I genuinely miss him when he's gone. I genuinely tear up at sentimental quotes about moms and their boys. He's at that age, though...."Oh, mom, stop...but buy me this first....."
I still admit I burst into tears last night when I was thinking about him at a cosmic moment and he instantaneously texted me a simple "Hi." It was too freaky.
Stability was fine, I guess, while it lasted. Neither WAY up nor WAY down, my new therapist wants me to keep track of my moods on a scale of 1-15, with 15 being like almost despondent-depressed, and 1 being hypomanic. When I went to see her on Friday morning, I told her I was about an 8 on the depressed spectrum. I explained to her (and she understood why) I felt that a hypomanic episode, given midterms and the amount of work I have ahead of me, would give me an enviable edge. While I might be scattered enough to start 18 projects with grandiose plans to finish them all, at least they'd jump start and perhaps I'd be able to complete them as I stabilized. But Friday wasn't happening. Books out, syllabi earmarked, case studies in front of me, drowsiness despite an entire pot of coffee knocked me out. For five hours. In the middle of the day. (SuperJuls was like, "That was QUITE the nap!") That's not a "nap." That's a "night's rest."
Some fellow bloggers who write about their experience with bipolar disorder will agree: no one will look at you and *think* that you're sick. You're not covered in boils. You haven't had a measurable heart attack. Your nose isn't running and you're afebrile. Mental illness is covert. And if you're good, really good at it, as I am, you can convince just about anyone that there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. (And besides, nobody likes a buzzkill.) I try not to fault people who say things to me like "Keep on plugging along!" or "Concentrate on what you have to do!" as if this condition was something I could just shake off and press forward. Look online and you'll find literal lists of WRONG things to say to someone who's bipolar. A popular one is "Just forget about it...only you can change how you feel." Another great one? "Go out and get some fresh air." (Because of course, it makes perfect biological sense that an alteration in the imbalance of brain chemicals is remedied by an influx of fresh oxygen to the lungs. Right?)
The truth? No, as a matter of fact, I *can't* change the way that I feel. If mental defect was all a matter of an adjusted attitude, none of us would be handcuffed to a lifetime of psychotropic medications. If my moods were as easy to reverse as changing a dead light bulb and screwing in a new, bright one, don't you think I would have, you know, DONE that a long time ago?
What I've personally found to be true of both bipolar disorder and PTSD, having both conditions simultaneously, is that they're largely trigger-based in addition to (at least bipolar) being chemical interruptions. A super-positive experience or achievement can flood your head with feel-good dopamine, not unlike having an orgasm that goes on without ceasing for days, or being high on drugs. Mania is getting up at 5 am after 2 hours of sleep, taking a shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast and flying off on errands before hunkering down and cranking out 3, 10-page papers in a few hours. Apart from the scatter-brainedness of trying to engage in conversation as you jump topics like a relay runner, the average person will simply think that you're really happy, or over-enthusiastic. The downside? It eventually ends, pretty badly.
Conversely, negative triggers (disagreements, icky stress, insomnia, bad dreams, or the anticipation of major life-altering events or decisions, other medical problems, work, hell, $1000 in unexpected car repairs) can precipitate an episode of major depression, or in the case of PTSD, disabling fear and anxiety during which everything and everyone is scary and dangerous. Put simply, it really, really sucks. Why I even bothered to shower and put clothes on yesterday is anybody's guess. It's not like I went anywhere. Cloistered in my house, my car which won't be ready until Monday, once again I set out to crank my theories midterm paper. Don't get me wrong--ideas and direction are in my head, but I lacked the capacity to follow through with the project. What'd I do instead? I took another long nap.
When I'm chock full of negative triggers and in a depressive state, though in contact with loved ones, I disregard positive self-care. (My school is HUGE into the concept of "self-care.") One might argue that sleep is a positive self-care mechanism, but neither too little nor too much sleep is recommended. But it's at these times, I'm typically not eating, pumping anti-nausea and diarrhea medication, stuck in the bathroom more than a dozen times a day, in lounge clothes all day, un-showered and with the exception of brushed teeth, I'm not exactly socially presentable. I chain smoke. About the most I look forward to is the time of the evening when I can take all of my sense-numbing psychotropic medications and await the wave of malaise to guide me towards my bed, though half the time, I'm not sure how, exactly, I made it there.
