I run, feet pounding the pavement in time to my crazed heart-beat, run so fast that I feel like I am soaring. Pounding on my door, cursing the automatic lock, pounding even harder, praying that he hasn't followed, isn't lurking in the shadows of the trees surrounding our house. Allen opens the door and I fall into the doorway, panting, "Man with a gun, man with a gun!" Somehow I am herded into the bathroom, my 4 and 7 year old in the tub, the door locked tightly against the four of us. A phone is in my hand, fingers are dialing 911, I can't get my breath, a voice is talking to me, asking questions and I do my best to answer, watching fear spread across my children's faces as they hear the word "gun", hear my choked voice whispering, "I don't know where he is, don't know if he followed me."
Time skips and the police are here, in my doorway as red lights flash up and down our street, cop cars driving in smooth, tight circles as they patrol. Questions, and more questions. What was he wearing? What did the gun look like? Did he say anything to you? Do you think you could identify him in a line-up?
I shake my head, suddenly questioning my recall. I think he was wearing a hoody. A young, African American man. He looked desperate, I whisper, and flash back to his face, twisted and frightened, eyes darting back and forth as he pointed the gun at me. "He said--You." I explain, not sure if the officers understand the menace of the word. "You."
You.
I heard something behind me, and I turned, as if in slow motion I turned, and the gun was there pointing at me, and the word was leaving his lips as if he knew me, as if I had moved in on his territory and I was the enemy.
I backed away, my voice tearing from my lips and bouncing off the street asphalt. "Please! Don't!"
He advanced, the gun shining in the luminescence of the street lights. I crouched, hands instinctively covering my head, waiting for the gun shot. I put the dog that I had been carrying in my arms, down. The dog skittered around his feet, The eyes darted faster, and the gun trained itself on the animal. The gunman hesitated. I ran.
Ran for my life.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Insecurities
It feels frail and vulnerable, like a baby conch nestled in the palm of a hand, or an infinitesimal snail shell. There is a rushing and roaring in my ears when I think about my most intimate secrets on display for many to read. My stomach gasps and squeezes, and my thoughts begin galloping to nowhere on a hamster wheel. Breathing becomes a chore and I wheeze out sigh after sigh.
Writing about this is to embrace some dark, broken, dank part of me. Sharing private details with more than just myself is terrifying and exhilarating. I admire so many others who have done this very thing, and being on the other side of it makes me realize the bravery and courage one must have to spill secrets onto a page. Funny thing is: I don't feel brave or courageous. I feel scared.
I feel scared and scarred and split open for all to see. I feel lonely and ashamed and worried and anxious. The other day, a client and I were discussing her life and its direction. "I don't have meaning in anything I do anymore," she said. "I don't see the worth in it any longer. It's like nobody cares."
"It's like there's no solace," I responded.
Solace. Comfort in the time of sadness. A soothing of distress. I feel no solace in writing this; in fact, it stirs up just the opposite. But I do it anyway. I feel compelled to do it, to tell my story, to process the hell out of these last few years of my life and make some sense of it all. Perhaps I will arrive somewhere I didn't expect to be. Perhaps it will give me some sense of peace or closure.
In the meantime, you must know this: I am scared. Splayed for all to see, the intensity of my darkness is cracked wide open. I don't know how to close the wound. I only know how to wash it out. And that cleansing can be incredibly painful.
Writing about this is to embrace some dark, broken, dank part of me. Sharing private details with more than just myself is terrifying and exhilarating. I admire so many others who have done this very thing, and being on the other side of it makes me realize the bravery and courage one must have to spill secrets onto a page. Funny thing is: I don't feel brave or courageous. I feel scared.
I feel scared and scarred and split open for all to see. I feel lonely and ashamed and worried and anxious. The other day, a client and I were discussing her life and its direction. "I don't have meaning in anything I do anymore," she said. "I don't see the worth in it any longer. It's like nobody cares."
"It's like there's no solace," I responded.
