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. 

The Snake

When I was 4 years old, I went to pre-school at the YMCA in town. I wore paisley dresses and cried when Momma and Dad came to take me home. I wanted to stay there with the books and toys and children all day. 

I don't remember a whole lot about pre-school. I remember that we went for walks sometimes. We'd get in a big line and a jump rope would be strung among us with rings attached. Each one of us would grab a ring and hold on. Off we'd go, parading down the street attached to a plastic ring that was attached to a jump rope, connecting the lot of us like a short, stout, brightly-colored snake. 

We were a snake of criers and complainers and stumblers and runners and a few laughing teachers. We were a snake of lives just beginning. We were a snake who will forever shed its skin, with new teachers laughing, and new children holding on. 

I eventually let go, and some new pre-schooler took my place, and on, and on...

I am attached to a new jump rope now. The plastic ring I hold onto is the promise of help from a hospital. My fellow walkers stumble and cry and laugh and complain. We pray that the walk ends successfully, and that we can pass the rings of a jump rope onto a new class of those who seek help. 

We are a snake that is just as stout and short and brightly-colored. We have the potential of a group of pre-schoolers, off to make our lives anew. 

Silent Screams

I've been thinking a lot about the recent shootings in our country. When things like this happen, the conversation almost always stumbles right into the gun control issue. Who should have them? Who shouldn't? Should we ban them? Should there be stricter laws? Should the second amendment be obliterated?

I find myself shaking my head and pointing, usually while silently screaming,  to the mental health issue in our country. People with mental illness are all silently, or not-so-silently, screaming for help. For understanding. For acknowledgement and treatment. 

If you walk into an ER with your leg hanging off, they put it back on. If you are diagnosed with a horrific growth somewhere in your body, you get chemo and radiation and other treatments to try and shrink or eliminate it. If you walk into an ER saying you are depressed, anxious, or suicidal, you wait. 

You wait hours to see a nurse. You wait a few more to see a medical doctor who listens to your heart and lungs, then walks away without a word. Then you wait a few more hours for a social worker to give you the third degree about "just how bad things are". You wait another few hours for them to call around and find a mental hospital that has space for you. Oh, and if you're not "bad enough", they send you home again. 

Now if you don't think you need hospital care, there are outpatient options. You can go to a day program where 3 social workers are trying to teach workshops and care for 30 patients, all while fighting with insurance companies for more time, fielding med questions they can't answer because the one prescriber that treats the entire program's worth of patients is at another facility 2 days a week; that facility doesn't have anyone, and it's the best we can do. 

You can go to a therapist, and you can go to a prescriber. Just remember that if a crisis arises or another clinician is sick, you'll get cancelled on or ignored if "you're not feeling too horrible" that day. 

I decided to really take the bull by the horns. My body doesn't respond at all to medication; they call it "paradoxical" or "treatment-resistant" mental illness. So off I trotted to a naturopathic nurse practioner. Don't worry, she's just as confounded as everyone else. This is my supplement regiment from 2 months ago:

This is last month's:

This is what I need to try this month:

And I'm lucky. I have Medicare because I'm on Disability, and they don't cover naturopathic care. So I have to self-pay. I'm lucky because I have a husband who says "Damn the cost; we have to get you better." I stopped counting the expense at $5000 out of pocket in the last 6 months. 

This is what my arm looks like today: 

I am one of "the lucky ones". I have people to help me, people who love me, and I have never been homicidal. 

If I am one of the lucky ones in the psych system, how dare we be surprised at what happens when people aren't getting   treatment?

Best Days

On my best days, I walk to work.  

My walking commute to the Parker Memorial Library is ridiculously short; driving, it's obscenely brief. I usually drive because I go to Dunkin Donuts first.  Anything worth doing well is worth doing with an iced coffee in one hand.  I take the mile and a half ride down to my favorite drive-thru, order a large iced black with extra sugar, and easily fly back down the street to the library. As I drive back, I feel a momentary sense of pride in ordering a coffee with no dairy, and then an equally-timed sense of guilt for ordering it with extra sugar.  I always forget my Stevia at home. 

