Dec 13 2012
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mental illness

Perpetual Lump

My mom has been moved from the psychiatric unit to the ICU.  A rapid heartbeat and high blood sugar spell big trouble for someone with diabetes and a family history of heart disease.  The nurse assures me that there is no need to rush to the hospital.  Regardless, ‘ICU’ is a scary acronym that has left me swallowing hard all day.

Awhile ago, VP and I had coincidentally both started writing eulogies for mom.  Okay, he actually started whereas I couldn’t get past the idea to do it.  I want to. I want to write about the hand that reached through the water and saved me from drowning. I want to write about how she never swore at us.  And about how it was the greatest thing to get my mom to laugh. I want to tell everyone how she’d say “you turkey” as she chuckled at our antics. I want her to make the yam balls she used to make at Thanksgiving that no one would eat.  I want to hear her laugh again – I mean really laugh – I haven’t heard that in years. Mostly I want to preserve all of the memories with my mom that don’t start with mental illness.

In the last four years, we’ve lost a lot of my mom to mental illness and a stroke.  I’m so ready for her to be out of misery.  As of late, I’ve often wondered if death is the only way out of the darkness of her mind.  Now that the reality of the ICU is involved, it’s clear that I’m not ready to lose the rest of my mom.

 

Dec 11 2012
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mental illness

Commitment

Commitment has a good connotation, right? One is committed to school or one is committed to her craft. Marriage is a commitment. Every time you make plans, you commit to them.

Commitment is good. Unless the commitment we’re talking about civil commitment. Then commitment becomes evil. Albeit a necessary evil.

Thursday, my sweet, sweet mom will be taken by police to the courthouse to stand before a judge as the county attorney makes a case for her civil commitment.

The big advantage will be that she will finally have access to more outpatient care. She will also be required to be hospitalized as prescribed by the psychiatric team rather than the insurance company. Once at home, a case manager will regularly come to the house to check on her medication and if she’s uncooperative, she goes straight to the hospital.

The big drawback is that my mom will be physically forced to take her meds if she refuses.  Is that trauma better or worse than the trauma she endures every day by the delusions?

I don’t know. But I do know that her 75-year-old husband cannot care for her anymore. I know that my brothers and I can’t care for her. And I know that her insurance company has been doing the same thing with her mental illness over and over again expecting different results every time (who’s the crazy one in this situation??)

I just want my mom to be as healthy and happy as she can be and if this type of commitment brings us closer to that goal, perhaps it will be good after all.

 

Dec 06 2012
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adventure, renew

Cautiously Optimistic

On Tuesday, it took ten minutes exactly to row 500m, push up 30 times, squat 20, and pull up 20.  The push ups and pull ups were assisted, but the post-workout endorphins were all mine. In one month, we’ll be timed again with workout to measure progress.

After spending far too much ‘thinking about it,’ I started the intro classes to CrossFit.  It fulfills what I’ve come to realize are important for personal success in a fitness regiment: direction, accountability, and accomplishment.

Before signing on, I consulted an old college acquaintance, who frequently posts about her CrossFit experience.  She mentioned that she has lost little weight, but seen dramatic changes in her measurements. So I decided to measure myself and report back in six months.

Measurements 12/5/12
30″ Waist
37.5″ Hips
23.5″ Thigh
11″ Arm
140lbs

I also just ran across a CrossFit member who was asked to write what success looked like to her. A terrific idea for reflection in June.

To me, success would be countering the malaise with endorphins and energy, feeling confident about my body, and accomplishing new things I never knew I could do every day.  A flat stomach and defined arms would be nice too.

But first, I’ll go to my second intro class tonight…cautiously optimistic.

Dec 03 2012
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mental illness

Where My Mom Begins

She won’t drink water.

Its unclear where mental illness stops and my mom begins.  There used to be a clear line. When she would open up all of the windows in the house to ‘air it out’ on a day the mercury barely reached 50 °, we knew the wheels had come off the wagon.  When she started obsessing about the Bible, we knew her meds were off.  When there were too many tears for no apparent reason, we knew it was time for the hospital.  But ever since the sly fox of paranoia bellied up to the table fifteen years ago, we found ourselves caught in a game we can’t possibly win.

We used to know when mom started and crazy stopped.  Now, there is a mucky grey area instead of a line.  Now we simply measure shallow end versus deep end of the crazy pool as she hasn’t stopped treading in years.

“The city water is bad,” she says and she won’t drink it in any form. Not from the tap, not from a filter, not from a bottle allegedly from the French Alps.  A tiny breath of relief escapes as she finds nothing wrong with milk at this time.

Perhaps the insurance company will finally see, after four hospitalizations this year, that her mental illness will not get any better (or any cheaper for them) without significant changes to her outpatient care.

Oh mental illness, I hate you.

Nov 26 2012
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reduce

Kryptonite

JJG.  Even after all of this time, that name makes me dizzy.

