RealMental

We were driving through the mountains in Maine.  Steep forests of pine closing in on the winding roads.  This was a vacation.  This was going to be fun.  This was family time.  Except I couldn’t breathe.

The walls of green trees were clearly unstable and likely to collapse at any point- same as my lungs.  Turns in the road seemed less intentional and more like haphazard attempts to avoid impending doom.  Were we driving too fast?  Was my seat belt working?  Why were my little sisters being so loud and I was the only one who noticed?  How come my mother couldn’t hear me screaming from the passenger seat that I was dying, we were all dying, the mountains were all wrong and everything needed to stop?

She did hear me eventually- once I actually started making noises outside my head.  I cried, hyperventilated, yelled- the whole show.  And we did pull over and stop everything because clearly there was something wrong.  I scared my sisters but hey we look- we’re at a scenic trail stop.  We looked at a brook from a sweet little bridge in the woods and still I had no explanations for my mother’s questions.

I remember walking around a gravel covered area by myself and trying  to focus really hard on the teeny, crushed rocks.  All they did was remind me of the massive effects of calamity.  A boulder crushed into quarter size chunks.  What size would I be when the mountains fell?

Eventually there was no more stalling- nothing else to see, no more trails marked by wooden signs with animal footprints burned into them.  It was time to continue our happy vacation.  It was time to get back in the car and squeeze between the carved out mountains all the way to our lakeside vacation destination.  Happy.  Fun.

I remember other things about that trip and my mother should be pleased to know that some of those things make me smile or laugh or just feel warm.  But mostly I remember that trip as the time I sped through a mile high alley walled with pine needles to poke at me as I held my breathe and salt water spilled from my eyes.  I remember my lungs collapsing and the confusing inability to scream effectively.  It is my first memory of a panic attack and at the time I didn’t even have that name for it.  I must have been 12 or 13 but nobody did anything, nothing was changed except for the new sound of tiptoes around me until a rheumatologist passed me along to a therapist when I was 15.

Here is an odd thing: That place where my mother had to pull over, probably terrified herself, because I was frightening to watch and listen to- the bridge, the stream, the trails and wooden signs are so fresh and real to me even now.  As long as I pretend I can’t see the gravel- I love that spot.  I want to look over the rails at the water tumbling aimlessly over the river rocks, pulling leaves and twigs at will.  I want to follow a trail into the woods just far enough for it to get a little bit too dark and then I want to come back.  That spot- and I have no idea where exactly it is or even how to find it- was the first place I remember finding relief and refuge from that particular type of terror that I now know better than the alphabet.

In spite of its awfulness I sometimes like to think about that day.  Because it was so new and a stranger to all of us the only remedy was stopping the car and absorbing nature for awhile.  20 years later and the remedy is waiting at the pharmacy, is more attack than remedy or takes so much concentration and remembering of action plans and mantras that I can barely remember I am trying.  Have labels and sessions and stays and medicines made things better?

If that was the first time I thought I was facing imminent death- my first panic attack and we will assume it is because I don’t recall any others and I am a memory keeper, how many have I white-knuckled my way through in those 20 years since?  What would I do if I had all those minutes back?  I’m not sure I would even want them back.  Would they still be filled with panic or somehow fresh and clean, ready for newness and light?

When is time lost better off gone and when is it appropriate to mourn its absence?  I am very glad that I am too tired for math today or I would have some heavy accounting ahead.  And well, that just seems foolish to spend minutes counting up the minutes you have already lost, even if I do find it tempting to have my own badge of courage style panic tally.  Which would then lead to receiving the “Anxiety and Panic Gold Master Level” iron-on badge.

The mentally ill club isn’t the Girl Scouts but it would be so much nicer if we got to wear sashes.

It comes with no warning, I was just sitting in a chair when I felt my insides begin to melt.  My first thought was to wonder if I was getting sick.

I don’t have “sick” symptoms, which means it’s the sickness in my head, thereby named “the ick”.  It’s when that visitor from the deep recesses of my mind comes out to tell me how fucked up and stupid I am, that I should just crawl into a cave and die.

