Vignettes Part II

Another excerpt from from hospital travels. Names and such have been changed. 

Gerald

Gerald laughed again, his perfect brown skin sliding easily over chiseled cheekbones. His laugh and winning Hollywood smile were infectious, and all packaged in a dapper frame. His entire demeanor spoke of a cool fall day in 1952, a radio softly playing jazz with a fedora lying on a nearby chair. 

Gerald's personality literally filled a room. The room just happened to be in my mind. 

I found myself seeking Gerald out. Maybe his mania was exciting, a perfect dance partner to my sluggish depression. The fluidity of speech that only made sense to him was like a Miles Davis riff. I wanted to lean back against my chair and let it wash back and forth, a breeze blowing through the window on that afternoon in '52.

I think Gerald is good for me. I think Gerald is my escape. 

Cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet..

A new journal was procured from the bowels of the resource room on North 5. God Bless Emerson Hospital.

This week abounded with thrills and spills, making even the most valiant hearts sputter.  But amongst the voices whispering, and the pictures of blood and gore spilling from my brain, there was a golden light called mania. I have psychotic symptoms, but I'm really happy about them!  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, psych issues!

I sit gracefully poised in a Monty Python t-shirt and yoga pants, a BIC pen and a Styrofoam cup of decaf coffee to light my way.  I feel that I can climb mountains, conquer nations, and create world peace.  Of course, the working part of my psyche reminds me that the mountains are a load of laundry to be done, the nations are showers without interruption, and world peace is a meal without an altercation breaking out between an alcoholic with trust issues and a bipolar girl who can't stop talking. 

And so we keep traveling our roads, running parallel at close proximity.  Each carries a pike to keep the monsters at bay, riding a blind horse.  We each pray that this steed has been here before, and already knows their way.  For we know those "woods are lovely, dark and deep", and we are trying so hard to remember our promises.

"And now, the end is near...

And so I face the final curtain"

My Pa Rocky was a huge Sinatra fan.  He was such a big fan that we played "My Way" at his graveside on the day of his funeral. That song wasn't just one of his favorites; it was a mantra by which he lived his life.

Pa's life was not an easy one.  He came from a small town in Calabria, Italy. When he was 12, he and his father came to the United States, to work and raise enough money to bring his mother and two brothers over.  They lived in an apartment building in Boston, working hard, eventually bringing the rest of the family to America.  When Pa was 15, his father died.  Now he was the head of the family, supporting his mother and two young brothers.  School had been out of the question for a long time; now his life was about family and work.  Childhood was out of the question as well.

The years that followed were not easy either.  There was joy in his marriage and birth of his three children, but heartache in his divorce and strained family relationships.  He continued on his own path, not worrying about consequences, but being true to himself.  Even if no one liked his answers, they were his own truth, and he would not give up.

I find myself thinking about Pa a lot these days, these days that are shaky at best.  He did his utmost to make his own decisions on his own journey.  He was strong and stubborn (some would say to a fault).

I am making my own decisions now.  I have thought about giving up music.  Last night, I was scheduled to sing the Verdi "Requiem" at Tanglewood.  About an hour before the performance, I began to sob uncontrollably.  A dear friend and my manager both rubbed my back and comforted me and told me not to worry about singing, just to take care of myself.  My husband and mother said "Put tonight behind you.  It's one Verdi performance." But how many nights like these must I put behind me?  How many times can I start to lose my mind and let everyone pick me up off the ground, sobbing and wondering why I can't just get swallowed up by it?  How many people must I disappoint?  How many times will I prepare for a concert and then go through such a roller coaster in my brain that I question my own perception of reality?  In the span of one hour, I went from urges to cut myself, to determination to do the concert anyway (sobbing during silence be damned), to a simple and utter despair.  I don't know if I'm manic, hypomanic, anxious, depressed or psychotic.  I keep taking the pills, and taking the pills, and coping and coping and coping.

I want to try to slow the creeping unrest in my heart.  I can't stand to be around more than two or three people at a time.  Going out in public makes me fearful.  I worry that people I don't know will be angry, talk out of turn, or won't be quiet in a movie theater or at Mass.  These things make me feel actual fear!

And so I feel an end is near, and I face a final curtain of sorts. Is this the end of a music career? As I rehearsed the "Requiem" this week, I could not help but weep while I sang.  I am mourning the career that might have been.

I have had regrets, but I will have to do this my way.

But What If I Can't?

I am many things, one of which is a singer. I've sung for as long as I can remember, which for me is 2 or 3 years old.

My first musical memory is of my father standing me next to the piano and teaching me the song "Dites Moi" from South Pacific. Dad played, I sang, and an obsession was born. I can still hear the 4 bar piano intro in my head, V to I, in staccato chords. Dad would play the first note of the melody at the end of the 4th bar, so I knew where to start. But I didn't need the help. I couldn't HELP but know where the song started. It just made sense. It couldn't be anything else.