The roughest? A mixed-mood episode. Rapid cycling. Those are the nights I fall asleep writing at my desk, my head churning zillions of ideas but my body shutting down, usually culminating in waking my family up by the sound of the loud thud of me, having been asleep for hours in my office chair, finally slumping to the floor with the imprint of my keyboard spread across my forehead. I think my family is finally so used to it, they've stopped coming in my room to check and make sure I didn't break any bones. The thud awakens me enough to, again, guide me to bed, usually *after* I figure out where the hell I put my eyeglasses, which I've not-so-mysteriously busted no fewer than a dozen times in the last 6 months, in my sleep. (Lenscrafters, who repair my glasses at no charge, ask me every time I come in how in the hell I broke my glasses in such seemingly inexplicable ways. I'm out of excuses. Now, I just say, "Hell if I know.") If Luke's home, after I thud, or even while still in my transient dream-state, sometimes I'll seek him out in his room, interrupting his sleep. He gently walks me back to my room, cracks my window open, uncovers my bed, tells me I'm making no sense whatsoever, (reminding me the next morning of what I was babbling about) and puts my ambient music channel on, kissing my forehead goodnight. We try and do this as quietly as possible. When he's not home and I go looking for him, and I can't find him, I panic until I am awake enough to logically deduce that he's at his dad's. Yes, his therapist, father and I all realize this is a grossly unhealthy familial pattern.
Speaking of unhealthy patterns and dynamics, I'm in a relatively serious, cross-generational fight with a much-older friend. (Yeah, if you read me enough, you'll figure it out but I'm purposely not glaringly calling attention.) As to which I eluded like 2 years ago, being friends with someone who's a Baby Boomer is sometimes really difficult. Me even mentioning here that we're *having* a disagreement will be enough to tick him off further. In the course of conversation the other night, I suggested that it's, perhaps, more typical of his generation to sweep feelings, opinions and events under the rug, and pretend they don't exist. He argued his offense at my friends and I, for lack of a better term, publicizing our lives in detail, when in his view, it's a mark of disrespect and dishonor of privacy and confidentiality to expose the aforementioned, never mind that at least a couple of my closest friends are closer to his age than they are to mine.
I never got the chance to explain, amid him implying that he has lots of friends (a sudden bumper crop of divorced and widowed female friends he's never mentioned before, as if to say, "You're the most high-maintenance, childish girl in my life and I frankly don't have time for any more of your bullshit") and family members who all keep sensitive matters to themselves, that I grew up in a house full of secrets, between my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. Anything that brought to light cracks in the pavement of our nuclear existence were hush-hush and nobody's business.
When the male grownups argued, it was in Polish, so the women (except my Nana, who was fluent) and children wouldn't understand. I can't tell you how many times my brother and I were shepherded to either a neighbor or another un-involved extended family member's house for the evening while a "family meeting" was being held at our house between my mother, my father, my paternal grandparents, my dad's older brother and his wife...matters of unheard-of, unspoken, non-revealing skeletons chiefly (as I'd find out after I grew up) centered around my father's fores into misadventure, or failure, or shenanigans; or at worst, jeopardizing the very core of our family with his perpetual drunkenness and poor decision making and lack of impulse control, his moods unpredictable. Whenever I knew a "family meeting" was being held, it struck fear and anxiety in me when I was a little girl. I was tiny but smart. I knew somehow that my Daddy was in trouble for some reason or another.
