Crazy Talk

Sometimes I get a bug up my butt* (not literally, because, eeeuw) to write about something, and no matter how I try to avoid it, The Universe™ continually sends me sneaky, snide reminders that I have Something To Write, and eventually I just.can’t.procrastinate any longer.  Like today.  There I was, driving along calmly (seriously, I’m the least road-rage-y person on the planet, so GET MOVING ASSHOLE, THE SPEED LIMIT IS NOT SNAIL), on my way home from work (if you can call it “work” – I have a client who is forever cancelling, so technically, I suppose you can say I go to “work” but once I’m there, I’m not actually doing any work, which means I’m totally qualified to be a politican), making up Christmas medleys in my head**, when I get totally distracted by Bob Marley’s voice on the radio zapping my brain with his dictatorial mandate gentle admonition…

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds

…and I’m like, FUCK.  Because the whole post concept I’ve been stewing over for days and weeks and months has everything to do with (1) freeing my thoughts from their mental corral and allowing them to run roughshod all over this bloggy wilderness, and (2) herding them into some sense of order without chaining them, at least for the short*** amount of time it takes to get out what I want to say.

Which will probably look a bit like word vomit by the time I’m done.

If you are queasy about such things, you might want to leave now.

Also, if you are thirsty, you might want to leave now.  At least long enough to get yourself a drink.  Or possibly a whole bottle****.  Because when you come back, we have some things to discuss.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

While I’m waiting for you to return, I’d like to clarify the following:

*Whoever came up with this phrase must be an entomologist.  Or perhaps a proctologist.  Or perhaps, my mother.

**For example:

I saw mommy kissing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
So you better not pout in a pear tree
‘Round yon virgin I’ll have a blue Christmas

(It’s a work in progress.)

***Short is relative.  But, not my relatives.  So saying “relatively short” is sort of like saying “mostly long and not very lean but with occasionally stooped shoulders and lots of freckles.” Just to clarify.

****If it’s Peach Snapple (or cane sugar Coke, Dr Pepper, or Cheerwine), kindly bring two.

‘Kaythen, now that you’re back…

Today we’re going to talk about Mental Illness.

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And the crowd goes wild…

I know, right?!  Because, HAPPY!

FURIOUSLY HAPPY, to be exact.  Because that is the title of the book I’m reading (No, I’m not getting paid to plug this book, and as a matter of fact – so far as I am aware – the author, Jenny Lawson, doesn’t know I exist.  I’d like to keep it that way.  Because, SCARY BLOGGER LADY.), and because ’tis the season for The Frenzied Sads® (I don’t know if that’s A Thing, exactly, but I’m patenting it, just in case), when all the carnivores start eating turkey like they’re some sort of waddle-addicted buzzards (the buzzards being the people eating the turkeys, not the turkeys themselves, since the turkeys are not so much *addicted* to their waddles as they are *attached* to them, considering that the waddle is part of a turkey’s anatomy) and then get inexplicably depressed for a month. (Seriously, someone should do research on whether there’s a causal relationship between the two.  Ingest Turkey = Get Depressed)

What was I saying again…?

Oh yes!  Mental Illness.

It’s really not a laughing matter.

Except sometimes it is.  It has to be.  Because sometimes laughing about what ails you is the only way to cope.

I know this because Jenny Lawson said so.  (If you don’t know who Jenny Lawson is, you haven’t been paying attention.  Kindly go back and re-read the paragraph directly underneath the picture of the rabidly joyful raccoon.)  She also says:

There’s something about depression that allows you (or sometimes forces you) to explore depths of emotion that most “normal” people could never conceive of.  Imagine having a disease so overwhelming that your mind causes you to want to murder yourself.  Imagine having a malignant disorder that no one understands.  Imagine having a dangerous affliction that even you can’t control or suppress.  Imagine all the people living life in peace. Imagine the estate of John Lennon not suing me for using that last line.  Then imagine that same (often fatal) disease being one of the most misunderstood disorders . . . one that so few want to talk about and one that so many of us can never completely escape from.

