RealMental

The last time I did it consciously was in college, after a week in school where all my friendships seemed to fall apart, after a poorly-done hookup/getting together with someone who was a dear friend– and then an even more poorly-managed “umm, wait” on my part. I was exhausted from thinking about it, and couldn’t stop. So I went away for the weekend, to visit a friend spending her junior year elsewhere. We went out and painted the town red, and on the way home, I filled the gutter with all my shame and sorrow, in a purge that felt like a tidal wave.

My forehead was numb cold hot tingling all the way back to her dorm, as the cab slid around corners in defiance of natural laws. We were at the bottom of her hill, not far, when I said, “stop.” Just that, but the cabbie did. I slid off the leather bench seat, and somehow did it butt-first, landing right on the curb. And I sat there and vomited, one heave after another, until all the emotion came out, was purged, and was carried away by the water, by gravity, by time.

I don’t like that there is something in me that is sometimes so unable to handle a situation that I have to get drunk in order to literally spill my guts about it. I would rather spew words, knowing the history of alcohol in our family. But sometimes? It’s necessary, the only release valve I have that is less destructive than the alternatives.

My usually Better Half and I had a problem recently, one that came up suddenly (at least to me) and which infuriated and wounded me. I was boiling over, and didn’t know what to do. I was too angry to say anything constructive, too wounded to hear anything that might make sense. I talked to a friend or two about it, and it did clear a little perspective for me, but I was still circling, feeling like both a bleeding swimmer and the sharks surrounding her.

So I got wasted, slowly, methodically, at a small gathering at a friends’ house– friends who I knew wouldn’t mind. He was there– he was driving. And unlike other times when he’s said hey, maybe you should slow down a little, he didn’t this time, for which I’m glad. Because I needed not the drunkenness, but the release from it that came on the ride home. Without spewing my guts on the highway, on my shirt sleeve, on the side of my car? I don’t know how I would have been able to respond to the situation.

When I wrote this, it was less than twelve hours after disgorging that anger and confusion, that humiliation and almost-hate.  (I have a disproportionate, awful temper at the best of times.) I am still a little angry, and still a little sad, but they’re of manageable proportions, and we’ll be fine. But I don’t know if I could have said that and felt that I meant it unless I’d gone and drunk a bottle and a half of red wine, just so I could throw it back up, four hours later. The physical purge acted as an emotional memory dump, and I’ve never been so glad to lose a set of feelings. At least since the last time, thirteen years ago. May it be at least that long before I need to again.

It’s been a rough spring around our house. But at the same time, it’s been better than each one before it. So I feel like I should be grateful, and I feel guilty for feeling emotionally exhausted all the time, but there you have it. I feel what I feel, and it is what it is.

I belong to some support groups for “significant others” of people with bipolar disorder, and I can tell you from years of observation and experience that, among our ranks, May is a rough, rough month. In a bit of black humor, someone somewhere began referring to this month as “May-NIA,” and that stuck. Even my own spouse, who is faithful and dedicated to his mental wellness, and takes his meds and tries to stick to healthy routines, has periods of “breakthrough” hypomania in the spring. Do what we will, the force of springtime will not be denied. Every year I’m struck with jealousy over other people’s rejoicing in the coming of spring…they’re planning their flowerbeds, washing their windows, de-winterizing their mowers, while I’m monitoring the bank account, trying to keep things quiet, and generally just scattering a fresh layer of eggshells across the floor for us to walk on. I dread spring. And to be honest, I resent having to feel that way.

In the beginning of our journey with this illness, post-diagnosis, I lived in a state of wary watchfulness. In the first year, there was a significant relapse, so after that I was pretty much in constant readiness, watching for that sign that would indicate that everything was about to go south again. If he was 5 minutes late, or didn’t answer his cell phone one time, I just knew that “it was happening again;” that he’d disappeared, he’d “run,” and that, since that was the line I drew in the sand when we decided to stick this thing out together, that our marriage would, consequently, be over. I literally went through this entire thought process on a regular basis. It was a long, long time before I could make myself continue to breathe normally in the face of even a small unknown. But I learned, as time went on, how to focus on myself, to trust myself, and to breathe.