Other members of my immediate family can refute my clinical opinion until they're hoarse. Scientists, geneticists & psychiatrists all conclusively agree that bipolar disorder presents as a chiefly inherited illness. It's not "the luck of the draw." I'm not an unfortunate mutation of the combination of mental disease and addiction. My mother disagrees with me because she, to be honest, didn't know what to look for, nor was mental illness (even worse than alcoholism) made public knowledge, treated or openly discussed, all in favor of putting on airs. The way I see it, from what I've understood, my father began drinking in his teens and by 20, was an alcoholic. His manic impulses manifested themselves much in the same way mine did, only more severe and devastating; his depressive episodes all drunkenly fought. (He had to have Bipolar I, whereas I have Bipolar II, which is slightly milder.) He started to drink (read: self-medicate) right around the typical time bipolar begins to exhibit symptoms. I'll bet if I could psychologically interview him now, he'd liken triggers that affected his moods (in either direction) and the puzzle would be arranged pretty quickly going back to his life events. Keep in mind, most of what I know about my father is anecdotal; my concrete memories of him ranging from about the age of 2-3 to when he died when I was 11. I don't have a lot to work with. Hence, I rely on what other family members tell me. My father wasn't in treatment long enough to have doctors "figure out" what was behind his addiction, never mind that the tools by which to diagnose and treat in the early 80's didn't exist. While my elder friend is busy "reconciling" his feelings of anger, betrayal and God knows what else with regard to my big mouth, I'm still left trying to reconcile why nofuckingbody at the hospital knew how to safely detox someone who's drank every day for 22 years by using medications to prevent delirium tremens, while my father's cardiac system completely exploded in 24 hours, instantly killing him with my elder friend's own father at the helm of pronouncing my father utterly and completely DEAD.
Taking *that* into consideration, my Boomer friend, I would hope, at the very least, understand exactly WHY I loathe secrecy and under-brushing or not honestly expressing emotions or feelings. Sometimes respecting confidentiality (and I think friends my own age would agree), while perhaps some colorful, detailed stories are indeed best kept out of the public eye, kills. It kills your heart--either metaphorically or physically. Forced to internalize or disregard extreme changes in mood, or expressions of either love or hate, does everyone a disservice.
My friend views Facebook, Twitter, etc as a ridiculous, time-wasting exercise in too-much-information and futility, once again, airing one's dirty laundry or that of others when nothing is anyone else's business. To a certain extent, I'll agree with him when it comes to inane status updates about people eating pancakes, or the weekly "Go Bears!" inundation. Sometimes Facebook updates are so banal, that I'll cut/paste them and post them over on Twitter, citing them as the "stupidest thing I read all day." What he doesn't get, because he's averse to the openly online culture, is that there are gems hidden in between insipid congratulatory wishes on Yo Yo Ma's birthday. There are those on Facebook who do what we deem "Vaguebooking," or posting confounding status updates purposely to alienate or express passive-aggressive diatribes. While superficially annoying, it's in updates like that, or other, more blatant expressions of present-in-time emotions that someone working with a psychologist's brain (with experience as a patient) can truly dissect and assist someone who otherwise wouldn't raise a "help me" flag. It's kind of like the online, mental version of, say, visiting your doctor complaining of heart palpitations. And I've experienced this with a wide variety of people--friends I've known for decades, people from church, down to names I barely remember from my teens. I find that if I'm open and honest about myself and my struggles, the more I can give back armed with a wise history, a perspective missing from most conventional client or patient/doctor relationships, which is WHY I DO WHAT I DO. Yes, sometimes the solicitations for advice or help couldn't come at a more inopportune time, like being on call 24 hours a day. I have my own shit to manage, which isn't easy. Yet, do I turn away anyone? Never. That is not my nature. It's also the manner by which I would (hope) to be treated by people with at least a minimal, vested interest in my well-being.
Not being in daily physical proximity to my Best Male Friend, how did I piece together his behavior coupled with what he was posting to Facebook and Twitter multiple times a day? By reading between the lines. By comparing what I knew of him versus the subjects and details about which he posted online. Was that time ill-spent? Was it inane? Was it too-much-information or the divulging of too much detail? A reflective "No." Had I not been paying attention to his tiresome online missives, I'd never have picked up on his patterns. In doing so, yes, I helped save his life. While I didn't make the ultimate decision for him, nor did I gather together an intervention (blech), calling him out on his posts led to his personal revelation that he was slowly killing himself and needed help, and I guided him as best I could. For that, he owes me nothing. He is not indebted to me. It's the same thing I would do for anyone else I loved or even cared about.
