UNBROKEN-Love and Relationships while Disabled

Elizabeth and Phoenix

My name is Elizabeth Roderick. I'm an author, freelance editor, mother, musician, and farmer. I'm also bipolar, autistic, and I have PTSD.

My neurodivergence has defined my life, for better and for worse. I spent my youth trying to ignore and suppress the obsessive thoughts, powerful emotions, and psychosis. I tried to learn how to socialize and communicate in the ways that "normal" people do, even though it was unnatural and exhausting for me. But I always failed. I came up empty.

Until, in a strange phase of my life, I met Phoenix. 

He was the most amazing, beautiful person. And, he was schizophrenic. 

He spoke in elaborate, vivid poetry. He blurted non-sequiturs during the sermon in church. He danced in the aisles of the supermarket. He made sense to me.

If he could be so perfect in his neurodivergence, maybe there was nothing actually wrong with me.

This is our story. 

(I will keep adding to this- I'll try to add one more episode every day or so.)

CHAPTER ONE

I sat staring at my computer screen, my fingers tapping idly on the keys.

I couldn't see the way ahead on this story. I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and written myself into the vacuums of space, where nothing would ever happen. Something was wrong with the book, but I wasn't quite sure what.

My husband Eric's voice cracked the shell of my concentration. "Are you ever going to stop writing and pay attention to your family?"

He and my daughter Juniper were sitting on the couch, giving me twin looks of indignity, while Family Guy blared on the television.

"What?" I said. "I have to stare at the same screen as you in order for it to be quality time?"

Eric rolled his eyes and looked away, tugging at his hair.

Juniper huffed. "You're on your computer all the time, mommy! You love your stupid stories more than you love us!"

"That's not true," I said.

Eric shot me a hard look. He'd been complaining about my writing for months, hinting I should give it up and move on to something more productive. He seemed to think it was a phase, something I'd grow out of. But it wasn't. I couldn't quit writing. It was a compulsion, the way some people can't stop picking their scabs or chewing their fingernails.

I swallowed the bitter lump in my throat. "Well, do you guys want to go to the beach, then?"

Juniper snorted. "I'm tired of the beach."

I unclenched my teeth. "How about a walk?"

"No, I'm tired," Eric said. "Can't you just watch TV with us?"

I stared at the cartoon images capering around the screen making fart noises and racist jokes. "I don't want to watch TV."

"Liz," Eric said, "you have to spend time with us sometime."

I clutched my fingers in my hair. "I do spend time with you."

"Ha," Juniper said. "You never spend time with us."

I sat with my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for my kick-punch-bite rage to subside. But it didn't. "Fuck this." I snapped my laptop closed. "I'm going on a walk." I flung myself out the door, slamming it shut behind me.

I stomped down the street, not caring where I went. Not that there was anywhere to go in this shithole town. We'd been forced to move to this dusty cluster of hovels because my husband had accepted the one job I'd begged him not to apply for, at a university in a California town with the worst real estate price to salary ratio in the known universe.