mental health

I Heard it in the Homily

Standard

*This essay is about me and my dealing with things. Except in rare circumstances, my coping falls to me until and unless I ask for help. And sometimes I can’t ask.*

When I’m having a particularly difficult time, I pray for patience, courage and strength. Never one without the others. In my early days with the church, there were times when the priest said, “Let us pray.” I had no idea what to do. Make my shopping list? Think about breakfast? Write fan fic in my head for the next three minutes? But one day the words just came to me: patience, courage and strength, and just the thought of them during prayer was very calming and gives me a moment to re-focus. When I have nothing or no one specific to pray for, I can always use more patience, courage and strength.

Today was one of those days. Actually, it’s been one of those fortnights. I’ve been falling into a deeper depression and heart palpitating anxiety and sudden bursts of tears. There are several factors causing this, some that shouldn’t be reaching the level of anxiety that they are and others that are obviously out of my control.

Sometimes my coping works and sometimes it builds to a crescendo until some kind of an outburst happens. I’ve had one outburst in the last three weeks, and considering that I’ve been sick that long, the kids have taken turns being sick, my friend died, a student at my son’s high school committed suicide, my friend has had a crisis of their own and can’t help me, and payday and therapy can’t come soon enough, I think one outburst is a reasonable ratio to three weeks of time.

For example, my coping this morning when my car went sideways in the snow was very good.

My coping last October in Virginia with the idea of driving forty-five miles on a straightaway in near perfect weather was very bad and if you ask anyone present, that would be an understatement.

It’s unpredictable, this coping thing.

Some of my successful coping isn’t available (more than one thing and for varied reasons) and in addition to the coping not being accessible, the idea of the coping being unavailable increases my stress levels.

It’s hard not to blame the people around me (whether in person or by phone/text, whether by actual acts or acts of omission), even though in my mind, my logical places, I know that no one can read my mind and by the time I can, by the time I’m able to, ask for what I need, it’s often too late.

At this morning’s homily, one line blared above the others, and stood out to me:

“We are called on to be strong.”

The exact message I needed to hear today. Maybe I can get through another day if I can hold onto that.

We’re not called on for more than we are able; I truly believe that despite my much often heard whining. I’ve been strong before. I can do this until tomorrow and then see where I stand. Maybe tomorrow is the day I can reach out and my hand is grasped or maybe someone will reach for me. I don’t know. I just have to hope that I’m strong enough to endure until the depression passes or the coping returns, whether that’s through people, writing, planning, carrots, or whatever. I won’t know until it happens, but until then I am called on to be strong and the best thing I can do is believe in myself and have faith that things are going the way they should be and this moment is just that: a moment soon forgotten.

Remembering September 11th

Standard

 

Mass was oddly unsatisfying this morning. My expectations may have been a little high, although the somber intonation of the congregation’s response to the priest’s words illustrated that it was not an ordinary day for daily Mass.

I read a friend’s account of 9/11 and I hadn’t known that she was there that morning, and her reminiscence of the perfectly blue, perfectly clear sky over Manhattan triggered my memory that I truly had forgotten about in talking on Tumblr this morning.

We are from Long Island; in fact, I grew up in NYC before that, and after marriage, I moved about 250 miles away, well out of the city area. We traveled often to visit our parents and siblings, and on September 10, 2001, we were returning from Long Island. The crossing over the Throgs Neck Bridge gives you a perfect view of the World Trade Center, and we drew our four year old’s attention to it.

We got home safely, but had to be up early waiting for the Verizon guy to fix our phone line. I turned on the television as I did every morning and watched the Today show. They were talking about a plane that ‘accidentally’ hit the World Trade Center.

I watched the rest of it unfold in real time, spending the day trying to get through to our family and friends still in the area, keeping my son entertained away from the TV, and talking to passersby on the street.

