RealMental

Dear Miriam-

You are really starting to slack.  You seem to have completely forgotten that to get anything done you have to do anything.  Even though that is almost exactly the advice you gave your dear friend not more than a week or two ago.  Saying you are slacking is too harsh because you are more like a headless chicken.  That makes you blind, deaf, and aimless if not running directly into walls.  You are neglecting things that need tending.  You are tunnel-visioning into, well, tunnels.

Miriam- you have some serious relationships that have been affected by your mental and physical illnesses for years and the cracks are showing.  You better start an account at Home Depot because you have to do something to mend those zig-zagging, criss-crossing cracks and laughing and putting off conversations isn’t going to work forever.  You need to remember that you do have a few friends that you adore and can count on more than you let yourself think.  Start seeking them out instead of hiding from them.  You would give them the (always stained but moving towards more fashionable) shirt off your back so let yourself see what they are wearing.  A little stretching and they might have some shirts you can borrow too.

Stop pretending that the world comes to a standstill while the housework or kiddo craft waits to get finished.  There will never be enough time- you know that.  Miriam, be honest with yourself- if you keep waiting to really dive back into your work until you have the perfect tranquil but energizing space transformed out of your little sun room turned storage locker and all the corners of the house swept it might wait forever.  Do you want to wait forever?  As the song goes: “That’s a mighty long time.”  I have forgotten which song.  Sorry about that but be realistic- can your inner self be expected to do all the work?  Try looking things up or maybe ditching the old music for something they play on radios without ads like “we play all the music you love from all the years you remember most!”

So get cracking, devote a bit of time to making a room of your own and a little time to grocery lists and tub scrubbing but then move on.  Focus and then focus on DOING.  Seriously.  You need to try it.  You need to try harder.  Focus on your work, focus on the kids, focus on the best way to treat your pain.  For god’s sake, focus on the people you love who love you back.  But Miriam, you are 32 and can not just wish that life would straighten itself out because you made a really good list that day.  You get credit for kicking ass in the whole “working on getting better” thing, but you are quickly losing ground outside the health care realm.  You do not live in a doctor’s office.  You are not a professional patient.  When people say they are taking a “mental health day” it is so they can take a break and get away from their troubles.  Your version of a mental health day seems to be to head straight into the depths of crazy and sick and hope there isn’t a storm.

Miriam, if this were a letter to the editor I would probably offer a proposal for a change in zoning regulations or an explanation of why we shouldn’t trust “those” people.  But it isn’t.  Although… zoning regulations and reevaluations of relationships is kind of spot on. This is an open letter that I am hoping will show you and the readers who are out there (right?) that sometimes you need to step back and take a different perspective on things.  Give yourself a good talking to.  Every therapist I have ever seen has said at some point “what would you tell your best friend if they were in this situation?” or something similar.  I am not my best friend but I do need to tell myself what to do from a more disciplined place more often.  Easy right?  Hence the “open” part of the letter.  Accountability.

So in closing please remember that you do not have to be super-writer, super-mommy, super-wife, super-homemaker, super-business-re-starter, super-finance-manager or super-crazy-sick-person all the time.  Pick a hat (although I hate that expression) and wear it for 20 minutes, an hour, a week- whatever you can take and feels reasonable.  Focus on it as best you can and then move the hell on.  Give yourself permission to break away, give-up for a spell and let go to give yourself space.  In the simplest of words: Miriam- you must do this to keep functioning because we all know what happens when “super” becomes the norm.  It doesn’t work and you fall fast and hard.  So read this letter, hope that it makes sense and hope that you can make some sense of the world.  Not figuring out the whole world right now on demand, just make some sense as best you can.

Feel free to address any comments to both the author and the addressee.

Sincerely, The Inside of Miriam’s Brain

It’s been a tough couple days.  Hoss ran away from an event on Sunday- he wasn’t happy about being in a big group of kids, and was not very interested in making cards for soldiers.  So, while I was in the parent meeting, he just scooted out of the room, headed to the playground and didn’t look back.  I should have warned the adults in charge when I dropped him off, but I didn’t think he was at the point of running away from situations the way he did six months ago.

