RealMental

I’ve had a lot to say, and yet nothing to put to words.  And time has just slipped away from me, as I let myself get pulled into the swirl of holiday planning and meetings and snow days and doctor appointments and life in general.

During the snowstorm earlier this month, I was knitting a pair of gloves.  I had leftover sock yarn, a funky self-striping pattern, and I found a pattern in one of my magazines for fingerless gloves with mitten hands to fold over them (that probably makes no sense whatsoever, but I suppose what I was knitting isn’t the point of the story).  I started a new skein of yarn for making the mitts with the intention of picking up the pattern somewhere near the same point in which the hand pattern fell.  That way the stripes would match up, there would be no jarring change in the color sequences.  I pulled the yarn from the center of the skein, and instead of unspooling neatly, it came out in a huge tangled clump.  I worked at the clump to untangle it, winding the yarn into a neat ball as I went.  I was bound and determined to have my tools perfectly ready so I could make this glove coordinate, make the patterns align.   I worked at that gigantic tangled mess of yarn for close to two hours- I didn’t realize how much time I was spending as I was going, I was just focused on the task at hand.

Then the yarn broke.

That tangled mess of yarn became a metaphor.  In the end, I started the mitt part of the project at a slightly different point than I’d intended to, since I wasn’t able to properly judge the coloring to make it perfect.  I know that there is a glitch in my mitten.  I had an extra yarn tail to weave in at the end because of the split, so there are technically two glitches from having to add an extra joint. No one else can tell.  No one else would think to look.  I spent a ton of time trying to work through a problem that wasn’t really all that much of a problem, and instead ended up damaging my yarn.  The final mittens are warm, and they are a quirky pattern that makes people smile when they see me wear them.  I made a mistake and I recovered from it and it didn’t detract from the final outcome.

I’m not always like that with my knitting, I often turn my goofed up stitches into ‘design elements,’ but I am like that too much with my life.  I spent so much of the past year worrying that the decision to put Hoss in the hospital or the delay in getting him into another therapy group or my losing my temper with him when he can’t focus is negatively affecting his daily life.  I see his outbursts, which are less frequent and less intense than a year ago, and I wonder why I haven’t been able to give him the tools to stop them.  I get so entranced by untangling the knots that I forget to go ahead and start the damned stitching so the mittens can be ready to wear.

We are rapidly approaching the first anniversary of that hospital stay.  I’m alternately thankful for the progress he’s made and the help we’ve gotten from the school and the doctors and my family and everyone, and being scared of becoming complacent.   I don’t have a pattern to tell me how this is supposed to turn out.

My mom has an incredibly annoying habit of starting conversations with me with the phrase, “What’s wrong?”

Example:  It is the day after Christmas.  I have been downstairs eating cake for breakfast in my pajamas.  I walk up the stairs and see my mom.  Startled, she looks at me.  “What’s wrong?”

Nothing. I say.  I was just eating cake downstairs.  Everything is perfect.

Example:  My mom calls me on the phone and leaves a voice mail.  I return her call.  She answers the phone—no “hello”—but “What’s wrong?”

It wasn’t always this way.

***

I don’t know what it is, what makes her do this.  It unnerves me to no end, makes me feel like she’s always on edge.  I have my theories, of course—that our relationship is forever changed by the knowledge of my mental illness, that she feels guilty that she didn’t know I had so many problems.  Guilty because she discouraged me from getting treatment the first time around.  Scared that it could happen again, a snap of the crazy finger and everything changed, or gone, again.

Once, when I was 21 and in the middle of the arduous task of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I spent the night at home.  It was Daylight Savings Time, the one where you spring forward and lose an hour, the same lost hour that started everything the year before.  The boy and I were both upset—him with me, and me with myself.  In the middle of the night, I slipped out of my bed and left a note saying I had gone to sleep at his house.  Later, in the early hours of the morning, someone shot a gun outside my house.  My parents awoke, saw I was out of bed, and immediately feared for the worst.  I got my mom’s panicked call on my cell phone, out-of-breath and hysterical.

I’m here. I said.  I’m alive.

