Tomorrow is your birthday. And I was thinking maybe, just maybe, I would have the bestest gift in all the world to give you. Or maybe I was deluding myself into thinking it could even be a remote possibility. But I was having symptoms. Actual symptoms! So, of course, I broke down and tested, again. And I failed, again. And then, because I had stated not three weeks ago even that I was going to stop thinking about it, stop obsessing, just learn to accept and be calm, I hid my failure under used tissues in the trash can. I want to be calm and accepting, but I also wanted to surprise you, to give you (us) something you would never forget, to give you this fairy-tale ending (or beginning, really). Maybe next year….
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One thing I am still coming to terms with here is how much to share. I tend to be a fairly guarded person. Letting the wall down is hard, and here I am, spilling. In fairly generic yet transparent terms. You said you didn’t mind. You had no problem with me sharing, with people knowing. But the failure isn’t on your head or in your heart, it’s on me. And that’s hard.

It’s also hard to know that 90% of the readers are people we know. The anonymity of the interwebs is a beautiful thing, and it helps me get stuff off my chest and out of my brain. Writing here has been a nice outlet. But what happens when someone reads, and feigns sympathy to my face, but behind closed doors is judgmental? And ok, I’m not giving our friends very much credit (sorry everyone), but I also feel like not too many of our friends are in similar places or have a similar mindset about all of this. But maybe that’s just my insecurity coming out…

Sorry to be so dramatic. I’m going to go ahead and blame that on the clinical depression. Everything escalates to super drama in my mind, and then I get to type it out and share, for better or for worse. So, happy birthday. Sorry I’m lame.

To me, it’s always felt like my mum was the glue that kept our family together. She was solid and stable and kept everything running smoothly. She kept the calendar up-to-date on our fridge, knew which kid had to go where on a given night, planned meals, grocery shopped, cleaned, and worked full-time. (This isn’t to say that my dad didn’t do anything; he was equally involved, and our house would have fallen apart without him, but to me, Mum ruled.) She was always well-dressed, attentive to everyone around her, gentle, caring, loving yet stern when needed, she was my everything in a lot of ways.

My sophomore year of high school, though, that rock-solid stability started to falter. She started forgetting things, missing details, losing thoughts. She started napping a lot and crying more than I was comfortable with. Reoccurring nightmares made it such that she would walk our halls at night, afraid to try to sleep.

I remember the day they told me so distinctly. It was a dark February day, a Friday. I had come home from school and she was already there, on the couch, wrapped in blankets. She had been missing work a good deal by then. I sat down with her and we talked for a bit. She explained things to me as much as she could before the talking and thinking had exhausted her too much. My dad was at the kitchen table, and as I searched his eyes for an answer, I quickly came to understand that he didn’t have one. He was lost, drifting, trying not to explode, pleading with me through his eyes to not make a scene.

“She has to go,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She has to go away, she has to get help. This is one of the better programs, this Vet Hospital treats PTSD, and we’ll be able to visit. It’s only a few hours away.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, two to three months. It’ll just be you and me for a while.”

I don’t know how, but this is one of the few times I held my shit together for them. (About an hour later, though, when Tim picked me up to go to a movie, I lost it, absolutely lost it. I cried throughout the whole movie – the first time I ever cried at a movie – and something in me broke that day; I now cry at almost any movie, as though my body has decided that this will be my release.)
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About five years later, after continued treatment and therapy, options to treat her PTSD were still being explored. She was much better, but still not entirely functional. It was hard, really hard, on the family. I can’t imagine how hard it was on her.

My dad has this thing about always being treated by the best. No matter what it took, if someone had a health issue, he felt the best doctors in the country should be sought out. So, my mum was being treated at Johns Hopkins for geriatric medicine. She wasn’t that old, but her symptoms were pointing to Alzheimer’s, and Hopkins was one of the best. She had multiple CAT scans, and my dad sent the films to be read not only by her doctors there, but also by brain specialists across the continent. It was acknowledged that her brain was altered, that her grey matter did in fact look similar to a brain of someone with advanced early-onset Alzheimer’s. But, thankfully, it was just her PTSD. This ‘disorder’ was so severe it had physically changed the make-up of her brain. It was scary, but also a relief.
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An article in the New York Times this week reports that the Pentagon has decided that PTSD does not qualify someone for the Purple Heart. Because “it is not a physical wound”. This makes me sick. It makes me want to jump up and down and scream. My mother’s brain has been physically altered. She was in war over 40 years ago and is still suffering the consequences, but wouldn’t be eligible because her scars are on the inside. Now, I understand some of the Pentagon’s reasoning – I’m sure a lot of people do try to fake PTSD to avoid further service, and I understand it is hard to diagnose. But maybe, instead of disregarding it yet again, they should look into further studying this disease, so that there are better standards by which to diagnose and treat PTSD.

How many people need to suffer this for the military to start to take it a little more seriously?! Are the reports of vets who turn violent, vets who are unable to be reintroduced into society, who shut down and can no longer deal not enough? Instead of throwing our resources at wars with no end, maybe we should be thinking a little more about what happens when thousands of men and women come home with long-term PTSD. What happens to the spouses and children of those vets who then live with this suffering, who start experiencing their own suffering, who breakdown along-side their loved one? Screw you, Pentagon.

One of the things about my particular flavor of crazy is how I react to the unexpected. I am normally a functioning, logical human being. But once in a while, there is a hiccup in “the plan” that will completely throw me. Something doesn’t go according to how it had played out in my mind, and I shut down. Any sense of logic or rational thought become foreign concepts and my brain races through any number of worst-case scenarios, settling on the one that creates the most panic deep down, welling up and out in all sorts of unhealthy and spastic ways.

