Tag Archives: Mental Illness

And still…

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There was an incredibly powerful exercise that I did once in a group session with other alcoholics and addicts. It was about the first step-admitting you are powerless. It was recommended by one of our peers, who said his sponsor guided him through it. He gave us all an index card and told us to number one through ten, leaving two lines for each number.

Then he said “I want you to think of ten of the worst things you did while you were drinking, and write them down. Leave an empty line.”

Our leader, Bob, was feeling sassy, so he timed people. The first person completed his in 27 seconds. Others needed to think a little harder. I was in the middle of the pack.

Then he gave us the key for the exercise.

After every statement, we had to write “and still I kept drinking.”

We had to confront the fact that not only did we facilitate these terrible experiences, we chose our demon again. And again. And again.

So for me it would start out a bit like:

I broke a goddamn toilet, and still I kept drinking.
I was sleepwalking naked, and still I kept drinking.
I let the horses out in the middle of the night, and still I kept drinking.
And so on.

It occurred to me recently that this same method could be modified a bit for other situations. I thought of my parents, the spiritual abuse they put me through, and how I’d keep crawling back to them.

So here’s another list. Yeah, it’s different, because the first reflects more personal choice rather than something being done to or with you. It was still a key moment for me to process this list, though. I think it’ll help give me strength.

1. They taught me how to tie a noose when I was really young*, and still I gave them more chances.
2. They told me I was getting fat, and still I gave them more chances.
3. They had me work for the family business in a shop from an incredibly young age, and still I gave them more chances.
4. They made me write pages from the Bible every day to improve my handwriting, until I developed carpal tunnel, and still I gave them more chances.
5. They held me to such high standards that it was impossible to ever succeed or feel like I could be good enough, and still I gave them more chances.
6. They stayed close with my exes even though it made me uncomfortable, and still I gave them more chances.
7. They put down my perfectly healthy dog unexpectedly without telling me while I was away in the hospital, and still I gave them more chances.
8. They left bible pages open about raising godly children after finding a dildo at age 16, and still I gave them more chances.
9. They guilt tripped me for how I was making them feel by choosing to live in my car rather than with them during a complicated time, and later gave me a mattress shoved behind a couch as a bedroom, and still I gave them more chances.
10. They refused to let me see a therapist or get medication for my depression, then insisted on a Christian counselor when it became court mandated after my first institutionalization, and had him perform an exorcism on me, and still I gave them more chances.

It was a pretty frequent pattern that I’d get sick of them and run off, or end up in a mental institution. But I always crawled back, and was always made to feel broken and wrong.

The last couple weeks, I kept getting little barbs from my Mom that indicated that she knew about the transition although I hadn’t had the guts to come out directly to them. Things like telling me how I was the feminine version of my dad, or how girly looking my hair was coming along to be, or how “a girl can dress up pretty and wear makeup and heels and have fun but when a boy does it it’s weird.”

It got to the point that I just walked out the door and left their property after she said something like that. Stopped talking to her. I texted her and said if she wanted to talk, I was meeting with my therapist and she could join, so she did.

She claimed she didn’t have a clue about the transition. She said that when she looks at me she sees “a very confused young person.” When my therapist gave me a chance to express how I was feeling, all I could come up with for a minute was “tense,” and she jumped in saying “And I’m devastated.” Not only did she continue to deadname and misgender me after we explained my wishes, she actively tried to correct my therapist and fiance when they were using the right ones. She asked my fiancé if he was okay with this, and after contorting her face in disgust when he said yes, asked “WHY?!?!” When he explained that his love had nothing to do with my gender, she said “Wow, so anybody can do what they want if they love ‘em.”

There’s another therapy session scheduled.

I added to the list number 11. They invalidated my choices about my gender and sexuality.

Any chances from here on out are to be supervised by a professional.

*It actually wasn’t until very recently that I realized this was fucked up. I mentioned something about it in passing on Facebook and a number of friends jumped in saying how gross that it was. I had been under the impression it was fairly normal, like a Boy Scout thing or whatnot.

