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The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
April 14th, 2009From David
In 1979, when I was 18, my mind had what I colorfully like to call a “come-apart”. I didn’t realize it or even know what it was, but deep clinical depression was growing in me like some toxic black mold. I had no idea what was wrong and I became so sick so fast I lost all ability to even articulate what was happening inside of me. Rapidly I skidded down the slickery slope to psychotic, suicidal hell. Weeeeeeee!!!
My mind soon began to shut down. The simplest tasks took extraordinary effort to complete. Ask me my name and I’d have looked at you as if you’d just said to me, “Tell me what 137 to the 27th power is or I’ll stab you in the neck.” I wouldn’t have been able to answer you. I’d have stared at you with panic and confusion on my face and would have weeped uncontrollably. All because you asked me my name.
I was exhausted constantly. All I ever wanted to do was lie down and sleep, preferably forever and ever. And ever. And ever. But night would come and my brain wouldn’t shut off the internal noise and sleep would elude me. At some point I realized I was going mad. What could possibly be more frightening than being aware you’re losing your mind, losing control of your own self, your own thoughts, and not knowing what to do about it? Relentless suicidal and self-destructive ideas were bombarding and tormenting me. I am, and always have been, a peaceful person yet suddenly my mind was roaring with violent, vicious, grizzly thoughts all directed at me.
I felt as if I had split in two. The old part of me: timid, sweet, funny, generous. The new part of me: dark, powerful, the devil. The thoughts in my head soon became external and loud, and they took on a different voice. A deep, loud, growling voice telling me to “kill yourself” or “worthless piece of crap” or “idiot” or “people hate you”. Then one day the voice said “cut” so I did. I don’t know why I did or why I listened, but I did. I cut in places no one could see, but I cut. I cut my arms, my chest, my stomach, my thighs. I still look at the scars and wonder why I cut myself, but in some way those scars are my friends and I’m fond of them.
During that time, the early 1980s, I was in and out of hospitals. Diagnosed as manic/depressive, then with borderline personality disorder, then borderline paranoid schizophrenic, then this and then that. Ah, the inexact science of psychiatric medicine in the 1980s. Tell me, is it any more exact today? Eventually someone hung the label “acute psychotic major depressive disorder” on me and it stuck. But with differing diagnoses comes differing pharmaceuticals. Artane, Navane, Elavil, Mellaril, Thorazine, Stellazine, Ritalin, lithium, Nardil, and probably a dozen others I can’t recall. You think the dry mouth or limp noodle side effects from Paxil is bad? You take Thorazine and then come talk to me. All the while, though, the voice kept talking to me, telling me to “cut”, “kill”, telling me I’m “worthless”.
Many doses of ECT offered no relief either. ECT kills one’s short term memories and yet I still vividly remember the zombie-like feeling following a round of having an electrical current fired through my noggin. Feeling neither happy nor sad. Quite literally devoid of any feeling. An electrically induced temporary lobotomy.
Yet still the voice screamed at me. “Cut yourself.” “You’re worthless, shoot yourself. Now!” Nothing could make the voice stop. Oftentimes the voice was crude and quite vivid in the gruesome plans it wanted me to carry out on myself, but due to decorum I’ll omit those here. If a voice you hear, but nobody else does, telling you awful things to do to yourself doesn’t drive you over the edge then probably nothing will.
After the 7,112,976th time of the voice telling me to “kill yourself” I decided to listen to it. I worked at a hospital and had access to all sorts of festively colored pills and capsules, just ripe for the picking. I swallowed several bottles of anything I could get my grubby hands on. Heart medication, blood pressure medication, migraine pills, tranquilizers, the prescriptions I was currently taking, even a huge bottle of Tylenol. Obviously I was discovered, I’m not writing this from the grave, and they pumped my tummy clean and revived me and then, as punishment for my crime, I was sent for a stay at the lovely and oh so inviting “Timberlawn Sanitarium”, it actually had that name etched in stone over one of the old original buildings that is used as administrative/admissions offices now, in Dallas, Texas for a period of approximately 11 months.
The Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital facility was incredibly secure. With heavy metal screens over all windows, plexiglass on all the bay windows, doors that lock automatically when shut, etc. You’ll pardon me, I hope, if when I speak of Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital I speak of it as a prison and of my stay there as a prison sentence. I will refer to the nurses and staff as guards and my psychiatrist as the warden.