The visitor isn’t welcome here, but it leaves things behind giving it the idea that it qualifies under squatter’s rights to torture me periodically.

Everything I look at around me is scary, the house is a mess, the floors need a sweep, vacuum and good cleaning.  The cushions are crooked on the couches again and that spot in the garage where the cat threw up a week ago is still there.

Why am I the only one that can see this type of chaos?  This isn’t how it was supposed to be.  Sure, it was supposed to be hard but THIS HARD?  Seriously?  Why?  Why do we do this?  Who came up with the idea that living with other people with totally different habits is enjoyable?

Sometimes I can send the visitor away by changing my thoughts, reading something inspirational, talking to someone on the phone, or writing about it.  Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes slowly.

No matter how many times I bid it goodbye, I know that it will keep coming to check in on me.  Just in case I’ve decided to let it move in permanently taking me to depths of despair and depression that I never imagined possible.  Not ready to be it’s bitch yet.

There is no permanent cure, there’s only a daily reprieve that helps keep it manageable most of the time.  After each visit, I become changed.  Mostly for the better, always a little stronger, always a little more enlightened, sometimes weaker.

The benefits gained don’t make it any easier to accept.

My anxiety levels peaked about an hour before the time to be there and I panicked as I searched for something to wear, making myself late as usual.

Walking into the church late, you were already in the process of getting married.

I began to cry watching you up there exchanging your vows,  looking so beautiful.  Soon I noticed that you were trembling severely.  I recalled my wedding day and how nervous I was, crying through the whole ceremony.

Your entire body was rocking like you were being electrocuted, and I felt scared for you wondering what could be wrong.

As you walked down the aisle, as a newly married woman you said “don’t hug me, my ribs are broken”.  I knew as soon as you said that, why your ribs were broken.  Your engagement party was the weekend before.  You got drunk and you fell down.  Then I noticed the huge bruise on your forearm that you’d tried to cover up with makeup concealer.

I wasn’t there, I didn’t have to be.  As quickly as you told me, I knew.  My heart fell, knowing that nothing has changed and you are still looking for the answer in a bottle of vodka and drowning.  Trying to kill yourself quietly so you aren’t a burden on anyone.

It seems like a lifetime ago when I was the one drowning.  You took care of me, helped me when I couldn’t walk and talk.  You risked your life being a passenger in my car, driving with a person drunk and stoned out of her mind.

We’re sisters, you and I.  Only eight days apart in age, we’ve grown up together.  Our bond is one that will never be broken, no matter our physical distance.

Watching you in so much pain was unbearable for me knowing that I could do nothing to ease it for you, the day of your wedding.

You’d waited an entire week to go to a Doctor because you didn’t think insurance would cover it.  You’ve held pain in for you whole life.  Stubborn, strong willed, never living for yourself, never honoring your true spirit.

We’ve grown apart, mainly due to life events on both of our parts.  I miss you, and I know you are hiding from me.  Knowing that I will see the truth and feel your discontent.  My concern is almost unbearable for you to see.

You are slipping through my hands, and all I can do is love you as I watch you go.  Watch you dig in deeper to the life you know isn’t yours.  I’ll always be here, you can count on that.

In the first apartment building that the Palinode and I lived in after we were married, there were many adventures. The building manager was of excellent character, most of the other tenants seemed nice enough, and although the rent was low, the building was gorgeously maintained, but it seemed to be cursed with a series of misfortunes that eventually pushed us to seek our home-making elsewhere.

There was the man who took off everything but his tightie-whities in the building’s entrance and tried to molest me in this weirdly romantic way when I set off for work one morning. There was the accidental flooding of our bathroom by an upstairs neighbour which resulted in part of our bathroom ceiling being pulled down, the tub being chipped out of the stone floor, and our inability to bathe at home properly for two weeks. There was the night that I pulled a young woman into our apartment after she’d spent a couple of minutes yelling for her life and banging on doors because the tenant she was visiting had threatened to forcibly restrain and abuse her. Then, there was that rash of fires that had us repeatedly expelled from our apartments in the wee morning hours. The alarms happened so often that we eventually gave up on panic and instead took to deserting the situation altogether and heading out for coffee, where I would inevitably remember that I left our birds to die again and had, instead, saved my favourite sweater.