Recently, my life has been dealing with the unexpected. I research and plan, take all necessary precautions and actions to ensure the outcome I desire. But it’s not enough, and I stand here feeling helpless, my need (and ability) to control ripped from me. The worst-case scenario has been established. My situation is so far from becoming my worst-case scenario, and I know that. I recognize that my ‘big deal’ is so minor, so insignificant to what countless thousands have gone through, to even put myself in a parallel category is laughable. And I’ve been handling it – trying to stay positive and not over-react – but I am still caught off guard now and then, finding rage and tears uncomfortably close to the surface.

Life’s little ironies spitting in my face, having a good chuckle on me.

But maybe it’s for the best. Maybe this time I can be a better person. Maybe I can learn to (finally) let go a little, loosen the grip, take things one day at a time. I’ve been working on that. And once in a while, I’m caught off guard by the calm I feel. Not often, mind you, but here and there, I am able to sit and smile and be ok with where I am.

I started going to therapy at age 13, shortly after three grandparents died within a 15 month span.  My day had developed into a breakdown that looked something like this:

8 hours – school
1-2 hours – eating, homework, etc
14+ hours – sleep

At first doctors thought I had mono.  They took lots of blood, ran lots of tests, but I was healthy, except for that pesky exhaustion.  It took months before they diagnosed depression, but once they did, I had an hour appointment weekly for most of the next eight years.

The first therapist was a wash, a wretched older woman who, after a single session, told my father that I was a morbid child.  Um, thanks.  Helpful.  With complete disregard of my extreme dislike for her, I continued to go there, to talk about death, music, whatever.  Nothing changed.  I wore black all the time, had Metallica’s Black Album running constantly in my walkman, and spent as much time as I could get away with in my room, alone.  My parents eventually acknowledged the huge amount of money they were wasting, and therapy stopped for a short while, thankfully.  

About a year later, I realized all was not right with my head.  I had entered high school and my social status as an outcast had not only followed me, but seemed to strengthen.  I stole cigars from my dad and convinced my brother, home on leave, to buy me a few cartons of cigarettes.  Violent thoughts became an obsession.  Screaming matches between me and my dad were a regular occurrence.  I looked for ways to be destructive, to myself and others.  And it scared me.  So, one day in the car as we pulled up in front of my school, I asked my mum to help me find a therapist.  I explained the things I felt, the urge to sometimes grab the steering wheel on the freeway and jerk it so hard the car would slam into the jersey barriers, the desire to not wake up the next morning, every morning.  I told her about the empty bottle of tylenol. As I talked, I saw her face go white, and she slowly started to cry.  What an awful feeling – to make someone you love and care so deeply about hurt like that.  (I have often tried to have that sort of impact on family members – mostly my dad – in the heat of a rage, screaming insults, but would never ever want to affect my mum like that.  And that I had, without intending to, just tore open the wound all the more.)

So, I started visiting with Debbie, and we stuck together for the next five years.  She was a good fit, and once we got to know each other a little, we worked well together.  She knew when to push me and get in my face, and she knew when to just sit back and let me explode all on my own.  I guess that’s part of what makes a good therapist…?  Unfortunately, my progress plateaued, and stronger methods of treatment were sought.  And that method was Wellbutrin.

It’s a funny thing, being on an anti-depressant.  I hated it, but loved it at the same time.  I was like a frat boy, with a fear of commitment, yet knew I wouldn’t walk away.  I didn’t want to admit it had any affect on me or my behavior, but at one point, sitting at the kitchen table, my mum told me that it felt like she had been given her “old, happy-go-lucky Becky back” and I just cringed and cursed the stupid chemicals that seemed to be doing their stupid job.  

A few years later, during my first year at an art school I had transferred to, I had an encounter that somehow made me swell with pride….  I was in the hotshop (glass blowing facility) with two classmates, both female, both a bit nuts.  They were talking about their weekly-scheduled phone check-ups with their psychiatrists back home, about the most recent dream, and how it obviously pointed to what an awful father they had, blah blah blah.  Next thing I knew they were talking about what pills they took, how much they needed them.  It was as if they reveled in their craziness.  They identified themselves as unbalanced, and needed to make sure everyone knew just how ‘on the edge’ they were.  I barely knew them, was shy and awkward, but they turned to me.  ”What do you take?”  Huh?  ”Well, what are you on?  Or don’t you need medication?”  It was almost accusatory.  ”Um, actually, I’m on Wellbutrin,” I told them, and they just stood there, completely stunned.  ”No, no way – a mood stabilizer?”  ”That’s serious shit, that’s for people with crazy mood swings.  So, you’re really nuts?”  

And somehow, for whatever silly reason, that interaction is what made me comfortable with what I needed to maintain a stable, happy life.  I had shocked into silence these two gals, these two decked-out, hipster art students.  Little old me, quiet and reserved, had surprised someone and made them think differently about me.  I don’t know what this says about me.  Am I looking for validation?  I don’t think so.  But I walked away from the shop with a smile on my face that day.

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About ten months ago, I decided it was time to see what life was like on the other side, without the daily dosage.  It had been almost ten years of medication, and I needed to know if this was a lifelong dependency, or merely a means to help me through a rough time in my life.  So, talked with Tim (the husband) and we agreed that he was able to step in at any point and tell me I was becoming batshit.  Ten months later, and we’ve had to have that talk only once or twice, after periods of self-created gloom.  I definitely have patterns of depression, definitely fall into a mode of self-destruction when feeling down, but he calls me on it, and helps pull me back up.  All of the studies I could find say that if you are going to boomerang back into severe depression, it happens pretty shortly after stopping medication (at least that is what was found to be the case with Wellbutrin).  Well, no boomerang here.  I’ll always be a little crazy, but maybe now it’s in a good way.