He asked me if I felt suicidal. My reply was flat: “No, I’m too tired.” My voice was even, deadpan, serious. A numb soul is expressionless. It was a plain fact—I didn’t have the energy to brush my teeth, let alone execute a suicide.
The psychiatrist told me that when some people are seriously depressed, they take their own lives after they start to feel better. Huh?? That doesn’t seem to make any sense. But that information is stated on the packages of many anti-depressant medications, and in commercials. It’s not that the medication makes you feel more suicidal; that’s misleading. The medication gives you back the energy to take your own life. I can understand this; I can feel it, and it’s scary.
I have children and I would not commit suicide. This book isn’t about me committing suicide; it’s about my anxiety and exhaustion about living. It’s not because I’d never wanted to commit suicide, but because the love that I have for my daughters is stronger than my own will to live or die. Even in my mixed up mind, I am here for them, and the thought of leaving them to avoid my own anguish is not a possibility. The same way that I was here to make sure that my Mom was okay. I could not imagine what she would have done without me. The concept of her living on her own and tending to herself baffled me even as a child, and gave me enough reason as an adult not to end my life. Rather arrogant actually.
It’s not that I never considered suicide; I just didn’t want my girls growing up motherless. I was raised Catholic, but that had nothing to do with my state of mind or my decision.
I grew up without a mother. I’m 46 now and my mother died two years ago. She was 68.
Not having been allowed the opportunity to live my own life based on what I wanted or expected was normal for me. As an only child, I didn’t think much of myself, and I remember thinking that I was eating the food that other people could be eating. I didn’t feel I was worth enough to waste food on. I had little self-esteem and was unable to create my own existence apart from my mother’s life.
As a child I was quiet, almost as if I wasn’t around. That is what people say that they remember of me as a kid. I recall being extremely shy and not socializing much with the kids from my school. At recess, I would walk around the playground by myself. Extremely small, skinny, frail and pale. Always the last one to be picked for a sports team.
School made me feel smaller. In fifth grade, my teacher stood behind me while I was up at bat in a baseball game. She held my arms to give me balance and support to hit the ball. I doubt very much that I scored a home run, but I really can’t recall. I do recall her support, though.
Another time in gym class, we had to roll up into the smallest balls that we could. The nuns praised me because I was the smallest human ball. That didn’t surprise me. It’s how I always felt.
I use the term “normal” to describe my childhood because normal, to you, is whatever you think it is, whatever you’re used to. I’ve learnt that normal is subjective. But I can differentiate between what’s considered normal in society and what one thinks is normal. For instance, eating the family dog for dinner is not normal. Eating hot dogs for dinner is.
I think on the outside most people think they’re normal but they really wonder if they are. Love is subjective, too. It’s not really measurable and each person is in control of how they feel love or accept love. Giving love is unique. How we feel love is unique. Love is really what you think it is.
But when you’ve living a life trying to keep up with someone else’s life, it’s easy not to have your own feelings. Not feeling becomes normal. Success and dreams aren’t available for you. Your life doesn’t allow for dreams or successes. It’s a rogue life. It is obligation. It is a drag—dragging on and on. Waiting for the next obligation, waiting for something to happen that is out of your control. In my case, waiting for my Mom to do something, and then I would help her out of it.
People would ask me, “What do you like to do?” I’d lie. My replies were straight off of what I’d seen on the TV sitcoms: gardening, sewing, whatever. What I really liked to do was sleep. Sleep all the time, never feeling rested. The doctor said this is “Le Petit Mort,” literally translated into “The Little Death.” It was easier to sleep than to live. I was exhausted from living too much.
Leonard Sheingold, in his award-winning book Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation, depicts people who struggle because they have, quite simply, experienced too much: “…the distrust of parents and the entire affectively charged environment is based for soul murder victims on experienced reality” (312). That’s the reality I experienced.
In hindsight, I can recognize that I’d been depressed since early childhood. I compare my feelings and motivation back then with those of my daughters today. They have plans for their lives, ambitions. They have the confidence and self-esteem to pursue what they want to do. They know, within themselves, that they are important. Normal for them means having motivation, wanting, doing, feeling. They stand up for themselves. They push back when they feel they are not heard, they let me know what they need, and it’s all done within reason. My normal was monotone, quiet, guarded and always on edge.
