7.21.2012
and the adventure begins
writing tonight from blue springs, missouri, just east of kansas city. i haven't really delved into this part of my plan, but i'm relocating from the bay area to durham, north carolina (the northernmost point of the Research Triangle Park; the other points of the triangle are chapel hill to the southwest and raleigh to the southeast). to make a long story short, after my hiatus at my mother's house in pennsylvania, i came to the realization that i simply couldn't afford to go back to graduate school in san francisco. therefore, i'm headed back east to a more laid back and much less expensive place. it happens to be where i went to get my undergraduate degree a million years ago. i sold my condo in san francisco, packed my much-pared-down belongings into a relocation "cube," and am on my way. it's scary, but it's also starting to seem like a real adventure. it's been way too long since i've had one of those, and i'm heartened to know that it's never too late. next task: house-hunting. more on that early next week.
7.04.2012
a cold january
happy independence day. it's not deliberate, but this post happens to have something to do with independence. and liberty.
when i got to my mother's house, it was unclear how long i was going to stay. in my head, it was three to four weeks, and then i had to "snap out of it" (yeah, we still try to convince ourselves we can do that, even if history shows painfully obviously otherwise) and get back to my life. i kept looking at plane tickets, but i didn't pull the trigger. the schedule wasn't exactly right, or i couldn't get a nonstop (important because of the dog), or whatever. of course, the truth was that i was simply stalling.
and then on january 14th, 2012, my wonderful grandmother (my mom's mother) passed away. i wrote about her here last august, pointing out that i had only one surviving grandparent but that she was "still going strong at 94." in november, a maintenance man at her senior living facility went to her apartment, where she'd lived alone for more than 30 years, and noticed she wasn't looking well. someone was called, and she ended up in the hospital for a few days to be treated for severe dehydration. my mother, who lives three hours away, and one of her brothers, who was local, were told that she couldn't, or shouldn't, live on her own anymore. sick as she was, she was as stubborn as ever. she'd been refusing for years to come and live at my mother's house, and she wasn't changing her mind. the hospital wanted her gone (naturally, since she was on MediCare), so my mother and uncle had to quickly find a place for her to go. within a few days, they found a facility about 15 minutes away. it was adequate, if not wonderful. so there she was delivered, directly from the hospital, kicking and screaming (figuratively, but still) the entire way.
lord, she was a handful those first days, apparently. she refused to eat. she called the nurses and orderlies nasty names. she spit her dentures out at them so many times that they eventually took them away. let's say she probably wasn't a fan favorite. but she was still my grandma, speaking her mind and fighting for her way, just as she'd done her entire life. and i secretly loved her for her bad behavior, because it showed she was still in there, that she wasn't giving up.
but her decline was shocking. within three weeks she could no longer stand and barely said a word. she stopped eating and drinking - whether out of a lack of interest or in some sort of protest, i don't know, because she stopped speaking coherently at about the same time. and this would go in waves. they'd call my mom (the primary contact) to tell her that grandma had fallen out of bed or had stopped eating or had stopped drinking or had started again or had stopped again and did we want to give her IV fluids, etc.
it was just around this time that i arrived at my mother's house. of course, i'd been hearing the news about my grandmother and wanted to see her right away. so a few days after christmas, we made the three-hour drive together. i was apprehensive the whole way.
my mother tried her best to prepare me, but i was horrified when i walked through the doors. i'm sure it wasn't anywhere near the worst of these places, but it was bad. there was a lot of moaning. there were no lunch carts in sight even though we'd arrived at about 11:30, which was lunchtime. and there were a lot of orderlies who appeared to be standing around, not doing much of anything. (i don't know how these places run, and i know the people who work there are grossly underpaid for what they do, so i didn't want to judge, but i simply couldn't help it.)