Jenny’s blog, as well as her book{s} (she’s written two so far), deal specifically with her choices and her coping mechanisms regarding her specific chromosomal cocktail of crazy.  And no, I don’t feel the least bit guilty about using that term.  It’s okay to be crazy.  (I know this because Jenny says so.)  Own it.  Do something about it.  Fight!  Win!  Shake your pom-poms.  Or your booty.  Just don’t shake too many screws loose.

Note:  Every time I type “Jenny says” I think of this song.  Which is now playing on repeat over the airwaves in my brain.  (No, that does not mean I’m an airhead.)

I am not, personally, mentally ill.

Uhm.  Let me rephrase:  I do not, personally, have any diagnoses of mental illness.  (This does not mean I’m necessarily right in the head.  Though it’s generally a good idea to assume that I’m RIGHT, period.  At least that’s the safest stance you can take when I’m hungry.)

But I come from a family where Crazy is in the genes (and literally, in the jeans), and I’ve struggled right alongside my kin – differently, but no less difficult – as they’ve warded off demons and talked to angels and played fast and loose with more lives than just their own. I’ve watched, helpless and horrified, while people I care about have blithely gone about the business of train-wrecking their lives (creating lasting casualties in the trauma of their wake), and I’ve stood by as a support, a stalwart lighthouse on a crashing-storm shore, getting pummeled by wave after wave when those same people finally send out an S.O.S.

It’s hard.

For everyone involved.

And one of the hardest things about Crazy is that there are so many social taboos around the idea of “not normal.”  Add in the guilt-heaping nay-sayers’ constant beratement of “There’s nothing wrong with you” and the holistic health gurus’ “You don’t need drugs to fix this” snobbery, and add in a few sprinkles of the religious zealots’ “You’re just not a good enough pray-er” and WOW.  THAT REALLY MAKES A PERSON WANT TO ADMIT THEY NEED HELP.

Aside:  They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, but it seems like the step before that “first step” would be having a problem to begin with. So is that like a pre-step?  (First:  Get yourself a problem!)  Or is the whole “first step” thing really just a maniacal scheme to bamboozle people into thinking they have to take a “first” step when actually they’ve already taken one?  Gah!  It’s like the SATs all over again.  Is this a trick question?!?  This is why I avoid interventions.

♦

There is much debate about the use of drugs (okay, medications) for the treatment of conditions and disorders and phobias and other such mental messiness.

You know what?  Your treatment plan is your treatment plan.  You do what you need to do.

Oh-oh-oh!

/begin rant/

AND:  Don’t fucking preach at me or my family or anyone else who is trying to find What Works about how “medication is not the answer.”  Do not shout at us from your Pulpit of Normalcy about What We Are Doing Wrong.  Fuck you.  No, seriously.  FUCK YOU. There are no one-size-fits-all answers.

/end rant/

I love this passage from Furiously Happy, because it pretty much sums up how I feel about Keep Trying Until You Find What Works:

When I went on my first antidepressant it had the side effect of making me fixated on suicide (which is sort of the opposite of what you want).  It’s a rare side effect so I switched to something else that did work.  Lots of concerned friends and family felt that the first medication’s failure was a clear sign that drugs were not the answer; if they were I would have been fixed.  Clearly I wasn’t as sick as I said I was if the medication didn’t work for me.  And that sort of makes sense, because when you have cancer the doctor gives you the best medicine and if it doesn’t shrink the tumor immediately then that’s a pretty clear sign you were just faking it for attention.

She goes on to further expound on the idea of trying meds, changing meds, and constantly striving for balance, and stresses that once that balance is found – though it is often tentative at best – everything should just be perfect again and for always.  (She is being facetious.)  Because just like cancer, “once the cancer sufferer is in remission they’re set for life because once they’ve learned how to not have cancer they should be good.  And if they let themselves get cancer again they can just do whatever they did last time.  Once you find the right cancer medication you’re pretty much immune from that disease forever.  And if you get it again it’s probably just a reaction to too much gluten or not praying correctly.  Right?”

NO.

A thousand times NO.

YET THIS IS THE “LOGIC” PEOPLE USE TO EFFECTIVELY TALK THEMSELVES AND OTHERS OUT OF GETTING THE HELP THEY NEED.

