Miracles, Moons, and Madness

By S.C. Ryder

When S.C. Ryder first met Nick, she immediately fell in love with his smile, his sparkling blue eyes, and his outlook on life. Drawn together by their shared passions for dogs, walks, rocks, gold, and old mines, it was not long before S.C. and Nick would fall in love and move to an isolated, primitive house on farmland in Northern Canada without any idea that eventually a challenge bigger than them or anything they had ever experienced before would loom over their lives and change everything.

As a need for a steady income drove Nick to seek work with a Mennonite farmer, S.C. details how she took over the duties maintaining their farm. But as Nick slowly began spending more time away, S.C. began to notice disconcerting changes in his personality. Something was wrong inside Nick. As financial challenges plagued the couple and Nicks anger transformed into physical aggression, S.C. shares how they embarked on a desperate quest to find out what was wrong with hima journey that would result in a disastrous combination of misdiagnoses, wrong medications, and inadequate therapy.

Miracles, Moons, and Madness is the true story of a relationship torn apart by mental illness as two young people in love attempt to battle the effects of bipolar disorder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480810686

S.C. Ryder

S.C. Ryder spends her life in rural Northern Canada walking, reading, writing, and caring for the numerous animals that reside with her. After losing the love of her life to mental illness, S.C. has found a new life purpose providing help for others in similar situations.

Book preview

1

Nick and I met in a bar, probably not the most romantic or unique setting but that was the way it happened and I fell in love just like that. I had been playing ball in a slo pitch tournament since early morning, and I was hot and sweaty and had two incredibly black eyes from being hit in the face by a rogue ball three nights earlier. He came into the bar holding a cane that helped support his limp – he later told me it was the result of a vehicle accident a year earlier. Destiny I thought! We talked for hours and drank a lot of beer. We also spent the night together. I wasn’t in the habit of doing that sort of thing but there was just something about him, I was hooked. I loved his smile, his sparkling blue eyes, and his outlook on life.

We began to see each other regularly. Nick was taking a two year business management/accounting course and was about to begin the second year. He was staying with his mother and stepdad and I was working and living about ten miles from where they lived. We had a lot in common and as Nick said we complimented each other. We shared the same passion for dogs. He had a little Jack Russell terrier that was quite wild, and I had three dogs of my own. We also loved walking, looking for rocks, for gold, and old mines.

He was on disability from the accident and trying to make ends meet on a limited income. He also had a son from his previous marriage that would stay with him every second weekend. I have always been one of those people that likes the underdog, takes in stray animals and wounded birds, and especially admires those that make success stories out of sheer will power and hard work and Nick fell into that category with flying colors.

Nick was incredibly smart, liked ‘numbers’ something I am terrible at, and we would talk for hours about everything from world problems to mundane everyday events. How I loved him! We spent the rest of the summer walking, dancing at the same bar we met, and were together every minute we could manage.

I happened to be standing in line at the bank one day when I saw Nick, his son, his mother and stepdad come in together for a meeting with the loan officer. He explained to me later what he was there for, his step-dad had agreed to co-sign a loan at the bank for him to begin his second year of schooling and he had also bought Nick a fantastic laptop. He had to be the real thing for his family to believe in him so much. My love for him soared.

In September, Nick took his travel trailer to the city where he would go to college and parked it in a camp ground. This is where he would live for the school year. His little dog was a problem. He didn’t like being left in the trailer all day and his barking annoyed other campers, so Nick decided to leave him with me during the week. That was a huge sign of trust because he adored that little dog. Nick would spend the weekends at my house or sometimes I would go to visit him in the city, but it was harder for me because I had to find a ‘sitter’ for my dogs, cats and horses.

We got along so well, I couldn’t imagine not being with him. About three months in to his school year, he phoned me one night and asked if I could lend him the money to catch up on his trailer payments. It was quite a bit of money, but I knew money was tight for him, and gave him the loan. He said he would pay me back when he was working. It wasn’t a problem, trust was becoming a big part of our relationship.

He had his son for Christmas that year and Christmas Eve was spent with his mum and stepdad and son. I was sad because I had spent so many Christmases alone and I had been excited at the prospect of waking up Christmas morning beside the man I loved. I was disappointed but I understood. I saw him after Christmas Day dinner, when he came to pick me up at a friend’s house and we spent part of the next day together too.

Nick’s schooling would be over by late spring, and he wanted to move and start over somewhere new. I assumed he must have had too many bad memories where we were now. We both decided on the north. I hate flying but I bought plane tickets to fly up to the Yukon to look at a house up there. Unfortunately at the airport I chickened out and he went by himself. Yes, I should have gone, but I didn’t. Nick loved the Yukon, loved the property, and the people, the lifestyles in the North, and put a down payment on the house. As it turned out, there were some problems with the windows and insulation and we decided to cancel the offer, but were unable to have the down payment of five thousand dollars returned. It would have to be decided in small claims court at a later date. He graduated a couple of weeks later with honors, he had aced the courses and earned a degree in business management and accounting.

I had a piece of property in the mountains not as far north as the Yukon but still in the north and Nick wanted to move there. It was quite an isolated property, it had an old house that I had converted from a barn, and not much else. No water, no power and not much of a road in. I didn’t want to live there but we decided to try to make a go of it. His heart was set on living in the bush, a completely different way of life than he was used to. In May 2006, we moved up there. We built a beautiful big shop for him to do ‘shop’ stuff in, filled it with new tools and equipment and spent the rest of the summer building barns and fencing and enjoying being together.

Nick’s son came to stay for a while, and his mother and stepdad visited. He had not had a lot of contact with his dad in the past few years, and it was wonderful that he visited too. It was nice to see the two of them together, although their personalities clashed at times. They were a lot alike. He brought Nick’s young step-brother with him, who was a really nice kid.

My father’s suicide, only two years before still bothered me and occasionally I drank too much beer and slept at night with the help of a sleeping pill. But my ‘rock’ was making my life better and better. One afternoon I was looking for him and found him down at the beach, fishing. I was in an irritable mood, but when he turned and smiled, I still remember the way it made me feel. I asked him how he could always be so calm and happy. Again that smile, and he said ‘he had peace in his heart’. That night there was a forest fire up the valley. The sky was bright red and glowing and it scared the daylights out of me. I wanted to feel like Nick. Peace. The next day I quit the beer and the sleeping pills.

One of the first instances of his ‘forgetting’ was to do with the court case for the return of the five thousand dollar deposit for the property in the Yukon. The court had decided to allow Nick to present his case by phone as the cost of the trip there and back was so expensive. The afternoon of the court case, he ‘forgot’ to phone and the five thousand dollars plus expenses was awarded to the owners of the property as a default. I was choked and also upset that it didn’t seem to bother him, but I let it go. It didn’t seem worth causing problems over. It couldn’t be changed anyway. The money was gone.

Fall came and went. We got in the winter’s firewood, and we were pretty proud of ourselves when the shed was full. But now we were running out of money. Neither one of us were working, his disability had long since gone. During the summer, I had paid off his truck so he didn’t have truck payments anymore, using the money from the sale of my house when we moved. Still, even without payments we needed an income. He had decided he didn’t want to pursue his education with anymore accounting or business courses, and didn’t want to use what he already had for a career either as had been his original plan. I was a little confused about his decision but respected it. We lived 35km from a very small town, not a lot of work in that area anyway.