At the time, we lived in a first floor apartment, and while our landlord lived off site, he was very well known in the community, and he happened to be there for some kind of maintenance work on that morning of September 11th at our apartment. Our front door was open, and we were on the way to the local supermarket by the older people with their wheeled carts. I think every person stopped by, poked their head in the door and asked for an update. We had neighbors, strangers and acquaintances alike stepping in and out, watching the television for a few moments, speak to landlord, shake their heads in disbelief and walk aback out to finish their morning errands.

The rest of that week was spent huddled in front of the TV. Driving past our local airport was traumatic. A plane overhead against our state capital’s skyline nearly made me drive off the road. There were local memorials, prayer vigils, thankfully for us, no funerals, but our families knew people and my husband’s NY office lost nine people that day.

One year later, our son should have been in kindergarten, but we kept him home. We opted to bring him to the New York State Museum where there was a 9/11 exhibit. I have never been affected by a museum exhibit except Holocaust displays. This one was somber, silent save for some weeping. They had a piece of original fencing where folks memorialized loved ones with missing persons flyers and flowers, flags and ribbons. Relics and artifacts, fire helmets, badges, parts of the buildings’ infrastructure, street signs, but the most profound item: the Engine 6 Pumper, destroyed in the collapse of the Towers.

Even recently, my husband and watched Fringe, and there are some parts that take place with an intact World Trade Center. I find it very jarring. It doesn’t fit my world, and it brings me unbelievable sadness and pain.

For me this is one of those Holy Days, much like we just observed with Rosh Hashanah and will celebrate with Easter. That’s not to be disrespectful of more religious people, but this is one of those days that I just reflect. I think about my life, and the direction it’s going, the mistakes I’ve made and how to adjust myself to be a better person; I think about my kids and friends and family. I’m grateful for our friends who survived; I pray for those still struggling, with physical ailments related or PTSD, and I mourn, not only for the dead, who simply went to work and never came home, but also for the people; the world that changed on that day for all of us. I think when our parents told us things and quelled our fears, and said we were safe and would be well; I think they truly meant it. I wonder for how many do those words feel hollow and like a lie? I feel it. There are no other answers, but to reassure our children or our friends that need reassurance, but how hard it is to say when I’m  not sure if I believe it, but I still hope and I guess that’s why I continue to say it, not only to my kids, but to myself.

One day I will go to the memorial. I don’t know when or if it’s something that I am strong enough to do, but it is something that I must do; one day.

Every year, I always recommend this book. I believe it is out of print, but try and find it anywhere. It is the epitome of humanity and of strangers coming together and doing.

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede

Also, visit the Dalai Lama’s Twitter and Facebook. He is a wise, compassionate man and it is good to think on his words.

As well as one of the main organizations that I support: Random Acts

 

world trade center, 1980s

A Triggery Thing Happened to Me on the Way to NYC

Standard

 

There’s a broader understanding of mental health issues online than off. One of those issues is the idea of triggering. When I describe being triggered, most people don’t understand. My therapist understood context without an explanation. My best friend knew before I’d even said the words. A couple of people who shall remain nameless gave me a blank look and offered to cheer me up. This is not their fault, which is why they’re nameless.

Much like depression and anxiety, triggering is an individual response. In my case, it was the skilled nursing facility my mother in law is in.

The difference between being anxious and having an anxiety disorder is the distinction between nervous about flying and after taking a Xanax still not being able to board without a dead frog in your pocket. (Individual talisman may vary.) To be honest, it was close.

There is also a difference between simply being uncomfortable in a place or situation and being triggered emotionally (and sometimes physically) by it. Not to mention that triggers can change over time or come out of the blue for something that never bothered a person before so they’re unpredictable.

And so much more fun.

I didn’t expect a problem at the skilled care place. My Dad was in one in 2001 and it was a nice place. Everyone had been friendly and helpful to him and his family. They treated him well, his rehab was good and for the most part it was okay. There was every indication that this place was just as good. My mother in law’s place was also physically similar – the same curving driveway; the small lobby for visiting in groups, no parking. The interior layout was even the same. Comforting, I thought.

And then the automatic doors opened and I was not expecting it.

The smell.

