Rocky Road

Our dating continued in sporadic bursts.  I would spend my time in New York City, or London, or Dublin, and I would call him when his gigs in the states were over and we would talk.  I craved him, as I always craved male attention and companionship, but this guy was SO NICE.  It felt good.  Over the 4th of July holiday I flew out to Jackson Hole for another of his shows.  I was so excited to see him, but on the way out there I met two other guys!  One was a pilot I met in the bar in Denver.  We exchanged numbers because I obviously wasn't wholly committed to the relationship I was pursuing.  The other guy was an outdoor magazine editor that was on my flight into Jackson Hole.  I told him that I was going to see friends and even invited him out to see their show.  And he showed up!  I don't know what I was thinking or what I thought would happen, but in hindsight I think that I was so deeply entrenched in a manic episode that I simply had no control over my actions.  I just wanted to feel good, whatever brought that feeling at the time.

Well, editor-guy showed up at the bar and came straight over while Patrick was on a break. Patrick grabbed my hand, since I guess peeing on me was out of the question.  Editor-guy looked confused and I can only imagine what he was thinking.  After evaluating the situation he quickly turned and left.  

All the while, on that trip, I was pressuring Patrick to commit in some way to me.  I wanted it all.  I was being unfair to him and I knew it.  I just couldn't stop my behavior.  On my last night there he drove me up a mountain and we parked and talked and watched the sun rise.  He told me he loved me that morning.  It sent thrills through me even thinking about it on the flight back to New York.  When I was with him, he was all I wanted.  When I was away from him, I wasn't completely sure.  But I knew that I enjoyed being with him.  After another couple of trips to Europe I finally went home to meet Patrick's friends and family.  To say that I was shocked would be putting it mildly.  I was a city girl.  Even having been raised in a metro area of only 200,000 (which I considered a small town), I had the mentality of an East Coast big city girl.  His friends were like nothing I had ever seen.  They were country.  Just country.  His family was wonderfully nice and I enjoyed them, but again...there was a huge difference and I was completely out of my comfort zone.  It was like Green Acres.  I was fighting against myself.  I wanted to walk away.  I was being a shallow snob, but I just couldn't relate to this life.

So, guess what I did.  I talked until sunrise with him and we decided to get married.  We had known each other a total of three months and actually been together probably one month total in that time.  But he offered it and I grabbed it.  I thought I was choosing stability and domestic bliss.  At the time, I was so unstable in my own mind that I was reaching out to anything and anyone that would be the rock for me.  But he didn't know that.  He couldn't have known that my expressed thoughts and feelings were possibly disingenuous.  He only had what I gave him to go on.  

We headed out the next day to his next gig at a resort in the Texas hill country.  It was our engagementmoon. We started to tell people our plans.  They all tried to be happy for us, but looked at us like we were crazy.  And they were right, about me anyway.  While we were lying in bed one morning the pilot from the Denver airport called to see if I wanted to get together.  It had only been a couple of weeks since I led him to believe that I wasn't in a relationship and was open to dating. But now I quickly informed him that I was engaged and ended the conversation.  Another guy left wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

As you can see, it was already a giant, messy clusterfuck.  But I wasn't done creating havoc as we bipolars are known to do.  I was ovulating that weekend and I knew it.  At one point I even said to him, "I'm ovulating.  If we have sex, we will get pregnant".  So we did have sex, and we did get pregnant.  It was another of my reckless behaviors brought on by my manic episode.  And we could never have imagined how immensely that short-sighted moment would change our lives, for better and worse.