Status Update: Fake Status Updates Below
- On July 04, 2013
- By Deena Nyer Mendlowitz
- In Uncategorized
0
In a humongous display of out of shapeness, I tore my calf muscle earlier this week while improvising. Getting a leg injury while be silly on stage is about as hard to do as losing weight by bowling, but I did it. Yay, for being an over-achiever.
I posted two things on Facebook about this injury, getting some always enjoyed sympathy while not feeling pathetic or like a complainer.
This injury is a minor inconvenience, at most, but I talked about it cause getting good vibes from others is good, and it seemed funny, and I like funny, and most of all, I could share it.
When I went through depression hell, feeling the worst I ever had, I couldn’t talk about it, it felt like something you don’t share. Unless we were really close, you wouldn’t have even known. This wasn’t me putting on a brave face. We don’t “not share” cause we are brave, we “not share” because we are scared.
So here are some posts I never wrote because I couldn’t ( or felt I couldn’t) share them during my year long intense struggle with depression:
- Uh-oh, seems like the depression is coming back. Feels like a recurring STD. I need a brain condom.
- Feeling low today, like a gymnast going under a limbo stick low.
- Trying to get meds adjusted. Just swallowed a bunch of new side effects.
- Last check-in before my phone gets taken away – at Richmond Psychiatric Hospital
- Could use some extra support today #hugsanddrugs #whychoose
- Starting outpatient program today. Feeling scared and anxious. It’s like the worst first day of school ever.
- Things feel way horrible. Time to try shock therapy. If your power goes out around 10am, my apologizes.
- Finally feeling better. So grateful.
Shock Therapy Didn’t Ruin Me (A Treatment Destigmatized)
- On June 24, 2013
- By Deena Nyer Mendlowitz
- In Uncategorized
- 0
When I was ready to kill myself, a last ditch effort was presented, electro-convulsive therapy. With a name like that, who wouldn’t be all in?
Like any in-depth researcher, I immediately went to Google to learn more. While looking, I found a youtube clip from someone getting ECT in the 90s and nothing else helpful.
I didn’t watch the youtube clip cause, honestly, I did not want to know what happened when I was knocked out. I figured that was the benefit to being knocked out. I enjoy not knowing what happens when I am passed out. I get nitrous at the dentist, every time, I will not sit in the chair without seeing it hooked up, and I preferred, if I was going to get ECT, to not know what went on. I am extremely trusting this way, wait till I am under the magic drugs and do your thing. Don’t worry, I realize there are certain situations where you should probably avoid being drugged and trusting.
Anyway, after this cursory internet searching, I decided to not seek out information.
This plan was slightly messed up when the day before the fun was about to happen a woman in my mood disorder intensive program came up and begged me not to get ECT as it took away her husband’s personality and he was never the same. I don’t recommend ever saying this to someone.
But, motivational message aside, I still took the plunge because I figured i should try one more thing before I took a permanent, irreversible, plunge.
Like what learning to cook healthily or finding religion does for some people, ECT saved my life.
Like learning to cook healthily or finding religion, I would not recommend it for everyone,
To me, the most amazing thing about ECT, was when I started to feel better and the doctor asked me how was I doing. I said I was at 70%. I was thrilled with this number. Like my grades in school and Cookie Monster, “C” was good enough for me. But the Dr. said we will do this till you’re at 100%,
And in that moment, I realized I had given up on that number long ago. I thought passing was enough and this man said you deserve to feel not just better, but your best.
I think about this now when things dip for me. Am I still doing so much better than before? Yes. Am I grateful for that? Without a doubt. Am I deserving of 100%? Absolutely.
Reading Some Depressays
- On June 01, 2013
- By Deena Nyer Mendlowitz
- In Uncategorized
- 0
Reading things from this blog out loud at an art exhibit.
“It was so good I forgot to eat my candy.”
At seven, this was my review of The Muppets Take Manhattan. While most critics disagreed with this assessment, I loved this movie. I remember laughing as Rizzo the rat skating on pads of butter while they cooked in the restaurant. I remember being concerned when Kermit was hit by a car and got amnesia.
Like amnesia-ridden Kermit, my memories end there, except for the comment about the candy.
I saw Wreck-it Ralph with my son today. We had already seen it once before but it was at the dollar theater. We love the dollar theater and Wreck-it Ralph is a delightful movie.
It so happens the dollar theater is located across the street from the psychiatric bed and breakfast I spent five days in and the place where I went 21 times for outpatient ECT.
I had been in a psychiatric hospital once before, for less than 24-hours after I attempted suicide by driving my car over an embankment in college.
This is what I remember from that visit:
1. While being admitted to the hospital a nurse asked me “Do you have anything on you that you took with the purpose of killing yourself, like a razor?’
”Nope, I’m not really a planner” I replied.
2. While trying to sleep in a dark, bare room, they brought in a roommate who was screaming nonsensically and I obliviously said to myself “Wow, this place is full of crazy people.”
3. The following morning, after driving all night from Cleveland to Peoria, my parents came to get me and I had the best hug I ever had in my life, from my mom.