Anyway, there are days when I walk to work.  In those brief minutes, I breathe in the air as deeply as I can.  I notice things like the brands of cigarette butts I pass in my travels, or the way a soda can has been maimed and tossed to the side of the road. I hear the cars passing by on Route 38; motorcycles make the most interesting and annoying sounds.  Sometimes I imagine a helmeted head turns and watches me ambling past the hair salon and dance studio with a TARDIS messenger bag slung over my shoulder and a travel mug of iced coffee in each hand. (The days when I walk are the days when I made my caffeine fix at the house...and those mugs are small, so stop judging the number!)

The other day I was walking to work, making my usual observations. I suddenly realized that I was ignoring the bigger problem.  It's a problem that follows me around, just like my friend Bipolar.  It's like Bipolar has this annoying kid brother who always tags along, and his name is Self-Harm.

Self-harm is exactly what it says on the tin: hurting oneself.  It comes in forms as diverse as the people who engage in it.  Some people burn themselves, some people cut themselves, some people hit themselves with objects, some people scratch themselves to the point where the skin begins to redden and even open. Some people pull out their hair, some people bite or pick at their finger and toenails until there's nothing left but the bleeding.  People generally engage in this behavior because they are so upset, frustrated, depressed, or anxious, they cannot think of another way to fight the growing explosion inside.  There are all kinds of different names for people's various preferences.  I'm a cutter.  Cutting my skin (usually on my arms) is horrible and wonderful.  I do not know how to describe the feelings that come before, during, and after this action is taken. 

Walking to work the other day is what made me realize that I can't describe the feelings, and that I'm focusing on anything BUT those feelings because they scare me.  

That's it.

That's the punchline.

My own feelings around self-harm are so conflicting and confusing that I don't know what to do about them.  I just keep going to my therapist and talking about it.  That's all I can do.  That's all ANYONE can do.

On my best days, I walk to work. Perhaps enough trips past the hair salon and dance studio with a TARDIS messenger bag slung over my shoulder will begin to provide answers.  Maybe I'll stop ignoring the feelings and explore them instead.  

Perhaps all of my days ahead are my best days.

On my best days, I walk to work.  

My frustration is at a limit. I can't say it's at THE limit, since there's no knowing when it may get even worse. I am trying to be pro-active. 

I have deleted Facebook on all my devices. I'm looking for yoga classes in town. I've gotten a tai-chi DVD through the library. I'm considering taking a few days off from life up here, and heading down to the Cape for my own writer's retreat. Perhaps putting my thoughts down on paper, or a screen, will take me down a few notches.  

I am so fed up. I'm fed up with feeling like a burden. I'm sick of biting my lip instead of telling people "I'm not ok!!!!!!!!!!" because WHO WANTS TO HEAR THAT AGAIN?!?!?! I'm tired of disappointing my husband, my family, my friends. I'm so sick of this horrifying illness and the way it's fucked my head into a stupor. I'm fed up with paying tons of money and time toward medications and treatments and health plans, only to confound another set of experts.  This is becoming my life's work. 

I never wanted my life to be like this. 

I know that this is some form of mania coming upon me, because I don't want to kill myself. I just want to go away.  I want to exist in a new place with new people and new experiences. Of course, what I'm running from will never leave, and that is the illness. My naturopath says to me "Stop thinking of this as a mental illness, and just remember that it's a sodium/potassium ratio upset." I appreciate her wanting me to feel less like a mental patient, but when the symptoms of WHATEVER is going on in my body make me feel like some sort of superhero or burden or recluse or unwatedwhatthehellisallofthisinmyheadandwhywontitstop person, or all of those things at once, then guess what? I'm a mental patient. 

I love writing that I'm not JUST a mental patient; some days I even believe it. I'm a wife and a daughter and a sister and a librarian and a singer and a Whovian and a Trekkie and a whole bunch of other things. But you know what really burns my ass? I'm a mediocre one of all of these things. I'm not actually good at anything. When my mother teases me, she says "You EXCEL at crazy." Unfortunately, that's not even true. I'm this planning ahead, ok here we go, watch out for this, be careful of that, maybe something's happening right now type of crazy. I can't even jump head-on into the bloody illness. 

My therapist laughed at me today: "Wow, Laura, you can't even enjoy mania." And she's right. I'm so concerned with "what happens next" and being proactive and being a good girl and doing what I'm told that I don't even enjoy the madness. I just fear it. 

That's what it's come down to. I fear my life. I fear tomorrow. I fear right now. I fear next week and next year and next month. 

I simply fear. 