I let someone get under my skin at work.  I got a comment that was not meant as a personal criticism, but I couldn’t help but take it that way.  This woman comes across as quite critical, so most of the things that upset me are probably not really meant to be as scathing as they are.  It shook me to my core, though, because the administrative stuff is the only thing where I am the expert, the one in charge.  When someone is dismissive and snarky about it, it’s insulting to me.

The bills are mounting faster than the paychecks are right now.  The kids need new school clothes, thanks to some growth spurts since the last time long pants and sweatshirts were needed.  I can put off buying stuff for myself, but sending Princess to school with high water pants would be a bad thing.  The van is due for service, tuition is due, we’re almost out of covered sessions for Hoss’ outpatient therapy. And I’m not sure what to cut to find a way to cover it all.

I was clearing out the cup holder in the van, and I found some pieces of paper.  One side had some printing that looked to be questions to spur discussion at the outpatient therapy program, the other side was filled with Hoss’ handwriting.  “I <3 electronics.”  “Milks [sic] close to the only thing I drink.”  “I hate my mom.”  I know he doesn’t mean it.  I mean, when I poured his juice so he could take his meds yesterday, he told me he loved me.  But it still hurts to see the words on paper.

But I don’t have the luxury of falling apart right now.  Hubby has a bunch of night events at school, so I’m on my own.  The tears, like the rum and vodka on the shelf, like the ice cream in the freezer, are something I need to push aside.  I’m afraid if I start, I won’t stop.  Maybe I’m overreacting, maybe I could stop at a reasonable level.  But I can’t take the chance.  I have to help Princess solve for “x.”  I need to record how many minutes Lil Joe spent reading his picture books.  I need to verify that Hoss’ spelling words have been written three times each.  I have to oversee the tooth brushing and baths.

Sometimes I miss the days when I could wallow.  When I could hide in bed and pull the covers over my head.  There was a time when I could hole up, and there was no chance that I would need to be on call to attend to anyone else’s needs.  No one else got hurt back in the day if I went crazy and ate a whole pound of Oreos.  Now, I have to be grown up and responsible and dependable.  I know it’s better for everyone when I am in control, that the days when I could be crazy were not OK.  But I’m tired.  I’m just so darned tired.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. That is the way the saying goes.  Going by that reasoning I must be holding onto some finely-tooled leather reigns and racing through the woods under a starlit sky right about now.

I wish for clarity and brevity.  I wish for simplicity and strength.  I wish for resolve and repair.  I wish for whole-ness where there are pieces breaking off.  I wish for an answer but I don’t think I have even asked the question in the right way, let alone at all.

I simply wish.

Wishes are like prayers with less faith.

When I was little in stature and years alike, I was accustomed to prayers before bed.  They were usually said in bed and used the same structure each night, modeled after something my grandfather (missionary offspring and minister) devised.  It was not just said for comfort and love and to give a big “hello” to the man I pictured wearing brown and hanging out with sheep and children.  My siblings and I also used it to stall for more time with my parents or more time with our eyes open and the light on.  No sacrilege intended.

“God bless our happy home right here and all our loved ones far and near.  God bless…”   And then comes the listing of names; closest family first, stuffed animals and extend from there.  I think it ended “and God bless Jesus.  Amen.”  I’m fuzzy on the last part but undoubtedly will remember when I have already posted- since it is too late to call my sisters or mom for a phone-a-friend help on this one now.  I should say right now I don’t practice any religion in particular as an adult.  My family (husband and kids) celebrate Christian and Jewish holidays in a way that holds true to family tradition and tries to connect to culture before god.  God is up to the kids when they get there.  Although there will be a post on my blog about the kid to god connect-the-dots coming soon.

Modeling after my own parents, I started saying something to the kids each night without really thinking about it a while back.  I don’t remember starting it but I do remember it got longer periodically as I thought of a new sentence to add.