What I only wanted to do was sleep. If I couldn’t sleep all the time and had to continue on, I easily slid into self-destructive behavior, abusing prescription pills, weed, alcohol, cough syrup. Cough syrup can give you a bit of a buzz if you can get past the taste. Thank God for the marketing geniuses who thought of grape and bubble gum flavors?
All kidding aside, I’m not promoting any type of cheap buzz, but one thing I’ve learnt in my life is that it’s important for me to be funny. They say that many great comedians and actors come from a messed up past. We use humor in our lives to “ease our pain.” Special endorphins are released when one laughs, so that may explain something. I like to think of myself in this select category of people who think that everything has the potential to be funny. Great comedians like Jim Carrey and Rodney Dangerfield suffered from depression.
The summer that I was 43 years old, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t get out of bed. I would wake up only when I needed to. This usually caused chaos and rushing around because everything would be done at the very last minute. I would drive my children to school each day in my pajamas, and even this proved to be an arduous task. They were late all the time and we existed on pizza and Kraft dinners. I couldn’t cook, clean, take care of myself. Any energy that I did have was spent on trying to keep some balance in my children’s lives, trying to appear normal. And that, in itself, was a struggle.
I knew that I needed help and if I didn’t get it, I would die. I knew that I wasn’t the mother that I wanted to be. I knew my girls deserved more than a mother who bowed out of Easter dinner at my aunt’s house so she could sleep. I didn’t eat any Easter dinner, I just slept, and was quite content.
It is excruciating to have to force yourself to continue in a life that doesn’t matter to you. This statement may be difficult to comprehend, but it’s stark reality for many people.
When you’re in deep trouble, black is white. And then it’s all black. I struggle with bringing these thoughts back on paper. It’s now easy to recognize irrational from rational, but living in a frenzied, panic state for your entire life tends to make your mind and your thinking a little fucked up.
I had been taking prescription pain pills to help me feel better and get through my days. I liked the pills with codeine, as the drug made me feel euphoric and energetic. But I still didn’t feel great, and the pain pill high only lasted a few hours. I was beginning to develop a tolerance for them, and had to continue to up the number of pills I was taking. Being comfortable with the notion that a pill could make me feel better, I went to my family physician and described my feelings of being down, unmotivated and lethargic. I suggested that I needed an anti-depressant and he agreed. He prescribed me 20 mgs of Fluoxotene (street name, Prozac). It usually takes a few weeks before the medication would begin to affect my mood. I waited for it to work and it just didn’t. I’d seen the ads on TV where the sullen woman is staring out the window with the blank look on her face, her hair disheveled. Then, the commercial commentator steps in to talk about the benefits of the medication. Next, is the shot of the same woman on the beach playing Frisbee with her dog. As the ad comes to an end, the commercial commentator talks very quickly and states some of the negative side effects of the drug, and how if you have an existing kidney disease, blah, blah, blah… Even after starting on the Prozac, I didn’t notice a difference in my mood. Sleeping was still my number one priority. I wasn’t feeling any better and becoming more despondent. Nobody seemed to understand me and I felt as though people were thinking I was lazy and irresponsible. Pressure was building up in me, as I didn’t have the energy to pay my bills on time or even shop for groceries. I couldn’t keep this up, my girls needed me. Trying to ignore life isn’t a smart thing to do. Comparing myself to other mothers, I thought myself extremely incompetent. Maybe if I went to a psychiatrist, they would put me in the hospital, and there I could rest. There they would give me more drugs to make me feel better. If I were in a hospital, then I would be excused from my daily life chores. People would understand that I was ill, and it would be better. My mother would realize that her years of abuse had rendered me incapable of handling anything else from her. She would have to start to look after herself. And maybe now she would look after me.
