RealMental

This is the first Christmastime since I can remember that I haven’t felt depressed. 

The secret of my equanimity?  One big factor is that I cancelled my cable TV.  Not being bombarded by non-stop advertisements and Christmas specials has made an immense difference in my ability to retain equilibrium.

I also have not:

• shopped in any malls;
• struggled to wrap gifts in fancy paper;
• decorated my home;
• felt obliged to embark on ill-fated adventures in baking;
• or otherwise disrupted my comfortable, sanity-friendly routines.

The things that I have done or have planned to mark the season are all focused on human relationships, not material stuff:

• enjoying togetherness at holiday parties;
• making donations to charity in lieu of buying gifts;
• trying karaoke for the first time with friends in a growing friendship;
• celebrating as relatives who were feuding for years kiss and make up; and
• hugging.  Lots of hugging.

I’m not worried about living up to anyone else’s standards.  I don’t have a giant to-do list before me, or an over-packed schedule.  There is room for me to breathe this holiday season, and for once I’m truly enjoying it.

I bought a Korean red bean bun as an after-work snack.  According to the packaging, the first ingredient was “Bean Lump”.  For a laugh, I brought it home and showed my husband.  He patted his large belly and declared “This is my Bean Lump.”

He and I are a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife, reversed.  He struggles not to overeat.  I can’t seem to gain an ounce.  Granted, I do exercise more and snack less than he does, but in the final analysis most of the credit for my low BMI goes to luck.  I have skinny parents.  He doesn’t.  It’s not fair, but that’s life.

When I’m feeling good, it doesn’t matter.  My husband is a handsome man with smooth skin, a mischievous glint in his eye, and an alluring dimple when he smiles.  He also has very charismatic eyebrows.  And sexy hands.  Perfectly straight, white teeth;  a cool haircut.  Women flirt with him, and love it when he flirts with them.  His waistline isn’t big enough to overshadow all his attractive features.

Frankly, if you could give me a guarantee that my husband would live until at least the age of 85, I wouldn’t care about the bean lump.  It’s not an issue of insufficient superficial beauty.  I count my lucky stars every day that the wonderful man I married happens to be so good-looking.

However, when I’m anxious and under stress, I can’t ignore the bean lump.  It taunts me.  Bullet points from magazine articles about Metabolic Syndrome scroll across my mind’s eye like quotes along a stock ticker.  I’m sure he’s going to get diabetes.  I’m sure he’s going to die of a heart attack.  How selfish of him to abandon me through an early death!  He loves bacon more than he loves me!

Technically, he could be doing more.  He says he has “no time” to exercise, when I know he spends at least 4 hours every night playing on the computer or watching TV.  He swears off snacking for a while, and then I start finding wrappers in the garbage and unwashed plates in the sink when I get up in the morning.  When he orders a side of bacon with his brunch, I bite my tongue.

The thing is, I know he’s doing his best.  I’m not the only emotionally fragile person in this house.  He has his limits too.  While he may have time to exercise, I know that he doesn’t have the emotional stamina to deal with it.  He took up jogging for a few weeks two years ago.  Every time he came home, he talked about how much it sucked to be “that fat guy trying to run”.  Everyone else on the track was fast and athletic.  That was outside, at night, in the dark.  I can sure understand why he hasn’t been able to face a brightly lit gym.

Yes, he eats compulsively sometimes, but do I have any right to get on his case about that?  He doesn’t smoke, drink to excess, gamble, or get too wrapped up in online gaming.  His family has a history of alcoholism.  He’s had a rough past.  All things considered, if all he does is eat a whole big bag of potato chips at 2:00 am every once in a while, he’s doing pretty good.  In fact, he’s doing excellently, and I’m proud of him for coming as far as he has.

But when I’m down and nervous, all of that counts for nothing.  All I can see is his early death, the funeral, and an old age of loneliness and endless grief stretching before me.  The bean lump may as well be a tombstone hanging around his neck.

I always think that I’ve got myself under control.  I tell myself that I’m doing fine.  But my resistance slips.  Although I should know better, I justify to myself that I can make this comment, leave that article on exercise out for him to find, because it’s “for his own good”.  Then we fight.

“Do you think I don’t know that I’m fat?” he asks me sharply, wounded.