Why I’ve Just Begun Being A ‘Good’ Mentally Ill Person

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You know when you learn about something for the first time, and then suddenly it keeps popping up everywhere(that’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, by the way, and I bet you’ll hear that somewhere else soon)… That’s been happening with the writer Sam Dylan Finch for me. He represents a slice of who I crave to become. He is the beautiful butterfly of a feminist, transgender, and mental illness advocate and writer. I am barely building the chrysalis where I will liquify into the goop of my potential.

When this article popped up on my Facebook feed today, I took notice. I read it. I re-read it. I went to work in a residential psychiatric facility. I had Kool Aid thrown on my new shirt. I kept someone from harming themselves but not from destroying their wooden bed frame. I guided a woman to the floor and used my hand to prevent her from hitting her head as she had a seizure. I came back home. I read it again. I starting writing this. I read it again.

I see myself in it. Then I look, and I see myself in it again. I look a little deeper, and there I am. I’m existing at all different levels in this piece, just as I’ve related to the mental health system at all different levels.

 
As a child

The first time I said I wanted to kill myself, I was on the playground. It was second grade. The recess monitor abruptly replied “No you don’t” and I continued to hang between the bars, imagining a vast expanse between me and the ground. I doubt she told anyone. I suppose if she had, there might have been some earlier intervention, and my life might have gone a little differently.

My parents didn’t really “believe” in mental illness. They saw me struggle. They saw me come home crying. They saw me gain weight. They prayed. They kept their distance, because I was pushing them away and they thought it was the right thing to do.

I wasn’t quite right, socially. I wouldn’t get diagnosed with Asperger’s until I was 19, but all the signs were there. However, I made good grades. I excelled in every subject I touched, except PE, where I was clumsy, apathetic, and unpopular. But when is came to Science or English I basked in the attention of teachers and other authority figures. These were the only people I could seem to talk to. My peers were just out of reach of my awkward rumblings. Somehow I was okay with that for awhile. Increasingly, I isolated. Increasingly, I became more and more difficult to reach out to.

This is how I slipped through the cracks.

 
As a patient

The seeds of potential in me had long been choked out by thorny tendrils of mental illness and substance abuse by the time my grandfather died. I had dropped out of engineering school and semi-flunked out of community college. I was living with my sister, drinking heavily and pretending that it was okay.

The years of 2012 to 2015 remain fuzzy to me. It’s hard to clarify timelines, or which hospitalization happened in what order. I went to treatment centers somewhere between eight and a dozen times, I believe. Some were partial programs, where I learned coping skills during day classes and then drank at night. Some were full hospitalizations, with varying levels of functioning. Once I was in the ICU for three days, knocked out following a suicide attempt. I had Electro Convulsive Therapy, also colloquially referred to as shock treatment(this is part of why by brain is so scrambled).

I started writing about my experiences not long ago, transcribing hospital records and frenzied scribbles in notebooks that are entirely free from metal binding or staples. I found statements from the psychiatrist in one of the partial programs I did. He said “I do not know how much she will get out of our program as it is impossible for her to think with any kind of speed.” This was a kick to the gut, which, coincidentally, also happened during my shift at work. I have never once been accused of being slow, it’s nearly universal that people who interact with me will make some off hand comment about how I seem smart within minutes of meeting me. It hurt to read. At that time, I was assessed with a GAF, or Global Assessment of Functioning, of 40. The scale goes to 100, for reference.

I have been a “bad” mentally ill person. Bruises from fighting against the restraints(I have no memory of this.) Someone trying to drag a necessary response out of me, but I was too busy staring at a crayon with tears running down my cheeks. Not waking up for any reason but to go to the bathroom, for days. Not remembering who or where I am. Being awakened for a blood pressure check to the croons of “well you’re just wrapped up like a burrito!” which became decidedly less charmed when we both(!) realized I was actually naked in my blanket burrito.

Then there’s the egotistical nature of depression. I was quoted in one of my charts as saying that I was the worst person in the world. God, how arrogant. But to truly believe, right down to the base of you, that that is true, is absolutely wrecking. It reflects in everything about you. You don’t care about a damn thing. Eating, showering, moving, taking meds, appointments. You have to be pried out of wherever you are in order to be forced to do anything. And there’s 25 other people on the unit in various stages of recovery that need to be handled too. And guess what? Staff would do a phenomenal damn job. And I’d still be back in three months again.