The medium of electronic communication, by its very nature, plunks shitbombs in peoples' laps which they didn't ask for, have little time for, don't appreciate, are irritating (sometimes) but are NO LESS valid or worthy of attention or care than a private discussion between 2 people over dinner. And it's public--and I'm part of it. While termed self-aggrandizing or egocentric, the tale of my life in print, subject to criticism and harsh dissection by even strangers on other sites, could be considered my own rebellion against the shame and secrecy of the culture in which I was raised. I don't sugarcoat. I don't hide. I'm crazy and a drunk junkie. My father was crazy and a drunk. My friends are embroiled in complicated situations. I have feelings that aren't reciprocated that eat away at my heart, that are interfering with my concentration, which my BMF, as politely as possible, addressed one-sidedly with my elder friend because he didn't know what else to do and he knew I was hurting, that route being a lengthy email. I'm also loved passionately in what's seemingly also an ill-fated situation. We're all colorful figures. The characters in my blog are real people with their own real feelings, which I guess I need to do a better job of respecting.
If being part of my life is embarrassing or shameful to any of you, or inappropriate, I apologize. I'm used to it. My last boyfriend harbored such disdain of the public acknowledgment that we were a couple, he quickly would remove himself from any photos of the two of us on Facebook, and continued to tout himself as being on-the-market even when he was (supposedly) exclusively mine. Being sorry and apologetic about myself and my life, however, wears me out. I'm not saying "My way or the highway," but nothing can be resolved or reconciled unless open dialogues and frank honesty, which includes time expelled, are fostered. A blithe "Yeah, see you around..." is a larger slap in the face than any of us should be expected to bear.
I mentioned in a previous blog having had dinner with my aunt and uncle recently, and the subject of bipolar disorder came up, upon which I poked my son's leg under the dinner table after my mom announced off-handed that I had it. My aunt asked me what it was and how you "get it." Knowing brain chemical disturbances would go right over her head, I simply said that it was "largely genetic." GASP! That implied, as is typical with my family, that ultimately, there's someone to BLAME. While I categorically hate being equated as being "just like" my father, seeing as I'm *not* dead and am recovering from addiction, when I piece together our lives side-by-side, they're remarkably similar, behaviorally. Why I'm the only one who recognizes this or sympathizes with it, I don't understand. A-ha! That brings us to the next Baby Boomer characteristic du jour, denial.
The physicians at my former place of employment would get aggravated at the lag in their schedules caused by patients whose agendas of problems and issues surpassed the scope of a 15-minute allotted appointment. (The patient base being largely elderly, or late-Boomers.) While their compassion and patience was no doubt appreciated by their patients, and while they would take extra time to listen, it seemed as if the ticking clock or the sand in the hourglass rang more loudly than the words and feelings iterated by the patients. Time management in medicine is a dumbar's struggle, especially in the advent of electronic-based charting, detailing and notating. In my aspired-profession, we refer to something called "core competence." My opinion is that, if the doctor, who's time is limited, cannot (either by virtue of his specialty or time), cannot spend an hour listening to the problems and issues of the patients, the ethical, compassionate, sound thing to do is to refer the patient out to a psychologist. Easier said than done with that generation, who by and large deny that they have emotional problems or issues that would benefit from the listening ear of a therapist. Certainly that's the case in my own family, and would've been the case in the course of treatment of my father, had he survived. The dichotomy of people reaching out versus their senses of pride and stigmas fascinate me to this day.
Ask me when, where and why my depressive episode began, and I'll tell you. Unlike my family, I'm not assigning blame to whom I believe to be responsible. That's unfair. My mental illness is my own situation to manage.
My mom is leaving town until the 11th and Luke is with his dad until then. Scheduling some free time with my friends has proven futile, with the exception of a friend who's doing a psychological survey for one of my classes. My elder friend wants nothing to do with me. I have school--midterms--work to do. Unless I reach out, which I certainly will if you hear from me, I'd prefer to be left alone to do my work and yes, my work tires me severely and no, I don't want to spend my scant free hours at AA. My phone lines are 24/7 open to two people, both of whom know who they are, BMF and my best girlfriend. I'm thinking of going to the Tattoo Factory alone, potential mugging be damned, though my friend who recently went plead with me not to go nuts in there permanently marking myself with something I'll later regret. I'll eat if I feel like it, but I'm really kind of a GI mess right now. I'm a little scared, and apprehensive about the solitude, though welcomed and freeing. Hopefully, in between depression-induced extensive napping, I will get my work done without the aid of too much Pink Floyd.
