Page 35 of Isn't It Obvious?
“I know, I know. It’s just—”
“I get it,” he says. “We don’t have to talk like this if you don’t want to.”
“It’s just scary. But I do want to.”
“I scare you?”
“No,” Yael says.The idea that you’ll stop talking to me scares me. But she can’t say that, or it’ll put too much pressure on him to pretend things are okay even if they aren’t. And if they aren’t, she would much, much prefer to know sooner than later. “I’m going to try; I just need a moment, if that’s okay.”
“Definitely okay,” he says.
There’s dead air for fifteen seconds. Yael knows, because she counts them. And then she says, “I’m not really good at letting myself enjoy good things when they happen.”
She pauses, unsure where to start, and Kevin makes a sound that she takes to meanI’m listening.
“I want to say first that I’m pretty stable, compared to how I used to be. But I have bipolar two which means that sometimes I get hypomanic, which can look like intense stress but can also be, like, clinical-grade euphoria. Like I am at this heightened state of feeling good for a while, just buzzing, and it can make me fun and funny and productive with almost no exhaustion. So, honestly, when it shows up like that, it never actually bothers me. I never really reported it as a symptom, or it wasn’t recognized as one—whatever—so I had the wrong diagnosis for a long time. But it’s only for a few days, and then for me, it always gives way to a depressive episode, and that is a lot less fun.
“Post-hypomania, the episodes tend to be a lot more intense than my normal depression.” Yael gives a short laugh. “I guess that’s what I meant by it getting scary in my brain sometimes. I’ve gotten better at catching it early, so it doesn’t get so bad, but yeah. It makes trusting myself to enjoy the high of a day like today like a normal person kind of difficult.
“It’s not like… like I’m not functional. It just makes things hard for me, sometimes. I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself very well,” she says.
“You are,” Kevin says, and it’s almost startling to hear his whisper again. “I think I understand what you mean.”
“Yeah?” Yael scrapes out, her throat thick.
“It seems like you associate a certain kind of happiness with pain,” he says, “so it makes sense that you’d be wary of it.”
“I’ve only been like that once this year, actually,” Yael says. “And I caught it pretty early. Took a half dose of my emergency meds, slept for fifteen hours, and woke up fine, so.”
He clears his throat. “I don’t want to assume anythinghere,” he says slowly, “but it feels a little bit like you’re trying to assure me of something. And you don’t need to.”
Yael laughs. “You’re right. Yeah, you’re right. I don’t really talk to people about this. I mean, my therapist. But nobody else.”
“Not Sanaa?”
She shakes her head without thinking, forgetting for a moment that he can’t see her. “No. Well, kind of. Not much, unless I have to, like when I was at the start of an episode before I asked her to find me you.”
“‘Find me you,’” he quotes back to her.
Yael’s cheeks burn. “You know what I mean. Find me someone to help with the podcast.”
“I liked how you said it the first time.”
The feeling in her belly roils, and her next intake of breath is sharp. “Okay,” she gets out.
“I’m really grateful that you’re talking to me about it,” Kevin says.
“My ex, Halle,” Yael says, before she can think better of it, “didn’t want to hear about it, really. It’s a long time ago, now, and I was pretty early in my diagnosis. But I sort of had to hide it from her, and pretending I was okay all the time was… Well, she’s an ex, clearly.”
“That’s really fucked up, Elle. I’m sorry.”
Yael swallows at the sound ofElleon his tongue. So close to her name, and yet. “Her dad had bipolar type one, and was abusive, and I think she had trouble divorcing those parts of him from one another. Maybe they can’t be divorced, I don’t know. I want to be fair to her.”
“I don’t,” he says, and Yael laughs.
“I was at my worst, too,” Yael argues.
“I honestly don’t care,” Kevin says. “I wish she’d been there for you. Or, fuck, I wish you’d been with someone whocould have been. You deserved to have your partner there for you.”