But it was eye-opening, having a glimpse into the fears they had about my life and my illness.  The fact that they thought it could have been me has always shaken me to my core.

***

An essay on suicide and its presence in my life:

In 2002, a month before starting my senior year of high school, one of my best friend’s fathers committed suicide in the woods outside their house while no one was home.  Her mother, out of town and worried that she couldn’t contact him, called my friend on the phone and my father, brother and I drove home with her.  While we were in transit, he was found dead.  One of his employees knew me and knew that I was a friend of his daughter.  Trying to track her down, they called me.  We were halfway there.  We pulled over in the rain and I got out of the car.  At the age of 17, I had to tell this girl that her father died, that he’d committed suicide.  And then there, in my arms, were the pieces he’d blown apart with his gun.  I held the one who’d been left behind.

Last week, one of my closest friends called me—after a string of numbed-out half-started words, he finally choked out that he’d lost his college roommate.  I went over to his house and we sat outside as he smoked cigarettes.  He told me about the questionable nature of the death, about the erratic driving and an overcorrection of the steering wheel that flipped a car and left its driver DOA.

“His father told me that he’d been on pills, and I knew that he was having some problems.  But nothing like this.  And he never told me how he was feeling.  He never told me.  Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

He was asking because he knows about my experiences with mental illness, because he knows that I’ve been depressed.

So, I told him the truth.  That sometimes we don’t tell the people who are closest to us because we don’t want to change their perceptions of us.  We don’t tell them because we can’t bear the sideways glances, the frightened looks that make us feel crazier.  That we can’t stand the thought of hurting and worrying the ones we love.  That when we tell the closest ones, that’s when it really hits us.  That’s when it’s real.

It’s easy to tell strangers and people you’ve just met.  They don’t have any emotional investment in you or your well-being.  They don’t worry at night or when you call them on the phone.  They never will have to ask you, “What’s wrong,” and be scared of what the answer might be.

So he’s quiet and drunk and upset—all the things I’ve been before, when someone I knew unexpectedly died.  And he looks at me, and repeats himself.  “I just wish he had told me.”

And here I am, once more—holding in my arms one of the ones who’s been left behind.

***

It’s not my intention to proselytize or blame.  I’ve been on both sides of the matter, flipping back and forth like a metronome from experience to experience.  I know what it’s like to wallow in desperation and sadness that feels like it will never end.  I’ve visualized it in my head a thousand times—what it would look like to rake a razor down my wrist, what my feet would look like hanging from a rope or the moment of clarity I would have just as I jumped.  I’ve wished for cars to hit me in crosswalks, and I’ve thought incessantly on rough days of turning the steering wheel and careening into a tree.

But I know, too, about the ones we leave behind.  Friends, family, teachers and acquaintances.  The ones who will sit in doorways, mouths drooping with cigarettes and veins running with vodka, the ones who will ask “why” and “how” and blame themselves, no matter what anyone else tells them to the contrary.  I’ve been there too many times, and the pressure of these times is always enough to push me back.

But in the light of this most recent experience, I feel guilty for being so frustrated with my mother.  She asks “What’s wrong?” because she worries that the time she doesn’t is the time it will matter.  I want desperately to tell her that she shouldn’t worry.  That the truth is that, if that time came, she wouldn’t be the one to know.  No one would.  Our hearts are full of secrets and lies, of deceit and worry and fear, of questions that have no answers.

But I want to reassure her.  I want to reassure all of them.  “Don’t worry,” I want to whisper.  And even if I can’t guarantee it, I’m pretty sure.  If I could, I’d write them all promises.  “No matter what, no matter how hard it gets—I won’t leave you behind.”

I work at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. As you may know, each year around Thanksgiving, a giant evergreen tree is trucked in and trussed up in time for the televised “Lighting of the Tree.” The tree is big. It’s so big that decorating it takes weeks. And scaffolding. Lots and lots of scaffolding.

Now, this is only my second Christmas in NYC, but I’ve already got my own ritual for this event. I, along with everyone who works in the building, evacuate at 3pm before the crowds gather to watch the tree get blown up and sung to by rock stars.