And the fear is maddening in and of itself. Because admitting my fear to myself and others, makes me even more of a pitiable sight. Now Dad will say "here comes the victim" and Momma will remind me to enjoy things, and Gina will try to calculate how best to approach me, and Chris will joke and try to make me laugh, and Meg will remind me to still smile through it, and Kate will text to check in daily and Paulie..... oh Paulie. Paulie will stand and be strong and try to counsel and kiss me once and a while and try not to sink under the great bloody abyss of Laura. He will be the hero of the piece. 

And I will hate myself for it. 

May Is Mental Health Awareness Month

"I feel like I can fly.  I feel like I could write until the end of time.  I feel like I am worth nothing.  I feel like cutting my skin is the only way to stay in the moment.  I feel like I am the best, worst, and only person on the face of the earth.  I feel like I do too much.  I feel like I will never do enough.  I feel like I am a role model to all those who seek the truth.  I feel like if you listen to me, you will only hear lies.  Don't listen.  Don't look at me.  Don't pay me any mind.  Please see the hurt.  Please see how I am lying.  Please see what I cannot tell you...ever.........."

The preceding is what goes through my mind in about 15 seconds on any given day.  This is the thought process of one person with Bipolar Disorder.  It usually happens about 100 times a day, a few times every hour.

Now add guilt.  Now add anxiety, nausea, sweating, shaking.  Now add the voices of 10 other people, all shouting at the same time. Now add visual hallucinations.  Now add screaming parents, spouses, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, enemies.

Now try to work a job "just like everyone else".  Now try to clean your house, cook your meals, do your laundry, tend to your children, socialize with your friends. Now try to accomplish your dreams.

Seems a little difficult, doesn't it?

The next time someone says they're anxious about something, or they don't know if they can make it out to meet you for dinner, or they just don't know how they're going to get through the day, don't get angry or annoyed.  Don't sigh and think about what a drama queen they are.  Don't try to tell them that "it's all in their head", because IT IS ALL IN THEIR HEAD AT THE SAME TIME.....and it's not going anywhere. Just read this post.  Read it again and again until you start to see what it might be like for them.

And just love them. The only thing people with an illness want is a little love and support.  Just give them that much....and know you make all the difference.

Unfit for human consumption

I don't like opening lines. They carry WAY too much expectation, a sickening amount of potential, and in my case they are usually contrived. I would prefer to start in the middle. By then, we've all settled in, and we're just enjoying ourselves...

Tonight, the very fact that this blog exists pisses me off. It feels like an endless diatribe of "Am I good enough?" Ugh. What a pain in the ass. 

Why did I think that being a whiny bitch would be cleansing? Why would spilling my metaphorical beans ever make me feel better? It pisses some relatives off, embarrasses others past the point of recognition. Oh yeah, there are those who would rather smash the punch bowl in the middle of Nana's table and floss their teeth with the remnants than talk to me. I'm that annoying brat who TALKS ABOUT THINGS.  

ANYway, the fact that I am an entitled and self-righteous bitch was recently brought to my attention via the interwebs by a real special person, if you interpret the word "special" to mean total effing piece of shit. But, when some pieces of shit have lots of money and prestige, you start to believe them. Isn't that sad? Pathetic, actually. 

Well, here's some knowledge I would like to throw the interweb's way: I eat Moose Tracks ice cream on a regular basis. I read Game of Thrones fanfiction online when there are perfectly good books on my end table. I listen to the "Twilight" soundtrack on repeat. I love people of all kinds, and I'm getting pretty fucking sick of folks telling me who I should and should not hang around. I've been honest and it's blown up in my face time and time again. I am good to people. I am brutally giving and honest. I will lie down in traffic for you if that's what you need.  Don't call me two-faced because you're not "the only one".

I can't have children, ever. I cry about it sometimes, and mothers tell me "Oh but if it's meant to be, it's meant to be." Say that again, bitch. Say it again and listen to how ridiculous you sound. 

I like to read fiction that comforts me; Edwardian romance usually does the trick. It's not what a "feminist" should read, but a good ol happy ending in long pretty dresses makes me happy for a little while, and sometimes soothes my brain for a bit when I get my period AGAIN, and three more friends announce their pregnancies on Facebook.  

The conclusion that I have ultimately come to is that I'm NOT necessarily interesting, I'm probably self-righteous, and I am using this base and BORING means of communication because I'm just entitled.

I'll let you know when I'm ready to stop.....'cause that time sure as hell ain't come yet.