My divided world.

• Author: Martinez, Demetria

It's July 10, 1990, my thirtieth birthday. I'm in a phone booth, hemmed in by Nevada desert, beneath a yellow moon. The man I married earlier today is with his brother in a barbecue joint. I manage to escape with a lie, saying I have to call my mother. The number 0 on the telephone is an open mouth, trying to scream a warning. I'm shaking.

Against my will, I close my eyes ... and see the massive glass doors of the federal courtroom in Albuquerque where I stood trial in 1988, accused of conspiracy against the United States, accused of smuggling Salvadoran refugees into the country as part of the Sanctuary movement. I see myself speaking into the polished microphone on the witness stand--then flash to the image of a machine gun in the hands of a Salvadoran soldier. Two years after my acquittal, I'm convinced that I uttered something, I don't know what, that resulted in the disappearance and death of somebody in El Salvador.

I reach for the phone, hit 0.

"I don't know what's happening to me," I tell Norty, a doctor, a family friend. "I haven't slept for nights. The world seems to be going ... dark. I'm afraid. If you could send me a few sleeping pills, I'm sure everything will be fine."

He pursues a line of questioning I never anticipated. "Have you had any tendencies, as far as your moods go, towards highs and lows?" Norty asks.

I pause. "Since I was a teenager," I say. "Maybe even earlier."

"Have these mood swings become more frequent of more pronounced?" he asks.

"Yes," I say. "But I'm sure it's just the insomnia that's causing everything."

But Norty won't bite. Instead, he drops a bomb: He thinks that I could be suffering from bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depression. Characterized by severe mood swings, the illness, if left untreated, can grow lethal with age.

For a blessed moment, I remember elation sweeping over me, only to give way to sadness so black I could paint with it. My mind racing through the night with ideas for books to write, countries to visit, causes to embrace--only to detour down a dark alley of paranoia and paralysis. Any sense of a center, of a stable identity, had long eluded me. Routines--the loom upon which one weaves a life--fell apart whenever I did.

But always I'd blamed myself. For all my outward successes, I'd failed to cultivate equanimity.

Others seemed to pull it off, in varying degrees. They exercised, ate right, meditated, kept better schedules, chose more compatible partners, went into therapy...