It wasn’t a bad smell, but it was a face full of – not déjà vu – but a repressed memory and I practically gagged on it. The comforting floor plan now became an Indiana Jones obstacle course of wheelchairs, walkers, food tray carts, blood pressure machines, even a bed.

A haze settled over my eyes and I swallowed hard, trying to keep it all in. After all, I’m the grown up. The kids were in a strange place, we were visiting my husband’s mother. I’m the caretaker; I need to keep everyone okay, and still none of these thoughts were conscious ones. I reached for my phone, but put it aside. I’m not the only one in the world. It would be better tomorrow.

It wasn’t.

The pressure only felt heavier, a tightening of throat and chest, mind trying to remember every clichéd mantra, using different words to repeat it’s going to be okay. By day three, I was picking fights and I knew it. It was the only coping mechanism I had regardless of how unhealthy it was. I went through a list of people to ask for help. Whoever I would reach out to was unavailable so I didn’t even try.

I couldn’t lay this on my husband. He was already balancing his siblings, his kids, and me plus our money issues and his childhood home clean up.

I would have called my best friend, but he was helping someone move, he’d just started school and was working full time on top of having an actual semblance of life. I wanted to call, and it would have helped, but without the guarantee of the call being answered and a couple of short conversations promised, not calling and being angry was still better in my mind than calling and getting a ringing phone.

The next person I’d call was helping the same person move and arranging a call to my therapist would inevitably come at an inopportune time.

Eventually, there was a midnight phone call and words not coming and weeping and misunderstanding and stammering and more crying and phone hugs. I didn’t feel better, but I could get through the rest of the week, continuing the twice daily visits to the skilled nursing facility and planning to see my sister and brother and nieces, arranging those schedules enough of a stress builder, but tolerable.

Suddenly, there was a plan, and then another plan, and then I was buying a one way ticket to Penn Station at 9:30 Monday night. I should have been anxious; it’s in my DNA, but I wasn’t. I’d be back in less than twelve hours and I hadn’t realized how much I needed this until the train pulled out from the station.

This saved my sanity. Literally.

There was a lot of walking, a lot of stairs, J took pity on me and paid for a cab to the subway we needed – Penn Station was a ‘can’t get there from here’ place. I had no idea where they were staying; I just followed.

When you meet up with people, there are hello hugs. They’re quick. When the quick hug normally would have been over, A held on and I literally felt him absorb all of the stress, all the anxiety, the memories, the everything bad that was weighing me down. I heard the whoosh and then it was gone like a wall had been put up to keep it out.

I had anticipated more stress than the visit was worth – the energy of the city does that to me, being in a strange place, not even able to pick out the apartment on a map (I probably couldn’t find it today), not even sure if there wouldn’t be a phone call saying get on this train and meet us here instead, but sometimes, actually more often than not, my friend knows me better than I know myself and surprises and spontaneity are provided incrementally so as not to shock my system and that toe in the water testing is what gives me the strength to say yes, to know my feelings and what I need and to always move forward, even through the difficult. The lack of that is what paralyzes me, why when my depression hit me in the face after the birth of my second son, it was largely ignored, but when this trigger happened last week, I was able to recognize it and grab it, maybe not to cure it but to control it for a couple of hours and then a couple more.

The difference between arriving in New York and leaving the next morning could not have been more unalike. The 11 pm bustle feels like New York to an outsider, but the morning brings the wonder and amazement at how everyone and everything flows – they just know how to go and where to go and when to go, and nothing shall get in the way of their rhythm. Out of rhythm, I stumble crossing the street, not in step with the rest, slower than a city’s pace. While my friends kept my pace the night before, the city that never sleeps keeps walking by and around me in the morning, never making eye contact.

Breakfast of fried plantains (from A) and a tamale (from a street vendor) only made this excursion that much better.

And flavorful.

