Lukach Giulia - My lovely wife in the psych ward: a memoir

For Giulia and Jonas, true believers all the way.

I can see a lot of life in you

I can see a lot of bright in you

And I think the dress looks nice on you

I can see a lot of life in you

Sufjan Stevens, The Dress Looks Nice on You

The first time I saw my wife, she was walking around the Georgetown campus and I shouted out, Buongiorno, Principessa! like a buffoon. She was Italian, radiant, way out of my league, but I was fearless and almost immediately in love. She had a smile bello come il soleI learned some Italian to impress herand when I saw her at a party, we spent the whole night immersed in flirtatious conversation. I walked her to her room, and I snuck in a quick good-night kiss, and she kissed me back. We both already knew what was happening. She lived on the floor below me in the same freshman dorm. I knocked at her door the next morning to take her out to breakfast. She answered with a tone that was almost like Where have you been, its about time you got here.

Within a month we were a couple. Shed stop by my room to wake me up if I was oversleeping class; I taped roses to her door. Giulia had a perfect GPA; I had a Mohawk and a Sector 9 longboard. We were both blown away by how amazing it feels to love someone and be loved back.

The night before winter break freshman year, the first time wed be apart since we met, we sat up together late into the morning, perched at my dorm window, watching snow blanket the quad below. We cried our guts out at the prospect of being separated for two weeks. It felt as though we were anticipating a death. I hoped that the snow would postpone or cancel her flight and wed steal a few more hours together, but the snow backed off, she flew off to her family in Italy, I to my family in Delaware. Our fragile hearts somehow survived. By the time we got back to school, we were already talking about the Future, as if it were a certainty. Our love was inevitable, like graduation or gravity, a foregone conclusion that neither of us wanted to escape. It didnt matter that we were only eighteen years old.

The more we got to know each other, the more we delighted in our commonalities. We were both left-handed, and our moms shared a birthday. My family moved abroad from the U.S. to Japan in 1989; Giulias family moved abroad from Italy to the U.S. in the same year. We told ourselves that these mere coincidences were something much more, and they became part of our mythology that we were destined to be together.

The most important thing we shared was an emphasis on family. I had three siblings and Giulia only one, but for each of us, family was at the core of our identities.

Our two families first met on Christmas Eve, a few blocks from the Spanish Steps in Rome, the winter break of our sophomore year. My family was there on vacation; Giulia was visiting her extended family, all of whom were still in Italy. Another coincidence to be spending the holidays in the same country.

Giulias mom, Mariarita, gave me her cell phone number in a time when few people had cell phones, so I could call to arrange for us all to meet. Giulia arrived a few days before we did. On my familys first night in Rome, we ate dinner and then walked through the cobblestone streets back to our hotel. My mom, Mary, led the wayshe had studied in Rome in college and was giddy to be showing the city to me and my three siblings. Every few blocks I ducked into a bar or a restaurant to try to call Mariarita from a pay phone, but she never picked up.

I had just about given up, and then we turned a corner and I saw Giulia coming our way, the collar of her winter coat drawn tight against the lightly falling snow, arm in arm with her mom, her dad and brother laughing about some joke. They stopped short when they saw us walking their way. Mariaritas cell phone was in hand, waiting for the call. The phone lines didnt find each other, but we did anyway.

No one knew what to say, we were so shocked. This was one coincidence too many.

My dad, C.J., was the first to snap out of it, and he eagerly introduced himself to Giulias dad, Romeo. The moms met, and all the siblings exchanged hugs, and then we parted ways, with a plan for a proper meeting scheduled the next day.

No one said it, but I think everyone left knowing that these two families would gather again someday down the road, in a church, for a wedding, a formal blessing of the union, and maybe that was what we had just done anyway.

Back at our lives in college, our plans expanded, from what we were doing that weekendlike crashing a wedding reception, which we did one Saturday nightto what we were going to do beyond college. Ever since high school I had been planning to go to law school, but now in my critical college years, I wasnt doing a very good job of convincing myself of that. I haphazardly signed up for whatever humanities courses sounded interesting to me and cobbled together a history major with an English minor. During summer break, I escaped to a small beach town in Delaware and wandered from surf session to beach volleyball and then worked for tips in restaurants.

Giulia could not have been more opposite and certain of her path. She wanted to be a marketing director and have three kids by the time she was thirty-five, and she was ready for whatever work was necessary to get there. Which meant internships, and meeting with professors during office hours, and even spending Friday evenings at the library. She used to dress herself up for Friday night by four p.m. in order to go to the library for a few hours before meeting mestraight from the books to her boyfriend. She always covered her tracks, pretending that she was doing something with friends rather than studying, afraid that I might think she was too nerdy.

Summer for Giulia meant an internship in New York Citythe first summer it was with a fashion house, then a boutique ad agency the following summer, and then a major ad agency the summer after that. In the summer after our junior year, that major ad agency celebrated the end of the season by taking the interns out to a concert. I came up to New York for the weekend to be Giulias plus-one.

Now remember, my boss is going to be there, so make sure you say hi to him, and, you know, be good, Giulia said to me. We were cramped in the bathroom of her rented apartment. Giulia was in a skirt and a bra, applying eyeliner. I was ready to go and didnt need to still be in the bathroom, but I liked to be there as she got herself ready. I got to see Giulia before she presented herself to the world and felt like I was getting to become a part of her secrets. I closed my eyes and imagined us getting ready for concerts and parties together like this for the rest of our lives.

Ill be good, I insisted, hands up, innocent of the implied charges.

I mean dont say anything about the band, she said.

Oh, you mean Evanescence? You dont want me to say anything about the fact that were actually at an Evanescence concert? I had been mocking Evanescence to her over the phone since shed first told me about the concert.

Yes, she said. Thats exactly what I dont want you to say.

She was impatient with me, but I leaned in and kissed her on her bare shoulder. I couldnt help it. Makeup, no makeup, in the act of putting on makeup, it didnt matter. She was stunning in all contexts.

Whats the name of that song of theirs that you love so much again? I asked, teasing, knowing she didnt know.

You know, that one song, she said, now applying lipstick.

Oh yeah, right, that song, I said back, smirking.

Dont be a jerk, she said.

Im not, its just... Evanescence.

Mark... She turned, trying to be mad. This was a big night for her, and she was taking it seriously, which she should, but I knew that even she couldnt take Evanescence seriously. Finally, she couldnt contain it. The laughter spilled out of her, a bellowing laugh that outshone even her smile with joy. Giulia laughed longer and harder than anyone Id ever met. It took control of her whole body. She often had to hold herself up when she started laughing, to keep herself from falling down. No matter what mood you were in when she started, you were always laughing along with her before she finished. I loved to make her laugh, because it was like creating a little private memory that was ours and ours only, to add to the growing pile of trivialities that no one else could possibly care about but were becoming the foundation of our intimacy. Little things like thisknowing that we would wordlessly laugh about the band all night long together, through smiles and glancespulled me deeper into my infatuation. As she laughed in her bra and half-applied makeup, I knew that I would never be able to be away from her.