The Other Me

On the hamster wheel that is my brain are a good many pressing thoughts and concerns.  Subjects which could weigh a gal down if she didn't work to balance them with joyous expression, humor and gratitude.  That there is why I spend time with my other blog, Push-Ups, sometimes seemingly at the expense of this blog.  My mind would wish to spend countless hours a day filling entries here, but my life requires me to maintain equilibrium for the sake of my family and the responsibilities I have chosen to accept as my part and parcel.  Posting pictures and waxing only mildly philosophical about the happenings on the home front requires less emotional energy and intellectual challenge.  Both of which I seem rather short on these days. 

But internally, I am here, feeling the reluctance of my station in certain areas, witnessing the continual unfairness which sucks like eternal quicksand at the heels of many around me, contemplating the realities which exist outside the boundaries of my third acre lot here in Jamison Place of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

While a certain fair-furred mutt leans into my legs while I embrace his lean and narrow chest, crooning those silly sweet-nothings that over-the-top dog owners say to their pets, I wonder what it would be to hug my youngest brother on a regular basis.  Instead of returning his collect calls, asking for the infamous Scratch from whatever client picks up the phone, and fighting the helplessness that threatens to overtake me while I listen to him fret, and rightfully so, about doctors who change diagnoses without warning and the doubling anti-psychotic meds without informing.  With a reduced budget which results in reduced staff and settles for less well educated professionals, the hospital reminds me more of a souped-up daycare. Instead of battling the ball in my stomach which contracts and expands when I must dial alternate numbers for hospital staff in positions of power of him, praying for my words to be right and the results to be correct, even as the realization sits heavily that I'll most likely be promised a great risen dough ball of assistance and delivered a flat pale disc of nothing in return.  Though I aspire to hope, I often surrender to frustration with the system and the system's often apathetic and jaded employees.  With their pat replies and pseudo-concern.  Because the good ones often leave.  The good ones can't handle the inaction which results from mounds of paperwork in triplicate which keeps the patients' needs at bay.  Though I keep right on trying, I fear I may have a dropped an important ball and missed it bouncing away, its rolling off the edge of the cliff that marks my brother's last shot at an ordinary life.

Did you know that for almost two months, I neglected to return the call of a social worker assigned to Gary simply because I didn't want to hear the same old runaround and play the same old "what can I say versus what can't I say/what will they tell me and what will they actually mean" game?  That's the new version of the tired me.  I don't care much for her but she's there.  She says that 'they' assure me family is integral to the therapy of the client . . . but they never call and include me in the staffing meetings, though the staffing meetings are really nothing more than a quick consult in a closed room whereby a nurse, social worker and psychiatrist tell Gary what he's done, what they are going to do, and then tell him they will address his worries later when they have more time.  They never have more time.  She wonders about the multitude of clients without family or friends checking in on them and offering a lifeline to an existence outside the fences and walls of the state-run institution.  She figures that as long as Gary continues to plod through his days, avoiding staff out of mistrust of their intention or distrust of his reactions, then she will await his signal to get involved outside of personal conversations and ordering socks (he marvels at the sport socks with the tight massaging middle that offers better arch support -- akin to the invention of sliced bread and canned soda pop for him). 

And then weekend arrives whereby a combination of suppressed frustration over meds, the dimming effects of the meds themselves, and confusion in a chance meeting with his medical doctor about liver medication had him thinking this was his opportunity to rail about the anti-psychotics he didn't want or need, resulted in his throwing the wondrous soda pop in the face and chest of the aforementioned medical doctor.  Bad move.  A move seen only in movies . . . in in psychiatric facilities.  This move gets Gary moved.  To another ward.  Rumors begin to circulate as to what may be in his future.  Talk of administrative meetings between people who have never spoken to me, who don't know Gary, who will decide if his next bed should be inside the walls of the maximum-security hospital in Atascadero.  AKA "ASH."   Only it makes no sense.  He's not a murderer or rapist or child sex offender.  He's not taken his fists into the problem-solving arena there at Patton State Hospital.  (AKA "PSH.")  Save for the one time that a child sex-offender tried to attack him and staff agreed that he was not at fault.  Setting aside my sisterly love, I can look at this objectively and ascertain that it is NOT a fair move based on circumstances.  It's the possible throwing away of a human being who exists as a polarizing force on their grounds who requires a good more work than they have time and resources to give.  And, to be sure, more than he has been willing to invest in himself, either.