I have also been the “good” mentally ill person. I was grinned at and asked what I’m doing for the next art competition by about 5 staff during one stay. I always made sure to give them a baffled look and respond “The 16 hour days from the LAST one landed me back HERE again, what makes you think I wanna do more giant art?!?!” I’ve been the bright, relatable, engaged one, who will hold a conversation while meticulously coloring. I’ve been asked what hair color I’m gonna do next, and quipped about how I hope they don’t get to see it. I’ve made a girl nod sheepishly when I asked if she was pregnant the last time I was there.

There was a point where I was a revolving door patient, but I was liked. I was cared about. They prescribed the name brand stuff and made sure to give me a stack of samples on my way out the door. They signed special notes in the cards that we all got with our Christmas bags. They tell me to come back and visit sometime when I’m NOT suicidal. Give them an update. Maybe someday I will.

 
As a provider

Things have changed a bit lately, and I’ve turned the corner well enough to be able to actually work in the mental health field as a care provider, and that provides a different perspective.

One, you have to consider your safety at all times. Allowing your preconceived notions about who might be a “good” patient to lower your guard just means that you will be attacked. Yay, you didn’t suspect it! That probably means your injuries are worse.

 

Two, your patients crave connection, and the staff will most likely try to connect to the ones they relate to most. This means the “mostly normal” one who has a substance abuse problem is going to get better treatment than the person with schizophrenia. This is an unfortunate reality of bias. I try to compensate for it every day, but it’s something that workers need to be actively conscious of.

Three, the mental health field is othering as all get out. I have Borderline Personality Disorder. Every-Single-Training that I went through specifically called out people like me. There were multiple instances of failure to use person-first language, “You might be dealing with schizophrenics or borderlines.” This occurred in the class that brought up using person-first language. Even in Van Safety, the watered down two hour driver’s ed class, “One in four people have experienced a mental illness, there’s seven of you in here, I bet at least one of you has anxiety or something, raise your hands.”

The “Trauma Informed Care” training referred to individuals with trauma as “broken” and says that we are to be there for them while they put themselves back together. THIS IS THE APPROVED CURRICULUM OF TRAUMA. INFORMED. CARE. Broken. Seriously. I was mildly uncomfortably during most of the training, but he had provided coloring sheets so I was keeping pretty chill. Some people were stepping out because the videos were triggering. But the second he said that, my brain went on a loop. Broken, broken, broken. I scribbled it all over my carefully and brightly colored paper. I went up to him afterward and expressed my concerns. He diplomatically explained that this is how traumatized individuals are to be viewed through this approved and regulated curriculum which cannot be changed.

I guarantee you, every time I had a concern in one of these classes, I brought it up the the trainer afterwards. I can also guarantee you that I was not the first to notice or be made uncomfortable. I was probably not the first to complain either. There are systemic mindset issues in the field of mental health. Fortunately, the type of people drawn towards that kind of work are usually compassionate and often touched by mental illness in their own life somewhere, so they make efforts to improve. Awareness is where it starts though.

Okay, what was it, four? This is tough work. You will be kicked, punched, spat at, and insulted on a regular basis. Anyone that doesn’t do this is a welcome respite.

So yes, being able to function as a somewhat “basic human” can make you a “good” mentally ill person.

The thing is, high functioning, low functioning, a number on a GAF scale, these are indicators of illness, of danger. If you have a GAF of 20(which you do, if you are clearly suicidal) you are Stage 4, man. Appropriate interventions are planned and made to save your damn life.

That guy screaming for help? He could have established attention seeking behaviors.

You never really know.

The Pit

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I think one of the scariest things about depression is how alone that you feel. A depressed person is not only lonely, but lost and forsaken, feeling unworthy of love. It isn’t about physical presence, because you can be in a crowd and be the only one there. It’s not about mental presence, because you can be engaged with somebody, wholly involved in an experience, and still be desperately alone. It’s not even about emotional presence, because a depressed person can still be a functioning partner in a relationship.

It’s about the pit.

I imagine an endless gray landscape, dotted with abysmal pits. I imagine a smattering of trees, and a thick fog. This is where people go when they are depressed. All you can see is the inside of the pit, the clammy, rocky walls of the pit. They are rough, jagged, hopeless. Far above, there is a pinprick of light. The opening. There is nothing comfortable about this pit.