The one incident that would not leave me, though, happened early on a Sunday morning while I sipped coffee at the kitchen table. It was a cool spring morning, and I liked to look out at the darkness of the wet bark against the greening grass. Two people were chatting outside, one on the lawn and one on the sidewalk, and I had just begun to think that an early morning walk might be nice when I saw that the men were having less of a chat and more of a negotiation, one that was being guided by the point of a large knife in the hand of the man on the sidewalk.

I remember thinking, “Seriously? Now someone’s going to get knifed on our front lawn on a Sunday morning? Fuck me.”

Then, I opened the window, because I’m a looky-loo who likes to hear what people in potentially deadly situations are talking about. In hindsight, calling the cops might have been a better reaction, but bizarre situations often inspire bizarre responses, and some part of my brain was not willing to accept that this was really happening right in front of me.

“I want the money,” came out of Knife Boy’s mouth.

“I don’t have it. I have a baby on the way,” said Lawn Man.

“Go get it,” Knife Boy said. “Now.” He made a small jabbing motion with the blade.

“I don’t do coke anymore. I’m going to be a father,” Lawn Man said.

“I don’t care. Just get me the money!”

“The mother of my child is sleeping inside. Can’t we just forget it?”

“DO I HAVE TO CALL THE COPS?!” I yelled out my window when I saw that pleas for human decency weren’t going to have much of an effect on Knife Boy.

Both of their heads swivelled around to figure out which window my voice was came from. I ducked my head away from the screen.

That last piece I contributed to their conversation surprised me as much as it did them, but I guess I felt for the ex-cokehead, baby-daddy-to-be who was trying to go straight even at the end of a pointed knife. Police intervention wouldn’t save the kid from getting knifed in the future by the next goon in line, but it sure could land his butt into a tidy jail cell, depending on how things went down, so I gave them the option to break it up. I’m nice like that.

“I’ll be back,” Knife Boy muttered as he turned and shuffled away down the sidewalk.

With the knife put away, they both turned back into near-children who looked like they should be wearing warmer coats, and it was then that it struck me that I was nearly witness to a stabbing on my front lawn. I went into a mild shock that gathered ice around my bones. I couldn’t get warm, and I would never feel safe on my front step again.

I was thinking about this incident this morning after reading Heather’s post that mentioned drug dealers in her old neighbourhood, and while I mulled over what made me react the way I did when faced with a potentially life-threatening situation, I realized something about my life: I walk around like there’s a guy with a knife on my lawn ALL THE TIME.

The memory of this incident has become an overly detailed metaphor for a fear that I live with every day. There is a wolf at my door, barbarians at my gates, monsters under my bed, and I keep every aspect of myself reigned in like children I’m trying to defend against an angry father. I was bullied in elementary school, I have been bullied at work, there are a couple of incidents in which I was bullied within my own family, and I think I have been unwittingly living under the assumption (yes, that does make an ass out of the ump and tion) that the next stab to my heart is just around every corner. If I do this, go here, feel that, I feel as though I am putting my own well-being into danger, because that’s what experience has taught me, or, rather, that is what I have thought my experience was teaching me. I am beginning to think, though, that these lessons from experience have suffered from poor interpretation. I’ve made the stories too simple. I’ve distilled out the parts that speak to my own power, strength, and wisdom and allowed the people who caused the hurt to be larger than life. The people who caused me to doubt myself and my abilities and my worthiness are all still standing around on my lawn brandishing knives.

It makes me wonder why I haven’t threatened to call the cops yet.

Sitting still and feeling my feelings has become almost impossible. I have the urge to run, run, run and do, do, do and it doesn’t really matter what or where as long as I’m not there or maybe not me. But, of course, I’ll be there, wherever I go and I will always be me, as fucked up as that can be.

I think about when I was diagnosed with Bi-polar and wonder if that is me or not. Some of the symptoms fit some of the time and there are many bizarre things I’ve done over the years that could be slotted into that diagnosis, but I don’t know. The meds made me a zombie and I cried a lot. I was once diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and I have lots of things that could slot in there, as well. But because I’m DID, I could be all those things or none of those things. I think I’m tired of diagnoses and searching for answers and trying new medications and the whole basket of things that come with being mentally ill. The labeling – I’m tired of the labeling.