This isn't very cohesive.  It's not even what I had hoped to write.  But I've visions of 'schizo-affective' versus 'bi-polar' diagnoses dancing in my head like bright red and green Christmas ornaments on some enormous evergreen sprouting from within the center of my brain.  And they are bumping up against an already crowded surface area of competing colors, lights, textures, dangling this-that-and-the-other things!  So, here it finally is, the OTHERS in my seemingly happy heart.  Those images and sights and sounds that don't jive with the cheery pictures and snapshots on my other blog site.  In essence, the other me.

In no particular order, the OTHERS.

My husband spent two hours undergoing a radioactive scan of his gall bladder and associated digestive system parts (small intestines and liver) to rule out other scenarios which might compete with the possible diagnosis of a non-alcoholic fatty liver per an appointment and an ultrasound last week to ferret out the cause of ongoing stomach-region pain in the form of dull intense aching.  My husband spends very little time in doctors' offices unless it is to swab his sore throat during cold and flu season.  Outside of a bum knee back when he played semi-pro football for the Pueblo Crusaders before we were married in '89, he's had no need for scans and such.  I've encouraged him into taking advantage of annual physicals on our insurance, but sometimes he has neglected such opportunities.  Now, though he tries to quell his apprehension, he goes straight to the Cancer worry card at the bottom of the deck of illnesses that could be causing his discomfort.  I pull every other card of possibility and then show him my hand.  Because he's heard of people receiving a synopsis of their scan results from the technician on-site and this technician said she had to cull the images and information into a cohesive report and had no information for him directly, he sees that as a bad sign.  A billboard in red planted right in front of his life.  I say wait for the call from our doctor tomorrow once the report is in her hands.  But I'd rather not see my husband go through the anxiety he presently suffers.

Per my own health, I wonder how I would fare if I had to return to the work force outside of the home?  Mainly due to the monthly encroachment of my uterus upon my ability to think and walk.  I couldn't very well take three sick days every 21 to 24 days.  My name would soon be stricken from the payroll, methinks.  Hormone treatment, i.e. birth control and the like, have not been successful for a variety of reasons.  In previous entries, I've outlined this topic to the most finite of points.  One of my close friends continually insists that I should take the bull by the horns and do whatever it takes to be rid of this female problem once and for all.  She says that one day, I may have to miss something of great importance in my life because I'm debilitated by my period.  Like maybe a wedding.  Or a graduation.  Or a round-the-world trip.  And it is true that I look ahead, ticking off the small squares of my calendar, whenever we are planning a trip or party or even when I agree to volunteer at church or school.  But I fear the cure will involve separating my uterus, and most of my accompanying female parts, from my body.  Forever.  That particular scenario scares me.  Turns me cold.  Causes me to fidget in my chair.  How do you spell 'heebeegeebees?'  It's a part of me.  It's not cancerous or rotten or malfunctioning.  It's conducting a vital function of the female of my species.  It's just rather intense.  I understand that proclivity.

Truth be told -- you will find this odd as I somewhat do, too -- I would miss my period.  As mean as it sometimes is.  As bossy as it becomes with my schedule.  We've been together for longer than I've been married.  Over three decades.  What happens in the wake of such a break-up?  Would I stand perpetually on that familiar monthly shore, awaiting the ferry that would never again land at the dock to disgorge its antsy passenger, my company for a time?  The same aforementioned close friend has a theory which suggests that I can only fully relax and disengage from my busy-busy when I have the acute pain and befuddlement of my period as a viable excuse; she would like to see me give myself permission to simply take the same amount of days off from everything without pain and without the guilt I would experience in the absence of my valid excuse.  Oh, I don't know.  I just don't know.  I'm not there yet.  Perhaps I'll take a poll.  Research.  Start asking pertinent questions at next week's annual physical.  Call my insurance about coverage and the like.  Or . . . forget about it all until the next cycle come around and derails something minor or major.

My final OTHER of this entry hits closer to home in terms of parallels between tragedy, mental illness, death and societal feelings.  A friend of mine experienced a personal heartbreak which played out in California news last week.  Her son shot and killed a sheriff's deputy and a locksmith who had come to his apartment to carry out an eviction.  The notice had been posted on his door 5 days prior.  He remained in a standoff with police for roughly 11 hours before a fire of unknown origin (not sure if he started it or the police did, unintentionally, with non-lethal grenades thrown in his windows).  When his body was recovered, it was determined that he had shot himself to death.  It appears he intended to have it out with authorities as copious amounts of ammunition with varied accompanying firearms were found with him.  And he was dressed for battle.  Unfortunately, he was a very mentally sick man who did not see himself as thus, and therefore never received any help for his problems.  The fact that eviction was imminent reveals that things were not right in his life for whatever reason.  The police also took note of outside mounted surveillance cameras positioned by this middle-aged man.

