Fuck Positive

Fuck Positive

Life has been a motherfucker lately; it’s always a motherfucker, but this year my mom has a lung disease that should kill her sooner if not later.  I’m not the primary caretaker, holy no—she has insurance and a loving husband--I’ve only had to run around doing menial last wishes chores. It took her bank I don’t know how many resubmitted applications to get a safety deposit box transferred to my son; it seems nothing can ever be done simply over the phone. I walked with my mom through rows of clothes and boxes of novelty sweaters—in the end, she could part with nothing to give to the poor because she liked it all.  “You’re the poor, Debbie, so you can just come get it after I die.” 

Having a dying mom makes for a less than baseline positive self and I’ve always been a depressive person so let’s just say I’ve been grim lately. More anxious than usual. Other family members are probably progressing in their respective treatments for their various illnesses, but managing all their appointments and issues is a bitch; I’m always on the phone. I have phone phobia to begin with—I get clammy palms and a racing heart when I talk to a disembodied voice—and here I act like a receptionist almost every day with medical appointments.  Prioritize your own healthcare, everyone says. Put the oxygen mask on Mommy first. But of course, I always haven’t.

The sort of psychotherapy that dead broke Louisiana seems to push when it can’t provide actual services for those who live in pain and wretchedness is Let’s Focus on the Good Stuff. I have nothing against positive thinking, but I’d rather have the 40 hours a week childcare that the state owes me for my disabled daughter. Sophie is on a 10 year waiting list for a sitter, and I also have a disabled husband and the world’s judgement because I’m not going out and making more money. Oh right I have a mental illness myself but the free clinic only has so much time to offer me so I’m not getting the proper medical attention I need. But positive thinking works as well as the yoga and tai chi I don’t have time to do because last week I juggled six medical appointments for the disabled members of my family who DO have Medicaid, plus the dog got her ovaries yanked out.  Meanwhile I can’t see a doctor without insurance in this town for issues other than my bipolar--my sprained ankle won’t heal, I have sciatica pain, and although the new governor has promised health insurance for my income group by July, I still don’t have it, and folks at the clinic on Government street says that unless more people are hired to handle the applications, Medicaid for thousands ain’t happening soon.  So while the water heater breaks, the plumber comes by for his monthly visit, while various social workers call in late or tell me they have to re-do assessments for my son or daughter they didn’t do right the first time (my son is about to get a shiny new diagnosis of high-functioning autism like his dad), while my mom goes around telling every grocery clerk and bank teller that she looks great but the doctors say she could go anytime now, I try to be positive.  One thing I’ll say for myself—I try. It’s probably my subclinical OCD and perfectionism that makes me want to report back to the social worker at the clinic: “I TRIED BEING POSITIVE LAST WEEK.”

Being positive often involves going outside and enjoying the yard, but yesterday it was cold and a hard thunderstorm had blown all the early blooms off my favorite magnolia tree.  My son’s at-home therapist was late. David Bowie was still dead. I had too many phone-calls yet to make.  

I told my husband, “I feel like I’m in charge of a mental ward when I really should be one of the patients.”

“That’s silly,” he said, “People in charge of mental wards have more staff than you do.”

So I tried something else.

I remembered that years ago, during my first hospital stay at Brentwood, a very nice facility in Shreveport, back when I was under my dad’s insurance, back when I was a teenager and before there was any suspicion of bipolar 1, I was diagnosed with major depression and an eating disorder. In group therapy, people were asked to image the worse that could happen and to accept it. One girl, who had an eating disorder similar to mine said that her worst fear was getting fat—she cried and accepted getting fat if that meant she could live and everyone congratulated her and there was much ooh wow wonderfulness all around. Then we got around to me and my worst fear was dying, and I said I couldn’t accept that, even though I had already tried to kill myself, and I admitted this was a paradox, and the doctor said we’d get around to me next week.

We didn’t. I left the hospital against medical advice soon after.  I’d been there for months, not getting any better, and my dad was convinced I’d get better at home. I actually did get better at home, if you consider gaining weight and going back to school and not dying getting better. As they say, there’s always room for improvement.

So yesterday I thought about my whole worst fear ultimatum the Brentwood psychiatrist had delivered.

I wondered if it was the same.  Do I still fear death and crave it?  Suicide is no longer an option when you have family depending on you. Many times, even very recently, I’ve wanted to die because life just sucks. But I thought harder, and no, that wasn’t at my worst fear. My worst fear was plain just dying too soon and leaving my needy family.

Could I accept the fact that I might have a shorter life span than 90 and that I might go out in 15 years? That like David Bowie and my mom, I will die of some disease in a proper timely age (honestly, it’s not gauche to die in one’s 60s) and leave my oh so dependent family? What about my very special needs daughter?  State care for the rest of her life? Having bipolar 1 statistically shortens my life but my grandmas lived hella long so genetically that boosts me some, but the fact is, I’m not getting any younger and I only have maybe a decade and a half of true vitality left. And probably more hard work ahead of me given my luck.

Could I accept that?

I did.

