Category Archives: Loss

A Dream

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I had a dream, a wonderful dream.  So wonderful that I didn’t mind having it.  I actually liked having it.

But then I woke up.  I woke up because I was so excited from the dream I thought that it was truth.  And I wanted to live it, with my swollen heart.

But.

It was just a dream after all.  Now it is reality, and I must somehow go back to my broken sleep.

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” ~ Saul Bellow

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Teach Your Children. . . Well

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I am getting so damned sick of having to bandage shaving wounds I inflict upon myself with gauze and medical tape to stop the bleeding, then having to go back to clean up scenes reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in my shower.  This is what I get for having epiphanies while holding a razor so near to my ankle.

But this time, it’s worth it.  I haven’t had words for a very long time, they had literally gone, but thanks to a friend of mine (whom shall be henceforth known simply as The Muse, she has inspired so much that matters in what I write) and a conversation we had, I have something important to say, and I know how to say it.

So sit down and listen, because when Mama Ruby talks like this, those who fail to pay attention do so at their own peril.

Now I am going to say one word, and I’ll only say it once, so you will not turn away because you are over-saturated-sick-to-death of reading and hearing about it:  Steubenville.

SIT.  BACK.  DOWN.

That’s not what I’m going to talk about, not directly.  A lot of people have already done a much better job than I ever could, and I’ll provide some links at the bottom for those who are interested.

But, as it would turn out, I have something to say related to this that hasn’t yet shown up on my radar as having been discussed.  And if it has, it bears repeating.  Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, anyone who is raising children, this matters.

I’m going to tell you how to talk your children about sex, and how not to.  I don’t mean I’m going to give you my value system, so you in the back there, getting up?  Yes, I see you.  Sit.

I had a conversation some time ago with a child of mine.*  I’m going to withhold all details of which one out of respect to her.  She’s old enough to be talking about sex (I think nowadays kids start doing that at preschool, right?), but what popped out of her mouth that day floored me.  It was a remark that came from some of her friends about rape, and if it hadn’t gotten me so livid, the subject matter probably would have taken me a bit by surprise.

The comment was how “such-and-such” behavior meant boys were going to rape her, if she didn’t do it differently.  Again, not mine to share, also not the point.  I got so whipped into a frenzy by this, I gave her the “doesn’t matter what you wear, do, if you’re drunk, etc.” and moved on and on, performing my denouement somewhere around, “I don’t care if you are lying naked on a bed, with a man you have had sex with hundreds of times before, I don’t care if he’s your husband, if you say no, he has no right.“

She got a little quiet by the end of my soliloquy — and I mean in demeanor, she never breaks in on me when I “get like that”, which isn’t very often.  In fact, she smiled a little inside.  Being able to read her, I can tell you it is exactly why she mentioned it, consciously or not.  She knew, but she needed the kind of fiery hot rage of reassurance that only Mama Ruby can provide.

She has good parents.  Wonderful parents.  And I guarantee that they have talked to her about sex.  Rape?

Here’s the thing, my loves.  I don’t believe in an abstinence only approach.  I also don’t believe that every child should be given condoms at a certain age.  I believe that if you are raising a child, you should absolutely do your best to instill your values into them (unless your values are really messed up, in which case you shouldn’t be raising a child and God help them).

But.

Your children are going to grow up, and they’re probably going to do some things you don’t agree with.  And even if they don’t, the odds are extremely high that they’ll have something done to them.  Every parent has that worst nightmare, and so do I, and every parent says, “not my child”.  That second thing I hope and I pray with everything in me, but I don’t say it blindly.  In the United States, one out of every six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.**

Here is where the conversation parents have with their children needs undergo a seismic shift.  Because we live in a rape culture, that is a fact.  It’s an ugly one, and one that needs to change, but I’m not dealing in what “should be” right now, I’m dealing in the ugly reality of what is.

Parents, when you talk with your daughters (and sons) about sex, if you tell them to wait for marriage, if that is fundamental to your beliefs, I support you wholeheartedly.  With two caveats.  And to clarify, the second caveat applies to whatever stance you take when you talk with your kids, so those of you who have no problem with pre-marital sex, back in your seats.

The first is that you do not ever use the words “wrong”, “bad”, “immoral” or even “sin” when you do it.  That isn’t going to change the mind of a child/young adult/teenager/adult when they have decided to explore sex outside of the bonds of marriage.  I know, I’m sorry, it hurts to hear that, but it just isn’t.  What it is going to do is plant a deep seed of shame within them.  Such that if they are ever molested, raped, or sexually assaulted in any way, they’re going to be that much more hesitant to come forward and talk to you.  After all, if sex outside of marriage is so bad and wrong and sinful, then they must be bad and sinful, too.  Think what that does to someone who has just been horribly traumatized.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t work like that, either.  You expect them to listen when you say don’t have sex before marriage, but not remember all the other things you said when someone forces sex upon them against their will, their want, the very beliefs you have instilled?  Uh-uh.  No way.  You can’t have both.