There is enough pain to go around in all of this.  Grief for the two victims and their families.  Though the public servant intentionally took on a job where danger could occur at any time, that poor man there to change the locks had no clue his life could possibly end on that day.  Death surprises most of the time, and tragic death, unexpected death, cuts deeply.  And bleeds most profusely.  Confounds the mind.  Befuddles the soul.  Challenges the faithful.  And then there is the category of suffering for one who knows their loved one caused such loss and hurt.  And an even more specialized category for mothers who suffer the death of their children before their own passing away.  The combination of mourning heaped upon mourning, grief upon grief, pain upon pain . . . it would be far less agonizing to stand directly in the face of the sun's heat.

So in the midst of my beach wanderings and postings of shell finds and heron sightings, I commiserated with my friend and her daughters.  With those two other families.  Remembered my family's headlong crash into holocaust.  And discovered a way to remain whole in myself without divesting so much of my empathy that it left me bereft.  I must allow room for the idea that the burdens others must bear can be handled without me accepting more than my fair share of that load.  A most compassionate and empathetic man I know worried that I internalized the suffering of those close to me more than was good for me or necessary for them.  He requested that in this instance I suffer for a time but compartmentalize so as not to deprive myself of the healing I had experienced.  That to enjoy my rare time at the beach away from my worries was an okay activity even in light of this terrible news.  And he was, and is, right.  I know this because I would never want my loved ones to internalize my pain and suffer as I have in those searing moments of unfair worldly absolutes.  I would desire their support, their ear, their words, their hugs, their ongoing friendship, their reminder that life will endure and one day I will return to myself. 

I pray that for my friend and her daughters.  And for all of you, whatever your OTHER may be.  

On Books, Periods and Best Parts

I love to read a good book.  To dive in and stay under.  Hold my breath as the plot develops and the characters become flesh-and-blood company.  I prefer to stay under, floating in the ether of printed word, until the last page is turned, but rarely does a day or two present itself for such a pleasurable undertaking as devouring a novel from cover to cover.

In either case, when the story does end -- always before it should -- I hold the cover up for final inspection, returning to the jacket to again review the story outline, to peer at the author's photo and envision that writer's process: a decompression ceremony akin to watching the credits scroll at the conclusion of a movie, figuring out how to best reacquaint myself with my lungs.  How best to return to the surface and gulp the air of real life, of daily life as I absorb what has just been imparted to me.

But let's backtrack.

For the past day and a half, I've been sidelined with one of my infamous periods.  There.  I've said it.  The big dot-at-the-end-of-the-sentence word that makes our mothers cringe when we say it in public.  And I'm guessing MY mother would count this blog as a public place.  I know I do.  Anyhow, how could I ever have a real blog and NOT discuss my period from time to time.  It's a fixture.  It likes attention.  It gets attention.  One day, it will shut up.  And then it will be arthritic joints or impacted bowels or some such physical condition which competes with my regular life for attention.  (I'll just say right now that I'd prefer to NOT have the whole bowel issue if I have a choice in the matter.)

So, the thing about my periods is that they involve a significant amount of pain that I once endured without the benefit of medication.  Enduring said periods involved crawling on the floor, crying and praying, and afraid to take anything to alleviate the labor-like episodes.  Eventually, a smart doctor talked me through my irrational fear of medication.  I began to ingest ibuprofen in 800 mg doses, every 4 to 6 hours, for 3 to 5 days.  Despite researching alternate ways to handle this problem, and thus avoid developing resistance to, or stomach damage from, all those wee green-blue liqui-gels, I always end up back here.

When I don't adhere to this schedule, when I try alternate meds, I'm met with little or no success . . . and significant amounts of pain.  And that doesn't include the 'cloudy brain' syndrome which precludes thinking my way out of a paper bag.  The extreme sensitivity to noise and scents.  Irritability which makes me want to tape my mouth shut.  And an often heavy depression which feeds into my body image issues.  I try to rest, read, distract myself, pray, and apologize in equal measures during these times.  Some cycles are worse than others.  For awhile, when I was on the anti-depressant last year, my periods were more in keeping with the size of a grammatical period.  And after this weekend, I may return to that anti-depressant, despite the sound reasons I had for quitting last fall.  I've been trapped in a pattern whereby if I move, the pain rears its ugly head and puts up quite a fuss, and when I'm still the hormonal dark clouds fill my brain and mutter ugliness I know isn't true but feels quite potent in the moment. 

All of this to say that I used my distraction tools to keep my mind and body busy as much as possible.  Yesterday, I slept in, easier to do when doped up by the ibuprofen.  And then I moved my heating pad, pillow, ANSAID and iPhone to a docking station of sorts on the back patio where I was entertained by my family, including Ashley's boyfriend, for several hours with grill cleaning, meal preparation, jocularity, dog watching, and actual eating (which I also do in more dramatic fashion at this time).  Later, when the sun, sights and sounds got the better of me, I relocated to the recliner in the living room, where I remained planted until after 10PM.  I did, indeed, read post-film credits after admiring Michelle Williams' performance as an American icon in "My Week With Marilyn."