in my mental state, it was very difficult to control my emotions, and i started crying almost immediately after walking into the facility. my mother led me to my grandmother's room, but before she let me in, she turned to me and said something like, "I know this is incredibly difficult, but you have to think of her. Please don't let her see you like this." she hugged me tightly, which made me cry harder. then she pulled me away, looked at me, nodded, and turned on her heel and walked into that room with a big smile on her face. "Hi, Ma! How you doing today?" she's the fucking bravest person i know.
it took a few minutes for me to collect myself, but i finally took a deep breath and walked into the room after her. a whole new sense of shock and dismay, and even fear, welled over me when i looked at the woman in the bed. she was a shell of my grandmother. her skin was tissue-paper-thin; it almost looked as though the veins were sitting on top of her hands. her lips were horribly dry and cracked. her hair (oh, she was such a proud person that she still washed and set her own hair every few days while she lived alone) looked dirty and was brushed back from her face in a way i'd never seen before. her mouth was sunken because they'd taken her dentures away. and she looked tiny. she never broke five feet at her tallest, but she looked like a child in that big hospital bed.
i held back tears with immense difficulty and greeted her with the biggest smile i could muster. she looked up at me and seemed to attempt a smile and some words, but without her dentures they were unintelligible. i just smiled and nodded and stroked her hand and told her how i'd missed her, how i loved her.
we stayed for about an hour, during which i had to approach an orderly twice to ask where her lunch was and once because it was clear from her distress (my mother had come to recognize it) that she needed to be changed. i was polite, even sweet, during these interactions (the dutiful, concerned granddaughter), when actually i wanted to wring someone's throat. the visit took its toll quickly and my grandmother started drifting in and out of sleep, at which time my mother suggested we leave, that any meaningful interaction we were going to have was over. i clasped her hand and kissed her forehead and told her how much i loved her and thought, "this is not my grandmother; this is her shell of a body. her soul, while still present, is searching for and will find a better place." and this time i did cry. and left. and that's the last time i saw her.
when we got the call a couple weeks later, my mother and i had just barely begun a game of scrabble. (this was one of the first times since i'd been at her house that my mother had tried to engage me to do something active with my brain and i'd actually agreed. she used to beat me handily when i was a kid, but i'd had plenty of practice against worthy opponents and had learned a lot of strategy in the intervening 25 years and was prepared to kick her ass.) i knew what had happened as soon as she picked up the phone. she was off in less than a minute and turned to me with tears in her eyes. we hugged each other, and as is typical of my mom (of all moms?), the instant she realized how much i was hurting, she put her own feelings aside and began murmuring comforting words in my ear. my ear. it was her mother, with whom she'd had a complicated but very close relationship, and she was putting her energy toward trying to make me feel better.
there's a lot more to the story, of course, but what's important as it relates to this line of thinking and act of writing is that when my grandmother died, i let myself off the hook. i gave myself over to the fact that i couldn't go home just because i thought i should - in other words, just because i was a fucking grownup, for god's sake, and should act like one, whatever that meant. i camouflaged some of that thinking in the convenient part of it: i have to stay and be here for my mother for a while. but that wasn't the half of it. it would have been disrespectful to my grandmother not to fight for my life, to do everything i could to get better. and realistically, i was not confident that i could do that in san francisco, where i was basically entirely on my own. i let go of the shame and guilt i felt about "dropping out of life" and decided that i had to do what i had to do to get myself back in. and if that meant staying at my mother's for a few more weeks or a few more months or longer, that's what i had to do. and whereas i'd been poring over travel websites almost every day for the previous few, i didn't visit one for at least a month. i liberated myself from a damaging vein of critical, punishing thinking and behavior. it was an important turning point.
when i got to my mother's house, it was unclear how long i was going to stay. in my head, it was three to four weeks, and then i had to "snap out of it" (yeah, we still try to convince ourselves we can do that, even if history shows painfully obviously otherwise) and get back to my life. i kept looking at plane tickets, but i didn't pull the trigger. the schedule wasn't exactly right, or i couldn't get a nonstop (important because of the dog), or whatever. of course, the truth was that i was simply stalling.