Which brings us to caveat number two.  When you talk to your daughters and sons about sex, talk to them about sexual assault and rape, too.  I know.  Really big and really scary and my guts are churning just thinking of how to broach it.  But bite the damned bullet and do it.  Make sure that whether or not you think sex should only occur in marriage, when you teach your child about sex, you also teach them that if they are raped, if they are attacked in any way, it is never their fault.  That even if they have broken every rule you have ever made for them, if they have had sex before, if they were out drunk partying, I don’t care, doesn’t matter, they can come back and tell you what happened and you will support them with all of your heart.  And follow through on that.

If, God forbid, your daughter should come stumbling in at three a.m., clothes a mess, sobbing, and tell you she was assaulted, don’t ask what she was doing out, don’t ask her where she got that dress that’s so short.  Sit down with her and tell her that you love her and will do anything she needs you to.  I can’t tell you what that may be.  Maybe the foundation you laid will be enough to help her want to call 911 and report it.  Maybe she won’t be able to do that, and it won’t be anyone’s fault but the scum who put her in such a state.  But at least she’ll know that you have her back 110%, that you don’t think she’s “bad” or “sinful”, and that you want to do whatever you can to help her.

And, sadly, even that won’t make her magically feel better, like when you used to be able to kiss a bump and make it go away.  But it may make it easier for her to see herself as a worthwhile, valuable, beautiful human being once again.

*For those who don’t know, I have no children of my own.  I do have several “daughters of my heart” that I used to care for and still consider “mine”.

**Source:  RAINN | Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network

Relevant Reads:
I’m angry | Meizac
The Wrong Message | The Bad Luck Detective (trigger warning)

And if you read nothing else, please read this piece:
Steubenville’s Jane Doe asked people to do something…

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Dear Depression, Fuck You

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You are not me.  You are not a part of who I am.  You may have the power to dictate what I can and cannot do, but you are not something I accept, you are not part and parcel of my life and living with mental illness.

You have robbed me of so much joy, you have stolen years of my life.  I won’t take it anymore.  Yes, even as I sit up here sobbing because downstairs my mother and father are celebrating; it’s his birthday and I spent fifteen minutes with him before I was driven upstairs by you, you piece of shit.

I don’t want you.  I didn’t ask for you.  It’s not my fault that there is no medication on this earth that can drive you from my life.

But I want you gone anyway.  You are not part of me, you are not welcome, stop taking and taking and taking all that I love from me.

I’m scared of my friends, I’m scared of my family, of my life, of my thoughts, of my words.

I was happy today.  I was driving, and the windows were down, and I had the music full blast, and I should have just stayed on the highway, I could have been on the coast by Friday morning.

But I came home, and then came you.

So I say fuck you, I say go to hell, I say leave me be.  One week, one day where I can live without being crippled by your death-grasp.

I can’t do this anymore.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Because I Can

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I’m finally letting myself show anger, even rage, call people on the bullshit they hand me, their lies, singular or repeated, all of it.

Because I can.

I purged an old, dead email account of its contents the other day.  What (at the time) I felt was a stupid move was reading a bunch of those emails first.

I was aghast.  I saw myself being emotionally and psychologically abused to a horrifying degree.  Had there been a physical analogue, I would have been the woman in the ED who “fell down the stairs”, “walked into a door”, or was “just the clumsiest woman ever, you won’t believe what I did to myself. . .”  And I would have ended up there daily, until eventually I landed in the ICU, on life support.

Reading those emails was something that needed to happen, though, because it wasn’t just one relationship, and it hadn’t been just with guys I was “involved” with.  I took a long, hard, painful look at the woman I have become, and I’m angry.

I’m angry at myself, but I’m also angry at all of the people who had a big hand in turning me into this woman.  Because I never used to be this way.  You swung at me, I ducked and hit back twice as hard.  You lied to me, I called you on it straight out and gave you the option of being honest henceforth or getting the fuck out of my life.  You treated me badly, or took advantage in any way, I walked and never looked back.