It is not impossible to get out of the pit, but it takes help. Help that IS OUT THERE because DEPRESSION LIES and YOU ARE NOT ALONE. There are people that love you milling around outside that pit, wondering the best way to get you out. Waiting to help in any way that they can. You can’t see them, though. Because you’re in the pit. You don’t have the right perspective.

Maybe someday something magical starts to happen. Your medication starts to work. You’ve started ECT. Something clicks in therapy. Suddenly, there’s a rope being lowered into the pit. You don’t know whether to trust it, but you give it a few yanks and it feels solid. So you start to climb.

It’s hard work. Everyone is looking down into the pit and cheering, but their voices bounce off the walls, seemingly turning into mockery. Depression, you see, has a tendency to distort everything. But you climb. And climb. And climb.

Maybe you get out this time. Maybe it takes a few tries, a few rests, some time to strengthen your muscles. But you make it!

And shockingly, there’s all your friends and family. You just couldn’t see them before. I’m looking around right now, on the cusp of genuine okayness if not wellness, and I can see that the droning that was driving me mad while I was in the pit is my support system excavating a staircase down to the side of my pit. These are my skills and coping mechanisms, now out in the light and ready to be practiced daily so that I may learn them truly. So that future visits to the pit can be a lot easier to get myself out of. So that they can come visit me.

There can be something comforting about the pit. If nothing else, it’s yours. It’s a safe place. A place for you to feel miserable, but safely so. It is so devastatingly difficult to leave, but so easy to return to, especially if you are afraid to make a new normal. The kind of bravery it takes to get out of the pit is nothing compared to what it takes for the first few steps to the land of new being. That’s where unhealthy coping mechanisms get analyzed and shed, where toxic relationships pass into memory, where bad habits meet their demise. Replacements for all of them are forged, and you become a stronger, healthier being.

Wherever you stand today, friend, I would like to encourage you. Do not succumb to the lies of the pit, nor those of the gray landscape. Keep stepping forward.

Becoming

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My mother often jokes about the crayon marks on the wall- you’d think that in a 150 year old house, with a husband that does custom paint jobs on cars, my artwork would have been painted over in the last twenty years. However, it perseveres, abstract renderings that my mother claims will make the house worth more when I’m famous. I think of this sometimes when I traipse through the living room… What will these be worth when I’m successful? That phrase then sticks in my head, wandering over and over, taking laps through the same worn paths. Half the time I can’t tell whether the thought “when I’m successful” boils down to “when I’ve achieved something of significance in my life” or “when I’ve done it right while attempting suicide.” I’m sure both would add value to the scribbles on the wall, entirely different kinds, but still, something.

I’ve attempted suicide twice in the last two months. Maybe this is too honest, maybe I shouldn’t be sharing this. But things don’t change by letting them sit in silence. When I get chastised for joking about another attempt(as I do), I’ll often reply “I’ll try harder next time.” How this becomes a joke for me can be unclear to others, I know, but I can’t help it. I’ve wanted to die for as long as I can remember. It’s all I know. I think it’d be evidence of being more unbalanced if I COULDN’T joke about it.

Cognitive distortions. I’m told these are the things that tell me I am worthless. I currently only see them as truth. That is the way it will be until I put in the very, very difficult work of training myself otherwise.

Someone once told me, “If you could see yourself through other people, you’d know you are worthwhile.”
My reply was “If I could see myself through other people, those people would need to go to the hospital.” Snark is a defense.

The hospital is a place I’ve been several times. It doesn’t seem to help for very long. Therapy is a place I‘ve been several times, through several programs. It doesn’t seem to help for very long. Hey, I’ve even had an exorcism. That sure as hell didn’t help.

A last ditch effort was ECT, electro convulsive therapy. The phrase makes most people immediately jump to a Cuckoo conclusion, but things are very different now than were portrayed in that film. It’s highly civilized and ultimately very hopeful. I got several weeks of what may have been normalcy out of it. I’ve also gotten a fair amount of damage to both my long and short term memory systems, some of which may shake out, some of which is permanent. However, once again it didn’t seem to help for very long. I did more damage to myself than I ever have before, after having been normal and happy for awhile.