So, I try and sit here, and feel. I try to identify what I’m feeling and to what extent. And that means I have to label everything going on inside me. It’s hard and not fun. It’s not the same kind of introspective afternoon where you get to think about your future and all the possibilities that are out there. No, it’s more like cleaning out the junk drawer and finding dimes and push-pins and keys you have no idea what they go to. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I love cleaning and organizing. But this internal stuff is HARD and I have to do it so OFTEN. It’s the only way to short-circuit the harmful cycles that come with not paying attention. When I’m no longer making choices, and instead I wander and react purely on my environment.

If I don’t do the work? I end up 3 states away and wonder why I’m there. I forget I’m married to a wonderful man. I go out and buy $700 worth of stuff we don’t need. I drink too much. I don’t eat. I fantasize about self-harming and prepare to do it. I sleep for an entire week straight. I obsess on everything I’ve ever done, ever, that wasn’t ok. I plan and plan and plan for every disaster that could happen. Ever. Anywhere. I dissociate without meaning to and don’t pay attention when I’m ‘not out.’ That one in particular leads to paying the car payment twice in one month when we can’t afford it because of the really large sums of money we sent in the mail to the IRS. I keep a headache going for days and abuse my liver with high doses of acetaminophen for weeks on end. I compulsively begin to straighten everything into sections. I draw lines with my fingers all day, copying words people say or shapes I see or images I have stuck in my head from childhood. I can’t follow a conversation with someone I care about and hurt their feelings with what looks like disinterest. And I get depressed to a level where ways to kill myself pop into my head with no notice. Jumping and dancing around what I feel.

Sit, Leah. Sit.

My leg is touching the door and I can feel the vibrations of the music through my knee cap. I’m not thinking. I’m just feeling the bass line and mouthing the words. My mouth opens and closes with the words but no sound comes out. I don’t think I know this song. If I was the passenger in the car to the left, I would think I was singing. But if I was the passenger in the car to the left, I wouldn’t be me. I would be him. I think about this for awhile, forgetting to mouth along to the song, my jaw slightly slack.

What if I was him? That guy to the left? I wouldn’t be me. Or I would be both. I would have his feelings. Or they would be the same as the ones I have now, just his. Or they would be different. And I would look over and see me and wonder about the lady driving in the big black van and hope she had at least one other person in the car to make that beast worth while. And I would know that she wasn’t really singing because I didn’t really sing, either. Orange would be slightly different, but how, I couldn’t say. I would like the air slightly warmer in the cab of the car while driving, but my wife would want it cooler and I’d wear gloves to keep my hands warm, even in the summer. I’d hate the birds that shit on the car under the palm tree. I’d love orange suckers and I’d do ceramics on the weekend as a hobby to calm my nerves. Or are they my nerves. Or mine. I don’t know.

My shoe is near the speaker and I can feel the vibrations of the music climbing up my leg. I turn the bass up and look up to notice the sign that says the name of street I know, but isn’t on my route home. I’m confused for a moment and then I realize I passed my exit about twenty minutes back.

I wonder where I’m going.

I’m driving as if I don’t care that I’m not headed in the right direction. I just passed an exit where I could have turned around. And another one. And another. I’m not changing lanes to get to the right. I’m just going forward at a steady 73 miles per hour. Maybe I don’t care. But I don’t know where I’m going.

I’m out of water. My mouth is dry. I have a headache. I get off the freeway and get back on, heading west.

My hands are on the steering wheel and the vibrations are coursing through my fingers and into my wrists. The music is too loud and I turn it down. Then off. The car on my right is driving right in my blind spot. When I speed up, he speeds up. When I slow down, He slows down. I punch the gas and hit over 80, moving away from the irritation. The road is bumpy on this stretch and the van bobs up and down violently for a few seconds. The Santa Annas are blowing hard against the windshield and I can hear the whistle it makes as it leaks through the seams around the doors. It’s high pitched and screaming. All it would take is my not handling the wind very well. Just a tiny mistake going around the right bend of the hills. The tire would hit a pothole and explode. The van would flip over and over, jumping over the guardrail and into the middle of oncoming traffic. I could even take off my seat belt first. I look at myself in the rear view mirror. And then I look away. My foot comes off the gas pedal a little and I slow down to 68 and hit cruise control.