“I have to look at this” (he grabs his belly) “every day in the mirror.  I’m the one whose pants don’t fit.”  By the time I’ve realized my mistake, it’s too late.  I have failed to love him unconditionally.  I’ve basically told him that he’s not good enough.  And guess what happens when he feels bad about himself?  He eats for comfort.  He lies around more watching TV because the stress of fighting is exhausting.

He also gets that I’m trying to control him, and he doesn’t like being controlled.  What better way to rebel than by doing exactly what I don’t want him to do? 

Hello, self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hate the ugliness in my head when I fall down that hole.  I hate that I never learn, that I make the same mistake over and over again.  Once the words are out of my mouth I feel so stupid, like the biggest dolt that ever walked the face of the earth.  I’m a bad wife.  I’m a crappy friend.  I’m a mess.

Every day I try to live up to my ideal: take life as it comes, and leave the things I can’t control up to God.  Be grateful for what I have when I have it.  Don’t grasp.  Don’t presume that I can know what the future holds.  Anything could happen.  Life has surprised me more times than I can count, and the surprises are often good ones.

Or, let’s say that my worst fears will come true.  What then?  What if my husband is destined to have a heart attack and die at a young age?  Do I really want to spend our remaining days together fighting over whether or not he puts too much butter on his pancakes?  I can enjoy what I have while I have it, and be grateful for every second.  I can be open to uncomplicated joy.  I can be fully in this moment, with all of my heart, without conditions.

He’s doing his best.  I can see that.  He puts in 110% effort every day, and that has to be good enough. 

I love him so much.  I hope that we both live long, happy lives together.  But the only thing I can truly reach for and achieve is long, happy moments, right now, one breath at a time.

I wish getting sick only involved physical symptoms.  I would patiently and calmly lie under a blanket, drinking plenty of fluids, until my body healed and I could resume my normal life. 

But that’s not how it works.  Sickness messes with my mind and my soul.  Sickness makes me depressed, anxious, weepy, frustrated, impatient, and prone to tantrums.  I remember how I felt the day before I got sick, just last week.  If I concentrate hard enough I can step into that feeling of centeredness, just for a moment.  I was living in the flow of things, letting stress slide off my shoulders even as it poured forth like an endless river.  I was keeping all the balls in the air, in a breath-taking juggling act filled with faith and grace.

Then I got sick, and it all came tumbling down. 

When I’m sick, I become frantically insecure about canceling plans and obligations.  I’m letting people down – how could I let all these people down?  I become paranoid; everyone thinks I’m faking.  What if Phil, who invited me to his birthday party for the first time this year, never invites me again?  Why bother inviting someone who cancels at the last minute?  What if my aunt, whose dinner party I missed, yells at my mother because she thinks I’m avoiding her?  Then my mother would be hurt and it would be all my fault because I made my aunt angry.

That’s how I think when I’m sick.  And it doesn’t matter that I know, I KNOW it’s stupid and all wrong.  I can’t stop feeling the fear.  These things keep me up at night.

Being sick also messes with my homeostasis.  That nice, comfy groove I got into with my sleep schedule and my balanced mealtimes?  Gone.  Blasted to smithereens, and with it, my equilibrium.  I have to sleep more to heal, but oversleeping always depresses me.

Also, sometimes, like this time, my hormones have been completely knocked for a loop.  Today I am living in the grip of PMS the likes of which I haven’t known for many a month.  I forgot how bad it could be.  I hate this feeling of hating everything, of the answer to everything being “NO!” before I even know what my options are.

I want to bite people, and not in a sexy way.

I don’t want to do anything, but I’m too restless to do nothing.

And I can’t seem to snap out of it.

It’s all in my head.  I should just snap out of it; get over it.  I’m making it up.  If I could just give my head a shake and come to my senses…

I don’t need to be like this.  I’m making excuses.  I’m a coward, a liar.  I’m just being lazy.  I’m trying to weasel out of responsibility.

When you get used to people not taking you seriously, it’s hard to take yourself seriously.  I probably doubt myself more than anyone else does, at this stage of my life.