Now I’m starting DBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which is all about teaching people to respond to stress, harmful impulses, bad thoughts, etc. in healthier ways. I’ve just started, but I’m feeling very hopeful. I’ve already gotten a bit of practice with one of the techniques. It’s an intense program, and a commitment. A patient signs up for an entire year of the program, which, for me, meets an hour away and twice a week. It will be worth it if I can achieve healthier mannerisms through this process, naturally, but if this also fails me, then I have run out of options.

I am determined to make this year mean something.
I will learn.
I will learn to believe, believe the good things that people tell me that I am.
Because I am stronger than I can see.
I am more than I believe.
I am above the sum of my faults.
And I am worthwhile.
I am creative.
I am kind.
I am talented.
I am loved.
I am smart.
I am funny.
I am giving.
And I am capable of changing the way I think about myself.
I am capable of becoming what I am.
I can’t think of anything that would make me more successful.
Wish me luck this year.

Youthful hopes.

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The rubber strap wraps around my arm.

“This will be tight, I’ll loosen it as soon as I can…”

I’ve heard Melissa use that exact sentence probably dozens of times as she starts an IV on someone in the prep room. Melissa is tall and slim, with chin length wavy silver hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but ask- “So how many times do you think you’ve said that?”

She smiles. “That’s something that I’m gonna ask God when I see him. My husband wants to ask what’s the closest he’s ever been in proximity to buried treasure.”

I smile and take a deep breath as she warns me “Little poke…”

She fiddles with the tape and looks at me before she asks “If you could ask God one question, and he had to give you a straight answer, no comparisons, no parables, just something you could completely understand, what would it be?”

I try to come up with something clever but the phrase “Why me?” pounds through my head over and over, eventually leaking out my tear ducts and my lips.

Her face melts with empathy. “You mean with the struggles you’ve had to deal with?” She asks me my age and tells me that when she was my age she struggled a lot too. “You know, a friend once told me something that I found to be true. There’s people that struggle when they are young, and there’s people that experience their struggles when they get older. You’re just getting yours out of the way. Things will get better.”

Saline drips down my arm. “I sure hope so.”

“I wouldn’t have believed me when I was your age either. But know that there’s hope.”

They wheeled me into the treatment room for my weekly seizure, the ones that feel like hope.

Forgetting

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My father called me, from inside the house. Asking if I knew of any zip ties. I reassured him that his guess what as good as mine. He asked me what I was up to. I said I was watching a show on Netflix with my husband. He replied “well that’s a priority.” before I hung up.

He called me back, a while later. Said that I was not to be forgiven for taking something as pure and light as thanksgiving and turning it into resentment. I had made it very clear that I needed to stay home and mourn Grandma in my own way. And then I went with my husband to the nursing home where his grandma stays, and endured the pain and vague atmospheric contamination of human feces to be, for a few moments, a member of a human family.

He called me again later and told me that he and my mother cried and stayed up at night, worrying about me and how I abuse them. That I should look for alternative housing solutions.

Which might be true. I used to think this place was all I ever wanted. But now it’s empty, and it exists as a pure vessel for pain.

He made an ultimatum during this last call. That I should come down there and talk.

He and I talk best during action. Neither of us are great at eye contact, and a helluva lot worse at seeing eye to eye. So I let him work on plumbing while I stacked wood. The only words he said to me during the half hour that I sweated? Asking where the air compressor was.

I left. I went upstairs. I tooled around.

I made a decision.

I heard him start to vacuum. I went out to my car and loaded my gun.

Today is the last night before my most hopeful treatment for depression, ECT. And I was ready to make it my last night.

I cried. And waited. And watched as his headlights flicked on and left.

It was the closest I have ever been to shooting myself.

If there’s any hope out there, it involves forgetting my family. I see that now.

Schemes and irony

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So, despite repeat conversations with my treatment team, my husband has done a piss poor job locking up guns. The shotguns are off the wall, sure, but now they’re just in cases on the floor. Because, godammit, when I want to blow the top of my skull off, I will surely be vexed by zippers!
Good thing I’d rather not use a shotgun anyways, but I’ve got a trick.
I’ve manufactured a state of increased poverty that prevents me from having the petty cash and gasoline to be able to go buy ammo. I bought a new car. A new plasma cutter. Toys to keep me occupied, hopeful, and strapped.
I do this because I know a great many people that would be mightily pissed at me if I were to scratch that itch inside my skull. For mysterious reasons, they like me better alive.
I must be prettier with my eyestalks still on the inside. Can’t think of any other viable reasons.
But, as a result of my scheme, I am consistently too poor to do things like hang out shopping, get dinner, etc. So I get to watch the people who love me get more agitated with my presence.
It’s a kind of silent irony.
The kind I’ll never mention.