Upon induction into Timberlawn, thankfully there was no full body cavity search and no delousing, I was swiftly removed of my shoelaces, my belt, my razor, my nail clippers, and anything else I had which was shiny or sharp. Meals would be served to me by the guards on my cell block until such time as I had earned the trust from the guards and the warden that I wouldn’t try to escape or hurt myself. Then, and only then, would I be allowed to take my meals across campus, the prison yard, and eat in in the dining hall proper. Welcome to your new home, inmate.
When asked to “please release me, let me go” I was told if I didn’t stay voluntarily I would be committed. The frustration of that was immense so I shut down. Refused to talk or take my meds or participate in anything. I wasn’t totally lacking in rational thought, and it quickly dawned on me, after being threatened with restraints and IVs and suppositories, that if I wanted to get out of there any time soon I needed to play the game, follow the rules, and go with the flow. Having my meds forced up my backside just didn’t sound like much of a bargain to me, then or now.
So I settled down and got with the program and within a couple of months I was allowed to go to the gym and go do crafts and walk, under escort by a couple of the guards, to the dining hall for my meals. I also got just crazy good at ping-pong. Every evening after supper it was ping-pong-a-palooza for those of us on the unit who had high enough privileges to walk down the hall to the ping-pong room. And then if you really behave and contribute to group therapy and show you’re serious about your treatment, maybe in six months if you’re lucky, they might let you out, with a guard of course, to go see a movie. Well I hated it. Can you tell? Every blessed moment of it, I hated it. Finally I was discharged, paroled, my illness cured. Yeah right.
Twenty years pass and I’ve fought this nightmare countless times off and on ever since, but for the most part keeping it to myself. I feared if I told anyone I’m hearing the voice again or that I’m incessantly thinking of suicide I’ll be locked away again. Within the past year the voice and my dreadful thoughts have become overwhelming. Over the years it seemed that if I just weathered the storm, waited it out and not acted on the self-destructive thoughts, it would ease up on it’s own and I’d come out of this hellish pit on my own. But this time, for nearly a year, I can’t get out. I can’t control my own thoughts and everyday I wake up contemplating suicide. It’s devouring me. I’m losing the battle. I want to walk into a field and sit down in the cold rain and just let it dissolve me into a puddle.
Once again I find myself frightened of myself. “I hate myself”. “I don’t belong here”. “I am a misfit”. “A freak”. “I want to die”. “My core is rotting”. These are the thoughts that consume me again, each and every day. My brain is being destroyed by the horrible thoughts which I can’t control.
I recently sought help. I am now on the second week of medication consisting of Paxil and Trazodone, but will they work? The best meds of the 70s and 80s did no good. Multiple rounds of shock treatments bought little lasting relief. Long term hospitalization made me angry at and scared of the psychiatric profession. Some may say, “But Dave, you’re alive.” Yes I’m alive, but that’s a small victory if you ask me. A very hollow victory indeed. Almost 30 years since this nightmare began and I can’t wake up from it to escape it.
Stop, Drop, and Roll
August 14th, 2008I called her right after I got out of the meeting. I should have called her two weeks ago, but this is a game I play with myself over and over. Before I got to the meeting, I was a jangle of nerves spilling the coffee on my pants and just a few minutes later, the water tumbled over too.
Why do I always have to carry along liquids everywhere I go? Especially liquids that I know do not fit into the cup holders in the car.
Most likely, the same reason that I forget to take medications and make stupid mistakes that I regret two seconds after making them. I told him tonight as I was getting ready for the meeting that all of these “ailments” I am having are directly related to my center not being centered.
Basically, the things that “get to me” are things that are not going to change. It is up to me to accept these things for what they are.
Still, I manage to find ways to pay penance for my being a mere human that fucks up.
Speaking with her on the phone, she suggested that I try and keep the focus on myself. I shoot back pretty quickly, “but I think that is why I’m loony now”. I fear I’ve been focusing on myself entirely too much. She’s quiet and patient with me. She sees no reason to argue this point, knowing that I will come around when I am ready to come around.
Towards the end of the call she tells me that I sound much better than I did at the beginning of the call.
Her voice is always so calm, so loving, and her words have a way of pulling me back into reality. She asks me, “what have you done for yourself lately?”
I think to myself, “I don’t deserve to do anything nice for me”. I make mistakes, I say stupid things. She isn’t buying it. She’s not taking the “please beat me” bait. She never takes that bait.
I want so much for someone to just tell me how incredibly stupid and thoughtless I am. I tell her that if she won’t do it, I’ll call someone who can. This is meant as a joke, but reminds me of all the times I wanted to be punished for making a mistake and I had folks I could call that were more than happy to tear me down. And I did it all on auto-pilot.
