Wednesday, 08 October 2014, The
Farmhouse Estate, Ceres, California…
Greetings To & From The San
Joaquin Valley!
As I’ve both made clear in my
last two blog posts, as well as with my new book, “My BiPolar Reality; How Life
Goes On…”, I am an individual who is successfully managing a (potentially
fatal) mental illness. But the truth is, I am not the only one who is working
hard to deal with my sometimes problematic symptoms, side-effects or other “abnormalities”
I sometimes exhibit; I have a very supportive family with an amazing amount of
loyalty, faith, hope and especially Love poured into my mixture of medications
from my wife…aside from my mother, I know there is probably not another woman
on the planet who would not only tolerate me for almost 20 years, but help me
so much in becoming the successful, healthy, happy and peaceful man I am today.
My wife, who married me when she was only 19 years old (I was 33) and after
knowing one another for only 5 months, ran off to Las Vegas with me while I was
riding an incredible manic wave and truthfully, not in my “right state of
mind”, I was not healthy. Yet even after I was forth coming about my suspicion
of being mentally ill (my previous wife left me when it was suggested I was
BiPolar), even after I compared our vast age difference and the notion that
when I’m 64 she’ll be sexy 50 year old MILF, she married me. In fact, as I tell
the story in the book, she almost DEMANDED we get married!
We did get married in July of ’95
and like many newlyweds, there was a year or so of turbulence and aggravation;
it’s tough to start sharing your whole life with somebody else, perhaps even
tougher when you don’t really know everything about each other, but we stuck
together. During the 2nd year of our marriage my wife was with our
first child and I was again on a high flying manic episode, but a three month
serious of very angry and rage filled violent bouts of resentful fury! I was a
maniac, smashing things without real provocation, foul mouthed, disrespectful
and very arrogant. I was impossible to live with, one time during an argument
with my wife I threw a ceramic coffee mug so hard at her that when she ducked
and the cup smashed into the wall, parts of it stuck into the drywall! She took
cover in the safety of her mother’s suburban home but still came to see me all
the time. I even accused her of stalking me, but she kept coming around to make
sure I was eating, bathing, behaving and basically alright…even though I was
horrible to her, I was such an ass but she always came back. Towards the end of
that year, ion a cold December night a few days before our first child was due,
I had a crash and burn episode that left me unemployed, homeless and so far
down it looked like up to me; I only remember stumbling up Michigan Avenue, the
stiff Chicago winter wind whipping me hard, freezing the tears before I could
shed them, I found a pay phone in a swanky hotel and called my wife. She was
there to get me in less than an hour and we have been together ever since.
In my book, “My BiPolar Reality;
How Life Goes On…” I depict the catastrophic complete psychotic break I
suffered and detailed the damage this event had on both my wife/family as well
as myself. It was several years before I even started making progress in the
recovery process and it left me as being on “permanent disability” so the
entire burden of supporting our family of four was completely on my young
wife’s shoulders. She not only rose to the occasion, but worked so hard that
she became the first woman General Manager for this chain of liquor stores
where she had started as a part-time cashier only 3 years before; not only a
stellar career curve, but quite the accomplishment for a woman who had never
had college or formal adult education! My 19 year old child-bride, by the time
our 10th anniversary rolled around, had blossomed into a strong,
resourceful and authoritative woman. Simply amazing, she has not only stayed
with me, helped me through these tragic and traumatic events, raise two amazing
kids and still managed to improve herself, to become stronger, smarter, more
confident and assured; wow, my wife is an incredible individual! I almost feel
guilty writing a book about my own struggles when in my humble eyes, my wife is
the real hero who deserves a story!
Understanding that until I got
the book offer in April, we didn’t consider relocating to California for
several more years. It’s been a goal of mine, I cut my teeth here and I have
been longing to come back home for a long time. We were stuck in Chicago, we
were concerned about pulling the kids from school, of being so far from our
aging parents, our network of friends and all that…before last April moving to
California was not something we considered. I had always promised myself, I
would never go to California to live until I achieved my dream of a selling a screenplay
or scoring a book deal; I didn’t want to be one of those “wannabe” kinds of
people who come to California seeking the Golden Dreams of their Soul. That’s
not me, I am not the “wannabe” kind of person, I’m more the “I am what I am”
kind of person. Then something happened, something completely unexpected and
one of the best things that’s ever happened for me…I got a book deal, in fact,
I got a 5 year, 3 book deal! My wife came to San Francisco with me when I
signed the deal at the end of April and she barely thought twice about it, she
too wanted to live in California. Since our lease was up in June and instead of
relocating again in Chicago, we made a huge migration of our family to The San
Joaquin Valley last July. That fueled
our motivation to be here now, but truthfully, it’s not an easy transition to
make. Moving a family of four, with one child still in school and two family
members who need specialized medical care (our daughter is diabetic type 1 and
myself), two thousand miles across the country is a very big life adjustment
for everyone. It’s still a process and although we’re feeling more at home
every day, we’re aware it could a year or more before we establish real
friends.
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| d'Philip & Wife at Paul McCartney at Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois 1 August 2011 |
Over the last few weeks, however,
while the final legal matters were hammered out with the publishing companies
and as we’ve been waiting for this very large sum of funds (book advance
money), it’s been very stressful for the family. There has been countless
delays in getting paid, so many changes of plans that my wife started to
suspect me of somehow organizing and executing this giant charade; as if I made
everything all up…the book deal, the advance money, the whole change of
plans…she started to frame the circumstances around my past history of
symptoms. I have done outlandish things in the past, some pretty crazy things,
even some illegal things but this was a charade far beyond the scope I could
ever pull off…and, furthermore, over the past 7 years of the recovery process I
have become a completely different person when it comes to managing and
controlling my symptoms. I am really good at it, in fact, I even wrote a bloody
good book about this disorder, so I knew it wasn’t me. I knew this was all very
real, as strange as it sometime seems, I knew all along it was the truth. But
wife, in her own moments of weakness, expressed her doubts. It isn’t about the
money, I realize, it has to do with her sense of security and the fact that
this wait (weight) has been enormously long to play out, simply shook her
confidence in me. It was okay, although I’ll admit it hurt for a moment to
think she somehow was giving up on me, now, when we’re at this pinnacle point
in our lives together…but then I realized the ridiculous logic of that thought
and trashed it! I know it’s not me, she too knows now it’s not me (the funds
have been deposited) but more than that, she knows it’s not me because like
her, through this amazing relationship between us, I have grown and evolved
into a better version of myself too. So hell yeah, maybe I’m amazed at the way
she really loves me, but what’s wrong with that?