It was brief, complicated, and nearly a decade ago.  But it happened during the crescendo of my 20’s and was, afterwards, a parachute as I barreled downward. He was the only good thing during the worst part of my life.

We never really knew each other. But carnally, we were…it was…we…it was magnetic.  Fervid.  Because of him that I understood the power of that kind of union.

It started with wine on a late-summer evening in the secret garden dubbed ‘the most romantic place’ in the city which clearly was, but had not been identified as, a date and led to both the freedom and terror of not being in control.  It ended a few months later with a kiss on the forehead.

It started again with enigmatic jealousy and ended with inadvertent spite.

And yet again with a grand gesture and ended with an email.

What began with virile attraction, perhaps in a way, never really ended.

While he is married now and I am quite fulfilled, it is with great intention that I avoid him even in this vast metropolis as I don’t dare play with Kryptonite.

Nov 24 2012
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recycle

Carrot Coins with Cheese

Thanksgiving is an institution. Every year, my mom cooks while we play Monopoly in the kitchen.  My dad is always the battleship, the Blonde Wonder gets bored halfway through, VP turns into a slumlord, and I have an incessant need to own the first two ghetto purple properties. We free the china, Waterford, and silver from the sideboard for their thrice-yearly use.  We eat and then we watch a movie.

But the menu is really what the day is all about.  A turkey that spent much of the morning splayed in the sink under a cool waterfall.  Stove top stuffing, cranberry sauce that retained the shape of the can, the $6.99 pumpkin pie from the grocery store, Redi-Whip in the red can for said pie, yam balls which never made any sense to us and were never eaten, mashed potatoes from scratch, and carrot coins with cheese.

My mom had a simple philosophy when it came to feeding her children: if you put something they like on top of something they don’t like, they will eat it.  Just like hiding a pill inside of a cheese cube for a pup, I suppose.

Cauliflower? No!  Cauliflower with cheese sauce? Yes please!  Broccoli? Uh-uh. Broccoli with cheese on top?  Heck yeah!  Squash?  Negative. Squash with maple syrup and brown sugar?!  Hell to the no. (Okay, so her plan didn’t work every time.)

Aside from the annual game of Monopoly, I think I miss those carrots those most.  It’s been eight years since I had Thanksgiving with my family.  It’s also been eight years since I stopped talking to my dad, but that’s an entirely different story.

Since 2004, I’ve spent Thanksgiving with S and her family – 200 miles due east from my own.

Tonight, I was talking to my mom and she was telling what my brother had made for Thanksgiving dinner.  It wasn’t until she told me about the carrot coins with cheese that I closed my eyes tightly and felt the burn of tears. I realized, that the Thanksgiving menu I serve to my children will be turkey, Stove Top stuffing, gravy, Burt Reynolds Corn Pudding, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and cranberry sauce in the shape of the can.  The Thanksgiving I will serve will mostly be S’s family’s menu – the Thanksgiving of my youth is like that of a grandmother’s undocumented recipe that is longed for but can never be recreated.

Of course it’s silly to mourn a menu, but in therapy, I’ve learned that mourning is a part of healing – even if that grief is over an idea or a memory.

So, I mourn.  RIP Thanksgiving 1984-2003.  Thank you for the memories, traditions, family time, the menu, my mom’s cooking and, of course, the carrot coins with cheese.

Nov 20 2012
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mental illness, reduce, renew

Crazy Goes to Voicemail

If you can’t laugh at mental illness, you’ll just cry all of the time. Trust me. I know.

There is an unspoken code in my family.  My mom has been sick for a very long time and like a team of lifeguards, each of us steps up to take his or her respective turn swimming out furiously to save my mom while desperately trying not to drown as she emotionally clings and flays about. It gets exhausting trying to save the person who lives in the tide.

Whenever my mom boards the ‘crazy train,’ family code dictates that whoever she drags aboard with her makes sure to notify the rest of us so, as we lovingly say, “crazy goes to voicemail.”

We all love my mom and we all want to help her, but Schizoaffective Disorder is an emotional leech. So each time, one of us simply ‘takes one for the team’ and spares the other three.

Last night, my mom called me four times between 7:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.  I didn’t hear the first two and then out of irritation, I ignored the second two at 11:14 p.m. and 11:28 p.m. respectively.  Her voicemails were reflective of her current mental state: manic.  Even though I knew I couldn’t do anything and calling her meant taking away from my life, good old Catholic guilt (@#$%) got the best of me and called her back.

When she’s sick, which is most of the time now, she can’t see beyond herself. She doesn’t inquire about me or my job or my husband or my life. She doesn’t care can’t focus on anything other that what she’s fixated on.  And it’s life-sucking for all parties involved, including her.  The neediest girlfriend doesn’t hold a candle to psychosis.

I’ve been working with the therapist and she blew my mind with one simple sentence. “It doesn’t matter if you’re happy or miserable, her life is going to be the same.”  What?!