I went back to my GP and asked him about going to see a psychiatrist. He looked at me and he knew I that I needed it. I had also been abusing the Imovane he had given me for sleeping, taking up to 4 times the suggested safe amount. If my girls weren’t around, I’d take the sleep medicine in the daytime so I could sleep even more. I did not want to feel any physical existence. My resistance grew and I began to increase my dosages. That medicine makes you out of your mind, and one of its side effects is that it has an impact on your memory. I would do amazingly stupid things when I took it, and not remember Once I called someone who was out on a business trip and asked him out. The next day I was horrified and embarrassed with myself for doing this. I just did it without thinking about it. It was as if the pills gave me a false, superior sense of my own self.
My GP sent my name to a local psychiatrist for evaluation. Within a few days, as I was lounging in bed, how appropriate, the psychiatrist called me. He told me who he was and asked me what type and dosage of medication that I was on. I told him about the 20 mgs of Prozac and the Imovane. The doctor asked me who was the perfectionist in my family and said it must have been my mother. No. My dad? No. I would never have said that either of my parents were perfectionists; they were at the opposite extreme. I don’t think he believed me, but he booked me for an appointment the following week and told me to increase the dosage of my Prozac up to 40 mgs until then.
The doctor was located at a posh address. Looking out from his window, there were tall trees and snowy mountaintops and the coolness of the Pacific Ocean. Walking toward the building I could smell the saltiness in the ocean air and it reminded me of sardines. On the side that his office did not face, there were beautiful homes on the slants of the mountain, overlooking the water. These people’s properties were the most expensive real estate in the country. I wondered if their lives were “normal.”
The waiting room was decorated with black leather furniture, a bookshelf with native aboriginal artifacts, like feathers and carvings. Standard waiting room magazines were stacked on one of the shelves, alongside a round golden clock that didn’t seem to keep accurate time. The receptionist acknowledged me as I went up to her desk and asked me to sit down. As I would later find out, the doctor usually runs about 5 minutes behind schedule, and my first visit to him wasn’t any different than all the others. I took turns looking at the closed office door and at the receptionist who was working in Word, on some document. Years before, I had taught Word at a local community college and ever since, had picked up the bad habit of watching people type. I mentally noted that she wasn’t using her tabs properly, and thought for a moment that I should mention this to her. But I didn’t, I just watched as she pressed her space bar to indent her line and knew she’d run into trouble if she needed to do any editing. This kept my mind busy as I waited. As I was getting used to the clicking of the keyboard, the sound of the door knob turned and the opening of the door snapped me back to attention. I looked toward the door and out came a woman, yes, very disheveled hair just like on the commercial. She made no eye contact with me, clutched her purse, eyes downward and bee lined for the outside door. The doctor came out and turned toward the receptionist desk to pick up a pink message slip. He turned again in my direction and said my name. I acknowledged myself. His hand motioned me into the office and while he stepped back from the door, I walked in. Scanning the room, I saw his desk and chair, and sat down on the armless couch alongside the wall.
The doctor was old, about 70. As I looked at him, I knew he’d have been quite handsome as a young man, as he was a handsome elderly gentleman. Gray wavy hair, with a mustache and dressed immaculately. I wondered if his wife picked out his clothes. He wore no wedding band, only a watch. I imagined that he was a grandfather, a wonderful grandfather. His face was soft and his eyes, gentle. Aside from a few freckles, his hands showed no signs of hard labor, maybe he did a little gardening, certainly with gardening gloves. Maybe he liked to feed birds in the park, or play chess. I imagined that he liked to go to the symphony and the ballet. All of my imagining as to what he was like, in 30 seconds.
He sat in his chair, black leather, a sleek and sophisticated type of business recliner. Swiveling slightly, he reached for a clipboard on his desk. He grabbed additional paper and started writing. Glancing up at me, I noticed that he smiled as he passed me the clipboard and a pen.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a psychiatrist, but you need to fill out forms. I rated my moods and ticked off all the stressors in my life over the past five years. Have you ever felt like committing suicide? Yes or No. Have you felt like committing suicide in the last month? Yes or No. I found these questions amusing, as I was wondering how many people would fill them in honestly. Had I experienced depressive symptoms at any time in my life for two weeks or longer. Forty-three years is long enough. I’d had many stressors in the last few years: divorce, moving from Japan, losing all of my personal belongings, having to rebuild a career, the death of my grandmother. Loss, loss, loss is usually the instigator or a trigger of a major depressive episode. These all add up to points, and I guess you’re given a mental health stress rating and diagnosed within the parameters of the DSM IV.