As more time went by with no full-blown episodes, something odd happened. I did manage to stop living mentally perched on the precipice of disaster. I remembered who I was before I ever tangled with bipolar disorder. I realized that I’m smart (enough), capable (enough), and tough (enough) to handle whatever it could throw at me. And with that knowledge, I relaxed. A lot. But I didn’t anticipate what came next–what has been happening for the last couple of years.

My husband has expressed to me, often, the irony of managing a mental illness well–that is, that since he stays on top of his medication regimen, sees his doctor regularly, performs well at a regular job, etc., that people tend to “forget” that he has bipolar disorder. Then, when there is an episode of breakthrough depression or hypomania, the reaction is one of disappointment, like, “I thought you had this thing beat.” No one understands that it’s an ongoing, daily battle, and that there is no magic pill that’s going to work all the time. We “tweak” his med cocktail once or twice a year, at the very minimum.

I have caught myself falling victim to this same phenomenon, in a way, and I’m not sure it’s any better than the way I used to live. Instead of being constantly on edge, expecting things to fall apart any second, I now let even a couple of weeks of good times lull me into near-total complacency, so that, when there is a bump in the road, as there most assuredly always will be, I’m left gobsmacked, the rug pulled entirely out from under my happy little world. Every time this happens, I feel so stupid, because, of course, I knew better. But it is so altogether soul-wearying to live in that watchtower, that sometimes I just desperately want to come down for a while. To stay up there, watching, watching, watching, is to admit defeat, in a way…but more than that, that sort of life is really no life to have. It’s not just emotionally tiring; I can feel it chipping away at my physical health, with all sorts of symptoms I never knew before I met bipolar disorder, like anxiety, panic, depression, irritable bowel, nausea…this disease that I don’t even have is shortening my life.

But the alternative–life without my husband? No, that’s no life for me, either. Somewhere, somehow, there must be a way to find balance. I wish this post were more about answers.

Last Friday, one of my son’s classmates lost his father.

The boy is a kindergartener, having only recently turned six years old. I read the letter the teacher sent home and I immediately began to sob. I do not know much about this boy, other than he frequents the principal’s office, and is well known for his antics.

That isn’t all he is, he is well known for his big and beautiful heart. He shares, he is loving.

As I am wont to do, knowing he was prone to trouble, I want to know more about him. To try and see inside his world, to determine if there is something more that should be addressed other than his negative behavior. It took me some time before he would really talk to me, this isn’t usually the case since I love kids and I always vie for their approval. Over the past few months, he’s warmed up to me.

Through the whole weekend, my thoughts kept turning to this boy and his loss. I am not sure that he will fully understand this situation for a few years. I worried if his Mom had other family, insurance, or anything to help ease her burden. These are times in which I wonder if I think too much about other people and if it really is none of my business. I subscribe to the quote, “it takes a village to raise a child”, and I fully believe in it’s power.

A few years ago, my daughter’s best friend lost her Mother when was only 9 or 10 years old. Her Mother was a friend of mine and we’d just spoken the day before about grabbing sushi at a new restaurant that had just opened in our area. She headed for the bathroom that Sunday morning and an aneurism burst in her head and she was gone. My daughter and her friend began to drift apart after this and we rarely ever see her. I miss her Mom every time I drive past their house.

All of this got me to thinking about my youthful dreams of wishing my Mom would die. I know how terrible this sounds, and I wince a little now when I think about it.

I would design horrible accidents in my head that she could be killed falling down the stairs, driving home drunk, whatever. When I got older and discussed this with my siblings, they too had wished for her to die. She was mean and she beat us. Who wouldn’t want the person who beat them dead? The woman she used to be, is not the woman she is now. She has become weak, fragile, and only has select memories. I am learning to make peace with this, she was always the pillar of strength and self control in my youth.

Putting these scenarios together side by side in my mind; my wishes for death, and the children that have actually had death at their door. I can say that I am glad that my deadly wishes never came true.

