A year ago today I sat in my office ready to kill myself, but I didn’t do it.
I wonder if Doogie Howser ever typed that same sentence in one of his computer entries.
Hmm, maybe Doogie was the first blogger ever. Write that story Entertainment Weekly.
I don’t feel 100 percent these days but I do feel a huge amount, like what The Cheesecake Factory considers a reasonable dinner portion amount, better.
My son had an OT eval on Friday. They wanted to check to see if any of his issues with writing his letters were related to fine motor skills. No one thought they were but agreed we should double check. I have been raised by a Speech Pathologist and have grown up hearing the cautionary tales of parents who ignored signs and signals so I quickly agreed.
I also grew up hearing the horrors of brain injuries not due to wearing a bike helmet therefore we were ahead of our time in this mandatory safety rule. This caused quite a bit of mocking from random classmates who saw me riding by (the dutch boy haircut under the helmet probably didn’t help) but my brain is in complete working order (physically) so I can’t complain.
All was good OT-wise. I was relieved we got the eval but a little sad about having to get one. My son looked at me a bit as I explained to the therapist why we were there and I wondered if he had a little anxiety feeling like something was “wrong” with him.
Maybe my worries in this moment were just that, my worries, I spent a lot of time as a kid seeing specialists as I never did any homework and did not achieve what I could in school. I am still not sure if this was a learning problem, a lazy problem, or a bit of both but, consequently, I let “being a person who needed extra help” define me.
My son is not this person. He is tenacious, not lazy, and has a lot of pride in his strengths. I remind myself I am not here to shield him but to support him. But like forgetting where I put my car keys and everything else in my life, the trying to remember doesn’t always win.
This past year or so has been a constant test as to whether I will let myself be defined as “poor, sick Deena”
As I have been recovering my husband has found much comfort in NAMI which provides, among other things, support for spouses of people with mental illnesses. I have kind of been a dick about this. If anyone should know the importance of support, in whatever form, it is me. I am not sure what actually happens in the meetings but I assume (most likely wrongly,but I am not about to let that stop me) it is a group of older women making my husband feel like a hero for putting up with burden-filled me. Even if that is the case, why shouldn’t he get that reassurance?
A little while back we went to dinner and standing outside afterwards, I realized I had a wedgie. I discreetly ducked into an empty storefront to set it free. Afterwards I noticed a couple looking at me. I was pretty blase about the whole thing till I learned later one of them was one of my husband’s NAMI friends.
“Oh man, that guy has to deal with a crazy wedgie pulling beast of a woman.” I imagined this man saying later.
I am nothing if not someone who likes to let my perception of how others view me be the basis for my own self-esteem, completely voiding the self part of self-esteem, a probably unhealthy but delightfully responsibility-free root to go.
I dislike the idea of these meetings and his desire to attend them because I feel I am healthy, why does he still need to go. Apparently people are autonomous and get to decide what they “need.” I am not a fan of this part of life.
But as I tell my son, “That’s the deal, Captain and Tennille.”
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Okay, gonna go audition for the camp play, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, wish me luck.
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Dear Supportive People,
Thanks for all of your continued support. Well, camp continues to be a challenge and a mix of ups and downs and struggling mostly with the amount of time it will
take for the medicine to work. And if it will work. I am cautiously optimistic, I think.
Some of my fellow campers came to my improv show and laughed a lot, which is a nice triumph when your audience comes from a mood disorders program. Though in hindsight they could have just been manic at the time.
Love,
Deena
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Dear Supportive People,
Deena
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Dear Supportive People,
Thanks for all your continued virtual support.
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Dear Supportive People,
I am about to have my fifth treatment. I am noticing quite an improvment and feeling better than I remember feeling in a long time. No memory issues either, which means I will most likely remember how boring the Oscars are this Sunday
W00t, as the kids say.
Love,
Deena
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Dear Supportive People,
There was a glorious time before television fans were obsessed with fancy cupcakes or Real Housewives. It was known as the days of no limit Texas holdem’, and just like any good entertainment obsession, cable TV over-saturated it like nobody’s business, and I watched every minute of it. The World Poker Tour, The World Series of Poker, Celebrity Poker Showdown, the DVD of Rounders with audio commentary by professional poker players like Chris “Jesus” Furguson and Johnny Chan, oh so much delight was had. I learned terms like big blind (the person who is forced to put in the bigger ante,) the river (the final card on the board), and on tilt (making decisions based on emotion that often are not well thought out.)
Years before all this pop culture poker I had already developed a fondness for the gambling. As a 12 year old, my grandma proudly took my money and bought me scratch offs at the Florida mecca known as Publix, a grocery store elderly people like to go to several times a week.
In college, I didn’t care about being 21 because it meant I was a legal drinker, but rather it meant I was a legal gambler and Peoria Illinois, the home of my delightful Bradley University, had a gambling boat. Instead of slamming shots, I doubled down on 11s and enjoyed free flowing complimentary diet cokes. I was a baller.