Barring other coping mechanisms, there's always Neil Diamond:
So I have this case study to analyze this weekend, on which I have to decide which psychological theory to apply and devise a treatment plan. Essentially, and admittedly I only read it through once, this gist is this:
A 42-year old virgin male who lacked affection from his mother, had a much older sister, felt in constant competition, a distant father, he has exactly 2 friends in the world, a couple with whom he has dinner once a week. He has no experience with socializing with either men or women, works in a solitary job as an engineer on lateral promotion with his company, and was referred into psychological counseling because of chronic tardiness at his place of employment. While employing several avenues by which to awaken on time in the morning, he cannot, so he frequently stays on nights and weekends to make up time. He has catastrophic fantasies of pending doom and has a history of suicidal ideations. He has a fear of barking puppies. He is timid at work and doesn't cause trouble. He eats alone in the cafeteria, avoiding social interaction. Seeing as cognitive dissonance has been my running theme for the week, I'm running with that as one of his presenting symptoms. While apprehensive about the intake interview and strongly encouraging the psychologist to read his previous evaluation, the psych had his own agenda in order to get to know the client on a level field. Blah, blah, blah.
Knowing how much I disagree with Freud, I think I'm going to apply this as a Freudian approach. (Read: 42 year old virgin, mommy issues, absentee father...) This is one instance where the psycho-sexual is regressing to explain this man's complexes problems. Classic ID-EGO-SUPEREGO.
ANYWAY.
Burned out from the week, after trying to finish the aforementioned case study, I nodded off..for FIVE hours.
It was an extraordinarily vivid dream. I seemed to awaken no fewer than 4 times in a hallucinogenic state, the dream continuing to compile in my head
I was in my big old Knox bedroom with Luke and Craig, and Craig mentioned having found every piece of artwork or displayed posters I had in my bedrooms over the years. He was also trying to help me to convince Terry Kinney, one of the founders of the Steppenwolf Theater (he's single--I should look him up) to give a talk at Knox (hey, he's from neighboring Lincoln IL, not too far from Galesburg!)
Craig and I picked out posters with Clapton on them, quoted postcards, Ansel Adams photography, John and Yoko pictures, and Luke sat in a corner playing his baby toys (though he was 12 in the dream.Craig worked perilously to redesign my dorm room exactly the way I remembered it, but with our mutual child involved too.
Then my friend, Sree, brought me a giant bag full of pills--morphine--enough to knock me out for MONTHS on end, which of course, I'd never do. The morphine was labeled under GF's wife's name, but spelled all wrong, and the morphine looked like itty bitty bullets, of which I took a whole ton because the bottle had something like 1200 pills in it. A junkie's paradise.
Craig found a large black plastic bag, cut it open with a knife and showed me "Look, I found everything we'd forgotten." It was full of papers Luke wrote, his art projects and all the trinkets and pictures we had on our married entertainment center. He also had Play-Doh in the bag, and when I went to separate the Play-Doh, I kept finding pills amid the dough. I didn't know what they were, but I panned on taking them anyway.
Call it narcotic craving syndrome, if you like. Don't know if we ever scored Kinney to speak at Knox, but he's certainly always welcome and I'd drive down to see him! But what was out of context? Craig seeming to rebuild the life we had when we were younger, except now we had a son together. That works for me.
Somewhere down the line, I was in Daley Plaza downtown, which is where I get off the train to go to school, and, armed with this bag of enormous morphine, I went in search of my late father, who was a Cook County Sheriff, and the Daley Center's raft with deputies. Why? I think for tips on where to hide it all, truly. Incidentally, one of my dad's side jobs was to personally bodyguard Richard Elrod, the Chief of Staff with the Cook County Sheriffs. (The latter being totally true.) I looked all over the place for my dad, but I couldn't connect with him.