Occasionally, I get irritable in New York. Sometimes when I’m walking and people (confession, I call them tourons, but I don’t mean you) stop on the sidewalk and impede the flow of foot traffic, I clench my jaw and widen my eyes in exasperation as I pause and wait for a path through to make itself known. I walk quickly, but I don’t run over people—they more or less veer into my path, like cicadas bobbling into a windshield.

As I’ve said on Twitter, if you lack the spatial awareness to step aside when exiting a door, elevator, or escalator, you’re probably really bad in bed.

Occasionally, as I walk through the city, I’m glad for the jostling, because it makes me feel connected in a sea of well-dressed anonymity. At these times, I’m filled with the spirit of kum-ba-yah, and I’ll often find that I’m smiling to myself. It’s not forced, it just happens. Who knows what brings it on—maybe I had a really good doughnut that day—but I certainly prefer being at peace with humanity rather than being a steaming bowl of annoyed.

But I digress. This post is supposed to be about managing mental illness, right? And, as I type this, it’s 8 days late according to my self-imposed monthly deadline. I’ve known I wanted to write about the holidays for at least a month, so why have I stalled?

Because I kind of hate the holidays.

And believe me, there are reasons.

This is a whole book, this here topic of me and the holidays.

It’s genetic.

No, really.

It started with my grandmother.

Okay. [Deep breath.]

My grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness. She wasn’t born that way. She chose it. And she was one of the 144,000 who are actually going to join God in Heaven. Well, she’s there already. She died six years ago this month.

I hardly knew my grandmother. My few memories of her center around rare visits during which I watched her shove vitamins down her Siamese cat’s throat and slather enormous quantities of hand lotion on herself and anyone within arm’s reach. Once I turned age 12, these visits stopped. With a complete lack of irony, my mother said she didn’t want my grandmother to hurt me the way she had hurt her. There were a few feeble attempts at communication over the years, but that ended when I got a note from my grandmother saying how worried she was because I was going to burn in hell for going to college.

You may know that Witnesses don’t celebrate holidays. My mother grew up never celebrating her birthday or Christmas. This of course meant that the holidays assumed an importance to her that was…spectacular.

I don’t remember a single holiday from my childhood (I’m talking even Independence Day) where my mother didn’t end up yelling. As I got older, and began to stick up for myself, her screams turned to sobs that I had caused by…well…by sticking up for myself. I was hollowed out after each encounter, and once I realized this pattern wasn’t going to end, I began methodically desensitizing myself by unplugging emotionally from the holidays as best as I could.

I evacuated.

One way I learned to manage the holidays was to encourage group gatherings. On those lucky holidays, we’d celebrate at a friend’s home, and keep the crying and humiliation confined to the car. (And here the memories are starting to come back. Ugh.) Another way I learned to manage the holidays was to stop going home. Of course there were repercussions to this decision, but it felt like survival more than a choice. For the most part, my mother has understood when I’ve chosen not to go  home. As much as she has lashed out, there’s always been a part of her that has known things were really messed up and simply not known how to fix it.

Now, my grandmother had been a traveling private nurse, and in her late 60s, she checked herself into a nursing home because she said she was ready to let people take care of her. It was her turn. She then went and lived for another 20-odd years. To me it just seemed like giving up. My mother said for years that she thought her mother might die soon, but this time, in 2003, I knew it was serious. I hadn’t planned on going home for Christmas that year, but my mother sounded destroyed by what was happening to her mother, so I was down in Florida at the nursing home the next day. All three of us were in the room when my grandmother left this world on December 18.

I’ve written elsewhere at length about what transpired in the days and weeks following. We had some wonderful talks as we parsed apart the legacy of choices that had led us to where we were. But then something snapped and there she was, glaring and furious because I had rolled her coins. (Funny because it’s true.) I remember saying, as things devolved, “I never understood why you kept me.” It wasn’t an accusation, it was a genuine question borne out of the confusion I’d always experienced at being told I was loved one moment and treated with contempt in the next. She quietly responded, “I don’t know why I did either. There were plenty of other people who would’ve taken you.” She later clarified that she meant that, for all she gave up in order to raise me, it seemed that it was all for naught because I didn’t know that she loved me.