I felt better when I did. I figured that I would probably whine more somewhere down the line but I didn’t cry. There was nothing else to do but know that I would die, that I would leave my Sophie and Asher and Max to fend for themselves, for better or worse, in that worse case scenario. 

Oddly enough, I think accepting worse case scenarios, even making them real, takes away some anxiety if not all of it. It’s not positive thinking at ALL.  But after imagining myself only living for another 15 years, I started planning, in my squirrel with nuts way, for a trip to California. I didn’t check Facebook. I didn’t listen obsessively one more time to David Bowie’s creepy last album about death. I had an afternoon cup of coffee while the plumber wrote me another bill and I did some math (amazingly, without crying) with an eye towards that California trip.

After all, I figured, it might be the last family trip I might take. Not just before I die but before Max gets Alzheimer’s –or more realistically, Asher grows up and moves out on his own. But allowing myself to think about negative scenarios and accepting them let me calm down in my own way. Fuck positive. Really. That’s just not me.

I'm a Rat

Sometimes I think I might just make it after all, but before I can throw my beret up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore, another appliance breaks down or my ears start ringing (usually a benign D flat due to allergies but I get a little heart attack thinking my meds are off and I’m about to hear voices again) or some little letdown happens—this week it was my trying to score a sub teaching job on the last week before I’d be dropped from the roster for not working enough. I tried so hard to work; I arranged childcare; I got a ride; then there were no sub jobs that morning. I cried like a motherfucker. Stuff like this is foreground against a background of the usual anxieties—will my husband come back from his psych appointment this time or will he be committed again (he’s been tossed in the hospital only twice in the past year—I tend to worry), will my disabled daughter be cared for when I’m gone and when will those ABLE accounts open up in banks in Louisiana so I can start saving up for her, will my son's six hours of testing this month show that he has autism like we’ve suspected all his life and what does that mean about me that I haven’t really addressed his issues until now—his therapist told me to forgive myself because I’ve been triaging everyone else wounds but I’m wracked with guilt. As I type these words, there’s a rat in the kitchen and my husband set a live trap out for it. The two cats also have an eye on the rat. Poor rat—I identify with it. It really has no escape—it had the great fortune to escape a recent flood in the creek to seek shelter in a house with killer cats, two dogs (who will chase it but really don’t kill) and a trap with cheese.  Like that rat, I’m offered all sorts of options—they all are stressful and even the one with cheese looks like a trap. REFRAME your circumstances, say some therapists. Be like fucking Viktor Frankl. Or the opposite message—don’t forget to grieve. You’ve had it rough. Process your feelings. Don’t keep it all bottled up. Acknowledge the pain. Mourn your lost self, blah blah.

I’m so fucking over this hard life and I just want to go see Star Wars The Force Awakens this weekend with my family. I’ve already warned everyone that I’m going to cry like a bitch because I love the whole stupid fantasy that much and all the old actors.

Been reading lots of Carrie Fisher stuff about her bipolar 1 lately, identify so much. Didn't have her safety nets of course (wow, what fun it must be to be that rich and that manic) but still, when she writes about her illness it's like OH YEAH, THAT'S IT. I didn't self-medicate as severely as she did--that's one issue this family doesn't really have (knock on everything--we have so many other problems besides addiction). I'm having such a whiny spell right now of "what if"-- what if I had been diagnosed early before getting a spotty work record and so many false starts and feeling so miserable for decades before hitting the right drug cocktail, what if I hadn't had a spotty work record, what if I had been able to pay into Social Security instead of using a fake social security number because I was undocumented until 1999 and might be able to qualify for actual disability benefits today because I have a legitimate disability--then again, all I hear is "try harder" "pull yourself by your bootstraps" "don't be dependent." My bootstraps have snapped so many times from being yanked upside my crotch now, and I've tried so hard. I'm dependent. Like a lot of people, I'm dependent on government money, on the kindness of others, on fantasies of Star Wars and myself evolving from Princess Leia into General Leia. I'm dependent but I'm also pretty dang strong; I've come a long way; I run a household, have inspired some students, and I haven't shot up anyone this week, ok? My illness is who I am; there are people out there who want disabled people to change or fake it instead of accommodating to us. There are people out there who are scared of us, who judge, who really think we’re that violent (we’re more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators) or put a strain on the economy with our lazy ass entitlement and need for fake ass pills. I actually had a perfectly nice person tell me a couple weeks ago that I would be just fine if I had a placebo pill instead of my anti-psychotics and continued with my yoga and tai chi. I was never so glad to be well medicated or I would’ve punched his sorry ass face.  Nah, I wouldn’t have punched. Before meds, I did do a lot of tossing wine into peoples’ faces for dramatic effect. Nowadays I still sob a good bit.

I’ll keep you posted about the rat. I’m pretty worried about him, like I don’t have enough to be anxious about.