“I love you so much.  You are my best little (boy/girl.)  You will always be my little (girl/boy) and I will always be your mommy.  I will always do my best to love you and protect you.  You will always be loved and cared for and safe in this home and in this family.  Good night.”

A little longer than your standard “G’night Kiddo,” but it keeps me comforted and my wish is that it keeps them comforted as well.  It is familiar and patterned and I do not stray from the expected.  I wish for them to have faith in me that I will generally not go wildly veering off the road.  I know that I have had my moments of that with them already and there will be more, so a little belief in me now can only help.

What they don’t hear, and I don’t even know if my husband hears, is what I say when I check on them before I go to bed each night.  They are lying in bed, sweaty foreheads and feet dangling off bedsides.  I lay my hand to their head and whisper.

“I love you so much.  You are my best little (boy/girl).  You will always be my little (girl/boy) and I will always be your mommy.  I will always do my best to love you and protect you.  You will always be loved and cared for and safe in this home and in this family…”

Then I lean in closely as if there were someone around who was eavesdropping.

“May god bless you and keep you tonight, this night and every night hereafter.  I love you.”

I start with statements and facts, promises of what I hope to be able to do and what I know I can do. Then when it is darkest and the house is quiet, I end with a wish or prayer.  That is the best I can do and it is a system I tend to apply to a lot of things in my life.

I am trying to apply it now, to the moment, the day, the week, however long I need to.

So, things are sometimes hard right now, even when I am happy and the ever-popular psychiatric euphemism of “doing well.”   There are always an abundance of things I wish I could say and can’t or won’t.  Even, maybe especially, here.  There are always times when a t-shirt announcing my situation or state of mind would feel cozier.  I can try to muddle through this, well, mud that is bogging me down.  I can try to hold strong for those who need me and bare my weaknesses for those who can take it. I can look for comfort in cooking and falling leaves.

My wish or my prayer is that writing about how I can’t be clear or specific in my writing, but have things to share, will help me feel better.  I think I might even be writing with almost total selfishness for the first time here.  Not that I don’t want someone to feel better or connected or like they can reach out- please wish I may, wish I might, that even my selfish and disorganized, devolving writing could be so useful- that I could be a voice in the dark so powerful!  I am writing because I want to feel differently than I do right now.  I wish I could make it happen as instantly as the letters appear on the screen.

I wish I were a beggar with a horse as fast as lightning with legs that never tired.  Tonight, this night and every night hereafter.

As I was driving home after picking Princess up from school a few days ago, she said, “I kind of had an outburst on the playground today.”  I steeled myself for what came next, since, in our household, “outburst” can mean a myriad of things.

“We were playing tag and it got out of hand, and two of the boys said some things that made me really mad, and I started yelling a lot,” she said.  “They called me some other stuff I won’t go into, but they called me fat!”  Sigh.  And so it begins.

“You’re not fat,” I reassured her. 

“I’m not just a little pudgy?” she asked.

“You’re just fine.”  And she is.  She’s not the stick she used to be, but she’s not overweight at all.  Her growth spurts mean that her pants get too short before they get tight in the waist.  Although we’ve already purchased the first bra, there really aren’t any developing curves to speak of yet.

I was a bit younger than Princess (fourth or fifth grade, I think) when I had my first experience with weight concerns.  Those were the days of my hard core dancing, 5 classes a week during the summer and 3 a week during the school year.   There was a cereal commerical asking “Can you pinch an inch?” to encourage the world at large to pay attention to their body masses, but I doubt I could have pinched a millimeter.  One of my dancer friends left class mid-semester, and the teacher sat us all down for a heart to heart about the fact that she would not be returning.  She was being hospitalized for anorexia nervosa, a condition that very few people in my neighborhood had even heard of.  I knew she was very skinny, as almost all of us were, but didn’t realize how it had taken over her mind.  It was also aroudn that time when I first had someone called me fat in an effort to insult me. In retrospect, I should have laughed, since it was a ridiculous thing to say.  Instead, I bit my lip to keep from crying.  Thus started my continuing concern about my size and shape.