There are also questions which you need to Strongly Agree or Strongly Disagree with. Sometimes these can be confusing: Please rate your current mood on a scale of one to ten. Have there been times when you felt as though you were on top of the world and then crashed? Have your friends noticed how fast you talk sometimes? Manic depressive, no, I don’t think so, maybe though? Have other people noticed a behavioral change in you?
If I ever went out of the house, they might.
When you’ve been pretending to be okay all of your life, it’s not going to change at this point or within the last two weeks. It is very “easy,” there are no other words to describe it, to fake being happy. I think all psychiatrists should have the pre-requisite of being mentally unstable themselves before they practice their profession. I’m not sure if they all do, but I would later find out that my doctor had gone through many years of psychoanalysis himself.
I handed the forms back to him. The mental health check continued with the psychiatrist asking me some questions. Any mental issues with your mother and father?
Oh, yeah.
But at this early stage, the doctor wasn’t concerned about that and didn’t want to get into it. Move on to the next question.
Do you ever have impulses to harm other people?
No. fyi…. It’s required by law for the doctor to report anything like this to the police. How long do your moods last, how are you sleeping, any change in eating habits, crying fits, agitation, anxiety attacks, confusion, difficulty in concentration? Yes. When has this happened? Over the last 43 years. It’s tough to pinpoint times when I’ve been chronically depressed throughout the years or just regularly depressed.
Do you ever feel like carrying out a suicide?
I fantasize about crashing into a tree, but I don’t want my face to get scarred. I wonder while I’m on a plane what it would feel like to suddenly start to “spiral down.” I think if I get cancer, I’d get a lot of morphine and I could sleep all the time. I feel ashamed of myself for thinking these thoughts. I don’t tell him any of this, though. I just reply, “No.”
At this point, the doctor doesn’t really know much about me, other than I can easily slide through the questions with truth or fiction. “Why are you here?” is his first really inquisitive question. Not feeling good, can’t seem to get out of the funk. A walk-in clinic doctor once told me to go for long walks if I was down, as no one ever died while going on a long walk. I digress.
I answered him with my truth. I cannot continue living the way I am. My body always feels like it needs water because it is depleted. I innately knew that I had reached my psychological and physical limit. I had lived too much and didn’t want to continue. I’d had enough. I lived each day expecting the worst to happen, always being on guard, always making sure I could react quickly. Having lived most of my life this way, I couldn’t appreciate any change in my future. This stress had been building since I was a child, and I was too exhausted and didn’t want to fight it anymore. I would either die or my mother would, but we could not continue with the daily rituals of our relationship. It was that simple. Frightened, I felt this and I knew it to be true at this juncture. I wanted to go into the lovely hospital in the country, where I could rest.
I didn’t tell the doctor that I was gulping Tylenol 3s like they were Tic Tacs. I’d built my way up to starting off with four of them first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach. This would get me through the day at work, and I’d take another four when I came home, to get me through the evening. I knew they were dangerous, bad for kidneys and liver, but in my state of depression I didn’t care. There are two choices of being: happy or sad. And I don’t think you have to guess too hard about which one I chose. I did not consider myself to be a junkie of any sort. I sure as hell wasn’t taking the forty painkillers like I saw the housewife on Dr. Phil do. I was only taking some Tylenols to settle down; I wasn’t totally strung out waiting for my next hit. I don’t look like a junkie either.
I had been doing this daily for about 18 months. I would wear my glasses to work so no one would see my glassy eyes. Tylenol 3s are hard on the stomach, for me anyway, and I was constantly constipated and my stomach always felt like it was burning. I had to avoid coffee as this compounded the acid in my gut. I didn’t want him to know any of this.