These quandries have always intrigued me, turning them all around in my head for years trying to unlock the secret of the why.

Why do the families that actually want children, are capable to raise them and give them a loving home cannot get pregnant? The parents that beat and destroy their children, live on so that the child is constantly reminded of their pain and suffering into adulthood, knowing that the truth will never be revealed.

Why do the good parents die, but the bad ones live? I’ve never solved this, but I have adopted a theory that our children choose us. Even if those children did not come from our own wombs, they choose us.

To make peace with the abuse that happens every day to children, even in my own neighborhood (and yours) I have to believe that on some level the children choose their lives before they are born. For me, it is how I make peace with the fact that I cannot save every child that I come into contact with. Throughout my main healing process, I was always told to watch children to “really” see them and how beautiful they are. This was designed to help me to understand that the abuse was not my fault. A six year old does not “want” to be touched by a grown man.

There were people along my path that reached me, inside where the pain lived when I was a child. I remember them, I remember their kindness and I believe on some level it gave me the hope I needed to rise up out of my experience, not to regret it, and heal. This is why I try to “see” children, to let them know that they are important and beautiful.

That there is more out there that will be revealed, they are not alone, they can survive and then pass it on to those that come after them.

I saw this rain-ruined crocus the other day, and thought to myself, better a broken flower than an empty patch of ground.

I don’t ask that anyone succeed in all they do– but I do ask that they try. This is the key to my relationships with people—I can’t be around quitters, or people too cowardly to try in the first place. Better to try and fail, than to never know if you could have succeeded.

My obsession with trying stems directly from my observations of my parents’ behavior. My mother gave up on her Ph.D., gave up on working, gave up on being independent, gave up on her health and attractiveness, gave up on being forgiving. My dad tried and failed to stop drinking for a long time; he tried and failed to get his temper under control—but eventually, when he bottomed out after being arrested, losing his driver’s license, and losing his job, he tried some more. Eventually, he succeeded. First, he stopped smoking and drinking. Then, he started going to A.A. Then, he got two jobs below his abilities, so he could pay our child support. Then he began trying harder to present a more pleasant face to the world, and to overcome his misanthropic tendencies. Meanwhile, my mother, a pretty, smart, ordained minister with a promising career as a lecturer on women’s issues in the church, allowed herself to become obese, increasingly crippled by the obesity (no outdoor family activities with her), and welfare-dependent– yet she continuously harped upon my father for putting her in this position, while somehow missing that they’d been divorced for ten years, and she could try to do whatever she wanted.

Obviously, my perspective is my own, flawed, and I am not as sympathetic to my mother as I would like to be. But the fact remains that older I get, the less sorry I felt for my mother, and the more I appreciate my father’s attempts to be a better person. That I got my bipolar in a double shot from both parents makes the contrast in possibilities, in attempts at success, even starker. But Dad finally pulled past his own pathologies, and worked long and hard to improve. I never really saw my mother trying, although she’d talk a good game, and did manage to do the minimum, working as a substitute teacher just enough (never full time, never every day) to earn what child support didn’t supply each month, when it became clear she wasn’t going to win the lottery (or an increase in child support) anytime soon. However, as soon as my grandparents died and her brief teaching pension vested, she stopped even that– and now lives a life of complete leisure in Southern California. I say that sarcastically, but still– she’s clearly got more disposable spending money than we do on a month to month basis.

I am always going to resent her—for not even trying. She did not try to shelter us from poverty. She did not try to get help for her own mental state in order to do best by us. She did not even try to think about her own mental state in order to recognize she needed help. She was too focused on being the victim. (I suppose that’s what makes her a narcissist.) She did have unloving and harsh parents, and she had to work at the family business—but she also had loving sisters and many friends in high school, and that family job paid for college. Yet the focus is always on the negative, unless she’s feeling ignored in a social situation, when she gets grandiose and bragging. My father’s mother was not the most loving or uncritical of women, either, and he had to become the “man of the house” at age 13 when his father died. So I don’t know where she got off whining about the tough childhood—certainly, she never had to endure the humiliation my brother and I did of being called to the front of the classroom to get our free lunch tickets as my brother and I did, or being mocked by other kids for wearing the same five outfits, week in and out, all school year long.