I entered treatment for my bipolar, and slowly, but slowly, I began to wear down, and people took advantage of that.  Even though I knew I was doing everything possible to be well, and that I had never taken my illness out on others — except for a few, a very few, bursts of shouting and tears — I felt like I was a burden just being in people’s lives, and I had to do everything I could to compensate and please others.  This belief was reinforced when friends I’d known for years started backing away; the mother of one of the children I nannied for started distancing herself and telling me how disappointed her child was when I didn’t show up for something because I was curled up in my bed, sobbing, unable to even move (yet I always at least gave her notice that I wouldn’t be there); and finally, my sister, with whom I had always been very close, and my best friend of 20 years both decided to cut off all contact with me, basically telling me that they couldn’t handle “my drama”, and other behavior that was completely beyond my control — even though I was still working my soul to the core trying to prevent them or anyone else from being negatively affected.

Clearly, there was something wrong with me beyond my illness, as a person, and I was lucky to have anyone still in my life at all, so I had to (and did) do anything and everything to keep them.

FUCK THAT.

A sister who walks out on you when you are at your lowest is not a sister.  For a long time I have been compassionate, because she genuinely didn’t get it.  She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting well.  But you know what, it doesn’t matter if you understand or not; you love someone, you support them.  You do not call them “a black hole”.

A friend who uses her children to hold you hostage — consciously or not — because you know they are little and they love and need you, and that if you call Mommy on her lies and bullshit and manipulation she will cut off the contact you have with them, I don’t even have a word for that.

Friends who back away because you are as contagious as a leper, and even if they know that statement is true, who don’t want to deal with the fact that you have to fight constantly to keep your head above the swells while they can get up and live their lives every day are not friends at all.

And new people in your life whom you will put up with, excuse even, all manner of garbage from, all while hiding or making light of how bad things have really gotten, because you’re desperate for someone, anyone, to “support” you and show you kindness. . .  Well, that one is on me, but I never would have gotten there without the concerted efforts of the people above.  Yes, they had every right to make a choice to remove themselves from my life, but they were cruel and weak and cowardly to have blamed me, instead of having the guts to admit that they couldn’t deal with being spectators to the struggle I was living and the constant pain I was in.  Because, had they done so, they would have had to admit to themselves that what I lived every day was an enormous struggle, and so unspeakably painful, and they were cutting and running, abandoning me when I needed them more than I ever had.

For years I have searched for the reason I let my former psychiatrist lie and manipulate and force me into electroconvulsive therapy — I can finally use the word FORCE, for the very first time, and you don’t know what a triumph that is — and at last, I have found it.  It was the result of a long line of abandonments and betrayals and manipulations and lies by those I loved and trusted most.  I had been made to feel like less than nothing for so long that I had come to believe it as gospel truth, and who cared that the old me, the real me, had been firmly and unwaveringly against ECT with all of her being for three-and-a-half years?  She wasn’t standing guard any more, and my opinion didn’t count.  How could it, when I didn’t count as a person myself?

That’s something I get to carry with me always.  The permanent brain damage, and the post-traumatic stress I have from being anesthetized, having electrodes hooked up to my head, having a current, a shock pass through my brain to induce a seizure in me — sixteen times over.  I blamed myself for that, too.  Up until about an hour ago.

And still, I put up with bullshit and manipulation and being treated as less than a person by people I love, because it is all I know anymore.  Almost three years to the day of my first shock and seizure.

Now, three years and fifteen days after that first blast of electricity, arguably the lowest point of my life, it ends.  I’m done.  I’m worth more than that, a hell of a lot more.  I am often a hard person to have in your life, and that has always been so, it has very little to do with mental illness.  But I am the best friend you will ever have, if you are willing to accept me, all of me, and give back.

I am smart.

I am compassionate.

I am intelligent.

I am strong.

I am creative.

I am resilient.

I am supportive.

I am loving.

I am beautiful.

I am selfless.

I have a strong moral compass.

I am patient.

I am understanding.

I am honest.

I am accepting.

I am forgiving.

I am idealistic.

I am open-hearted.

I live my beliefs.

And I once again believe that I am worth it, that I am worth more, much more than I have been given in the past six years of my life.  From friends, from lovers, from family.

So I will live my life accordingly from this day on.

Because I can.

“I ain’t a soldier, but I’m here to take a stand. . .”

~ Jon Bon Jovi/Richie Sambora/Billy Falcon


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Finish Line

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Last week my life as I had blissfully known it, for the past year at least, came to an end.

I have been struggling very hard to write something to update everyone, and failing, and failing, and failing.

I wanted to explain more of the situation, but that’s not going to happen, so here are the bare bones.

I can no longer take Carbatrol, which has been my mainstay in mood stabilization.  Not ever again.

It's the Great Big Book of Everything, with everything inside. . ."

It’s the Great Big Book of Everything, with everything inside. . .

I have been through every drug and then some; when I stopped counting in 2010, there had been more than 70.  So I am at a point of patching together what I call the “least worst” solutions for my future.  I have a three-inch thick binder filled with my notes, my doctors’ notes, medication inserts, pharmacy info, articles from different websites, and I’m basically using that, along with a grip of reference books, to decide which drugs were the most effective and the least intolerable.