I told him that I was depressed because a couple of years earlier, I’d had to start rebuilding my life after I left Japan. I had impetuously gotten married to a man I knew only in a marijuana haze, and had moved to Japan. It was a typical rebound marriage. My first husband had left me for another woman, came back to me and left me again. When I met my second husband Chuck, this seemed to be an interesting diversion and I badly needed it. When he asked me to marry him and move to Japan after only knowing him vaguely for a few months, I gulped the opportunity down like I was a dehydrated cactus. My first husband was moving on, actually moving to Saudi Arabia. My mom was pulling me down, I didn’t have too much to lose. As you may imagine, over a period of ten months in Japan, things didn’t work out with Chuck and I came back to North America, emotionally depleted, no furniture, no car, just a set of bunk beds for the girls and me and our clothes. This was why I was so depressed. He took notes and was silent. I continued to ramble
My cousin Pam was generous and offered us a place to stay until we could get on our feet again. We slept in my cousin’s basement for two months. My older daughter, Jordan, slept on the top bunk, and my younger one, Sean, and I stayed on the bottom.
I finally got a job and moved out. Bought a couch, TV, wall unit, dishes, for $325. Then my mother decided she needed to help me, and she packed up her bags, traveled across the country, and moved in. She literally moved from another city. How ironic, I had left to get married to a man I barely knew because I needed to get away from her. I had run away from her. Now, being on the same continent again, here she was, back in my life. When she told me she was coming, I knew I didn’t want her there but I couldn’t tell her since I was afraid. Afraid that she’d harm herself, afraid that she’d be angry with me, afraid, scared, just because, not really knowing why, but just because I was always afraid.
I kept rambling.
Having spent three months in Japan with her while my marriage was draining down the toilet brought back old memories and feelings that I was desperately trying to suppress. [As a side note, even as I’m typing this, my chest feels heavy and I can’t breathe properly.]
She was the major reason I had wanted to move to Japan so many months earlier. I partly blamed her for my failed second marriage. Mother-in-laws should not throw cameras at their son-in-law’s head while they are getting something out of the refrigerator. As much as she tried during her 3-month visit to Japan, the husband didn’t go away. Even if she did not set a place for him at the dinner table, he was still there. Needless to say, though, he eventually stopped coming home for dinner.
The doctor wrote, looked at me, and I continued to talk.
My mother’s behavior prior to her visit to Japan was blatantly self-destructive, as was her entire life. It was so typical. Without me being around for her, she was drinking and abusing prescriptions drugs regularly to an extreme. I remember going to the pharmacy regularly as a child to pick up prescriptions for her. Thomas, the Chinese pharmacist, knew me well and would give me a lollipop while I waited. Even as a child I remember wondering how she kept getting all of this medication. To me, it felt like it was a secret, only known by the pharmacist and my mom. I don’t remember dropping off prescriptions, just picking them up. I would take my constant pal, my dog York into the pharmacy with me, and each time we left the store, the little bugger would gulp down as many 1 cent candies he could grab off the bottom shelf. He was a fast little corgi, the color of peanut butter, no tail, and knew what he could get away with. I entered him into a contest once at the park, and he won for having the “shortest” tail! One scalding day, York decided to take a wade in the Kiddy Pool to cool off. He laid himself down in the shallowest part of the pool and basically began to sun bathe. He stole sips of the chlorinated water every couple of minutes and was the king of the Kiddy Pool, tongue hanging out, watching all the kids. One of the peer counselors saw him and he got the boot, and I was suspended for a week for going to the park because of his behavior. York eventually was banned from entering the drugstore too once they caught onto his candy caper on the bottom shelves. He would gobble up as many candies as he could while they were trying to get him out of the store. I did a silly thing at the park was when we were making these hand molds for our mothers, I painted mine dark green then rinsed them my hands of the paint in the pool.
Talk, talk, talk… about my childhood dog and the park? Anyway, he kept listening.
So, in her 50s, my mother had been diagnosed as being diabetic due to long, ongoing pancreatic problems resulting from too much drinking. Vodka was the drink of choice, straight up, in milk, syringed in an orange. The combination of alcohol, diabetes and abuse of prescription drugs kept her in a non-cohesive state much of the time when I was younger. Help my mother, help my mother, sometimes that’s all I felt I did.