And in between all of this period subterfuge, I read a good book.  Anna Quindlen's "Every Last One" work of fiction, handed off to me from my mother earlier this month.  At 10:30 this morning, I found myself at the last page.  Crying one last time.  Scanning the dust jacket one last time.  Reacquainting myself with the lungs of regular life.  Once again.  Wanting to share with all of you.  Once again.

In a nutshell, an ordinary suburban mom must find a way to develop a new normal after a truly horrendous intimate tragedy shakes the foundations of her life and that of her family.  Fiction or no, any story worth the time it took to write affects the reader.  Parallels can be drawn.  Descriptions visualized.  Characters understood or misunderstood.  Sympathies and empathy elicited.  And I want to be affected.  Entertainment is not my primary goal when I crack open a book.  Betterment.  Growth.  Improvement.  Perspective.  They are on my short list of that which I hope will happen during my discourse with everything between prologue and epilogue.

I had tears in need of shedding.  There were thoughts in need of coalescing.  Painful though wide swathes of this book were, those same swathes served as catharsis for this suburban mom in the midst of transition.  That my present condition has opened several emotional conduits which might have otherwise stayed shut and dry is a given.  Truly, I believe this is one of the most useful functions of a period if it is exercised outside of stress and stereotyping.  Though I can, emphasis on CAN, be more volatile right about now, if those emotions on tap are allowed a healthy outlet as opposed to being exercised in a rough moment, there are benefits.  Because I'm slowed down and not able to busy myself, I can think and emote my way around an issue in its entirety and gain a bit of closure or deeper understanding.  That makes for better days ahead.

This time around the circumspect block, I needed to examine the whole issue of my Sarah now belonging to someone else.  Her new status as wife trumps her old status as daughter, though I'm well aware she exists as both.  I will miss everything about my relationship with her.  Mostly because mothering was not this natural sunny experience for me with any of my kids.  I grew into motherhood.  I learned from my mistakes.  Apologized for my shortcomings.  And eventually begin to give myself credit for those areas where I got it right.  Sarah and I have trampled through some pretty overgrown fields together to arrive at this lovely expanse of deep green meadow all around us.  Somehow, that frustrated and fiery little curly-headed girl who could NOT, would not, be swayed until she was ready, whose moods and motivations I did not always comprehend no matter how desperately I yearned to plumb those depths, somehow she came to know ME the best. Out of my children.  Out of my husband.  Even out of those with whom I was raised. 

Wherever those inner battles took her in her young life, however it was that my nights of holding her and coaxing her and waiting her out allowed balance to take root in her heart, whenever it was that the painful lessons of her choices became valid in her mind, these forward movements of her existence gifted her with a natural discernment of her mother's core.  How best to approach me.  How best to talk with me.  How best to pay attention.  How best to comfort.  How best to back off.  How best to pull me up by the short hairs.  And because she is a part of me, and vice-versa, and because such understanding is a rare gift, and because we are both bright lights in a dark world, there is this especially profound joy which wells up within me when she is around.  It is not that I love her any more.  Or that I consider her 'favorite.'  It is that somewhere in all of this she walked right into me and allowed me to have a rare glimpse at the best parts of herself . . . and they were, and are, also the best parts of myself.  As giving as I am, as much I am one who shares and imparts and gifts, I would not be human, nor honest, if I didn't say that I would love to keep her right here on terra firma America, attending UTC for another 3 years, allowing a bit more time for good ol' ma to adjust to her eventual grown-up life.

However, having seen those best parts, and knowing that two bright lights separated will push back more darkness than those same lights concentrated on one shadowed area together, the larger part of me is bursting with excitement for the life my daughter is soon to start abroad with her Pfc. Ekmanis.  As we have both played a part in revealing one another's hidden layers, it is only fitting that we branch out and find our independent ways in our interdependent lives.  We are alive.  And healthy.   And still living on the same planet.  And we no longer have to rely on the Pony Express for long-distance communication.  Before long, I'll be a Skype Master.  And have a few European stamps in my passport.

But as Sarah has reminded me, there's still the summer of 2012 -- or at least some part of it -- for us.  For ALL of us.  And then I join the ranks of parents everywhere, many of whom are my good friends and family members, who've had to wave and sigh from their empty, or emptying, nest.

Just remember that there will be two more similar entries in the years to come.  But no rush, Ashley and Zachary.  No rush.