Dialogue

Benita laughs awkwardly as she stirs her coffee.

“Well actually one of the things I did—this is a funny story about my mom—was I walked into the ER at University Hospital and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jackie Kennedy.’ And when my mother heard this she said, ‘Jackie Kennedy, what were you thinking of? Couldn’t you have at least said Eleanor Roosevelt?’” Benita shakes her head and chuckles. “So it wasn’t so much that I was psychotic, but I picked the wrong role model.”

She tells me she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly after.

“That’s the funny thing, my mom would say, ‘Oh no, we don’t have it in our family.’ Then every time I talked to her more it would come out that so-and-so had been in the state mental institution.” She continues, shaking her head. “But she’d say, ‘Oh, that’s because he lost his job, or that’s cause his wife left him.’ You know—but she had a reason for everything, but nonetheless…” Benita trails off.

I ask what she’s learned living with bipolar disorder.

“Oh, lots of things. I think I know myself a lot better than I would if I didn’t have a mental illness, because I’ve really had to kind of study all aspects of myself.” She pauses. “It’s just one aspect of my life, and it doesn’t define who I am.”

Her eyes widen as she adds with a grin, “I’m a spouse, I’m a homeowner, I’m a baseball fan, I’m a gardener—and I also happen to have a mental illness.”