How to Love Someone with Bipolar Disorder by Becky Armoto Every January morning, we’d eat breakfast from our wedding-gift waffle maker, shivering like abandoned children (and we were children) in our heat-controlled apartment, where frost decorated the inside of the windows in snowflakes. Wrapped in quilts, we sat on an old futon that doubled as both our couch and our bed. So broke and so in love, we believed entire diamond-bright galaxies revolved around us. How could we have known my six-month depression was more than homesickness? Ten years later, we found ourselves in marriage counseling, sitting across from each other like war generals. I looked at the Nativity set on the end table where cold, hard, chipped baby Jesus stared at nothing. I stared back at my husband and said, “I can’t love you anymore.” In spite of this, he carried me through the day to day realities of child-caregiving, shopping, cooking, bill-paying, and washing laundry as I lay in bed. Now, ten more years hav...
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.