I’ve only called a suicide hotline twice, and this was one of those times. It actually ended up being funny. The fact that I had counted out my sleeping pills wasn’t what scared me—it was that I was suddenly deeply altered, like I had checked out. I was calm, affectless, and almost in a trance as I counted. The very freaked-out part of me that wanted to live then promptly sat on the floor, sandwiched herself between the bed and the wall, and called a hotline. I was on hold for so long—what with it being the holidays and all—that by the time I finally reached someone, I basically said that I couldn’t take up his time when there were clearly so many people needing help right then. I didn’t know at that time that the name for one of the conditions I had was Passive Suicidal Ideation, but I knew enough to know that, even though I wanted to give up because I couldn’t seem to find a way out of my pain, I wouldn’t really *do* anything, as seductive as that thought was at the time. So I hung up once I felt connected again.

The next day, after my zombie self unlocked the bedroom door, my mother came in, sat down on the bed, and made a solemn promise to me that she would never let an event like that happen again. I snorted a little because I didn’t believe her—belief like that costs too much. I remember thinking that’s right, it wouldn’t happen again, because I’ll do my best not to be that vulnerable again. I told her, “You can’t promise that.”

I don’t think my mother has ever really had a full round of therapy. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to navigate her particular emotional minefield without professional support. I know I wouldn’t have made it had I not had the help of others far smarter than I. I remember thinking at the time that if it were that easy for her to stop ridiculing me, why had she tormented us both over the years. I didn’t believe she had that kind of control over herself. But, I guess I had scared not only myself, but her as well, so even though she lacked the understanding, she made a choice of will to never behave that way again. I had forgotten she’d even made the promise, until she reminded me recently. I have to say, I think she’s kept her promise.

And I think maybe that’s love.

In a few weeks, I’m visiting my mother for Christmas. She’s been so self-aware lately that I recently asked her, “Are you getting therapy and not telling me?” (Answer: No, but she’s had time to think things over.)  I’m not hoping for a wonderful time, but I’m not dreading it like I used to. I’m actually a little optimistic, because you have to be, right? But I’m also on guard just in case, because I know there’s a part of her that is so hurt that she might lash out. And there’s room for that now without it making me crumble. It’s my job to defend myself, though it’s still new and difficult—it feels like I’m not allowed, like it hurts her.

Whew. Okay. That wasn’t sooooo bad.

The holidays can be rough for some of us. There’s not enough time, not enough money, not enough warmth and ease. We each find our ways of coping with the strain—I know I deliberately let myself get a little numb. I evacuate. I have my rituals of checking out. Where I used to love singing carols and decorating my home, I just sort of don’t go there because it would make me sad. And I used to love giving gifts, until the lean years when I was embarrassed that I couldn’t afford to give them. So my protective choice to emotionally ignore the holidays means I don’t appreciate the outdoor festivities, but I do have friends who get excited, and that makes me happy, because even though I don’t look forward to the holidays, I understand that for some, it’s a time of renewal in the midst of the bitter cold. For others, it’s a time of grieving. For me, this year, it’s a time for both—I know the holidays will probably always be a trigger for me, just like they are for my mother, but I also can slowly begin to let my guard down and hope that it might be just a little different this year. Which is terrifying, by the way.

Many people are struggling with mental illness, and some also are fending off emotional violence in the home. I’ve never felt ashamed for having had depression and all those other things. In a way I sometimes think I’m lucky because the root cause of my depression wasn’t chemical, it was external, circumstantial, a problem to be solved. (Though I’m guessing the decades of depression had a chemical effect.) I’m still working on telling my story in a way that doesn’t hurt my family by revealing too much of their part in things, but I’ve always believed that sharing our stories can heal on both ends of the transaction.

And I believe that I am entitled to my story.

Sort of.

I’m working on it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to bundle up and head home through the holiday crowds on Fifth Avenue. I have gifts to buy.

The countdown at casa de Miriam is on in full force.  We have the paper strips cut and ready for glitter glue, stamps and taping into chains to hang and confuse visitors.  There is the Hanukkah chain.  December 11.  The Christmas chain.  December 25.  Wee Girl’s 4th Birthday!!! December 31.  New Year’s Eve.  December 31.