That doesn’t work anymore. It hasn’t worked for a very long time, but old habits die hard. The knee-jerk reaction is to seek it out.
It finally dawns on me what I’ve been doing. Creating situations to disrupt my life in such a manner to make me “pay” for my bad behavior. I can know this all day long, and you can even remind me of it but it won’t guarantee my immunity from it.
There is a permanent path in my brain for a few things. When things get crazy, run. When feelings start to rise up, run. If anything uncomfortable, or not nice comes up I am supposed to run.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak I can’t run anymore. It’s like my running legs have been sawed off at the knees. My mind wants to, but my body cannot comply.
I was able to accept what she was giving me, even though it boils down to the truth of me not being able to run. I growled at her for doing such a thing to me. She didn’t do it at all, she was just the voice of reason during a mental breakdown. It is why I have asked her to help me along this journey.
I usually refer to this part of the process as “stop, drop, and roll”.
Reaching our for help pertains to the stop. Releasing what is no longer serving me is the drop. Lastly, the roll part is giving myself a break and moving on. Hopefully that moving on part won’t be as hard as I have a tendency to think it is.
Purge
May 26th, 2008The 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.
Brave, sad girl
May 5th, 2008A story from my local paper about a teenaged girl suffering from bipolar and the push in Massachusetts for better funding for youth mental illness treatment.
I am not mad anymore
March 18th, 2008Dear Mom,
I need to let you know that I am no longer mad.
It is possible that you didn’t know I was mad to begin with. Being a mother myself, I could speculate that you may have not known what “it” was, but I’m sure you’ve known that something wasn’t right with us.
When I called you last week sobbing, I wasn’t expecting you to be someone other than who you are. Your way of comforting me can sound a lot like criticism, but this time I heard with ears that are healing. I bristled a little just out of habit, then I realized that this is the way you try and comfort me.
This is how you comfort yourself, you take care of yourself the same way that you were cared for as a child. It is all you know. This makes me sad to know that you weren’t taken care of in the manner that each human deserves, with love and support.
If I was having a particularly hard week emotionally, I would beg my therapist to please tell me how to be around you without becoming sick. Each time I would ask him like it was the first time I’d ever thought to ask, and he somehow held the magic key.
His answer was always the same, “accept her for who she is and not who you want her to be”. This felt like a cop-out, a way to avoid handing me the magic answer that would allow me to be with you free of the knots that would form inside of me in your company.
The therapy work I’ve been committed to for the past two years is all about my relationship with you. The triggers began when I became a parent and took some time to bring itself to the surface enough so that I could begin the work of healing.
This is new territory for me, an area that I will need to tip toe into very gently and with a lot of love and support. Love and Support that I will give to myself. I won’t look to you, or others to love and support me in the way I need to give it to myself.
It’s my job now to take care of the injured one that lives in my belly. I thought being angry with you was the way to rid myself of the pain the abuse left me with. It was the only means I had of processing it all.
This is just a beginning for me, I hope it is a path that I can continue following. Not just for you, but for me. The release and calm I have is something I never got by holding on to the angry.
Just in case you knew I was mad, I need for you to know that I am not mad anymore.
I love you for who you are.
With much love,
Your Daughter
Moments Like This
March 13th, 2008It’s moments like this when I have to write. When the feeling gets so intense that it’s all I can think about. When I hold that razor in my hand feeling it’s cold metal against my skin. It’s at this moment that I know I’m in trouble. It’s at this moment that I have to get out of myself. I have to write, I have to take a cold shower, I have to go running. I have to do something other than sitting by myself in the dark. The lights have to be turned up bright, the music is loud in the speakers and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. And sometimes, even with all of this, it’s not enough. Sometimes I’m still holding the razor. The feeling isn’t as strong but it’s still there. It is at moments like this when I can’t deny that I’m not ok. I have to get out of myself, and I have to keep my hands busy. At these times, I get scared. I get scared that I won’t be able to keep myself from using the razor that sits on my knee. It’s now that I have to reach out to someone whether I know them or not. It’s not that everything is no longer about it. It’s about the people I could hurt. The fact I could hurt myself. It’s about a decision. I sit here reading the To Write Love on Her Arms story over and over, knowing that if Renee made it then so can I. It’s now that I feel as if I haven’t made any progress, only to know that in the morning I will feel different. It’s now that I cry, letting my cat curl up with me, collapsing into a ball, letting the razor fall to the floor. “The time has come the walrus said, to talk of many things.” And the time is now to talk about the pain and the fear. And through words, I will be ok, and I will survive.
Previously posted here.