It’s only been five days, but things have really gone incredibly badly to start.  I don’t want to talk about it.

I’m actually very well-equipped for this, in one way, in an important way.  I have been through this fire, for five-and-a-half years I went through it, and I came out the other side alive.  I know what to expect, and I know that I can get through again.

The thing that is knocking at my infrastructure is that I honestly and truly believed that this was it for me, I had found my cocktail and that was what I would be taking until I drew my last breath.

Also, there is the added element that I’m giving serious thought to looking for a new psychiatrist.  I am undecided here, as I need to sit down and discuss some things with mine first.  Additionally, I went through this process a little more than a year ago, for the first time since I’d sought help in 2006.  I got my first psychiatrist on the second try, and I didn’t know how lucky I was.

When I went through my search last time, I had very few doctors recommended to me, because my then-psychiatrist and my primary just didn’t believe there were many equipped to handle my case.  And, in fact, of those few, all but two said that they didn’t think they could help, because they honestly didn’t know what could be done that hadn’t already been tried.  I appreciated that frankness.

Essentially, what that means is if I do need to find a new doctor (still a big if), there is more than likely only one whom I can go to locally.  And that’s if he is still around, and still taking new patients. I do have information I saved on several national options, but there are enormous practical and financial considerations there. So, we shall see.

My parents are being very supportive, in their way.  After Thursday’s appointment, I told them I am no longer going to discuss with them what medications I am taking, because the last thing I need to be thinking when trying to figure out how to make the best out of a bad thing is, ‘Mom and Dad are going to freak out about this one.’  That really should not be in my mind at all.  Mom took it surprisingly well, she understood completely; Dad, well he will learn to deal with it.  He just loves his baby daughter and worries about me so much.  They both do, after these past years of seeing me hysterical and blanked out and taking me thrice weekly for ECT and rushing me to the ED many times and sitting up nights watching me because they were worried I would stop breathing.  Those are memories a parent can never erase.

So that’s the gist of it.  That’s how my life changed completely over one Thursday in January.  I was one month and four days shy of a perfect year.  But I’m glad I didn’t know that time had an expiration date stamped on it, because if I had, I wouldn’t have loved it as carelessly and blissfully as I did.  I wouldn’t have assumed and made plans and, yes, taken things for granted.  Taking things for granted is not always the monster it’s made out to be, my loves.  And if I have to spend another six-and-a-half years, or the rest of my life, striving for eleven months more like these just past, I will say that it’s worth the trade.  The reward is worth the fight.  More than worth it.

 

The rest of the crew.

More of the crew.

I’ll get through and find something, but it’s probably going to be an endless road of different drugs and dosage adjustments and changing this for that.  I won’t say I’m delighted, but neither will I sit here and wonder and wail that I can’t deal with that prospect.  To me it has never been a question of “how long” or “an end” or “too much”, it just is and I keep going, because this is the life I am living, and that is the only choice I have.  To keep going, to plunge ahead, to try something else.

I will always keep myself afloat, even if it means clinging to the fin of a shark.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Tears In Heaven

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To say that my Babygirl was an easy child wouldn’t even be half right. She brought out something magical in me, and I gave back all that was wonderful to her. But, occasionally, we did have a tough day.

I remember one of those days specifically, she had been cranky and I had been irritable. We were on our way home, and this song came on the radio. I vividly recall sitting at a stoplight, thinking to myself, What would this man do to have just one day like we’ve had, one more fussy, cranky, irritable day with his son? What wouldn’t he give to be as lucky as I am right now?

 
We live a charmed life, my Babygirl and me.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Crazy People DO Get Sick, Too

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I should be asleep.  Something woke me up in the middle of the night, in spite of my exhaustion, and since I can’t figure out what specifically it is, we’ll say that it was this.

Yesterday, my dear friend Laura — who is a doctor – published this post, Crazy People Get Sick Too.  I know that links are thrown into posts all of the time, but you really need to go read this one to understand fully what I am about to write.  I am completely in earnest about this.  I have a few little things I can get done while you read it, so please, go ahead.  I will happily wait (though I suggest that you don’t read it while eating, otherwise you should be fine).

Have you read it now?  Truly?  Thank you for that.  I don’t think in the whole year-and-eight-months I have been writing this blog I have ever pushed, really insisted that you read a post, so you have to know that Laura’s post mattered to me a lot.

The part that really grabbed me and started the tears was this:

He firmly emphasized to his small crowd of followers that it was nothing short of criminal to instantly brand every human being who presented to the ER (or anyplace else) with a medication list that included psych drugs, or was delusional, or disoriented, or hallucinating, or even violent, as being a “crank,” and ignoring the possibility that this person might be physically ill, just like anyone else.