This is, perhaps, the first Dad-seeking dream I've ever had where he didn't find me and I didn't find him. I was explaining to someone how my dad likes to visit me in dreams (Freud was HUGE into dream analysis) and I do get to hold him and talk to him. He looks exactly I remember him looking shortly before he died (jaundiced form too much booze, salt & pepper hair, tremendous blue eyes, and in those recurring dreams, he comes back, is healthy, and we don't know where he's been all this time, but he always says he can only stay a few hours. We get in a catch up, he sees the grandsons, announces his pride and that he loves every one of us, but then hastily has to leave.
I don't know why I was so adamant about finding him in the County Building. I think it was somehow for validation of me having the Rx for the morphine. I wish he could've stayed longer and that we could've caught up. Alas it didn't work that way. Seeing the County Sheriff's police force every day downtown makes me miss my dad that much more. It's actually unnerving to the Sheriffs around the Plaza, for it makes me miss my dad all the more. But "All Things Must Pass Away...." --George Harrison.
"Tell your brother. I love you both very much."--my dad's last words to me, 2/2/84, over the hospital phone, not even after 24 hours in "treatment," having a massive heart attack from liquor withdrawal (which they've greatly improved..by the time I went to rehab, it was all about keeping us comfortable and taking things one step at a time.
Come visit me again, Dad I need you right now. But stay. Please stay.
Oh give me just a small break. I purposely had the vows of "submitting" to one's husband taken out of my wedding. Instead, we said something like "To be inspired by and to respond," which didn't strike me as being as anti-feminist as the traditional way of looking at husbands and wives. This passage cracks me up (as well as cracking up several of my old college friends). I know a couple who should change their names to "Dr. and Mrs. Cognitive Dissonance."
Old fashioned, outdated, impractical...like everything else in the Old Testament:
"Like
the sun rising, so is the beauty of a good wife in her well-ordered home.
Happy is the husband of a good wife;
the number of his days
will be doubled.
A loyal wife rejoices her husband,
and he will complete his years in peace.
A good wife is a great blessing;
she will be granted among the blessings of the man who
fears the Lord.
Whether rich or poor, his heart is glad,
and at all times his face is cheerful.
A wife's charm delights her husband,
and her skill puts fat on his bones.
A silent wife is a gift of the Lord,
and there is nothing so precious as a disciplined soul.
A modest wife adds charm to charm, and no balance can weigh the value of a
chaste soul.
Like the sun rising in the heights of the Lord,
So is the beauty of a good wife in her well-ordered home."
Ecclesiasticus (Sirach)
26:1-4.13-16
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Dear Mr. President,
Late last week, in between starving to death and juggling 18 credit hours, I generously donated the last $5 on my unemployment debit card to the Obama/Biden campaign.
I am in receipt of your (see attached picture) most recent electronic plea. The minutes are ticking away before you metaphorically set fire to Mitt Romney's Sacred Mormon Bishop Holy underpants. Dude. You OWN the show. It's in the BAG. Chill the fuck out.
No, I will not send you the odd amount of $19. Next time you run to 7-11 for Funyuns and a Big Gulp, and forget your ATM card, it's your own damn problem.
I strongly urge you, as a proud American, to rid your campaign of publicists who misuse the native tongue and say things like "prouder" and that we need to "finish this campaign strong" with your signature attached to the correspondence, for it is beneath you. I couldn't be more surer that you'll emerge more victoriouser.
Study Break: Theories tomorrow. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm reading the 2 assigned case studies, because I motherfucking LOVE case studies. They fascinate me to no end. The chapter on CBT in the book? Given the obvious, that our professor will show us no fewer than approximately 100 Power Point slides on CBT, we'll discuss the case studies, then wind up with a class presentation on it is, in light of the fact it's the type of therapy I've been involved with as a client for--what is it--almost 4 years now--a lil' bit of overkill.
