“Look at how he cleaned this kitchen – I mean, I keep it clean, but this is move-out ready!”

“Harry always over-achieves – I don't know how you are going to live with all that pressure, but, hey, there are some perks!”

Maggie Thornton and Margie Bell were admiring the work Captain Lee had done instead of keeping from having some kind of hysterical breakdown as one of his wildest dreams at last occurred – reconciliation between his Lee grandparents, who had raised him, and the remaining Slocum-Lofton grandmother who he had reconciled with and come to love.  Those three people had shaped his life in opposition, but in Christ, at last, the warring had ceased and peace had come … and Captain Lee, after his terrible day at work, knew the whiplash of emotion was too close to the bipolar pressure he already had to live with.

Complex PTSD on top of bipolar disorder … even with a solid regimen, even with backup plans to the backup plans, sometimes you did things like do a deep clean of a kitchen instead of going into a more obvious manic break – if you had sufficient control, that is the kind of thing that you did.  

Maggie Thornton, Lee-to-be, figured it out (which was why she was Lee-to-be).

“Harry overachieves to keep from doing other things … he must have been quite affected by the way peace came to his family, and so just put that energy over here … it's a lot to try to unpack, you know, 44 years of fighting, ended, just like that, and people don't always understand if a man starts screaming and crying from joy.”

“Yeah … White men don't get to shout like Black men do in church.”

“Well, even consider that – consider how society treats Black men, and how the treatment is justified by saying Black men can't control themselves, even though 99.9 percent of the time, they do, just like everyone else.”

Margie Bell was a big talker, but that put her to utter silence for several seconds.

“Yikes, Maggie,” she said at last.  “I didn't even think about it that way … it's kinda dangerous for men to show emotion, culturally.”

“So, some men over-achieve to compensate.  That's Harry, 99.9 percent of the time.  He should be a wreck, given what he has been through.  If he overdid any other way – over-drank, over-smoked, over-drugged, or over-sexed – he'd be gone.  But, no – he just over-achieves, and in a world like this, he gets the positive reinforcement of winning, a lot of the time..  He's 46, so the pattern is set … so, I'll work with it.  He'll get admired and appreciated when he gets back for the labor he has saved us, and then, eventually, when he feels it is safe for him, he will share how he felt.”

“Don't you think he trusts you?”

“Margie, that's not the point.  A man like Harry fears little beside losing control of himself, so he has to feel ready to share without threatening his control.”

Margie thought about it and then shook her head.

“I couldn't do it with Harry, Maggie, but, thank God, you can!”