That med school professor certainly deserves a “Hell yes!”, but why did it start me crying?

The thing that I don’t want to write, because it makes it too real, the thing I have been avoiding up until now: my own doctor.

Long before anyone knew I was crazy

Long before anyone knew I was crazy

My doctor has been my doctor for more than half of my life.  That’s approximately 17 years, my loves.  I followed him from practice to practice to practice to practice because he really was that good.  He was an ER doc as well, so he was quick on his feet, and saw many things that regular primary care doctors aren’t familiar with.

I really fell for him, though, the first time he uttered those three little words:  ”I don’t know.”  You may or may not have noticed, but doctors don’t ever like to admit that one.  They will do everything possible not to have to cop to not knowing.  My trust in him became complete (relatively speaking) when he told me, “I don’t know, but I know someone who does.”  He always had a wonderful specialist up his sleeve.

Fast forward to now.  Every appointment I’ve made in the past eight months — probably longer, but I was too out of it to notice — I have gotten the same response.  It doesn’t matter what symptoms or complaints I have presented with, he has told me, “If you don’t feel better in a week, call me.”  And for a long time, I let it go at that.  I was frustrated, but I had put more trust in him than I had ever put in any doctor.

Finally, I got to the point that I wouldn’t even go see him.  Recently I was twice into the urgent care, that was where my mononucleosis was diagnosed.  I was miserably sick for more than a month before I made an appointment with my doctor.  Even then I only did it because I already had a diagnosis.

After I had been branded "crazy". Can you spot the difference?

After I had been branded “crazy”. Can you spot the difference?

Of course, at that point, I already knew what his diagnosis of me was: hypochondriasis.

I was crazy, so my word could no longer be taken.  In spite of the fact that in late Spring I told him I thought I was hypothyroid, he said I wasn’t, I insisted on a test, and lo and behold, I was right!  And then in Summer I told him I needed thyroid supplementation, and he told me I didn’t, and once again, I was right.  There are more stories like this, but I think you get my point.

But he was a good man, I believed.  If I just sat down and had a come to Jesus with him, I could break through all his pigeonholing of me and he would realize this wasn’t me being crazy, and that he had been treating me in an unfair way. . .

Well, I’m very sad to tell you that I couldn’t break through.  He is a good man, this I know, but he looks at me, and the word CRAZY emblazoned across my forehead is all that he can see.  He told me that “there are problems with the MonoSpot test”, and that I needed to get up and go out more, get back to kickboxing, when I was having trouble making it up the stairs.  Essentially, I didn’t have mono, I was just depressed.

Okay.  Okay doctor.

Please don’t get angry reading this.  I’m not angry.  I’m sad, and I’m a bit at sea.  I have to figure out how to end this relationship while my doctor and I both still love and respect each other.  Because I do love and respect him, in spite of things.  He’s a good man.  He was just raised in a time and school of thought where once crazy equals always crazy.  It may be hard to understand, but this really isn’t his fault.  It’s one of those things that is no one’s fault.  It just is.

And now I have to look for a new doctor for the first time in about 17 years.  It would have happened soon enough; my doctor is no spring chicken.  But I don’t relish the prospect.

I know, lots of people find new doctors all the time.  I’m lucky I had a good one for so many, many years.  But that’s what makes it even more difficult.  I’m not just changing doctors, I’m ending a relationship.  A relationship of more than a-decade-and-a-half, a relationship that I knew, no matter what else was going on in my life, I could always count on and trust.

You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

“Difficult”

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Difficult.  Overwhelming.  Exhausting.  All words that have been used to describe me for most of my life, in and out of episodes of illness, bipolar notwithstanding.

And they aren’t inaccurate.  I am passionate about almost all matters, and positively hellacious about the remainder of them.  I have mellowed in my old age, but I still pour my heart and my soul and my everything into anything I believe in.  It’s why you’ll see me disappear from here for days to weeks, because I haven’t anything to say that pulls at me and begs to be put down into words.  When I was in school, I wrote every single paper the night before — they refused to come out any sooner.  Some I even turned in late, because they weren’t done cooking in my mind; and while I could have written a good piece and turned it in on time, if I waited a day or two longer, out came something truly excellent.  And though at times I would fake it in many subjects, I never, never would when it came to writing.  Not only was it a mortal sin, the possibility just absolutely did not exist in my mind.