Though speaking of overkill, and while suicide is certainly, understandably, undeniably nothing about which to crack jokes, the case study of the suicidal clinical psychologist who was in CBT to quell her overwhelming disappointment at the loss of a boyfriend, had me at least chuckling to myself because the dialog between the therapist and his client (herself, like I said, a clinical psychologist) is, I guarantee you, almost eerily similar to therapy dialogues in which I have been the heartbroken, downtrodden, disenchanted, arm-slashing-with-a-steak-knife difficult, snide and argumentative client.
My life, admittedly, has been wrought with more failures than successes, which has been a philosophy of practicality my parents mapped out for me when I was very young, and, well, you know, self-fulfilling prophecies and all. But ne'er was I more inept at the successful completion of a task than when I tried committing suicide. Everyone...from concerned friends (Rule #1--never entrust a friend that you're suicidal who is a firefighter/paramedic, with all that duty-to-report you shit), puzzled and angry family members, social workers (the cockroaches of the psychology world) to ill-equipped quasi-talk-therapists from Lutheran Social Services, to police officers to paramedics, all engulfed me with good intentions, I guess, as I lied under bright lights in the emergency room.
So stinky ass drunk that I barely found my keys when the authorities SWAT-teamed my apartment, I left for the hospital without any shoes on, having nearly finished an entire jug of that awful Gallo wine that comes in giant gallons in one night. I was so *used* to drinking that I never vomited and never had a hangover. I called my friend Wes at like 2am, and basically just told him that Luke was better off with Craig, I had ceased to find one glimmer of hope--not even my son--and that I was planning to just quietly, uninterruptively cease to exist. I don't know if was my mental disease or the alcohol numbing all of my senses, but I can honestly say I just didn't give a damn anymore. (This was early May, 2007, and coincidentally, the night before my mom's first breast cancer chemo session.)
What did the team of experts conclude? That it was agreed...I was stinky ass drunk. The hospital team's solution? Close the curtain, dim the lights, send everyone away for the night and have a case worker see me in the morning, after I'd sobered up. No counteractive drugs. No stomach pumping. No attention, whatsoever. The "sleep it off" remedy, after which I would meet and gather phone numbers to various routes of assistance, my brother drove in to take me home (shoeless), and I promised I'd stop drinking. "Promised."
My brother bought me some Wendy's for lunch, a half-filled glass of wine still on my porch steps, and we talked for a while, before he went back to De Kalb. I, meanwhile, was wrangled into attending a Cinco de Mayo dinner at church. I came home and got stinky ass drunk all over again, the drink-to-blackout modus operandi would continue until the following winter. Hell, a week later, I threw a big 35th birthday bash at my house and all of my friends and I got plastered beyond recognition, en masse.
Speaking of alcohol, what IS this about young women soaking tampons in vodka and shoving them up their hoo-hah's? I understand the inherent biological concept, as well as that as "butt-chugging," or administering yourself an alcohol-fueled enema. The liver and stomach are bypassed and the alcohol rapidly enters the bloodstream and instead of it taking a heavy drinker 4 hours to become obliterated, such drastically disgusting tactics can get you really, super drunk really fucking quickly. Neither option sounds particularly pleasant nor safe to me, but it's becoming more and more popular, especially at the collegiate level. Either kids have gone crackers or I was raised in an old-fashioned culture.
In my heart, truly, did I want to die that night? In hindsight, no. In the moment, that severe edge upon which no one right-mindedly would teeter, seemed like the only logical way out of what was otherwise a totally irrational, permanent solution to the issue at hand (which, admittedly, I don't even remember).
When alcohol no longer satiated my pain, I turned to self-mutilation, the details of which I know I've explained to 100 people 100 times at least. What my first CBT therapist told me was that I cut myself because it worked....really, really well. Like I've said, it's so gory and painful, that when done with skill, the underlying layers of skin begin to actually feel very cold. You also, momentarily, while experiencing this agony, block out whatever icky thoughts have overtaken your head space. But once properly medicated and following the CBT therapist's behavior modification exercises, I overcame self-mutilation, roughly a year after I quit drinking altogether.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is wonderful, inasmuch as it advocates mindfulness, the Sanskrit representation of which I've chosen as my next tattoo, that I'm still debating with The Overwrought and Exhausted Guy Friend Whose Lack of Tact Nearly Keeled me Over On the Phone for a ride and more time together. (I've been listening to "Alone Again Naturally" and picking he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not flower petals for days, and am admittedly depressed at his supposed utter and complete rejection of me.)