My dad doesn’t try to be a parent now. He just wants to spend time with me. He is constantly trying to make amends, even though I’ve long since forgiven him. I worry about his getting older, and his untreated depression, but he knows enough now that if he got really bad, I think he would do something about it.

My mom, however, still tries to parent me. She urges me to finish all the food on the plate, despite the fact that her obesity as a model of my biological fate makes me sick to my stomach. She tells me what to do. She interrupts constantly to relate her opinion. She never listens to any professional legal advice I have to give her, only when she asks. In short, she has no respect for me as an adult. No conception, I suppose, because her narcisissm dictates how she re-writes the stories I burst in upon.

I tried to forgive and to understand her perspective, but I can’t understand how she could be so smart and yet so damaged that she is unable to make up her mind to get better. So what do I do? I tried to keep my mouth shut and my temper in check. For a while, I was getting better at it. I didn’t erupt, insult or ignore as much as I once did. And I tried not to take it so personally; realizing that her failure to try has nothing to do with my worthiness, or lack thereof. I failed, and we’re not speaking anymore, but I think I tried.

Once again I am in that place where I actively question everything and everyone that I think I know, or think I understand. Periodically, I get here and it seems hopeless and sad. It is important for me to remember that it will pass and new things will come into my awareness to change the tides.

As this is where my thoughts are traveling and exploring, this is what I’m writing about.

Lonely is the word that I find best to describe the look on my face, the tone of my voice, the slight droop of my shoulders and the slowness of my steps. Don’t ask me to “cheer up” or “get over it” because I WOULD IF I COULD.

I believe in the theory that the more we think certain things, a path is created in our brains that wasn’t originally there, helping it to become a habit. If we can find the start and finish, perhaps we can redirect that path, changing it’s course and having a better life experience as a result.

Movies about people finding themselves left in a town that’s been over-run by zombies, leaving one person, one normal person left, always creep me out. All people cannot be trusted, they are unsafe, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The unsettling part of it for me is that this place I am in, feels just like that. I haven’t figured out yet why this happens, I suspect it is a seasonal change combined with my history.

Oh goodie.

The mist of uncertainty, doubt and mis-trust. In the past, I’ve ended relationships, I’ve quit things, backed away from people and just kept to myself in order to feel safe.

Safety has always been an important factor for me. I would daydream about having an older brother that could protect me. I’ve often projected this need for protection onto men I’ve had relationships with. Just to keep my perpetual issue from never running out of ammunition, if anyone slightly attempted to care for me I would chop them off at the knees.

There is a difference in this period of my life, I am older (hopefully wiser), and it doesn’t have to include the wreckage of the past.

At least, I hope it doesn’t.

When I was in high school, I played the organized (thuggery) sport of field hockey.  It’s not a genteel sport for ladies, or at least it wasn’t in the Greater Boston Division One league.  Pushing, shoving, high sticking, tripping and fouling when we hoped the refs weren’t looking—if it only pushed the bounds of dirty, we pushed it.  (And had more than a few fistfights after games to prove it.)  But it was all a part of our love of the game. 

I wasn’t an all-around athlete, but I was a good defenseman—halfback, fullback, and occasional goalie as the changes in the line up dictated.  But I could drive and tackle, defend corners, pass, flick, scoop, and make penalty shots with the best.  I was blessed with a team that functioned as a team.  My offense was there, up ahead, making themselves open so I could dribble and dodge the other teams offense, and push them the ball or drive it up the sidelines to a waiting wing or center.  I had a long drive, so I also had league record number of assists for a defenseman.  I drove a ball so hard one time from just the other side of the 50 yard line that some of the opposing players jumped out of the way.  And the joy of the game well played more than made up for the laps I hated to run, the sprints I had to do.  Stickwork drills?  All over that.  Running?  Not so much.  But tackling an opposing player, stealing the ball, passing it to my wing, and having her flick it into the upper corner of the net?  All the sprints were worth it. 