Oh yes, many of my teachers found me “difficult” in school. I spoke my mind without restraint, I corrected them when they were wrong, and worst of all, I didn’t show them the respect they automatically deserved simply because they had decided to become teachers. I expected them to earn it, just like everyone else; my parents raised me to treat everyone this way — teacher, janitor, classmate, doctor — everyone began on an equal footing. Those teachers who appreciated me and didn’t label me in any way as “difficult” were the wonderful individuals who got it.  They saw the differences in me for what they were: self-possession, creativity, intelligence, sensitivity, passion, and an incredibly strong moral compass.  And they encouraged and supported me far beyond what their job description required.  The result was more than them gaining my respect in equal measure; from my third grade teacher to my Anatomy and Physiology professor (and quite a number in the intervening years), I remember them all vividly. They each gave me something special, and they left upon me an indelible mark so uniquely their own. I was sometimes still a smartass — that’s something rarely ever suppressed in me — but I was a polite, kind smartass (you know what I mean).

Over the years, I’ve lost more friends than I have kept because I am “difficult”.  In some cases it was my choice, but more often it was due to friends’ inability to understand me. I view the world with a very different perspective than most people, and I live my life accordingly. When I was younger, I was free-spirited and so absolutely sure of myself. But as we grew older, many friends came to be uncomfortable with the same wild eccentricities and unshakable character I have possessed all of my life. I have a wall that surrounds me, that has always surrounded me. I imagine I was born with it, and it has always kept me very independent and secure in myself. (“They got a wall in China/It’s a thousand miles long/To keep out the foreigners/They made it strong/And I’ve got a wall around me/That you can’t even see/It took a little time/To get next to me” ~ Paul Simon)  I can and do let those who are very strong and brave inside, because it is not a place for the faint of heart. And those dear souls who understand what it takes have been in — and even out — of my life for years, but I am blessed that they see that I am worth it.  I may be temperamental, moody, distant, emotional, overwhelming, exuberant, and at times just a bowl of crazy flakes, but I love them, I love their kids and their families, and I would do absolutely anything for them.  And they have loved me, not in spite of all that, but because of it.

Not surprisingly, the only people in my life who don’t find me difficult, overwhelming, and exhausting are my girls.  I am full of the kind of joie de vivre that most people either lose or have beaten out of them on their journey to adulthood.  I cheered them on with unabashed delight when they were learning to feed themselves (Babygirl gave me some funny looks for that one, but she loved it). I’ll climb a tree (in a skirt) with my girls, though I haven’t been up one in 20 years.  I encourage them and permit no room for self-doubt or restrictions when they paint (getting messy is part of the fun!) or do anything creative, and more often than not, I join in.  I get on Skype or the telephone to do reading homework with them, and I buy them books for absolutely no reason except that they love them and so do I.

I have bipolar disorder, this is true, and when I was so profoundly ill for so many years, I lost a couple of people from my life that I would wish back into it in an instant — except that things would never be anything like what they used to be between us.  It’s the nature of the beast, and I have made my peace with it.  I can’t say that was me (or anyone) being “difficult”; I won’t accept that word to describe me during a period of time that was so painful and so protracted that much of it I don’t remember, and what I do scares me even now, when I know I will never go back there.  I did what I could even then to try to save the last threads of these relationships, but sometimes things are just too far gone between people.

And now that I am well?  Now that I deal with sadness and heartache instead of depression, and joy and exuberance instead of mania?  Well, the sadness and the heartache are definitely far from on par with what most people experience, as are the joy and the exuberance.  My life is unusual and crazy and full of passion and love and heartbreak, because I am unusual and crazy and full of passion and love and heartbreak.

I am difficult.  I am overwhelming.  I am exhausting.  That’s something most people can’t deal with in their lives, not really, and I understand that.  But after 32 years of being this way, and never doubting that this is exactly who and how I am meant to be, you’ll see no changes in my nature.  This is me, and I’m not going to become someone else for anyone in this world, no matter how much I love them.  That’s not to say that I am in all ways rigid and invariable; like the tree I climbed with my girls, I have branches that are strong, flexible, and accommodating to embrace those closest to my heart.  But my trunk only grows stronger and more solid with each passing year.

Proof of my exploits as Rima, the (backyard) jungle girl. Though my girls told me to go inside and put on pants, I wasn’t wasting time with such silliness when it looked like so much fun!
P.S.  It was.  :P

Addendum: It seems this was my 300th post. I think that means something.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Addiction Thing

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Do you know, it’s been so long for me, I’m kind of having some difficulty figuring out how to start talking about what I dealt with when I was fighting my mental illness dragons?  I’m only about seven months out, and I don’t pretend that what I live with will not have to be accounted for and managed for the rest of my days.  There’s this enormous disconnect, though.  Because I know I’ve won.  I spent about six years solid in a terrible war, one I had given up hope of ever winning fully, toward the end.  And here I am now. . .  This life is so different from that one, it’s difficult for me to bring back the sense of it.