My love of music grew and grew, from a tiny spot in the center of my little body to the ends of the earth. Momma and I would sing songs from Disney movies and Broadway shows. I knew the words and melodies to every rock song Dad played with his band (I can still feel the foam microphone cover on my cheek as I sat at his keyboard during rehearsal breaks). My Fisher Price record player played everything from John Denver and the Muppets to the soundtrack of "Pollyanna" to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"-- a 4th birthday present from Dad. 

My family likes to joke that I started my "stage life" when I was negative 6 months old. Momma was pregnant with me during a run of "Trial by Jury", a G&S operetta. How could I help but love the theatre? I knew it before almost anything else!

Then when I was 6, I began piano lessons. I had been sitting at the piano "pretending to play" for so long that Momma and Dad knew this was the next logical step. My piano teacher was a little Italian nun with whom I had a love-hate relationship for the next 12 years. She was a part of the Irl Allison Guild; this is an organization for which you must play an "audition" every year in front of a judge, and receive an annual award commensurate with the material you present.  (Translation: If you don't screw up your songs too badly, you get a medal.) I loved these auditions because it was an adrenaline rush like no other.  You sat precariously on the edge of a piano bench, willing your hands to do what you'd worked so hard at all school year, in front of an audience. Then you got to do it AGAIN for a family recital in June..... now my obsession for music included the thrill of live performance.

And so it continued, with piano recitals, stage shows, choral concerts, band concerts, musicals, Pops concerts, Tanglewood concerts, Symphony concerts, more stage shows, TV tapings, movie soundtrack recordings, and on and on and on.

Last year, I came to a violent curve in my musical road.  I was onstage, and suddenly the feeling that I always cherished, that sense of "right" that music and performance gave me, was slipping away.  It turned to panic and rage.  My blood pressure skyrocketed, I broke out in a sweat, and I had to sit down in the middle of a performance.  My wonderful flying feeling from music was crashing and burning in front of my eyes. I tried to brush it off, as a simple flexing of the nerves, or a hypomanic episode.  But it keeps happening, and happening, and happening....

Since then, I have had a few other close calls and cancelled performances.  Two weeks ago, I was singing for a Marvin Hamlisch Tribute at Symphony Hall; we were doing all numbers from "A Chorus Line" with the original Cassie..... holy shit!  This is what young Broadway fans dream of!  How exciting!  But for me, it turned sour again.  I couldn't enjoy it.  I was so bogged down in sadness and anxiety that I had to actually keep myself from sobbing whilst another soloist sang "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows".  I COULDN'T SING FUCKING SHOWTUNES WITHOUT CRYING. As the 2nd evening of performance progressed, I made a decision.  That night, I would go home, get settled in for the night, and kill myself.  This was it.  Music held no beauty for me anymore.  I sang and felt nothing. What was the point? What will happen to me now?  My sublime comfort in all the chaos had been music, and standing on a stage singing as though the devil were chasing me. It was gone. And soon I would be.

I managed to remember my promise to Paulie and cling to life until the next morning when I got help from my therapist... into another hospital. Now, I can get through the day without wanting to die, most of the time.  I tried hard not to cry for that week in hospital, and the week thereafter when I thought about the fact that I may never be able to perform again. I can't find my fire. I can't find my love of this precious gift that was given to me when I was 2 years old, standing next to Dad at the spinet in the living room, right along the stairs.

I listen to music and sing along softly to the radio. I sing jazz as fiercely as I want while doing the dishes.  I can't practice.  I'm trying hard to keep my chin up, knowing I do have some musical obligations.  My conductor at the Hall is being gracious and wonderful and letting me try a few weekends of Tanglewood this summer. I am determined to find my sublime comfort again, in the memories of a toddler singing in French with her father......

.....but what if I can't?...........

Life on the Inside: or, How to Take a Shower in Fifteen Minutes or Less

When one is on a psych ward, there are at least 2 constants: crazy people, and "checks".  Checks are the constant "checking on" every patient throughout their day.  One staff member per hour walks about with a clipboard, making sure that everyone is safe and accounted for EVERY 15 MINUTES.  They bang on every closed door, including the bathrooms.  A running joke amongst "serial patients" is that if you get REALLY good, you can get into a bathroom, shower, change, and leave before someone comes banging down the bathroom door, insisting that you scream out your first name, last initial over the sound of running water whilst you scrub your hair.  It's like a guillotine that comes out of nowhere, blasting your last dignity; a hot shower where, for a short time, you can forget that you are so crazy you live in a locked space.

Life on an inpatient unit is a real lesson in diversity and similarity.  It's a study in opposites, and how they co-exist.  In this particular case, everyone is here because "coping on the outside" has become impossible.  We are a danger to ourselves and others.  How we handle this ranges from sleeping 20 hour a day to running around the halls in socks at all hours of the day and night, making signs for "those that are not aware of how things work" and refusing all medications.