I did not go in debt, in fact I often won, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t addicted. After all I knew the cautionary story arc of Brandon Walsh and his basketball gambling woes. I had no Duke the bookie to worry about and it was all in good fun.
Recently, Cleveland got it’s own casino and I have gone a couple of times and had my blackjack fun. This past weekend my sister and I celebrated my dad’s birthday by taking him to the casino and a nice restaurant. We all had a good time, no one won, in fact I lost my money in six consecutive blackjack hands, but it was all good, we we’re having good ol’ family fun.
We went to dinner at Greenhouse Tavern, a restaurant with an unusual menu and known for it’s famous half of a roasted pig’s head. I had looked at the menu ahead of time and had no plans of ordering Babe/Wilbur on a platter,but I lost all my money in five minutes and like a poker player who has a flush and loses on the river, I was on tilt, and I was about to make a poor emotions-based decision.
I would order the famous pig’s head, how could this not make me a true winner that night? Winner, Winner, honkin’ roasted pig’s head dinner. I ordered it. I ate it (well a third of it, it seems pigs have rather large heads,) and like most decisions made on tilt, I paid for it. For 24 hours and several times over.
A lesson was literally served to me on a silver platter and I learned it’s indigestion-filled meaning: Next time get the burger and fries.
I have so many things in my head to write but I’m just so tired. I’m pretty sure I’m okay, just tired.
I had a really fun improv show last night. I love hearing three storytellers with the same prompt write true, personal, completely different experiences from their lives.
I am pretty sure 95% of the time I am androgynous on stage and this bothers me because I think it is my lack of willingness to be vulnerable.
My son is learning to read and write. These are not things that that come easy to him yet he keeps trying which is good because being illiterate is a bad thing. I know this from watching Sammy Davis Jr. on a very special episode of The Cosby Show. I give up too easily and watching my son work so hard impresses me.
Improv, (which is still not recognized by spell check therefore undermining it as a real art form) like life,has to take place outside of the comfort zone if you want to grow. But dammit, complacency is so easy.
I am a laugh whore. Silence scares me and that needs to change. At my son’s school they do this little rhyme before running to the playground, which is across a parking lot.
Stop, look, and listen before you cross the street. First use your eyes and ears, then us your feet.
That is really good advice, and not just because it rhymes.
Be comfortable in silence.
Chaos can be funny but does it take away from a possible meaningful experience?
Like my son, as he learns to write, I will not say “I give up, this is too hard.” I will say “Can you help me out?”
Children are our best resource to learn.
I am lucky.
We are about to do some painting in our house so my husband went to Sherwin Williams and gathered some color samples. As I was taking my pills this morning it occurred to me that he did not need to run this errand as I seem to have every color in existence in our medicine cabinet.
It is my belief that drug companies think neon colored pills are a perfect way to brighten a depressive’s day, a little bonus placebo effect for the patient. While I am currently only on three meds, the process of finding the right medication means I have lots of almost full prescriptions that I am holding on to, maybe for a rainy day/psychotic breakdown, whatevs.
I wish there was a place you could swap your unused prescriptions with other patients, like a big take a penny-leave a penny tray but for SSRIs. Until this service is invented I guess I will just spend my day deciding whether our living room would look better in a Cymbalta blue or an Effexor orange.
Words Do Matter
“Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering – to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. ” – Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
A friend shared this passage with me when things were at there lowest, when I was in the psychiatric hospital. In my few days there, these were the most important, helpful words I heard. My friend helped me see my suffering had meaning, that I needed to make it through for my son. She helped me see what I couldn’t. She gave me the perfect words.
Giving words of comfort to a depressed/suicidal person is not an easy task. Like trying to impart wisdom to a teenager you are bound to be met with an angry “Nobody get’s me.” or a “Why can’t the people in my life talk to me like the characters on My So Called Life or Samantha’s dad in Sixteen Candles?”
So to hear the perfect words at a desperate moment, that is a gift like no other. Words aren’t everything but they are a very important thing, especially when those words give you another day.
I watch this clip several times a year. It’s what people loved most about Johnny Carson, having fun without being mean, treating his guest with respect while still adding some silly. If Johnny Carson were on your improv team, he would be the person everyone wanted to be in scenes with. He would add the details and specificity while still making his partner look good.
I performed on Friday night. Improv often gives me an energy boost, a feeling I imagine other people get from exercising, or heroin, or some other behavior I find too risky to engage in.
Being on stage with a group of people, making something up in the moment, while the audience reacts, I would pay for that high anytime. Well, I guess I have, with places like The Second City and The Annoyance being my dealers.
Friday’s show though, felt how I feel currently, not horrible but not good and no sustaining energy. I was bummed when the show ended because I was really hoping the boost would be there. I of course left stage analyzing everything that happened but in the end that helps little.
I’ll just sit here having the shakes, waiting for my next show, and watching comedy I love from others to hold me over.
Feel free to share any clips that give you giggles.