and then on january 14th, 2012, my wonderful grandmother (my mom's mother) passed away. i wrote about her here last august, pointing out that i had only one surviving grandparent but that she was "still going strong at 94." in november, a maintenance man at her senior living facility went to her apartment, where she'd lived alone for more than 30 years, and noticed she wasn't looking well. someone was called, and she ended up in the hospital for a few days to be treated for severe dehydration. my mother, who lives three hours away, and one of her brothers, who was local, were told that she couldn't, or shouldn't, live on her own anymore. sick as she was, she was as stubborn as ever. she'd been refusing for years to come and live at my mother's house, and she wasn't changing her mind. the hospital wanted her gone (naturally, since she was on MediCare), so my mother and uncle had to quickly find a place for her to go. within a few days, they found a facility about 15 minutes away. it was adequate, if not wonderful. so there she was delivered, directly from the hospital, kicking and screaming (figuratively, but still) the entire way.
lord, she was a handful those first days, apparently. she refused to eat. she called the nurses and orderlies nasty names. she spit her dentures out at them so many times that they eventually took them away. let's say she probably wasn't a fan favorite. but she was still my grandma, speaking her mind and fighting for her way, just as she'd done her entire life. and i secretly loved her for her bad behavior, because it showed she was still in there, that she wasn't giving up.
but her decline was shocking. within three weeks she could no longer stand and barely said a word. she stopped eating and drinking - whether out of a lack of interest or in some sort of protest, i don't know, because she stopped speaking coherently at about the same time. and this would go in waves. they'd call my mom (the primary contact) to tell her that grandma had fallen out of bed or had stopped eating or had stopped drinking or had started again or had stopped again and did we want to give her IV fluids, etc.
it was just around this time that i arrived at my mother's house. of course, i'd been hearing the news about my grandmother and wanted to see her right away. so a few days after christmas, we made the three-hour drive together. i was apprehensive the whole way.
my mother tried her best to prepare me, but i was horrified when i walked through the doors. i'm sure it wasn't anywhere near the worst of these places, but it was bad. there was a lot of moaning. there were no lunch carts in sight even though we'd arrived at about 11:30, which was lunchtime. and there were a lot of orderlies who appeared to be standing around, not doing much of anything. (i don't know how these places run, and i know the people who work there are grossly underpaid for what they do, so i didn't want to judge, but i simply couldn't help it.)
in my mental state, it was very difficult to control my emotions, and i started crying almost immediately after walking into the facility. my mother led me to my grandmother's room, but before she let me in, she turned to me and said something like, "I know this is incredibly difficult, but you have to think of her. Please don't let her see you like this." she hugged me tightly, which made me cry harder. then she pulled me away, looked at me, nodded, and turned on her heel and walked into that room with a big smile on her face. "Hi, Ma! How you doing today?" she's the fucking bravest person i know.
it took a few minutes for me to collect myself, but i finally took a deep breath and walked into the room after her. a whole new sense of shock and dismay, and even fear, welled over me when i looked at the woman in the bed. she was a shell of my grandmother. her skin was tissue-paper-thin; it almost looked as though the veins were sitting on top of her hands. her lips were horribly dry and cracked. her hair (oh, she was such a proud person that she still washed and set her own hair every few days while she lived alone) looked dirty and was brushed back from her face in a way i'd never seen before. her mouth was sunken because they'd taken her dentures away. and she looked tiny. she never broke five feet at her tallest, but she looked like a child in that big hospital bed.
i held back tears with immense difficulty and greeted her with the biggest smile i could muster. she looked up at me and seemed to attempt a smile and some words, but without her dentures they were unintelligible. i just smiled and nodded and stroked her hand and told her how i'd missed her, how i loved her.