The car ride is stereotypical, brakes and horns applied liberally and equally. Cutting off and being cut off at regular intervals. The only thing that couldn’t have been predicted was a building crew dropping (intentionally) a dumpster in the road – a single lane road – blocking traffic. Two blocks from Penn Station. During Rush Hour. It was the only picture I got of my New York adventure. I had thought talking until 2am, up again at 6am was all good time to get me back when I was supposed to be, but then an unanticipated shower, a missing claim ticket for the car, NYC traffic, aforementioned dumpster (but that came with traditional construction crew swearing and I thought I was an extra in a movie for a second) and on time was not to be.

An illegal drop off in the taxi lane, pseudo hugs and squeezes all around, see yous in October and a love you called out as I stepped into the cool rush of a Manhattan weekday morning. I had barely exited when the car seemed to vanish into the traffic, almost a dream, but taking my trigger reactions with it.

 

empire state bldg - nyc - 8-26-13                               2013-08-27 09.06.28

Relapse

Standard

 

There are so many things coursing through my mind that sometimes it’s hard to keep up and get it all out. It’s been going on longer, but the last four weeks have been a really bad place for me, throwing me, well, not throwing me, but sliding me back towards the beginnings of my depression and I do not like it. I noticed that something was off, but as per my custom chose to ignore it while at the same time being hyperaware of it. When my friend asked if I was alright and noticed that every time he called I sounded sad and asked about my mood, I realized that I wasn’t imagining what I had been seeing.

Lately doing anything is a chore. Not something like a responsibility that you know you have to do but are procrastinating doing, but an actual chore, pushing myself to, if not make dinner at least state what dinner would be and getting someone else in the family to make it. Cooking was one of the happy places that I lost when I sunk into depression and it hasn’t bounced back.

I did the cooking and baking for Christmas and my middle son is the only one who doesn’t get a store bought birthday cake because he always asks for my cheesecake (Philly 3-Step variety) and so I oblige him and did, but the daily cooking and experimenting that I was enjoying so much – baking bread, frying chicken in the newly discovered (for me) peanut oil, Pinterest recipes, caramel and ginger cookies. The love was there. The want was there. I just couldn’t get past the chore of getting up and actually doing it.

At least, we’re not eating out constantly or bringing prepared food in. That is something we definitely can’t afford to do as we struggle this year to pay the bills, some that are not always getting paid and our tax refunds going to repay friends who helped us in our time of need. There’s a lot of pasta and grilled cheese, but at least it’s getting made.

I try to have a list for each day, and those usually help, but it seems that my brain has picked up on all of last year’s coping tricks and is sabotaging them. In the Jewish faith, each year on the anniversary of a parent’s death, you’re supposed to light a memorial candle called a Yartzeit. You light it at sundown of the death day and it burns for twenty-four hours. You do not blow it out. This was something I learned when I was a child. I also learned that you never light the candle if your parents are living. I don’t know if this is religiously true or if my mother was just superstitious. I was supposed to do this on Saturday. It was written on at least two calendars. I said something to my husband on Saturday morning. And then I just forgot. It slipped my mind. Literally. I didn’t remember until I was looking at the calendar Monday morning to check the week’s schedule, and I didn’t actually remember it; I read it and had a V8 moment. I thought I would burst into tears. How could I forget my Dad?

For everything else, I’m not so much lazy or unmotivated as much as I just don’t feel it. I want to write, but if I don’t it’s alright. I want to make a phone call, but unless it is anxiety driven, I don’t until the anxiety builds to explosion levels and that is no good for either of us. I want to sit and do homework with my daughter, but if she decides to do something else, I just don’t want to be bothered, and don’t chase her down, and this is the scariest feeling of all; the not wanting to be bothered.

I’m not back in the place of completely mentally paralyzed or suicidal, and I credit that to recognizing the downward slide as well as my friend who knows me so well calling me out on some of my lethargic behavior and moods and knowing when to poke me and when to actually push.