Though I was only there this most recent time for 5 days, I had quite a few visitors. I felt like the kid at camp who gets tons of mail, feeling both loved and self-conscious that others might be resentful of the attention I was getting.
Having people visit you at a psychiatric hospital is odd. I felt very uncomfortable, not really knowing the right way to play host in this situation. Dammit, if I had only read more Emily Post.
Besides being near the dollar theater, the hospital was also located close to my friend Kim’s house which meant she was able to visit me a few times. Kim went to the drug store before coming to see me and purchased movie theater size boxes of candy for me. This is why I love Kim. She understood I was trapped in a psychiatric hospital with little desire to see a movie and knew these over-sized, almost festive boxes, would seem out of place and hilarious.
Interestingly enough, the next night I did watch Field of Dreams at the hospital and, much like when I saw Muppets Take Manhattan, I did not eat the candy.Though this time it was because it was taken by the nurses when Kim entered and I would have to ask them for it and that made me uncomfortable.
Judy is Always Right
In the 5th or 6th grade, I remember being in science class. One of the other kids said something and a hilarious response popped in my head. I wanted to say it. I should say it, I thought. It will be greeted with silence, I thought. And as I thought and thought, a boy in the class said his own version of my joke and people roared. I lost the laugh. This boy, with less finesse and worse timing, got my fucking laugh. This moment changed me, it wasn’t an aha moment, cause Aha Oprah didn’t exist yet. No, I clearly remember thinking this is my Judy Blume moment. I was having my turning point in Judy Blume’s never published book, Deena Gets the Last Laugh.
After this JB moment, I did begin using my humor and it became my defining characteristic. It was how I made friends and gained confidence.
Judy, of course, knows that life is never simple enough to just have one turning point though. Her characters suffered and learned and celebrated and then they rinsed and repeated.
My Judy Blume-esque Deena is a slow learner. Years later she would take an improv class and think of something and whisper it to someone on the back line and he would go out and do it in class and he would get the laugh.
I have finally learned this lesson. I will get my laugh now, but Judy isn’t a one lesson per character type lady, so I continue to learn and learn and learn some more.
Who knew twenty-five years later Judy would write a sequel, Happy Shock-iversary, Deena. In this mildly anticipated follow-up, we learn Deena has continued the thread of comedy in her life and has also added a child, and for good measure, ECT and some pretty little pills. The book opens on February 15, 2013, a year after Deena started her ECT treatments as she reflects on what this last year has meant.
Critics praise the book for “handling tough subjects” but also think “Deena, the main character is a little self-absorbed.” and ask “Geez Judy, is Deena ever gonna grow-up for real?”
But Judy knows neither life nor her characters are ever that clear cut.
And as it always seems, Judy is right.
For Anyone Who is in The Worst Place Ever
Are you feeling depressed right now?
Forget that, are you feeling like depression would be a huge fuckin upgrade?
Are you feeling, like you can’t even remember what it’s like to feel anything but the immense overwhelming need to be done with it all?
I get it
I can’t make it better and I won’t promise it will get better, though for me it has, and I really thought that was never possible, but ignore that.
I am not here to cheer you up.
If “being cheered up” was the answer, you would feel awesome. It sucks that that is not the problem (and that well-meaning idiots think it is.)
One of the best feelings I had last year was when I was suicidal sitting in a room surrounded by other people who were in their worst depression ever.
It was “not being cheered up” personified.
It was “let me feel the same shittiness you feel and I am not going to cheer you up because I could not even fake that and there is no need for you to fake it either because that would be totally lost in this room right now.”
I wish I could be your rent-a-depressive. I would just lay next you in bed and we could moan together and cry and scream, or just stare at the same spot on a wall.
You would know, even though our crap is not the exact same, that you are not alone and maybe being in the room with that would be enough to get through a couple of hours.
I get it.
Feel everything you are feeling no matter how painful it is.
There is no need for guilt.
You do not have a weakness. You have an illness and oddly, that is awesome because even though you don’t believe it in this moment. illnesses can be treated. (I have a brain that has gotten electroconvulsive therapy. It worked and I never ever thought it would. There is help)
Pick a person, a hospital, and outpatient group and reach out, even though the act of reaching out seems like too much right now.
There are so many of us and you are worthy of getting better and of meeting others who say “I totally get your shit.”
I don’t even know you and in this moment I get you and identify with you more than most people in my own life.
You are not alone.
———————-
Okay, gonna go audition for the camp play, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, wish me luck.
———————-
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
———————-
Dear Supportive People,
Deena
———————-
Dear Supportive People,
Thanks for all your continued virtual support.
———————-
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
———————-
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.
Hey body and brain, I am totally open to feeling good. I am here to accept what you have to offer. I will even read The Secret or whatever is the new Secret and follow it like an overweight bride-to-be pays attention to her points during her first week of Weight Watchers.
I had my last treatment Thursday. Got shocked and hoping i will get a much needed boost soon. Come on body, don’t make me try that five hour energy shit. I am not bluffing. I will drive to my closest gas station and chug it like a fraternity pledge doing shots of Everclear.
I am open to anything. Tell me what to do Iyanla Vanzant. I am all yours.
I am okay, really. Just low and tired and ready to be something different.
Allright, self, let’s do this.