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GREY WOLF: Earhart's Significant Other Speaks Out

© Jeffrey Welch

For the last fifteen years, I have been given the opportunity to live with Earhart, who is bipolar mixed. Sometimes it is frustrating, sometimes it limits, sometimes it is very hard, but I have never been bored and it's always been interesting.

Earhart's family and mine lived in a smallish town in Texas. The first time I met her, she was nine and I was in my thirties. We were involved in a play, and I realized that Earhart was one of the brightest, most precocious children I had ever seen. Her parents, well placed, put more emphasis on Earhart's failure to "conform" and her absence of poise than they did her gifts and talents.

Once, I was entering a popular cafeteria and saw Earhart and her mother at a nearby table. Her mother appeared to be chiding her about something. One minute she would sit placidly and the next she'd be visiting practically every diner in the cafeteria. Talking fast, loud and bounding around on coltish legs, Earhart managed to annoy more people in less time than anyone I knew.

Many years later, after Earhart was first diagnosed, I was asked to be a sort of mentor to her. Actually, we married relatively soon. I wanted to see her happy and safe.

At the time, she was taking anywhere from 1000 mg to 1800 mg of lithium and it seemed to be working. We experienced an ecstatic never-ending honeymoon until I took Earhart to my little brother's for Thanksgiving. My family is open, warm and large and when Earhart decided she had really missed out on some great times she dropped into bottomless depression. She sat on the couch and cried for a week until we decided she should enter a day program.

Once she had completed the program, she seemed to shine. She began accepting musical "gigs" again and became active in various support groups. I was a recovering alcoholic in a respected twelve-step program. For a while we were content until she lost her job shortly after returning to work. I think that was one of the first times she realized what stigma can do. Earhart was disconsolate until she was called on a job which greatly suited her skills.

At the same time, Earhart was placed on Depakote, along with the newly-introduced Prozac. Now, on Lamictal and Serzone, Earhart's symptoms are diminished and she has been stable since. I don't worry about "the next time". I only know she is my wife and I love her.

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Grey Wolf is a guest writer and significant other to Mental Health Issues Editor, Earhart.