Puberty was not kind to me, giving me curves below the belt with nothing to balance me out on top.  And I quit dancing when I started junior high, taking away my main source of calorie burning.  Gone were the days when I could eat what I wanted, knowing it would not cause any significant expansion.   But everyone kept telling me I was fine, even that I was slim, even when I knew that I was getting bigger.  And somewhere along the way, I lost the sense of what size I really was, and I’ve never really gotten it back.  I look at pictures of myself, I look at myself in the mirror, and I perceive myself as larger than I really am.  I laugh at my concerns about size in high school, since being that tiny now would be like a dream come true. 

I wanted so desperately not to pass on my body image issues to my daughter.  I’ve worked so hard for the past eleven years to avoid calling myself fat in her presence, even when I felt like I was.  I joined Weight Watchers last summer because my weight had inched out of the healthy range for my height, and because I saw how tight my clothes had gotten.  I worked hard to focus on having energy and feeling strong, not on being slim.

I brace myself for the onslaught of images that Princess will try to live up to, and all I can do is try to keep her on a more even keel than I was on at her age (and beyond).  I can try to have her body image heroes be more Mia Hamm than Kate Moss.  And I hope she has better luck in that arena than I’ve had.

These last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time alone with my almost 4 year-old daughter.  As summer counted down and my son’s first day of kindergarten drew nearer I started to get very nervous about all this upcoming alone time.  You would think I would have been looking forward to it- excited and eager for the opportunity to have all the “Mommy and Me” time I had one on one with my son repeated or matched up with my daughter.  I wish that I could lie and say I have waited for this for years.  I have actually been terrified of it for a long time.

After my son was born we had mommy and baby playgroups, developmental activities, hours giving Good Night Moon and Kerouac equal reading time, coloring outside the lines, giggling at the walls- the list goes on.  When I became pregnant around his first birthday there was no need to stop any of this.  Well, at least not until I was too huge and tired to make complete sentences.  Then I threw all promises of saintliness aside and taught my son how to use the remote.   Okay- not exactly- he could never figure out the right combination of buttons to get to PBS… but I did give in to the TV and settle into the couch.  Until playgroup or Kindermusik or a well-timed trip to the park.

The delivery of my daughter was so traumatic as to bring on a new recurrence of my previously undiagnosed but obviously there PTSD. The severe post-partum depression was just a fun bonus.  I was connected to the baby in all the “right” ways.  We nursed and co-slept, stayed abreast of developmental stages and her relationship with my son.   I made sure she was happy.  We had a new playgroup too.  One for the town, one from when my son had come along.  Mommies had their second babies.  I spoke wisely and joked about all the silly things and was the sarcastic one but pleasant as always.

I was also a super-mom.  Cloth-diapers- some sewn by myself, homemade clothes, no chemical cleaners EVER, organics, the best play date table spread you could imagine.  Theme days, crafts galore, organization of organizing tools, the continued ability to run my handmade goods business and do weekend fairs even with a new baby.  I was also lying to the world.  I was not super anything unless super crazy counted.  I hid my symptoms all day and let the night hold them for me.  It was during that time that I lay in bed and wrote the following piece.

Today seems interminable

Sleep refuses to revive me or release me

or open its arms widely enough to hold me

Daggers and ripping in my belly like cold fire

Heavy lids and skipping heart teasing me

When darkness goes on forever and

daylight is no sweet relief or proof of God

each minute is like a notch on failure’s belt

A bitter reminder of all the ghosts

that hold open your eyes and gorge on your dwindling faith

The tears and the terror that lurk on the

edges of my dreams, my terrible dreams,

make me wish for a few more moments of

wakefulness in spite of my worn down body

During these hours I dabble in forgiveness

I almost allow myself to breathe deeply

as though unburdened by responsibility

I almost let my heart empty itself of its

terrible weights and measures

I almost sleep

Three beautiful bodies rest next to me

chests rising and falling with whispers of peace

A rhythm of hopefulness and prayer

that guides me through nightmares and sadness to

a beautiful dawn and one more chance

at forgiveness and sleep.