Solace. Comfort in the time of sadness. A soothing of distress. I feel no solace in writing this; in fact, it stirs up just the opposite. But I do it anyway. I feel compelled to do it, to tell my story, to process the hell out of these last few years of my life and make some sense of it all. Perhaps I will arrive somewhere I didn't expect to be. Perhaps it will give me some sense of peace or closure.
In the meantime, you must know this: I am scared. Splayed for all to see, the intensity of my darkness is cracked wide open. I don't know how to close the wound. I only know how to wash it out. And that cleansing can be incredibly painful.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Denial
I sit anxiously in my chair, winding my hands around one another, heart pounding, stomach churning as I say the words. Such a small voice that comes out of my mouth, a kind of whiny monotone that I hate but plagues me every time I am really nervous.
“I think that-it’s just, well—I really think I might have been misdiagnosed.”
Silence. She’s shaking her head. I sigh nervously and stare at my hands. Wait.
“I don’t think so. I know you have a lot of denial and resistance to this process.”
Wait a second. Did she just tell me that I’m in denial?
Denial. The first phase of the stages of change. Denial is when someone doesn’t even know they have a problem, one of my supervisors once told a group of individuals with co-occurring mental health and drug and alcohol disorders. Denial is when you’re asking, “Who, me?”
Does that mean I’m not even aware of my problems, even of myself?
The big D-word. It is a word I try not to use as a professional therapist. It brings up resistance and fear in people. Generally, I find that if I tell someone they’re in denial, they retreat even further behind whatever mask they are hiding. But maybe that’s just me. A former colleague of mine would hold no punches as he assessed individuals for their anger management or batterer intervention program. I remember, on more than one occasion, he would look a client squarely in the face and say, “You, my friend, are in denial.” Usually they laughed it off or got angry. Once, a client swore to me that he hadn’t used alcohol, in spite of his dirty urinalysis from that day. Truly an example of denial, he repeated over and over that there was no possible way that he could have gotten a dirty test. No way in hell. When I confronted him with the paperwork, he continued to deny. I finally let it go. He was, after all, about to experience 52 weeks of child abuse prevention treatment, and CPS had just taken his kids away.
But here it is, staring me in the face. Denial. My own.
What does all of it mean? It means I have been diagnosed with one of the big-time, major diagnoses: Bipolar Disorder. Throw in some PTSD and OCD and BPD and you’ve basically got alphabet soup. And that’s how my brain feels a lot of the time, swimming in chemicals and struggling to form new channels to map out my thoughts and feelings. Like a big, messy, swirled-up soup. And that is why I sit here nervously before my psychiatric nurse practitioner, keyed up and on edge, as I tell her that I have halved my medications. Halved. As in reduced by half. As in: non-compliance. I cringe through the usual platitudes, the concern, and the firm voice. I hear the words, ‘suicidal, harm yourself, worried.” All I can focus on is my need to regain control, to feel like I am once again in charge of my own brain, my thoughts and feelings, my creativity, my heart.
I cannot go on like this. These are the words that I live by, the words that hammer out in time to my heartbeat as I plod towards my office at work, an artificial anxiety brought on by the meds that gnaw at my psyche. I cannot wake up another morning, so groggy that I must sit on the edge of my bed for ten minutes, slowly shaking my head to clear out the gauze and the cotton wads that have clogged my mind in the night. I must be in charge of my own self, my own destiny.
This takes courage, this denial. It would be so easy to roll over, as I have done now for two years, and say, “You’re right.” To justify the diagnosis with anecdotes from my life and accept the label of Bipolar. But I cannot do it, at least for now. For now, I am bent on reducing the amount of meds that flow through my system, to anoint myself with the flavor of freedom—the freedom that is the self. The taste of my own being, fresh on my tongue and wild beneath a turbulent sky as I drive towards endless destinations.
“Do you understand?” she asks me. “Please don’t do anything else with your medications,” she pleads.
“I think that-it’s just, well—I really think I might have been misdiagnosed.”
