Joey drink wine and tell me how this bipolar diagnosis explained things.
"How? What are you talking about?" I said, pulling at the fabric of the couch. It bugged Joey. I saw him watch me do it and want to tell me to cut it out, but he didn't.
"It explains that time you tried to kill yourself on the train tracks,"
I sighed. He thought this explained that? I shook my head.
"Joey, c'mon," I was mad. I was. Because this did not explain that. My dad has been dead for two years. I wanted to kill myself because he was beating me, not because I was fucking crazy. I wasn't crazy then. I knew I wasn't.
"I wasn't…look, you can't just use this to explain away everything I've ever done. It's not me. Now I can't have any other motivations for anything?" Joey sipped his wine and looked at me with that raised eyebrow look of his.
"What I've read about it, it's said that suicide is…it's common in people diagnosed as bipolar…"
I hated this. Hated not sleeping. Hated watching Joey drink that stupid wine. Hated what he was saying.
"I didn't have it then! I almost killed myself that day because, because my life sucked and my dad hit me all the time, how is that due to this bipolar stuff?" I punched the couch, making Joey spill his wine a little bit.
"You didn't just come down with it like the flu, Craig. It's been there, and probably the way your dad treated you triggered it, or signs and symptoms of it. It's not all black and white, you know,"
I swallowed hard, blinked back tears. I really hated this. I had felt so, I don't know. In the hospital I felt so out of control and so…beyond help, in a way. I didn't want to talk about it or even think about it. Bipolar. It really just sucked. Medications and shrinks and all that. And Ashley. God. She must think…I had no idea.
"So what else does it explain?" I said, and I sounded pretty bitter. I knew I did. Joey finished off his wine and set the glass on the coffee table.
"Maybe it explains some of your father's behavior-"
"So you think he was crazy, too? It had better be him, huh? If it was mom Angie might end up a nut, too," I watched Joey's face, watched him wince at my words. That was mean. I felt bad the minute it was out of my mouth.
"I'm sorry-" I started to say, but couldn't quite finish it. Pulled at the fabric on the couch again and Joey put his hand on mine, to stop me from doing it. I looked up at him.
"It's okay. Craig. I know this is hard for you-"
"How? How can you know? Joey, my life has been so screwed up. What do you know about it?" The truth was he didn't know shit. He just watched it, watched all the fucked up shit that went down with me. I hate when people say they know about something when they have no idea.