-May 03, 2006 (my daughter was just 4 months old, my son 2 years old)

I still have nights like this and I still have bouts with insomnia.  I still have all of those feelings at one point or another, but a miracle of sorts is taking place.  I was so afraid of being alone with my daughter when she was small because I didn’t want to stare my agony in the face and try to love it unconditionally while managing nightmares and laundry.  Now years later- I was afraid of being alone with her as my son started school because I never really had been and I certainly hadn’t done it regularly as a healing person.  Spending mornings and lunches and drives to school with my daughter in her big girl body has forced me to realize that my life kept going when I thought it wouldn’t.  I didn’t die from hidden misery, the push of frantic, imaginary perfection or even the breakdown that eventually came.

My daughter helps me see with clarity so much that once was obscured. I am sure this year will be one of great growth for both of us.  I am still looking for chances to forgive both myself and others and I hope that I find more.  I am still looking for sleep but now I am not always fearful of it or conversely trying to escape within it- most of the time it is just a need for sleep.  After dropping my wonderful son at school I can enjoy looking at my daughter and seeing her beauty, grace, intelligence and humor- not a terrible delivery, medical professionals who failed me or someone to whom I owe a debt for years lost because of mommy’s craziness and failure.  I can look and see a reflection of myself that is not the terrible one I spent so long wrestling with when she was so tiny.  During our time together, Mommy and sweet girl on our own, we are teaching each other.  I get a new way of moving towards forgiveness and restful nights.  She wrote the word “fairy” all on her own just yesterday.  She dreams of fairies and I am happy just to dream.

When I asked to join this site, and Leah let me, I said I would probably post once a week.  At the height of Hoss’ school issues, I could have posted something about his issues at least once a day, but now things have calmed down some.  Strangely enough, since deciding that I would chronicle our tentative journey through IEPs and his new outpatient therapy, Hoss has been very maintstream.  He hasn’t had a full fledged meltdown, he’s starting to pick up on his own triggers and articulate that he’s not feeling good, and he removes himself from situations (mostly with the permission of the appropriate grown-up, but even when he goes off on his own, it’s been in a reasonable way).

So I should be happy.  But I’m more nervous than ever.  I feel like I can’t accept that maybe, just maybe, we have gotten the medication and the therapy level and the coping mechanisms in the right place.  I feel like as soon as I relax and as soon as I accept what we have in place as the right thing for this particular moment, it’s going to blow up in my face.

It’s been one year since Hoss switched schools (translation: it’s been one year since the private school called me into a conference that took place the night before I left town for a week long conference and said “We’ll keep him for another week, but he’ll have to be in public school after that; we can’t deal with him anymore.”)  At the time, I was cautiously optimistic about the new situation.  As the year progressed, I became more comfortable with it, since the staff has been supportive and dedicated.  It’s been six months since Hoss was hospitalized.  The day we admitted him, the school counselor sat with me at the emergency room for five or six hours, handing me tissues when I fell apart and filling in details of the explanations to the doctors when I fell short.  I didn’t ask her to come with me, I didn’t feel I had the right, and yet she did it with full support of the principal and rest of the staff.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.

I had my conference this past week.  The specter of what was happening while I was at last year’s conference, and the specter of the downward spiral of last March, had me on edge.   Hoss forgot to take his medication one day, yet the assistant principal responded to the email relating this saying he’d had a good day.  Hubby met with the doctor about a tweak to the dosage for the ADHD (the risperidone level seems fine) on Tuesday, and it came off without a hitch.  The administration at the school say they are very happy with Hoss’ progress.  He has been getting along in group and interacting nicely at the intensive out-patient program and is down to two days per week.

So why can’t I relax and accept that he’s doing just fine?