But it’s still there, in its strange, separate space.  I haven’t forgotten.  Maybe it’s my mind’s gift to itself that I don’t have the sense of those dragons tearing at me.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how they did.

And to think, this wasn’t even meant to be so terribly heavy as all that.  But even I don’t know what my fingers are going to say until they get down to it.

One thing I was always grateful for was the absence of what I would come to call “the addiction gene” in me.  I never smoked cigarettes. When I was young I played around with pot for maybe a year, but it never did anything for me, so I just stopped bothering, and I never got into anything “harder”.

I have taken Vicodin for my migraines for more than 16 years.  Pretty much always as prescribed, though I’m not going to say that in all those years I never doubled up a dose because I was in so much pain.

Alcohol was fun in my early 20s, but I never drank like most people I knew.  I was always the designated driver, and while occasionally I would get good and tight at home or at my sister’s, it was very much a rarity.  Recently I decided I needed to stop consuming any alcohol, because even just having a drink or two makes me severely maudlin for three or four days after.  I’m sad that I can’t have my strawberry margs anymore, but the havoc drink wrought in my mind – and to some degree, my life – it just isn’t worth the trade.

And last year, last year I was on Valium for my mania, because we had run out of ideas.  Valium is not meant to be a long-term, three-times-a-day solution to anything, because the incidence of addiction is so high.  My current psychiatrist doesn’t like to prescribe it at all; I had to fight for a dozen pills earlier in the summer when I was dealing with anxiety that nothing I’d tried would alleviate (it turned out to be from the premenstrual dysphoria, and those Valium I fought for helped very much indeed).  I’m actually getting ready to go to the mat with him over it again, but that’s a different story.  Coming down off of months on that particular drug was probably the most hellish substance withdrawal I ever dealt with in my life, but I did it and I did it twice over.  There was never any question in my mind that I could.

When the Let’s Talk About section on A Canvas Of The Minds was launched a year ago with the topic of Self-Medicating, our authors discussed things like self-injury, shoplifting, drugs, drinking, sex, eating disorders, and more.  The closest I came to having something to say on that subject was to discuss my shopping habits, the over-spending and credit card use that got me to the point of needing to file for bankruptcy.  And as it turns out, I’m not really sure that falls into the category of self-medication, especially not in the broader context of addiction.

Thing is, I know how incredibly lucky I am.  I’ve always known.  Addiction runs through both sides of my family.  Some have been spared, some have beaten it, some are managing it, and one beautiful soul died because of it.  My Uncle Jimmy, my dad’s baby brother, he died about ten years ago after struggling for years with addiction to, primarily, Vicodin.  Of all things.  The same crap I’ve been prescribed for migraines since my teens, and never had any issues with.  The hydrocodone wasn’t what got him, it was the acetaminophen that it’s typically cut with.  And when I say “cut”, I mean the way prescription Vicodin from your local pharmacy is prepared.  Most states won’t sell straight hydrocodone, you either get it in Vicodin or Vicoprofen (ibuprofen replacing acetaminophen in that).  So eventually, his liver couldn’t handle it.  He didn’t overdose in one sad event.  Over years, my dear sweet uncle was taken out by the likes of Tylenol.  And heavier and heavier this post gets.

But he is my guardian angel, that I know, though I only met him a very few times.  Maybe that’s why I’ve never had issues with addiction, which is so commonly concurrent with bipolar disorder.  I don’t know all the finer points, but I do know he’s been looking out for me for a long time.  Even when I was 11 and he was in his late 30s, we were kindred spirits.  Death sure as hell didn’t keep him from watching over and taking care of me.

Do you want to know, finally, what I set out to write this post about?  What has become my one addiction in life, one that I recognized this morning had actually become a problem for me?  I officially give you permission to laugh, because after all of that build-up, I kind of have to.

Chai tea lattes from Starbucks.  I know, right?

It started out as a drink I just really liked.  At some point I discovered that the combination of the heat, whatever blend of spices is in the chai syrup, plus the caffeine helped with my migraines.  Okay, that is to me still a legitimate reason for drinking them.  I also found that sitting and sipping these hot drinks was a comfort for me, a way to soothe anxiety (in spite of the caffeine), depression, mania, a whole host of symptoms and manifestations of the various things that made up my personal Alphabet Soup.  And that was fine, too; I could happily rationalize the hell out of that, anything that was so innocuous and helped quieten the dragons in my mind was (and is) okay by me.

And really, in the grand scheme of things, there isn’t anything terrible about me drinking chai.  Yes, right now where I am financially, it’s not such an easy habit to sustain. And yes, I have to be careful to watch my blood pressure when combining any amount of caffeine with the Carbatrol I take (or so says my doctor – more or less).  But what really got me this morning was, well, me.