The therapist in the case I studied, during which he fought her every ounce of negativity with a positively reinforcing opposite thought or behavioral pattern, fortified the client with her capacity for rational thinking and underscored her multi-layered successes versus her intake dogma for that session, which in summary, essentially implied, "I'm about 95% sure I'm totally going to off myself, but I figured what the fuck, I'll tread one more lap around the toilet bowl." It's the remaining 5% that, as a clinician, concerns me. True, the odds pointing toward her life perpetuation greatly outweighed her self-perceived futility. And the goal of any therapy session is to have your client walk out the door in a better frame of mind than when he/she/they entered the session.
It was an interesting dichotomy in the case study how the suicidal clinical psychologist was entirely capable of administering provoking thought, workable plans, hope, courage, and mindful assistance to her clients, while she was internally rotting with all-or-nothing visions of catastrophe based on the premise that the breakup with her boyfriend scarred her so deeply that she doubted she'd ever want to enter an opposite-sex circle of date-worthy, eligible males herself, having resigned herself to a life of lonely celibacy.
It's certainly possible that I'll come away from class tomorrow knowing something I didn't previously know about CBT, especially if I'm forced to rate how I *feel* about CBT on a scale from 1-10, determining my inherent anxiety on a worksheet in an effort to gauge, yet again, the strengths or weaknesses regarding my "automatic thoughts." With regard to the popular worksheets, that's not to say I wouldn't eventually ask that of my future clients, but I would be more than sympathetic if the worksheet experience didn't work for them.
If I had to define automatic thoughts to a layperson, it'd be loosely translated as those ideas, mores, values, opinions and impressions one has held in his/her head since childhood which manifest themselves in ugly, destructive ways when people are faced with things like anxiety, disappointment, heartbreak, or extended grief. These negative thought processes are psychologically called "schemas." CBT aims at reversing those deeply rooted lines of negative thought and replacing them with positive, affirming, healthy behaviors. That takes a lot of dedicated work on both the therapist's and client's part, as the client only gets out of CBT as much as he/she is willing to actively engage. (I DID do the worksheets for a while, early on, then told my revolving door of therapists that I'd only consent to that type of treatment if no extracurricular paperwork was involved.)
I liked the therapist in this study's dictation that indicated in great detail what behavioral modifications he employed with the suicidal client and got her to re-frame her negative schemas with positive schemas. His techniques worked (at least temporarily), or until the client had another shitty week and came back to start at the first step yet again. Like recovery from any addictive or habitual pattern, abstinence or dilution of symptoms takes practice and careful thought. The brain has the capacity to retrain itself, and humans have the capacity to alter lines of thinking or belief.
After Best Male Friend wrote Guy Friend a 6-page Annie endorsement and ass-whooping, Guy didn't say much other than something about it being a fascinating read and something I should cherish forever, which I certainly will. Late tonight, Guy texted that I wasn't the only one on ignore mode and his 16-hour days were wearing him thin, but that he might have time to catch up on Friday. Woe is he, but I'm not feeling particularly charitable after his glib proclamation over the phone Thursday night that he was flattered by my attraction but didn't share the attraction, which every friend I have thinks is a blatant lie inconsistent with his behavior and advances. I'm still unsure of what the hell is going on, but I guess I'll find out. All I can say is dear God, I'm NOT getting into another phone call with him talking about our relationship. If he wants to discuss heavy shit, he can meet up with me and tell it to me to my face, once his face is done beaming at the very sight of me approaching.
"Guy Friend, please take this worksheet and rate your emotions towards me on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being "OMG, you're heinous and I loathe you" to "Yeah, ok, I shouldn't be and it's a sin, but I kind of think I actually do share your feelings, but I'm scared to death of them." Only time will tell which pair of balls he's wearing the next time we interact.
OK, kids, I have to hit the hay. Don't fill up your below-waist orifices and drive carefully!