we stayed for about an hour, during which i had to approach an orderly twice to ask where her lunch was and once because it was clear from her distress (my mother had come to recognize it) that she needed to be changed. i was polite, even sweet, during these interactions (the dutiful, concerned granddaughter), when actually i wanted to wring someone's throat. the visit took its toll quickly and my grandmother started drifting in and out of sleep, at which time my mother suggested we leave, that any meaningful interaction we were going to have was over. i clasped her hand and kissed her forehead and told her how much i loved her and thought, "this is not my grandmother; this is her shell of a body. her soul, while still present, is searching for and will find a better place." and this time i did cry. and left. and that's the last time i saw her.
when we got the call a couple weeks later, my mother and i had just barely begun a game of scrabble. (this was one of the first times since i'd been at her house that my mother had tried to engage me to do something active with my brain and i'd actually agreed. she used to beat me handily when i was a kid, but i'd had plenty of practice against worthy opponents and had learned a lot of strategy in the intervening 25 years and was prepared to kick her ass.) i knew what had happened as soon as she picked up the phone. she was off in less than a minute and turned to me with tears in her eyes. we hugged each other, and as is typical of my mom (of all moms?), the instant she realized how much i was hurting, she put her own feelings aside and began murmuring comforting words in my ear. my ear. it was her mother, with whom she'd had a complicated but very close relationship, and she was putting her energy toward trying to make me feel better.
there's a lot more to the story, of course, but what's important as it relates to this line of thinking and act of writing is that when my grandmother died, i let myself off the hook. i gave myself over to the fact that i couldn't go home just because i thought i should - in other words, just because i was a fucking grownup, for god's sake, and should act like one, whatever that meant. i camouflaged some of that thinking in the convenient part of it: i have to stay and be here for my mother for a while. but that wasn't the half of it. it would have been disrespectful to my grandmother not to fight for my life, to do everything i could to get better. and realistically, i was not confident that i could do that in san francisco, where i was basically entirely on my own. i let go of the shame and guilt i felt about "dropping out of life" and decided that i had to do what i had to do to get myself back in. and if that meant staying at my mother's for a few more weeks or a few more months or longer, that's what i had to do. and whereas i'd been poring over travel websites almost every day for the previous few, i didn't visit one for at least a month. i liberated myself from a damaging vein of critical, punishing thinking and behavior. it was an important turning point.
6.13.2012
winter
i don't particularly want to reveal a lot about my family; i want to protect their privacy. it was my choice to write about this topic, and they didn't get a say in it. so let's just say that there are others in my family who have suffered from various mental disorders, with depression probably being the predominant one, going back a couple of generations on both sides (perhaps further; i don't know). and since most in the field now agree that there is a genetic component to the disease, it shouldn't have been a major surprise that i would end up living with depression (or something else) too. however, when i was 20 years old and had my first episode, i don't remember being acquainted with our family history. i'm not saying my parents didn't tell me; they might have and i just didn't remember. but i suspect that the stigma of mental illness, which still hangs over us today, kept them from talking. a generation ago, the stigma was probably unbearable. i'm sure that if they thought i or my siblings were at risk that they would have said something, but medical knowledge wasn't as far advanced 20+ years ago, and it certainly hadn't trickled down to the general public.
so there i was, faced with this choice of what to do. i'd managed to finish up my classes, even a couple of challenging papers, which was good, and i was signed up to take another prerequisite online during the spring semester. i didn't have any "real" - i.e., paying - work lined up immediately. i decided that it couldn't hurt to head to my mother's for the holidays. i gathered up some winter clothes and my dog and got on a plane. (my dog is a registered emotional support animal, so she gets to come on planes without being crated and into other public places with me as well. what a godsend.)
enter my mother. bless her, she is one of the most genuinely happy people i've ever met in my life. she insists on seeing the good in every person and every situation. she laughs easily and heartily. she loves to cook and bake and still receives holiday cards from people she hasn't seen in perhaps 30 or 40 years. at 69, she still works out 5 days a week and looks 20 years younger. everyone adores her. in other words, if we didn't look alike, i'd have trouble believing we were from the same genetic pool.