I’d fallen asleep on the couch watching a movie.  I woke up this morning, and my first clear, conscious thought was, ‘What time is it?  Is Starbucks open?’  I proceeded to grab my tumbler, a five dollar bill, and my keys.  I was in my pajamas, which is no big deal, I go places in my pajamas frequently (especially Starbucks).  But my hair was sticking up funny on one side, I looked genuinely strung out, and for the first time since I’ve been well, I didn’t even attempt to make myself slightly less horrifying.  I just went for it.

And I thought, as I drove to get my “fix”, ‘Something ain’t right here, girly.’  The sunrise was gorgeous (oh wow, was it ever!), the temperature was just perfect, I had Simon and Garfunkel’s America playing, and things fell into place in my head and I realized the jig was up.

There’s nothing wrong with me enjoying my chai.  The baristas at my local Starbucks are lovely to start my day chatting to.  But right now, this shit owns me.  And yes, I know there are much worse things to be owned by.  And yes, I feel a taste of the absurd given all that I wrote leading up to this.  But what it comes down to is that nothing owns me, nothing ever has, nothing ever will, and I have to find a way to walk away from something that has become so much more than a “guilty pleasure”.  Everything in moderation, if I can manage the moderation.  If I can’t. . .  Bye-bye, sweet spices and milk and steamy goodness.  Not even for you will I let go of one tiny bit of my self-containment.

I don’t blame this tumbler.  It’s merely a pawn.


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The ECT Post

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So you want to talk ECT?  Let’s, then.  Let’s, then.  I can’t tell the truth about it when I am sober, it’s still too scary.  It’s even a little scary while I am drunker than I have ever in my life been.  Does that give you a preview?

You ask me if I would tell you to have ECT, “If I wanted only your best interest. . .”  We’ve been over the best interest part.  I have, anyway.

Do you know how simple the conversation about ECT would be, if I had only you to think about, someone I love and know intimately?  Were it only you, I would say outright that ECT is evil, it is the most fucked-up thing I have ever, and will ever encounter in my life, I do not doubt that; and if it were you and me only in this world, that it should be banned, outright? Made illegal, a form of torture, a war crime, a crime against humanity, whatever the very worst thing in this world that would bring forth the worst retribution could be?

Yes.  It’s that bad. Honestly.  So bad that I think I may have to have another blast or two, then take my vodka into the bathroom and write this there, because I am feeling sure anything else will make me throw up.

But I need to get the truth, my honest truth, out to you.

Fuck.  It’s a fine line, because once I start puking there will be no more typing.  But I need to maintain a certain degree of inebriation to be able to let this out.  More than two years in the making.

ECT is the Devil, Em.  Capital D, Devil.  It is the worst thing I have ever experienced in my very intense life.  (And wow am I wishing I had never eaten those potato chips right now.  The fear of vomiting is less to me if I don’t taste first what will come up).  Fuck don’t close your eyes or you’ll get the spins.

I have said before that I cannot explicitly say that I am 100% for banning ECT, because some people claim it has helped them.  And perhaps so they feel it has.  But it would help you exactly the way it did me.

Which it didn’t.

Would you find some temporary relief?  Perhaps.  Because it would numb and destroy the pain.  It would numb and destroy your brain.  And the pain would come back, but your brain wouldn’t.  And you are so incredibly intelligent, Em, that at some point in your life you would notice.  Lots of people don’t, and so hooray for them, because they never ever know what they have lost.  They live forever in mindless oblivion, and so hooray for them, because of their ignorance, they are happy.

But you wouldn’t be, as I am not.

I have found peace, this is true.  I have gotten back what I can possibly retrieve (which is more than most people, and now I know why I was never an alcoholic), but few days go by, if any, when I am not reminded of what is forever lost to me.

Forever.  Forever.  And ever and ever and ever.  I may finally have reached a point where I have decided to live with what has happened (consciously, I have made the decision), but that doesn’t mean that I am ‘okay’ and am moving on with my life.  In the broader sense, yes, but in the more exact sense, I will never be okay with what was done to me.  What I said, ‘Okay, do to me.  Please, please.  You said it would help, you said it would fix me.  Dear God, fix me!  Make me better.  Please make me able to face another day, another moment.’

I’m sobering up, I think that’s all for tonight.

Except for two words:  Self-blame.  (One word, it’s a hyphenate.  I think I’m going to vomit up that Grey Goose now).
 
 
(I have edited only major mistakes for the sake of clarity.  I will not allow for comments on this post, because I am in a terror at the possibilities.  Please respect that.)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.