I’m not saying drugs are the answer.  I’m also not saying they’re not.  I’m saying they’re an option, and for some people, they are worth exploring.  I’m saying, IF YOU NEED HELP, GET IT.  I’m saying that mental illness is exactly that:  an illness.

No two people are the same.  No two illnesses are the same.  No one person carrying two (or more) diagnoses is ever the same in any given situation, no matter how often said situation repeats itself.

And situations do repeat.

Rinse.

And repeat.

I have written about mental illness on this blog before.  In my family, it is generational.  And with each successive generation, things have gotten – for lack of a better word – worse.

I saw my nephew a few months ago.  It was the first time I’d been in physical contact since his first hospitalization in 2014.  It was the first time I got to see him with my own eyes, and it was the first opportunity I’ve had to have my questions answered (I ask questions – my nephew’s mental illness is not my brother’s mental illness is not my uncle’s mental illness; broad understanding is a Good Thing, but just like all genetics, expressions of a trait differ vastly between individuals) since his breakdowns began.  It was the first time I saw, in flesh and blood, the ways that father had manifested in son.  It was the first time I saw, in black and white, the lists and lists and lists and lists…  Doctors, police interventionists, diagnoses, medications, behavioral modifications, restrictions, etc, ad infinitum.

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Bipolar Disorder
Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD)
Schizophrenia

Dermatologist
Dietician
Educational Team
Psychiatrist
Psychologist

And on and on…

And it was the first time I’d seen – truly seen, with heart and head – and felt exactly how giant the wall is that he and his brother and their custodial grandparents are trying to scale.

But the key is, they are trying.

With mental illness – no matter what the label – you can’t stop trying.

For some people, this time of year is when they hit their all-time lows.  Ghosts of Holidays Past haunt.  The weather conspires against us.  There is an expectation of Happy that can feel impossible to live up to.  Everyday struggles somehow stockpile, and for some, that molehill quickly becomes an insurmountable mountainous obstacle.

Depression is a common ailment, one that doesn’t have to be clinically diagnosed to be felt.  And outside of chronic depression, or seasonal depression, there are a myriad of conditions and disorders that include depression, or for which depression is part of a cycle.

My dad has PTSD.  When he’s not depressed, he’s angry.  And when he’s neither, he’s self-righteous.  He’s a hard man to live with, and and even harder man to love.  But here’s the thing:  He is mentally ill.  And he is finally – FINALLY – seeking help. Forty-seven years after surviving two tours to Vietnam – tours he volunteered for because he was so broken inside he wanted to die – he is finally seeking help.  He’s still depressed.  Often.  He’s still angry, though less often.  But the key, for me, is that he is finally starting to see the fact that he’s in a hole – one he dug deeper and deeper for himself over the years because you can only be an asshole to people for so long before they walk away; abuse is abuse, and mental illness is not an excuse (that’s a post for another day) – and he is slowly, grumpily climbing his way out of it.

Recovery is a climb.

Day to day living, putting one foot in front of the other, is – for many who suffer from mental illness – a constant climb.

In Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson talks candidly and humorously about the realities of her constant climb.  And while I’m not one for making one-size-fits-all recommendations of any variety, especially not where What To Read is concerned (book recommendations are extremely personal to me), I am going to say this:

• If you or someone you know is making that climb, read this book.
• If you have suffered at your own hands or the hands of someone you love because of mental illness, read this book.
• If you know nothing about mental illness, but want to learn, read this book.
• If you don’t believe mental illness is a real thing, READ THIS BOOK.

And if you are suffering:  Go to therapy.  Talk to your friends.  See your doctor.  Run marathons.  Do yoga.  FIND WHAT WORKS FOR YOU.  Keep climbing.

I don’t have any grand point, or perfect answer.  I am not an expert, nor do I play one on TV.  I am just a person, one who gives a damn about people, especially the people I love. I don’t know why these thoughts have been clamoring in my head, but now they are out, wreaking havoc all over the page.  And maybe, just maybe, somebody out there will need to read what I wrote just as much as I needed to write it.

I don’t have any brilliant way to end this post, so I will leave you with this:

And go easy on the turkey. Seriously.