mom and i have always been close, but for all these amazing qualities, there is one huge problem between us, a problem that i've encountered often out in the world. almost everyone is able to point to a time in his or her life when s/he suffered from "being depressed," "feeling sad," "being blue." but think of that as the small part of the iceberg that actually can be seen above the water, with the massive remainder down in the dark depths of the ocean. clinical depression is that massive, dark remainder. it's huge and insidious and enveloping and difficult for others to see or understand. and that's the issue. people often try to sympathize, but many fewer can empathize. and many can do neither because they're [rightfully] afraid. so they run, or they drift away slowly. i get this. i really do. if i don't want to be inside my own head, i can hardly expect that others will want to get in there with me. and we're very sly when in the depths of the disease - especially if, like me, you're single, with a small circle of friends, and you're not working, so you don't have forced social activity every day. if you ignore the phone for a couple of weeks, the ringing slows down and then, mercifully, stops.
i want to be clear about something here: that i own my part of the responsibility for exacerbating the effects of the disorder. social interaction, even if it is forced, is a good thing to do. exercise, even if it is forced, is the right thing to do. mental exercises, even if they are forced or artificial, are the right things to do. if i make it easy for others to withdraw from me by withdrawing first, i'm responsible for that. i did read something recently, however, an article that was beautifully written by a cancer survivor. (I'm unable to find it right now - i think it was on slate or salon.com - but i will provide the link here as soon as i do.) the title was something like "10 things to do when you find out your friend has cancer." as i read it, i thought to myself, wow, one could swap in the word "depression" for "cancer" and this would still be an amazing, and helpful, article. I believe that #1 on the list was "don't run away." sure, as the friend you're probably scared, even terrified. about your friend, yes, but also about your own vulnerability. the easiest thing to do is to stay away from things that scare us. but that doesn't help our friend, and it doesn't help us grow.
anyway, back to my mother. she can be the most sympathetic person in the world, and i love her absolutely madly, but she does not understand clinical depression. she can't fathom the depths to which one can sink. she can't understand the feeling of wanting - no, needing - to stay in bed all day for days on end. (she's the busiest retired person i know.) she can't understand why i would cry at the slightest provocation, or even no provocation at all. she can't understand why i wouldn't want to see friends - after all, wouldn't that distract me, get some of these feelings out of my system? she tried, really hard. she contacted my therapist back in san francisco during one of my worst periods, when i'd been at her house for perhaps 3 weeks. they talked on the phone, unbeknownst to me until my mother came into the room where i was staying, handed me the handset, told me who was on the other end, and left the room.
at first i was furious: how DARE they talk about me behind my back? but that melted away quickly when my therapist told me that my mother was confused, even frightened. she felt helpless - and she's one of the most capable people i know, so that must have been awful for her. My therapist asked me kindly to get out of bed, to do it for my mother, to do it for her too. so i did. and i never went back to bed for hours and hours again for the remainder of my time there. as much as i was hurting, i couldn't bear the thought that i could be hurting someone else so badly, someone who was completely undeserving of it.
that's a good trick, actually, and maybe i'll close with it for now. thinking and caring about something or someone else prevents you from ruminating on your own situation. our brains simply can't process both at the same time. so pets, making something for a friend, writing an email or a (gasp!) letter, volunteering somewhere, finding a support group where you can hear others' stories rather than always focusing on your own - these are all good things to do. and i used some of these tools to start coming back.
so there i was, faced with this choice of what to do. i'd managed to finish up my classes, even a couple of challenging papers, which was good, and i was signed up to take another prerequisite online during the spring semester. i didn't have any "real" - i.e., paying - work lined up immediately. i decided that it couldn't hurt to head to my mother's for the holidays. i gathered up some winter clothes and my dog and got on a plane. (my dog is a registered emotional support animal, so she gets to come on planes without being crated and into other public places with me as well. what a godsend.)