Life is like field hockey in that it’s played with very little external padding.  When I played, we wore mouthpieces and shin guards.  That’s it.  No helmets, no padded glovers, no chest pads—despite the fact that concussions from balls to the head, and ruptured spleens from balls and stick-ends to the gut were a frequent occurrence.  And even with the padding, we were still open to injury.  Broken fingers, noses?  I’ve had several, some twice.  And that ball?  A larger-than-baseball-sized solid plastic ball, driven at as much as 75 mph (my hardest driving speed) by a fiberglass-reinforced oak stick of no small dimensions.  It hurts. 

In my sophomore year, I got whacked on my left shin one day intercepting a straight-for-the-goal drive from a player on the Bishop Fenwick team, and even through the shin pad, I could feel it start to sting.  The hit was so hard it didn’t even really bruise—it just became a hard, sore mass right in the center of the shin.  For weeks, it sent stinging, shooting pain up my leg, every time I ran on it.  Since the xray was negative, I learned to ignore it.  For months afterward, the lightest brush was excruciating.  So I taped a small gel pad on between my shinguard and my leg, and kept playing.  For three years, it was tender to the touch.  I learned not to touch it.  I never thought it would heal—but it did, while my attention was elsewhere.  (Only to promptly get whacked again in the same place during college field hockey tryouts—but that’s another life metaphor, for another time.)

I was reminded of this after a recent fight with my mom, who, less than three weeks after her release from the hospital for another psychotic/manic episode, accused my brother and I of trying to take control of her money and leave her in the poorhouse.  Currently, we’re not speaking, since she had the gall to tell me that I had no idea what being depressed was like. (I believe I said “I find that hard to believe, since you gave me the f-cking bipolar…nice f-cking present.  Thanks.”).  Afterward, I was angry for letting her goad me, and then angry at her for being Queen MeMeMe– but then I accepted that I’ve just got sore spots that she pokes, hard, intentionally or not.  But I was still despairing of the whole situation, until I remembered what I’d learned from my field hockey bruise– some things just take longer to heal.  Even if you think they never will, they very well might, long after you’ve learned to function, walking wounded, and have gotten on with things.  One day, the sore spot will be gone.  So for now, I am going to ignore my most recent sore spot, pad it as best I can, and trust that it’ll heal when it’s good and ready.  It’s the only thing I can do– I’ve got a life to live in the meantime.

feeling lost, and bottomless with no one to catch me.

want to run yet too old now, to think it would do any good.

empty, alone, sad, emotional.

wondering why things happen the way they do.

looking for the break that i believe i am entitled to, even though i know

i am not actually entitled to anything.

don’t want to repeat “sins of the father”,

of being everyone’s support.

old habits are hard to let go of,

holding things in because it is easier that way.

too hard to struggle.

not regretting my age, yet missing my youth to wonder if i would make

different choices.

knowing that all of the choices that led me to where i am

are all a part of a bigger plan.

a plan that i hope my higher self is in charge of.

loving lots of people, feeling emotions very deeply,

wanting to drop in and sprinkle magical fairy dust and then leave.

i question if i was built to be a “staying person” or rather someone

who can only flit here and there with no permanent residence.

i love too deeply, too much, i’m too sensitive, too complicated,

too me.

no one promises that we will be happy, that is a false illusion created by

the likes of walt disney.

i just want peace, serenity, and calm

but not every minute of every day.

perhaps i could store it in the closet on the top shelf and bring it out when

it is most needed.

if only i were not an addict, perhaps that could work.

a higher voice tells me that everything really is ok and not to worry

enjoy each as if it were my last.

that is how my dad tried to live his life, i miss him so much sometimes i

fear i will become invisible with sorrow.

he always knew the right thing to say, or perhaps he is the only one that i

actually “allowed” to say the right thing and be comforted by him.

the trust issues,

of them,

i have many.

my higher self is protecting me from harm

it is important that i experience the emotions

in order to break on through to the

other side.

perhaps i have channeled morrison.