There is no chain to count the heart wrenching marking of days that began sometime in the last few weeks and surprised me with its “still crazy after all these years” presence.  My daughter’s birthday is, oddly enough, also the anniversary  of her birth and thusly of what is one of the worst days of my life in spite of the amazing ten fingered, ten toed little beauty that came with it.  New Year’s Eve 2005 marked the beginning of years of a new sort of distress that my brain wasn’t used to regardless of the years of training in mental dysfunction I had.  Post-partum depression and a fresh batch of PTSD.   I hid it mostly, for the first year but by her first birthday I was shocked to wake up in a sweat.  Not long after that I was waking up very differently and without my little girl beside me.

I have worked so blessed hard to get better from this, let alone the mental and physical scars from days gone by.  But each year as December rolls in my chest tightens and breathing gets that much harder to manage.  The spirit of celebration is masked by fatigue, flashbacks and restlessness.  Fear and anticipation of The Day’s arrival choke me and leave me feeling split in two with a cleaver, as though anybody could see the wretched ache inside me.  Anybody could prey on it.

Yet this is my precious little one’s birthday and I should be struggling with pink streamers, glittery balloons and foolish party hats- not symptom control.  I know though that I need a second by second plan for that day from the moment I wake up to when I take an extra sleeping pill to fall asleep.  Without a round the clock plan there is too much room for emotional disaster.  4 years after my baby was taken from me so easily while I cried out until I was helped to calm down by a syringe and an anesthesiologist who turned blurry in seconds- and I am still stuck.  The distance is still there in little places throughout the year but on what should be her day and her day alone I am still having to distance myself from the moments, the day, from HER.

I would like to say that I will return this topic and release more.  Not just for myself but because somewhere inside me I know I must not be the only one.  And I DO believe that I am not the only with anniversaries of pain and mental paper chains to count down.  However, I am still not through the paper links.  There are still rings for children to argue over ripping before the arrival of that day of days.  The day when the whole world celebrates a fresh start, my daughter is showered with “my haven’t you growns” and I pray for a knock out pill that will keep me standing but get me through the day without feeling the sharp sting of tears or pulling of scars.  So I can’t really say that I’ll get back to this soon because I don’t want the pressure and I don’t want to rope myself into failure right now.  When the time is right I will share more and as always I welcome (very nearly plead with) you to share with me, on site or via email.

My daughter is nearly 4 years old.  Not a baby anymore and oh so bright and beautiful.  She is my love and my light and I hate and fear that one day she will read my words.  I never want her to blame herself for my swollen eyed, frantic Decembers and stumbling Happy Birthdays.  I never want her to feel the depth of my depths and feel like she dug the pits herself.

I hope that she will teach me to love December 31st for what it is- her birthday and New Year’s Eve.  I hope that one year I stop calling it the anniversary of her birth and my mental countdown will disappear.  I will only hope to be able to stay awake long enough to watch the ball drop with her and the rest of my family beside me.  She was born on a day of worldwide celebration.  There will always be a party on her birthday (god save me on her 21st!) even if I can’t throw it.  Her bounce, her giggle and her clarity of vision has fueled my breaths, my heartbeats and my kisses for 4 difficult years that I would never trade.

Part One Here
By Muriel Lipke

Part Two

My life evened out pretty quickly following that episode and the start of therapy. I was diagnosed with “situational depression” and “anxiety.” I worked for about a year to process the death of one of my abusers and compartmentalize it so that I could go on living my life in as normal a fashion as possible. In the spring of 2005 I finished therapy and wasn’t on drugs anymore and was generally feeling pretty good…

Flash forward to the spring of 2007. I was under a great deal of stress, working at a new job, in a exceptionally demanding field. My boyfriend (the love of my life) had broken up with me in 2005 (before I finished therapy, even) and we were still friends. Since that time I had begun dating someone new — who ALSO broke up with me — right after I started the high stress job. Like seriously, the day I started the damn thing…

I floated along, doing okay for a while – though I was clearly withdrawing from my friends and family – and, starting to spin out of control. I was drinking a lot – I mean, I’ve always liked to party – but, it was becoming a pretty regular habit. And, I didn’t like that. So I balanced the party out with excessive exercise, running three miles in the morning, every morning and another couple of miles on my elliptical trainer after work every night. I was working about 70-90 hours a week.

