I was so embarrassed by it, by the things I did. It seemed sort of okay at the time, everything going so fast that I couldn’t keep up with it. But now, the drugs in my system, slowing everything down, putting everything into perspective. I made a fool of myself. I ruined Ashley’s dad’s wedding. I hurt Joey just like my dad used to hurt me.

Okay, bipolar. A major mental illness, a mood disorder. This wasn’t like the chicken pox or getting your tonsils out. This was never going to go away. Never. Like I told Ash at the hospital, I’d be dealing with this for the rest of my life.

Everyone was being cautious with me, treating me different like I was crazy. Joey was totally focused on medication and shrink visits and all the rest of it. Managing it, that’s what he wanted to do. Caitlin was talking to me like I might snap any second. Angie was trying to pretend that things were fine but I could see in her eyes that they weren’t fine. I’d punched Joey so hard in front of her, and when I closed my eyes I could see the couple of times my dad had punched my mother, and I was hiding behind the couch like Angie had been or was crouched on the stairs. I scared her like that, just like my dad had scared me.

And Ashley, of course. She was pretending it was all okay but it wasn’t. She was watching what she said, what she did, looking to see how I was reacting, trying to understand my mood. I didn’t like this need everyone suddenly had to take care of me. I couldn’t be just Ashley’s regular boyfriend. No. I was this crazy boyfriend.

All my teachers knew. I told Joey that they didn’t need to know but he insisted. So now I went into all my classes and I could just imagine what they were thinking, and from some of them I got sympathetic smiles and some of them ignored me. I sort of preferred being ignored.

“How’s it going, Craig?” some teachers would say, and I’d cringe.

“Fine,” I’d say, wanting to get away.

My dad, though. It was easy to blame him when I was so innocent. I didn’t deserve any of that. But I maybe didn’t understand him, didn’t understand the forces that were tearing him apart. I was only a kid then, and things are more black and white for kids. But now I’ve been truly out of control, like he was. When he was kicking and punching me and strapping me I knew he was out of control, that he couldn’t stop. I knew he felt guilty, and that was why he tried to be nice the next mornings and gave me money and bought me things, knowing it couldn’t really fix it. Like with Joey. I couldn’t make it up to him, that I’d so totally lost control. Like Angie. I couldn’t do anything to make her forget that I could be so violent.

Now the manic phase was past, and the pills made everything even out, but I felt slowed, and depressed. I’d put on my jean jacket, shove my books into my bag, go off to school. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see anyone. I’d be okay just laying on the couch watching whatever mindless thing dragged itself across the T.V. screen. Was this going to be how it would be? Being out of my mind manic or being all depressed? Would I never be able to get back to how I was?

Ashley came to my locker and sat with me at lunch, her cautious little looks making me mad. Her soft soothing voice pissing me off. It wasn’t her fault. So I’d try to smile and act like I was okay. Went to my dad’s grave for the first time, the same round smooth stone as mom had, and his name carved into it with the bullshit inscription, epitaph. ‘Devoted father’. Shit.

“You must know about this guilt,” I said, and it almost felt like he was near somehow. This guilt was such a mind fucker, and I knew he knew.