My medication dose has been changed and I go back to the doctor in a week or so, but it doesn’t feel any different and I think it should feel a little better; just a little. The next few weeks are bringing things that are stressful and fun and I should be looking forward to them, but it’s making me feel anxious and as though I’m going to let everyone down including myself. I’m afraid to build anything up because it will be a disappointment; I’m afraid to get excited and I’m worrying over things that I really do have no control over, but they’re still there. I want to scream at some things, and I want to cry at others, and I’m trying to hold it all together so I don’t push away the people who are always there for me, who reach out and care for me, but the next few weeks….I just don’t know how to get through it and actually enjoy the parts that I’m supposed to enjoy.

This list includes Author’s Night at my daughter’s school, Free Comic Book Day, a doctor’s appointment, a therapy appointment, pay the mortgage and other bills, attend a birthday party, Mother’s Day, my oldest son’s prom, my daughter’s birthday party, visit my best friend at least four states away, Memorial Day weekend, which is also my deceased mother’s birthday and a visit from Grandma (the kids’ grandma, my mother in law). And that doesn’t include writing for my memoir workshop even though it won’t be in session and I’ll miss one session but I promised to keep up on my writing. And all of this is off the top of my head. I’m sure I forgot something. Or several somethings.

In trying to come up with some positive things to write about and ease out of the bad place, it is not easy. On a good day I’m at best a realist.

I’ve been very good since declaring my New Year’s Resolutions and my reaffirmation of much of them for Lent. I have been very good since Lent and have stuck to only two cans of soda a day with very few exceptions. I usually will drink those with meals, and I have primarily been drinking green tea with jasmine and water, the colder the better.

I have tried (and mostly succeeded) in eating oatmeal three times a week. I add a touch of brown sugar and a handful of cranberries and some milk. This really has decreased my cholesterol, and it is very filling and tastes good, and much healthier than a bagel.

I am skipping some desserts, and last night didn’t actually have dinner except for a bowl of strawberries and some sour cream, a childhood comfort food that can only be made better with sliced peaches and blueberries.

Except for three bad mornings, I have continued to attend morning Mass and have tried to add Sunday Mass into my week. If I don’t get to the church (and on the days that there are no Mass), I read the Mass in a Catholic periodical that publishes the daily Masses.

I’ve given away several sweaters that either no longer fit or that I know I will not wear again. I have a pile of baby clothes to do the same with as soon as I call the church’s office manager. We are very slowly clearing out the things that we haven’t used in years and that are taking up much needed space that can be used for other things.

I have been writing more even if I haven’t been sharing the really personal ones or the ones that need too much explaining to understand context, but sometimes (more often recently) I’ll start something and just leave it there and not go back to it.

I am not where I want to be, and I think that adds to the chemical issue of depression and brings on extra situational stress and in the place I’m in my level of tolerance and ignoring things is just non-existent so I find myself shutting down.

I also know that I can’t go back to last year; I barely lived through that. I also can’t go back decades and change decisions; I can’t return to college and choose different majors. It’s hard to move forward; though it’s not easy knowing that one changed decision could change everything now.

Or would it?

There is no way to know, but this is one of the questions that weighs heavily on my mind and in my relapse into depression and increase in anxiety, it plays over and over again as though a broken record or a film on a loop.

Train Derailed

Standard

(* This is something that spewed out suddenly during my workshop on Thursday while someone else was reading. My mind wouldn’t let me stop until it was written and I didn’t know what would come out of the pen until it was on the paper. It is not an assignment of blame. Just thoughts. I don’t know if this will be expanded on eventually or left as is. It’s not quite poetry, but it’s a bit more emotional and the cadence isn’t quite prose.)

 

My eyes hurt. I haven’t cried today, but my eyes want to. I’m not sure about my heart. I’m full of feels. Feeling melancholy. The lingering sad, inappropriate considering this week’s events of a heaviness, the lingering of something, loss of memories not to be. I was afraid to want, but I wanted so badly, needed so badly and I let myself grasp it and blow the embers keeping it warm, building the flame of expectation, of want and need I didn’t know I needed, but I did. This is strike two. You know me better than I know myself and you can’t heal me. You can’t fix me. And I want that so badly.