Sometime in April I noticed that I would occasionally hear this weird humming or ringing in my ears. Shortly after that I began having toothaches. I went to the dentist and he told me that it looked like I was grinding my teeth. My hands – which had always shook a bit – were so unsteady that I couldn’t hold a pencil or pen and perform anything that required fine motor function outside of typing. I began to get headaches – lots of headaches. In general, I was feeling pretty poopy.

At the end of May, over Memorial Day Weekend, I ran a half-marathon. I then went out that evening and partied to celebrate with my friends. I actually called it quits pretty early and hadn’t consumed that much booze, because I remember thinking I was pretty damn sober when I walked up the stairs into my apartment. I went to bed and slept fairly well until about 5 am when I woke up because my heart was pounding in my chest.

I was – for some reason – exceptionally frightened. I was having irrational thoughts and my hands were clenched at my side. I laid there for about an hour, trying to calm myself into going back to sleep, when finally I realized that wasn’t going to happen I decided to get up and go for my run. I flipped on MSNBC (as I did most mornings) and started the coffee pot which I had set up the night before. When the coffee was done I pulled the pot out of the cradle to pour myself a cup and couldn’t hold it. My hand couldn’t make a grip and the pot slipped out of my hands and crashed on the floor at my feet, splashing hot coffee all over me.

At the same time, a shooting pain went up my left side, through my torso and shoulder. I suddenly couldn’t breath and I began to have tunnel vision.

I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to get into my bedroom and called my Mom. I told her what was happening and that I was really scared that I was having a heart attack (because that’s what I thought it felt like) and that I wanted her to tell me what to do.

“Go to the hospital,” she said, “Right now.”

I called a cab and took myself to San Francisco General Hospital where I was seen by a doctor who told me that I was not having a heart attack, but a massive anxiety attack. I talked the doctor out of calling down a psych consult and took a cab home. I called my Mom and told her what they had told me at the hospital. And, I told her that I thought that there was something else wrong with me and that I felt like I couldn’t deal with it in San Francisco on my own and that I wanted to come home.

She agreed with me and two weeks later my friends had helped me pack my apartment into storage and I was on a plane headed home for the summer.

The first month or so that I was home was so fucking frustrating. After that breakthrough anxiety attack it was like I was a huge raw nerve just hanging out into the world. Everything and everyone set me off. I didn’t want to eat or sleep or see my friends or family… I just kind of sat in my bedroom at my parent’s house waiting for the medication that I’d been given at the hospital to do something.

One day while I was at my parent’s vacation house with my Mom, I decided I wanted to give myself a pedicure. It was a disaster: First I spilled an entire bottle of polish remover on the carpet while trying to take my old polish off my toes. Then I couldn’t form a steady grip in order to paint my toenails. I tried and my hand shook so badly that I smeared polish all over my foot. This happened three times before I lost my shit and threw the open bottle against a wall. My Mom came upstairs when she heard me sobbing. She found me slumped down in the hallway, crying hysterically, over something as stupid as painting my toenails.

“What’s the problem?” She asked.

“My hand won’t stop shaking enough to paint my toes,” I cried to her, “And, I spilled polish remover and then I got mad and threw my nail polish at the wall.”

My Mom was really shocked, though she knew that there was something seriously wrong with me, this was the first time since I was a teen that she’d seen me break down like this… She got me calmed down and took me downstairs where she painted my toes for me. It was comforting and humiliating at the same time.

My boyfriend (the love of my life) called me several times that first month and I talked to him about what had happened. He helped me come up with a list of questions to ask the doctor when I was able to see one. I ended up going to see my family practitioner who ran some tests on me and told me that he thought that the problem was that my brain wasn’t making enough serotonin to be healthy.

Eventually the medication combination that he gave me kicked in and I started to feel a lot like my self again. At the end of the summer I was ready to go back to San Francisco and resume my normal life.