I’m childless by choice.

Some prefer the term “childfree”.  Which term do I prefer?  A little of both.  Sometimes I feel deliciously, wonderfully, blessedly free from the demands and responsibilities of parenthood.  And sometimes I regret that my life is less for having missed out on the richness of raising children.

Yes, I chose, and still choose every day not to be a mother.  (I’ll be 37 in a few days.  The window of opportunity is closing fast.)   

I love children.  I volunteer at my church nursery once a month just for the chance to cuddle other peoples’ warm, adorable little ones.  I love being there, holding them, even when they scream in my ear, even when my arms are burning because I’m not used to holding a 15 lb. child for a whole hour.

I choose not to have children because I don’t believe that I could be a mother and maintain my mental equilibrium.  I would definitely have to be medicated to survive the experience, and since I’ve never been on medication I don’t really know how it would affect me.  What I do know for sure is that infants and small children, given any long-term exposure, create the ideal conditions for me to lose my grip.

Here is my formula for a life that allows me to function:  I must have 8 hours of sleep per night, and more on the weekends.  I hate to be touched too much or grabbed by someone who doesn’t respect my boundaries.  I have a very low tolerance for being interrupted when I’m concentrating on getting something done.  I need a lot of “Me Time” to decompress after a stressful day at work.  And I need to be able to negotiate with other people about how we spend our time together.

There have been times when I’ve been forced out of my formula.  And in very short order, a few weeks at most, I fall apart.  The joy leaches out of life.  I want to say “NO” to everything.  I start fantasizing about my kitchen knives.  When I hear about someone completing a suicide, I feel jealous.

I burst into tears in public without provocation.  I can’t cook or shop for food.  Every problem seems enormous.

I want everyone to go away and leave me alone.

My mother spent most of my childhood severely depressed, and enraged.  I’m not sure if medication would have helped her.  Her sister, the only family member who actually takes medications for the condition we all carry in our genes, has never been helped enough by her pills to pass for normal.  (She doesn’t have kids either.) 

I don’t believe that I have the emotional, mental, and physical resources to enjoy being a mother.  Fortunately or unfortunately, my husband feels the same way about being a father.  Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t chosen to marry someone as fragile as myself.  Would I be raising happy children with a strong partner by my side?  Or would they simply not be able to understand why I was always falling apart under the pressure?

Sometimes I feel deep, aching regret at having missed out on one of the most fulfilling experiences a human can have.  Most of the time I can accept what is.  But the worst, the very worst, is when other people don’t understand.  And they hardly ever do.

I present such a tidy exterior to the world that most people can’t believe that I’m really walking that close to the border of a breakdown.  They can’t or don’t want to see that the edge of the cliff isn’t that far off, and it wouldn’t take too much of a push to send me over.  I know where the edge is, because I’ve found myself over it, clinging on by my fingernails, too many times.  No matter how much time it’s been since my last fall, I musn’t confuse chronological distance with any kind of actual progress away from the edge.  That’s how I end up pushing myself to far, and ooop!  I’m under a blanket crying through a whole box of tissues again.

When I try to explain that I couldn’t be the kind of mother I’d want to be, and the person I’m speaking to says “Oh sure you could!”, it hurts.  It hurts so much I get a lump in my throat and the bottom of my stomach falls out.  Because what they’ve just said in a nutshell, without even thinking it through is a) they have no idea who I really am inside, and b) they think I’m exaggerating my mental condition and generally copping out.  There’s usually a certain amount of condescending reassurance to their tone, as if to say “You poor dear, you’re just afraid to grow up and take that responsibility.  You’ll be ready one day.”

It doesn’t help that I look at least ten years younger than my actual age.  People feel very comfortable giving that message to someone they see as just a girl, who might not even be out of college yet.

Even if I didn’t have a biological clock ticking, I don’t think there’s enough time in the world to make me “ready” to have a child.  My way of taking responsibility is living within my limitations and not re-creating the nightmare of my own childhood for another generation.