enter my mother. bless her, she is one of the most genuinely happy people i've ever met in my life. she insists on seeing the good in every person and every situation. she laughs easily and heartily. she loves to cook and bake and still receives holiday cards from people she hasn't seen in perhaps 30 or 40 years. at 69, she still works out 5 days a week and looks 20 years younger. everyone adores her. in other words, if we didn't look alike, i'd have trouble believing we were from the same genetic pool.
mom and i have always been close, but for all these amazing qualities, there is one huge problem between us, a problem that i've encountered often out in the world. almost everyone is able to point to a time in his or her life when s/he suffered from "being depressed," "feeling sad," "being blue." but think of that as the small part of the iceberg that actually can be seen above the water, with the massive remainder down in the dark depths of the ocean. clinical depression is that massive, dark remainder. it's huge and insidious and enveloping and difficult for others to see or understand. and that's the issue. people often try to sympathize, but many fewer can empathize. and many can do neither because they're [rightfully] afraid. so they run, or they drift away slowly. i get this. i really do. if i don't want to be inside my own head, i can hardly expect that others will want to get in there with me. and we're very sly when in the depths of the disease - especially if, like me, you're single, with a small circle of friends, and you're not working, so you don't have forced social activity every day. if you ignore the phone for a couple of weeks, the ringing slows down and then, mercifully, stops.
i want to be clear about something here: that i own my part of the responsibility for exacerbating the effects of the disorder. social interaction, even if it is forced, is a good thing to do. exercise, even if it is forced, is the right thing to do. mental exercises, even if they are forced or artificial, are the right things to do. if i make it easy for others to withdraw from me by withdrawing first, i'm responsible for that. i did read something recently, however, an article that was beautifully written by a cancer survivor. (I'm unable to find it right now - i think it was on slate or salon.com - but i will provide the link here as soon as i do.) the title was something like "10 things to do when you find out your friend has cancer." as i read it, i thought to myself, wow, one could swap in the word "depression" for "cancer" and this would still be an amazing, and helpful, article. I believe that #1 on the list was "don't run away." sure, as the friend you're probably scared, even terrified. about your friend, yes, but also about your own vulnerability. the easiest thing to do is to stay away from things that scare us. but that doesn't help our friend, and it doesn't help us grow.
anyway, back to my mother. she can be the most sympathetic person in the world, and i love her absolutely madly, but she does not understand clinical depression. she can't fathom the depths to which one can sink. she can't understand the feeling of wanting - no, needing - to stay in bed all day for days on end. (she's the busiest retired person i know.) she can't understand why i would cry at the slightest provocation, or even no provocation at all. she can't understand why i wouldn't want to see friends - after all, wouldn't that distract me, get some of these feelings out of my system? she tried, really hard. she contacted my therapist back in san francisco during one of my worst periods, when i'd been at her house for perhaps 3 weeks. they talked on the phone, unbeknownst to me until my mother came into the room where i was staying, handed me the handset, told me who was on the other end, and left the room.
at first i was furious: how DARE they talk about me behind my back? but that melted away quickly when my therapist told me that my mother was confused, even frightened. she felt helpless - and she's one of the most capable people i know, so that must have been awful for her. My therapist asked me kindly to get out of bed, to do it for my mother, to do it for her too. so i did. and i never went back to bed for hours and hours again for the remainder of my time there. as much as i was hurting, i couldn't bear the thought that i could be hurting someone else so badly, someone who was completely undeserving of it.
that's a good trick, actually, and maybe i'll close with it for now. thinking and caring about something or someone else prevents you from ruminating on your own situation. our brains simply can't process both at the same time. so pets, making something for a friend, writing an email or a (gasp!) letter, volunteering somewhere, finding a support group where you can hear others' stories rather than always focusing on your own - these are all good things to do. and i used some of these tools to start coming back.
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