Happy Thanksgiving (to my fellow Americans.  To my Canadian friends, please accept my more-than-a-month tardiness with the sentiment.)  And I really am thankful. 

I am thankful for my children playing on the Wii downstairs.  Little Joe ventured into the TV room downstairs today on his own.  He did not have any conditions for which doors could be open, or which lights could be lit.  He did not tell me that there were monsters in the room, or that the electronics had been turned on in the wrong order.  He just walked in.  Hoss is taking his turn, and giving his brother and sister theirs, and congratulating others for scoring.  No remotes (or fits) have been thrown.  Princess is feeling pride in the games in which she succeeds, and trying to improve in the games in which she does not, without quitting or convicing herself that the efforts are useless or that she is a lesser person because her little brothers won.

I am thankful for the homecoming festivities that will keep Hubby occupied late into the evening, and the empty bed that he will fill at his mother’s house, and the early morning golf round.  He has many friends to visit with tonight, and a short drive to a safe place to sleep.  He has the capability to walk an eighteen hole course.  He is not lying in a hospital recovering from a stroke.

I am thankful for the laptop on which I type, although it is not my property.  The organization that employs me keeps me more busy than I sometimes care to be.  Being busy, however, means that I am needed and the amount of work I am giving by the upper level people shows me that I am trusted.  “Employed and valued” is a precious place to be.

I am thankful for Vanna  White and Deborah Norville, and for the reasonably priced craft stores who carry their yarns.  There is a half-finished sock on my needles right now, destined for to be completed and matched with a mate in time to be a Christmas gift for my brother’s girlfriend.  And I am thankful for the members of my family who act like they appreciate receiving whatever projects struck me and kept my hands busy so they would not be putting unnecesary food in my mouth each evening.  Whether everyone actually likes what I give them or whether they are humoring me doesn’t even matter at this point- if they hate the stuff I make, they put up a good front.

I am thankful for this site.  I am thankful for a save haven, where no one recoils from me at the mention of having my eight year old on a twice daily dose of stimulants and anti-psychotics.  A place where, if I say that it’s a dark day, no one tells me that I just need to snap out of it or go jogging or some such thing.  I am thankful that I can read from adults who encountered their mood disorders as children, and yet made it to adulthood moderately unscathed and without a scarlet “I” for “insane” across their chests- that gives me some hope for my children to blend in and make it through their rocky childhoods.

I’m thankful we’ve all made it through another year.  2009 has been a hell of a year, and I still have one more month of it to face, but we have made it.   I’ve weathered more than I was aware I could weather.  I’ve attended more weddings this year than funerals, bought more baby shower cards than ‘get well soon’ ones.  And I have found, even in the years that seem to kick me until I feel like I can’t take another breath, that there is always something for which I can be thankful.

By Muriel Lipke

Part One

Shortly after I moved to San Francisco in 2004 I received a phone call from an uncle on my biological father’s side of the family telling me that my paternal grandfather had died. I remember sitting at my desk and asking my uncle if he had called to tell me anything else. When he said “no” I hung up the phone without even saying goodbye. I didn’t feel sad, I didn’t cry – why would I? My grandfather, along with my father sexually abused me from the age of four until the age of thirteen. I hadn’t even seen the man since I was 18, when I confronted them both as part of my therapy, demanding that they admit what they had done to me as a child.

For that matter, I hadn’t seen father-dearest since I was 23 when he told me that I was an “ungrateful child” whom he regretted was ever born. That was around about the time that I was in the middle of my first and only divorce – having married a man a few years previous who was just as abusive as my father was. I think that my father liked my ex-husband better than me because he saw himself in him. I know I saw father-dearest in my ex and that horrified and frightened me so much that I could barely move. Getting out of that marriage was the first step in many that I took for myself in order to get well.

Or, at least be better than I was.

Deciding to not have contact with the people who abused me and/or facilitated that abuse was the second.

So father-dearest got banned.

My boyfriend of several years was laying on our bed reading a book when I got the news of the old man’s passing. As I put the phone down in its cradle he asked me, “What was that about?”