The wind whistling through the doors grows deeper and less insistent. It sounds more like a hum and less like a shriek. I take a few slow breaths and turn the music back on, but softly. I click forward through the songs until I find something mellow.

I’m close to home now. And I think I’m glad. The thoughts and feelings I’ve been avoiding come rushing at me. I’m a horrible person. I’m so unworthy of love. The world would be a better place without me. My kids deserve a better mom. Joe would have a better life without me. I imagine saying that out loud to Joe and I can hear his voice in my head. I would say, ‘I’m too broken. It’s never going to get better. How many times can I say I’m sorry before I get on your nerves? Once a day? Twice? I should just leave.’ and he would say, ‘Only say sorry if you commit a sin of commission or omission against me. You haven’t. You don’t need to be sorry. Your existence is not a sin. I love you. I hope you don’t leave. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’ And then I’m crying but I don’t know if it’s happening now or yesterday when he said it for real.

The car is stopped and parked in front of the house. I’m home. Home. The thrumming I feel isn’t music. It’s my thoughts and I’m trying to get them under control before I walk in the house. I’m numbing out my mind, creating a buffer around my body and settling in the center where it’s calm and one tiny bit of what I hope is reality comforts me as I gather my things and head up the walkway.

Your existence is not a sin. I love you.

Originally published here.

From Bloggymommer

Anxious. Anxious. Anxious. Lonely. Angry. Anxious. Abandoned. Burdened. Anxious. Disappointed. Anxious. Stressed. In a hurry. Anxious. Unable to sleep. Anxious. Tired. Dragging. Anxious. Worthless. Anxious. Regretful. Anxious. Listless. Wistful. Anxious.

Today, the meds are working, and I am less anxious. A reprieve. It doesn’t happen often. But, when I’m less anxious, I’m left to deal with the other things rattling around in my head.

Anxious. Anxious. Anxious. Lonely. Angry. Anxious. Abandoned. Burdened. Anxious. Disappointed. Anxious. Stressed. In a hurry. Anxious. Unable to sleep. Anxious. Tired. Dragging. Anxious. Worthless. Anxious. Regretful. Anxious. Listless. Wistful. Anxious.

I should be celebrating. For the first time in twenty years, I have meds that help. Today I’m not anxious. Lonely. Angry. Abandoned. Burdened. Disappointed. Stressed. In a hurry. Unable to sleep. Tired. Dragging. Worthless. Regretful. Listless. Wistful. But not anxious.

I can sit still! Now that I can sit still: I can, I should… what should I do first?

I’m almost bored. The anxiety has waned, and now I have nothing to do, nothing to think about. Well, not nothing: Lonely. Angry. Abandoned. Burdened. Disappointed. Stressed. In a hurry. Unable to sleep. Tired. Dragging. Worthless. Regretful.

One foot in front of the other. One thing at a time. One. I can’t remember the last time there was a singular thought in my head. I can’t remember this sense of focus. The house is clean. The work is done. There’s nothing on the calendar until next week. What did I focus on, the last time that I had focus? I can’t contain this need to plan something, anything: a trip, a date, a movie premiere, a trip home.

Quiet. Birds chirping, and a bus passing on the street. There’s nothing good on T.V. I need something to do with my hands. I thought I got over this loneliness. I thought I worked through this anger. I feel raw and defenseless. A ten-year-old kid all over again.

I can’t remember the last time I lived a day without that pattern. Anxious. Anxious. Anxious. Keep Busy. Think of something to worry about. Anxious. Anxious. Anxious. It’s bizarre, but at least I knew what to do with my day. Is it strange to miss that?

It’s a beautiful day outside. The chores are done. The list is checked off. There’s nothing to finish up. I’m dressed. I can’t think of what to do or where to go. Now what?