RealMental

I guess there’s a rainy season in Florida, or something, but since I’m new here, I’m clueless. People I talk to are so non-committal about the phenomena of Florida that I never know what is to be expected as just regular old normal and what is actually extraordinary. To me, the volume of rain that we’ve had this week is abnormal. I’ve experienced the natural world’s rainfall before, I’m not from the Sahara, but St. Augustine’s weather is just weird. Pouring, driving, wind-gusted rain sheets. For days. And me on my bicycle.

When it rains, I’d rather be in bed. Isn’t it common folk wisdom that the best place to be in a rainstorm is in bed listening to the raindrops hit the roof? I buy into that, whether it’s just my quirk or whether people actually believe that about the weather. It’s so comforting to know that though the wind blows water outside, inside you’re cozy and safe.

I crave cozy and safe. And maybe that’s what bed is to me, cozy and safe. In bed, I nestle into my flamingo covered sheets and snuggle with my pink stuffed animal mouse, praying for the pillow’s promise.

Although I love to get into bed, the only time I feel really restful and surrendered is in the morning. Each day, when the alarm goes off, I can’t believe that the world is calling me from my cocoon. Again.

Getting into bed, I feel the desire to rest, the urge to lull into oblivion, but the actual falling off the cliff to sleep evades me. “Almost,” I try to capture that sinking into dream, but subliminal urge for wakefulness pulls me back up. “Damn the surface.” “Almost” again, clutching mousie tight, “why did I open my eyes this time?”

When I talk to doctors, I say, “The sleep medicine makes me tired and groggy, but I need something to push me over the edge. I just lay there, but I can’t get over that edge.”

Free-falling off the cliff into my nest, like a stuntman launching into a safety airbag, that’s what I want. A dropping off. Isn’t that an expression too? “Dropping off to sleep”? A push, a nudge, no safety harness, no tether, pull me til the bottom opens and spills me out into dreams.

At night, when the medicine takes control, I sleep, but don’t feel like I’m resting. I feel like a drugged, immobilized zombie, which is what I essentially am. By morning, my body is on its own crash course into true slumber. In the morning, the drugs are gone and my silken dreams weave the net I crash into on my own. Pushed over the cliff and rescued by myself, not drugs.

And then the pain of the alarm.

Given over to my own sleep, I’ll stay in bed almost indefinitely, relishing my true chance at peacefulness. Given over to the demands of work, the alarm intrudes and reminds me that I can’t be on the clock in bed. It hurts. It physically hurts when the alarm calls me and says: “Sure, you just felt the holistic dream-hole, but I’m here to remind you sleep’s a bitch that you don’t own.”

I borrow sleep. I steal sleep. I medicate myself into sleep but never really feel sleep. Is that addiction? Feeding the fire becomes more important than feeling the heat? Sleep is my shameful secret, and all my loved ones try hard to stage interventions. “If you don’t nap, you’ll sleep better at night.” “If you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day it will become an easier routine.” And my psychiatrist: “You really need to quit the benzos.”

Sleep. Such a gentle promise, but such a slap to the face. Give me angelic rest, push me over the edge til I fly away, and I’ll know true beauty.

In the meantime, Florida’s east coast monsoon on the roof of my office says, “Wouldn’t you rather be in bed?”

Christine

I am not my mother’s daughter.

My mother has been Bipolar since puberty. She’s allowed to say that in certain company. I am not.

I know that I’m not even allowed to say that Mommy reads the National Enquirer.

My mother got up one morning, having not woken up from her drunken nightmare state. She called her step mother and told her what she thought of her. My mommy would never do that. She doesn’t have the back bone for it.

My mommy came flying down the hall to my room to tell me that it was my responsibility to get my brother ready for school. And my brother’s best friend Isaac. I knew it was easier for my mommy to think that way, that my brother was my son too. Mommy couldn’t tell her husband from her brother. But why did my mother think that Isaac was my responsibility too?

“You had better be sweet to him, Daughter! Or he’s going to leave me and it will all be your fault.” My mommy was so desperate. My mother was so apathetic.

My mother has been Bipolar since puberty. She’s allowed to join a book group and write about it in her memoir. She’ll publish it when she retires, so she won’t be fired for what she’s written. I am not allowed to tell this story on the blog that has my name attached. I know that my space on my blog is not really my own. Mommy’s friends might read it.

The Truths I know will get us by. If the front yard is well manicured, then no one will see the Crazy barely contained just behind the front door. If we smile for every picture, then we have happy memories. Expensive straight teeth are the same as a smile. Do not ever let yourself go, self-control is beautiful. If I start to gain weight, then the world will know things are not ok at home.

If I plunge myself under water when I scream, then it’s ok to scream: “Things are not ok at home!” I can swim away, I can run away, but a lap just brings me back to who I am. Read more »

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