ETA--rat update. The rat is dead. It either made a break for it and dropped dead in the hallway (from stress of being preyed upon by all our pets?) or it was shaken to death by Leah the catahoula. I was outside teaching Olivia the pit bull down-stay and Ichigo the orange tabby was watching. Momo the black cat was asleep. Winky doesn't hunt. Max found the rat outside my study door, soft and newly dead, with no rigormortis and no Momo signature wounds. Leah was the only animal in the vicinity. She's never killed before though. I'd seen her growling where the rat was last spotted, though--all the animals were on the poor thing's scent. I'd've dropped dead of a heart attack myself. Let this be a lesson to me. At least it went out running for freedom, like Butch or Sundance, instead of starving to death in the kitchen cabinet.

My latest essay, dated Sept 30, is password protected. If you want to read it and know how to reach me, ping.

A Steve Martin Joke About Death

A Steve Martin Joke About Death

I can get so Death-obsessed, always have been this way, used to believe as I child that I was the original “Debbie-downer.” Some days I wonder how ok I really am, if that ok is enough to be in charge of a family of special needs people and my menagerie of animal companions, but it doesn’t matter—I’m who’s here, and there’s ain’t no one else being sent over by G-d or government to fill the pillboxes or clean the chicken coop.

Updates may be spotty for a bit because I’m struggling with processing another family member’s critical illness—this time an aging family member, a natural decline, and while I’m not the primary caregiver, there’s a an inevitable sadness. I guess that sadness is depression. On the care-plan I get from the free clinic it says my bipolar 1 is “active”—now, that doesn’t mean I actively hallucinate or am incompetent. It means my depression is active. It has been for over a year—same with “anxiety.”  So much for treating it in Bobby Jindal land though—my psychiatrist told me to keep on doing my tai chi and yoga, that the meds only can do so much, that the social workers are overbooked.  Eh, it’s ok, I’m fine, I’m fine. The social workers I see for myself and my family’s multiple issues pour praise on me. The praise amuses me—I find myself wishing it were money or time. I realize that this wish is a depressive’s wish, that all praise runs like pricey perfume out of a tiny bottle onto a vast dark ocean and floats there, meaningless.

I wonder why my husband never got a care-plan from the same free clinic in Bobby Jindal land, but consistency and competency aren’t the clinic’s strong points. This is the same clinic that didn’t give my husband any medication for five weeks after committing him in May. This is the same clinic that promises me a whole hour of therapy once a month but usually double books me so I get one half hour instead, during which time I’m praised for all the hard work I do—that’s nice, and the social worker I see is actually very good, but if I had some regular cognitive behavioral therapy or support I might be able to do more hard work. Maybe. Or if the clinic actually wasn’t shy about prescribing anti-anxiety medication for fear that its clientele would sell it or abuse it, I might get Klonopin for the short-term and get some sleep and be more functional as a parent and caregiver. But eh, I’ll sleep eventually. Never mind the adage that a person with bipolar is one bad night’s sleep away from an episode. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for five days now for worrying about Death.

The a.c. busted on the hottest day of the year in Baton Rouge and cost me the weekend price so my driving lessons are going to be a little delayed. I’m not as worried about facing my lifelong phobia of driving at the moment as I am about Death in general. It used to be that in my youth I was obsessed with Death, probably since the onset of my first depressive thoughts at age 10 or so, and I hoarded the fear by reading confessional poets and existential philosophy. Then my roommate in college died of AIDS in 1992 and I got slapped into appreciating even the cruddy moments of my life—David’s death coincided with Prozac being widely prescribed and I was the beneficiary of that ride and lo, I was never hospitalized in a looney bin again.

But here I am today, still sad and “active” under my axis 1 diagnosis. My daughter’s bipolar is in “remission” and I wonder what it will take for mine to be. Maybe one day someone will invent a pill to make the world a less horrible place? I skim Facebook and a friend of a friend of my Zen priest friend posts something Zen that reminds me of how I used to deal with my suicidal rage (probably mixed episodes) in the days before meds. I used to be still and bear the pain in loneliness. I may have actually had some Zen realization in those days that there was no alone, that there was no war with myself. But these days with the noise of chores, children, where is the time to bear? Now, in writing this?

I’m very happy for another friend who recently was awarded disability after the usual long, protracted ordeal with the government. Social security doesn’t award you based on how sick you are, of course—it awards you based on how long you worked or how much you paid into the system. Some people are dying or on life support by the time they get their disability money. As I type this, I’m still fighting social security to restore my disabled daughter’s regular SSI payments on a judge’s ruling (the local office seems not to have received the memo and is being willfully obstinate about facts).  My husband never got proper disability (only SSI) because he worked FOR the government as a teacher and didn’t pay into social security; I have a disability but I was an undocumented alien (brought here as a baby) and when I worked as an adult I did so illegally or I quit because I got crazy so I never paid into social security either. It’s all so unfair but then again, my favorite joke in the old days was Steve Martin’s “We’ve had a lot of fun considering we’re all going to DIE SOMEDAY.”

Death is Life is Death.  Perspective jolts help my mood, along with coffee in the morning. I read an article about the universe being older than we presumed or expected to die billions of years earlier than expected. I take an online test that forecasts my time of death. I have forty more years to live.  At odd moments, I see no difference between myself and the universe entire.