I somatize my emotional pain.  When I’m overwhelmed by grief, when I can’t process it all in my head, I feel it in my body.  Aching joints and muscles, fatigue, heaviness in my chest, stomach aches.  The aches and pains are the worst.  They’re everywhere, from my jaw all the way down my spine, into my hips, knees and elbows, hands and feet.

I used to be able to take an Advil or a Tylenol to help me feel better.  But there’s not any type of OTC pill left that won’t burn holes in my stomach and make me feeling like puking for a whole 24 hours.  So I just tough it out.

I’ve had every type of blood test my doctor could think of – all negative.  Maybe a little auto-immune dysfunction, but nothing worthy of a name.  The rheumatologist was only willing to say that it “could fall under the umbrella of fibromyalgia-type illness”.  No help there.

Because it’s “only psychological” I get down on myself when I get symptoms.  I feel that I should pull up my socks and get on with things.  I become useless.  I lie on the couch under a blanket a lot and wait to feel better.  One time, after a particularly traumatic experience, it took me 8 months to feel better.  I don’t know how I kept working full-time through that episode.  I almost couldn’t bear it.

And now, with four people in my immediate family suffering from serious illnesses, I’m wearing my pain on my body again.  Ouch.

I have friends at church; smiling, freshly-scrubbed friends.  Friends full of energy, who work full-time jobs and then spend their evenings and weekends volunteering for charitable causes, training for fund-raising marathons, and getting masters’ degrees online in their spare time.  They have four times as much energy as I do.

I sing in a church band.  I help our leader, an upstanding 30-year-old who believes fervently in saving the world, with some of the administrative tasks.  He saw how helpful I could be, and wanted me to participate more.  I said “no” to one of his requests, but I knew that more would follow.  I didn’t want to start making up excuses.  I didn’t want him to think that I was trying to weasel out of helping because I was lazy or apathetic.

So I tried to explain.  I wrote him an e-mail describing my “fibromyalgia-type condition” and how I have to limit myself because of it.  How I need extra sleep and downtime etc.  And of course he was understanding.  But I still feel like a liar.

I only told part of the truth.  He and my band-mates still don’t really know what’s going on with me.  They don’t know that it’s psychological.  What would they think if they knew?  How well can they ever get to know me without knowing this about me, this fundamental thing that defines the frame within which I live my life and make my decisions?  Could they possibly understand?  In equal parts I want to tell them everything, and I want them never to find out.

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.

I used to long for a diagnosis.  Something snappy from the DSM-IV would have done nicely.  I wanted an impressive-sounding label to stick on the mess that bubbled constantly inside my head and my guts.  If I had an official Mental Disorder, it would mean that people would have to take me seriously.  Maybe it would mean that I could get some help.

Sometimes I felt that I wasn’t being taken seriously enough.  Other times I accepted what others said.  “She’s throwing a tantrum.  Just ignore her.”  “Oh, she’s crying again?  Never mind, she’ll be fine.”  It was easy for them to minimize what they saw, because they were too busy, or too self-absorbed, or too contemptuous to stop and evaluate how much I was actually suffering.

I started cutting myself.  No one noticed.  I went to my doctor to discuss my mental health.  He had misplaced his Suicide Risk Checklist.  He looked through his files for 2 minutes trying to find it, and then decided it would be good enough to ask me whatever questions he remembered.  He forgot to ask if I had looked into killing myself.  I had, in fact, visited a website that provided techniques for suicide.  But he never asked, and I wasn’t able to summon my voice to volunteer the information.

I did ask him to prescribe me an anti-depressant.  I needed something, anything, to get me through my days.  Every hour, sometimes every minute, was excruciating.

The doctor told me he thought it was “just psychological”.  He wanted to refer me to see a psychologist for counseling, who happened to be his sister.  He said it might be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because my difficult childhood.  Finally, with reservations, he did write me a prescription for Zoloft.

I took it straight to a bookstore, found a book on the medical effects that are possible when people come off anti-depressants, and became too scared to fill the prescription.  I went back to toughing it out on my own.  I’m aware that I’m lucky to have that choice.

In the end, I diagnosed myself.  Moderate Depression, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  And after years of dealing with my moods I’ve learned how to keep myself on an even keel, most of the time.  It means I live a life that is relatively very limited, but within those safe boundaries I have found a way to be me that works.