From therapy part one, I learned and accepted (work in progress) that her decisions are hers. I cannot influence them, I cannot change them and I’m certainly not responsible for the consequences of her actions.  This is her life and these are her choices, regardless of where mental illness stops and my mom begins.

But now in therapy part two, I’m learning to live my own life. I’m learning that as much as I love my mom and want to fix her…I can’t.  There is simply nothing I can do.  It reminds me of Love Actually when Laura Linney’s character picks her mentally ill brother over her own happiness.  Yeah. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be happy.

Mom, I love you a lot, but I can’t follow you into the dark anymore.  I’ll be right here in the light with open arms if you can ever make your way back here.  But I can’t live with you in the dark anymore.

Nov 10 2012
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adventure, cancer, mental illness, renew

Where the Magic Happens

It was a great day.

A comp day from a thoughtful and smart manager, it started out with good pain at the premiere of season two of therapy. Turns out, the crying can be explained in one word: grief. ‘Ambiguous Loss‘ precisely, as the phrase has been coined. While we haven’t lost our mom in body yet, we lost a lot of her personality on September 26, 2008 to a stroke. Since then, more and more is lost to her unrelenting Schizoaffective Disorder every day. We are caught between the loss that was and the loss that will be.

Lost has been the innocence that S and I will actually live what we’ve joked about for years – old and senile, rocking in chairs on a porch. I made S promise that I get to go first.

I will likely lose my mom and my best friend within the next year. It is overwhelming to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. But, that’s what therapy is for…

TB and I then embarked on what would become an impromptu Choose Your Own Adventure day. First, we ended up eating wings at the sports bar. From there we spent down three of the last gift cards from the wedding, saw a movie, planned out the Christmas season over coffee, had a chair massage, priced out my new computer, bought new shoes, purchased a tree topper for Christmas (I’m so excited), and tried new sushi rolls for dinner.

It was heavenly.

The movie was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It was so, so good. So good. Difficult subject matter at points [spoiler alert] dealing with sexual abuse, but it rivals my long-standing favorite movie, Rudy.

I’d like to start living more in the moment. Seizing life. More days like yesterday. Opportunities in which cozying up on the couch and living vicariously through movies and television would have been fine and safe, but not magical like yesterday was.

Nov 07 2012
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Clean in ’13 Update

With a grimace, I stepped on the (unofficial) scale for the first time since weighing in at 146 lbs on September 5. While there were grander hopes than 141 lbs, I’m happy to see progress in the right direction.  An annual physical on Friday will determine the official progress.

Working out might help – right now my YMCA membership might as well be considered a charitable donation. I have been interested in the much costlier CrossFit, but will wait on that until the New Year’s Resolution crowd has fallen back into their bad habits.

Clean in ’13 has been a beneficial experience. I’ve found that the foods I crave all week are not very fulfilling when consumed on the weekend.  I’ve even found myself having trouble eating poorly on Friday…but by Saturday, that hesitation is long gone.  I also eat a lot less.  And those are all wins.

Nov 03 2012
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Make New Friends But Keep the Old…

…one is silver and the others gold. As the Girl Scouts song goes.

For a shoddy memory, mine never ceases to amaze when it comes to the most random of details.  A snippet of a song from more than twenty years ago I recall, yet what I had for breakfast yesterday eludes me…or if breakfast was even consumed. Ugh.

While I’ve fallen prey to a few dastards in the first 2.5 decades of life, I have successfully avoided and rid my circle of toxic people.  Yet, one remains. ‘We’ is that friend for which an explanation is always necessary prior to introduction. As in, “She’s abrasive and snooty and pretentious when first meet her, but she’s a dear once you get to know her.”

(‘We’ is actually the nickname we use for her because she sheds her personal identity when in a relationship.)

Of course her snoot and pretension surface from deeply rooted insecurities, but I have always been able to see past her ‘less flattering’ side for her better qualities.

That was until my wedding.  One month before the wedding, we were having lunch and I told her that TB would no longer be drawing a salary from his start-up company beginning about the time we were married.  I told her how the idea of being financially tethered to someone who would now be financially dependent on me was scary.  I was looking for a friend in that moment to tell me that everything was going to be fine.

Instead, she said to me: “Matt and I don’t lend people money.”

I was befuddled and humiliated.  I wasn’t asking for money, I was asking for support. Our friendship had started to unravel long before that comment, but it fast-forwarded it for me.

The idea of shedding a friendship that’s longevity is approaching two decades is kind of unimaginable.  While I retained zero friends from high school, I also had no idea who I was at 18-years-old. Today, while continual evolution is guaranteed, I have a pretty good idea who I am. I know who to keep and who to drop.

Huh. Come to think of it…I met We when I was 18.  Perhaps that song should actually be, ‘Make new friends, but keep only the gold.’

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