We squeeze stress balls and wrap ourselves in hospital blankets.  We talk to each other about the "good old days", when we used, drank, cut ourselves.  We compare scars and "The Lists"; lists of the hospitals we've been to, lists of the restraints we've been subjected to, lists of the drugs the docs have "tried out" on us.  We eat far too much, sharing candy and treats visitors have brought us.  We are from the city, country, suburbs.  We live in mansions, ranches, split levels, apartments, group homes, and cars; mental illness is the Almighty Equalizer.

I have watched as a young man cried into the shoulder of an elderly woman, finally accepting his addiction.  I have been the recipient of a piece of candy and a smile from a Hells Angel who loved classical music as much as I did.  We are a beautiful and highly dysfunctional family.  We scream and yell and laugh and cry and try to be "normal".

Today I am reeling; mania has taken over my life in a very real way.  I am inpatient now, trying to mix meds and coping skills into a kind of "cocktail" that might work. 

Mania has made me angry, violent, and frustrated.  My mood is labile (Holy understatement, Batman!) and I find myself getting into arguments with friends and family for no "good" reason. I cannot sit in a group for more than 15 minutes without having to leave.  I have a nasty twitch in my hands if I try to stay any longer.  I find myself pacing the halls, biting my nails so I don't scream at nothing and no one.  I shake violently just trying to keep my brain from leaking out my ears.  Sitting in a group starts to give me a glimpse into the life of Bruce Banner.

Up until yesterday, I would have said that I continue to have great faith in the medical profession to get me through.  Now my feelings are mixed.  While speaking with a doc on Tuesday, we discussed the medications I have taken in the past.  One of them is Depakote; I took it from about 1998-2001.  The doc immediately interjected "Well, I would never put you on that again; it obviously already did its worst." When I asked what she meant she told me that Depakote has been shown to cause PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome).  This is the condition that prevents me from ever having children.  Now the truth comes forward; the very medication that was supposed to "help" me ripped away one of my biggest dreams: motherhood.  The Brahms "Lullaby" plays over the loudspeakers here as I write this, indicating a baby has just been born.  Everytime it plays a bit of my heart bleeds faster. 

And now here I sit, at the end of a little twin hospital bed, writing on a tray table, begging God and all the saints and angels to come and bear a little grief and mania with me.  Maybe if they do, I can finish this latest of life's showers in less than 15 minutes.

The Descent...

On Monday, I went to my bi-weekly voice lesson.  I had a great time working on lots of musical theatre repertoire, and my teacher is a gem of a human being.  The lesson began with him taking one look at me as I approached his front door and saying, "Honey, talk to me..."

How do I respond to this invitation?  "Oh, I'm fine, just deep in thought!" "Oh, don't worry about me, I'm just trying to remember the lyrics we have to work on today!"

No. I looked him square in the face and said, "I think I'm losing my mind."

I haven't been using social media very much in the last few days.  I haven't been working, singing, reading, eating, sleeping, or anything really in the past few days.  I have been too busy trying to keep my brain inside my head.

I am manic.

Now, gentle reader, when I say manic, I do not mean the little hypomanic "blips" I've had in the past.  I mean that I am completely off-my-rocker.  I am not quite hallucinating yet, but every bit of my concentration is going toward not hurting myself/anyone else, as well as anyTHING else.  Last night I actually had to physically stop myself from getting out of bed at 11pm to smash every inanimate object in my living and dining rooms.  I had never felt so strongly that I NEEDED to destroy everything there.  Why?  Sure beats the shit out of me.

I have spent entire afternoons this week sitting on a chair and NOT cutting my arms to ribbons.  It takes all of my energy to finish sentences.  I have never been this manic in my life.  I have been anxious, or depressed to the point of self-harm, but this is brand shiny-new.  Paulie sat with me on Monday as I hung onto his sweatshirt in the living room and sobbed over and over again "What's happening to me; WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!"

Possibly the biggest KICKER to this entire shitty ball of wax is that I had my husband drive me to an Emergency Room on Monday night.... and they sent me home. I'm not crazy enough.  I had no "confirmed plan" of suicide that night, so "Medicare won't pay for any kind of inpatient treatment.  And don't bother telling me now that you're suicidal.  It won't work."  It was then explained to me that there were people waiting 3-5 days in the same emergency room who had not gotten a bed in a substance abuse facility yet.  There were waiting lists for every hospital and program in the area.  I wasn't getting in anywhere.  They told me to go home and talk to my therapist the next day; that she would have MORE luck of getting me into a facility THAN A HOSPITAL WOULD.

So now I sit at home and wait.  There is a facility in my hometown that is able to "talk to me" on Tuesday.  A psych hospital that is quite popular and rhymes with "LeClane" has a 5-week wait to just TALK to me for an intake, never mind get me into a program.

Paulie is being so good; he sits and tries to keep the demons at bay.  I speak in half-sentences and bewildering metaphors, and rail at anyone who will listen to my tale of woe.

Now begins my spiraling descent into uncertainty and insanity.....Hello, old friend.