“My grandfather died,” I said with no emotion in my voice what-so-ever, “You know – the one – who did those things… he died.”

“Good riddance,” he said, “Are you okay?”

My boyfriend was (is) a social worker and he’d been maintaining since he had met me that he thought I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to my abuse as a child. I probably was, in addition to suffering from the clinical depression and anxiety that I knew about already, but I was stubbornly resisting going back into therapy. I thought that my work there was done after several years of weekly therapy (five years previous) and a drug regimen. I considered my “issues” compartmentalized and put away where they appropriately belonged and wanted to get on with the business of living my life without having the stigma of mental illness – situational or genetic – tacked onto me.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I said.

That night I had to take a sleeping pill for the first time in a year so I could fall asleep. I am and was a restless sleeper. That night my inability to fall asleep was particularly bad. But, after an Xanex I eventually drifted off.

I dreamed that I was back in the house my Mother and I had lived in before she divorced father-dearest. I was five when we moved out of that house, so it’s rather remarkable to me that I remembered it in such detail in my dream. It seemed to be my birthday. I was my actual chronological age in the dream – 30 – but, I was dressed in a frilly party dress that I remember from a photo of my fourth birthday party. There was a party going on behind me, my friends and family were all there, celebrating. However when I turned around, towards the front of the house, I got tunnel vision and saw that my grandfather and father-dearest were sitting together on a plaid sofa in front of a bay window. I could see through the window that it was snowing outside. I turned to go back into the party and saw that the area behind me where all these protectors – my Mom, my brothers, my uncles, my maternal grandparents, my boyfriend (who shouldn’t have been in a dream where I was four, as I’d only known him for a few years) – had disappeared. The room had turned cold and grey and it seemed as if the walls were crumbling down.

I tried to wake myself up, saying over and over again that it was just a dream, to no avail. Then like by black magic, something grabbed me around my waist and pulled me towards that plaid couch, until I was standing right in front of father-dearest and my paternal grandfather. Father-dearest stood up and looked down at me with his eyes filled with anger and hate – it was a scary look – sadly, not one I was unaccustomed to. He pushed me onto my knees in front of my grandfather, keeping his hand on my shoulder so I couldn’t get up. My paternal grandfather looked at me, then leaned forward to hiss at me in his whiskey and liverwurst scented breath, “You’ll never escape me!”

I tried to scream, I couldn’t – I tried to get away, I couldn’t – I begged him to let me be, he wouldn’t. Then father-dearest forced my head down onto the couch and sat down on top of me. I was suffocating and screaming and crying and begging for my Mom to wake me up…

The next thing I knew my boyfriend was shaking me awake, but it wasn’t as if I had left the dream, only that he was there with me. I was terrified and it took me several minutes to recognize that we were not in my old house, but my new apartment in San Francisco. I still wasn’t convinced that father-dearest and my grandfather weren’t waiting around the corner to hurt me – I made my boyfriend get up and search the apartment, armed with my tennis racket. I followed close behind him and once we’d cleared all the rooms I allowed him to put me back to bed and feed me another sedative. Though I made him promise that he’d stay awake until I fell asleep to protect me.

I was completely irrational. Because I was sick, I was always sick, I just didn’t want to admit it — because, let’s face it, who wants to be mentally ill? My own mental illness was mild in comparison to my brothers – he was a full blown voice hearing and hallucination seeing schizophrenic – and where I could recognize his illness and advocate for him with doctors and lawyers and the general public, I could not admit my own disease or advocate for myself.

The next morning my boyfriend told me that I had woken him up because I had punched the wall next to our bed and was screaming at the top of my lungs. I had no memory of that what-so-ever, although my right hand was bruised and swollen. It was then that he put his foot down and told me that if I wouldn’t go get help for myself that he couldn’t continue to be in a relationship with me.

Given that my boyfriend was (and is) the love of my life, that was a powerful motivator and about a week later I went to San Francisco Mental Health Access where I was hooked up with a therapist and a psychiatrist and put back onto the medications that I had worked so hard to wean myself off (under the care of a different doctor) years previously.

Part 2 & 3 coming soon!