Silence. She’s shaking her head. I sigh nervously and stare at my hands. Wait.
“I don’t think so. I know you have a lot of denial and resistance to this process.”
Wait a second. Did she just tell me that I’m in denial?
Denial. The first phase of the stages of change. Denial is when someone doesn’t even know they have a problem, one of my supervisors once told a group of individuals with co-occurring mental health and drug and alcohol disorders. Denial is when you’re asking, “Who, me?”
Does that mean I’m not even aware of my problems, even of myself?
The big D-word. It is a word I try not to use as a professional therapist. It brings up resistance and fear in people. Generally, I find that if I tell someone they’re in denial, they retreat even further behind whatever mask they are hiding. But maybe that’s just me. A former colleague of mine would hold no punches as he assessed individuals for their anger management or batterer intervention program. I remember, on more than one occasion, he would look a client squarely in the face and say, “You, my friend, are in denial.” Usually they laughed it off or got angry. Once, a client swore to me that he hadn’t used alcohol, in spite of his dirty urinalysis from that day. Truly an example of denial, he repeated over and over that there was no possible way that he could have gotten a dirty test. No way in hell. When I confronted him with the paperwork, he continued to deny. I finally let it go. He was, after all, about to experience 52 weeks of child abuse prevention treatment, and CPS had just taken his kids away.
But here it is, staring me in the face. Denial. My own.
What does all of it mean? It means I have been diagnosed with one of the big-time, major diagnoses: Bipolar Disorder. Throw in some PTSD and OCD and BPD and you’ve basically got alphabet soup. And that’s how my brain feels a lot of the time, swimming in chemicals and struggling to form new channels to map out my thoughts and feelings. Like a big, messy, swirled-up soup. And that is why I sit here nervously before my psychiatric nurse practitioner, keyed up and on edge, as I tell her that I have halved my medications. Halved. As in reduced by half. As in: non-compliance. I cringe through the usual platitudes, the concern, and the firm voice. I hear the words, ‘suicidal, harm yourself, worried.” All I can focus on is my need to regain control, to feel like I am once again in charge of my own brain, my thoughts and feelings, my creativity, my heart.
I cannot go on like this. These are the words that I live by, the words that hammer out in time to my heartbeat as I plod towards my office at work, an artificial anxiety brought on by the meds that gnaw at my psyche. I cannot wake up another morning, so groggy that I must sit on the edge of my bed for ten minutes, slowly shaking my head to clear out the gauze and the cotton wads that have clogged my mind in the night. I must be in charge of my own self, my own destiny.
This takes courage, this denial. It would be so easy to roll over, as I have done now for two years, and say, “You’re right.” To justify the diagnosis with anecdotes from my life and accept the label of Bipolar. But I cannot do it, at least for now. For now, I am bent on reducing the amount of meds that flow through my system, to anoint myself with the flavor of freedom—the freedom that is the self. The taste of my own being, fresh on my tongue and wild beneath a turbulent sky as I drive towards endless destinations.
“Do you understand?” she asks me. “Please don’t do anything else with your medications,” she pleads.
I stand up, stronger and more sure on my feet. I know I cannot make any promises, but I affirm with a nod of my head and a chirp of the voice.
This is denial. And I have fully embraced it.
This is denial. And I have fully embraced it.
Update: Google somehow locked me out of my old blog, so I have had to create a new one. You can still read my old blog from before, here: http://shimmerandsoar--sanityinprogress.blogspot.com/. I have changed the title and description of the new blog a bit, to reflect where I am at today.
I realized that I haven't written since I started my new job as a mental health therapist--and that seems apropos, considering I have been busy reintegrating my identity as "patient" and "provider". My intention is to write more frequently. We'll see if that holds up.
I realized that I haven't written since I started my new job as a mental health therapist--and that seems apropos, considering I have been busy reintegrating my identity as "patient" and "provider". My intention is to write more frequently. We'll see if that holds up.
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