The things you find

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I was looking for a spool of jewelry chain. See, I had an idea for a sculpture, actual inspiration! I’ve been so lacking in inspiration lately, it’s seeped away and taken my motivation for living with it. I knew, I just knew, that I owned a spool of fine aluminum chain that would be perfect for prototyping my idea. Trick is finding it among the scattered remains of 3 household and 5 buildings that my life is divided between. I looked through stacks and boxes and tubs and piles and simply could not find my bin of craft supplies that I would have expected the chain to end up in.

But I found a lot more along the way. I gave up on finding the chain and resigned myself to buying a length of chain at the hardware store. I stopped by the freezer to grab a pizza for lunch, and my eyes landed on one last box- a box out of place, out of order. I set the pizza on the punching bag and started rifling through the box.

There was lots of stuff in there. Pounding board for leateherworking, a number of books, a ream of paper, paintbrushes, a computer monitor, an unopened package of lip glosses that had been a gift, and one item that ended up being the greatest girt the box had to offer. No, it wasn’t the spool of chain.

It was a sketchbook, unblemished except for one page. I have this tendency to hoard art supplies but then never use them. Before they are used, they are nice and clean and have the utmost of potential. They could turn into anything. After I touch them, they tend to have turned into trash. At least in my head. However, this sketchbook had a To-do list written on it.

Start load of laundry

Finish load of laundry

Bucket to compost heap

Get over yourself

Get over yourself.

GET OVER YOURSELF!

Do NOT take a pill

Bucket back to house

Throw away booze

Put seeds in pile

Fucking plant them

Throw shit away

Cough drops back downstairs

This was probably the last thing I had written before spending three weeks of May 2012 in a mental institution. I was living in squalor and shame, I was trying to stop drinking a fifth a day and had chosen to get anxiety meds to help in that goal. I just needed to get to my first counseling appointment on Sunday with my parents, I just needed to make it til them. Ativan, twice a day, no booze. Seems like easy enough instructions, but I had failed to tell the nurse practitioner how entrenched I was in the drinking.  I remember him asking if I felt I could take the pills as prescribed. I didn’t know. Did I live alone? No, I had my grandma. She was in the waiting room.

Of all the appointments that I brought grandma too, this was the only one for me. I was nervous and I wanted her with me, I don’t know if that was selfish, at the time she was fighting some persistent infections and was fairly weak. I sometimes wonder what she was thinking that day, as she waited for me in  my appointment. As she was called in to consult about holding my medications for me, I remember thinking that she wasn’t the right person for the job. She was having a hard time remembering what she had done in the morning by lunchtime, it would be too easy to lie to her.

We went home, freshly re-diagnosed with depression with anxiety and I felt victorious over my baser instincts. Here I was, choosing the medically sound way to start handling my demons, instead of drinking to forget. Surely this was the path towards pulling myself up and out.

It’s too bad it wasn’t.

Reconsidering CR, Part 2

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I went back to the Monday night group tonight and it affirmed that I should continue going to Celebrate Recovery.

We heard a testimony from a woman who told a story of hiking between two mountains in Israel. She was taking this path through the desert because she was told there was an oasis in the end. She likened it to CR; even though there may not be any signs of life, and everything still looks like desert, if you stick with it there’s a miracle in the end.

I also had a conversation with Dan, because it turns out that he heard about my blog post. The internet got real small for me that day.

It was really nice to talk to him.

I’m writing the following down so I’ll remember it.
He can tell I’m not a quitter by how many barriers that I have up. In a year, we’re supposed to talk again and see if I’ve figured out why those two concepts are related.
It sounded like an elaborate ploy to me. I mean, if you tell me to attend for a year so I can harass him about that question, then he’s just counting on my stubbornness. He insisted it wasn’t a ploy, though.

I guess I’ll find out this year.