When I moved to Japan my mother began to punish me by avoiding all contact. My phone calls were never answered or return. Her person would not allow for separation from me. The not knowing, the silence was a punishment for leaving her. My anxiety was constant as I allowed my mind to think she was dead half the time, my worst fear. Her behavior during this time was consistent with her past behavior. About three months into my Japan life, my cousin Clay phoned me to tell me that my mom was uncontrollable and my grandmother had broken her hip and was moved to a hospital. He went on to tell me that my mom’s blood sugar levels would drop to such low points that she would lose consciousness at times. Other tenants in her apartment complex were worried and kept an eye on her, but were beginning to complain at the same time. At less than 100 lbs, her legs were bony and her eyes sunken.
My frenzied response was also consistent in that I panicked, could not focus on my own life and needed to get her to Japan so I could save her and make sure she was safe. My very common reaction to her situation was expected.
When she wasn’t happy with me, her past motes operandi would typically be that she would cease to eat, and drink more. I would always panic and start to pay overly caring attention towards her. I remember feeding her once when I was around 15. I mixed some melted cheese and broken crackers together and told her she was eating Welsh Rabbit. She was propped up in her bed, sideways, and I could tell that she was drunk; her eyes were very dreamy, glassy, smeared mascara, little bits of white chunks where her tear ducts were and she was not able to put the food into her own mouth. Christ!! If she would just learn to take care of herself better.
The doctor intervened and asked me about myself, did I have siblings, where was my father when I was growing up?
My father was around, but we had more of a social relationship with one another. He would pick me up on Saturdays to take me to my grandmother’s house for chicken soup, and then he’d fall asleep on the floor. My Polish grandmother lived with a wonderful Jewish man named Sam. I called him Zaza. He had a wife and a family elsewhere, he owned many apartment blocks, but he instead choose to live with my grandmother in a rented duplex in a crummy neighborhood. Everything was fine with my dad. He had died ten or so years ago, but we’d never had any problems.
When I was a little girl, my favorite game to play was sidewalk. My dad would lie on the floor and sleep, while I wiggled and walked on his back. The doctor would later describe my father as quite literally being analogous to a block of cement, to our father/daughter relationship. All he did was lie there; he didn’t do anything. I quickly retorted back to the doctor that my dad also took me to James Bond Drive In movies and A&W and we always had root beer. The doctor did not seem impressed and said nothing.
On the table was a clock where the doctor would be able to track the time without appearing rude and looking at his watch. Our time was up. He told me that he’d look at my forms and that he’d see me for another appointment. After that, he’d be able to recommend me to another psychiatrist. His specialty was psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and he felt another doctor would be able to help me. His psychoanalysis patients saw him regularly, sometimes up to 4 times a week. He’d let me know more information on my next visit. Continue to keep taking the 40 mgs. of Prozac for another week and let’s evaluate how I felt when I came back for my second appointment.
As I left the building and started to go to my car, I was proud, I’d put on a rather good show. I had another prescription for Prozac in my pocket and figured I’d continue on as I had been, taking the Tylenol and Imovane and I’d see if the increase in dosage of the medication would help me.
I hadn’t told anyone that I was going to go to a psychiatrist. Even though I wanted the “official doctor acknowledgement” that I was mentally ill and fantasized about being hospitalized, I didn’t want anyone to know that I might be having problems. If this kind of thinking didn’t make sense at the time, it doesn’t even make sense now when I think about it.
I wanted to go back to see him again and waited anxiously for my second appointment to come. When the time came, there I was in the waiting room, comparing the time on that little round golden clock with my watch. It was still off. The receptionist was busy, not working at the computer so I grabbed one of the magazines off the shelf. It was a woman’s type of magazine and I idly flipped through the pages, glancing at recipes and makeup tips, glancing at my watch.
The door knob turned, the door opened, and out came the lady with the disheveled hair, still clutching her purse. This time, I avoided looking at her directly, and watched the doctor. He checked for messages again, looked at me and motioned for me to go into his office. I went in and noticed that he didn’t follow. I sat and waited.
This time I paid more attention to the room. A large plant in the corner, almost touching the ceiling, a whirring floor fan moving from side to side . Shelves on the walls were jam packed with books. A black metal filing cabinet with the lock pushed in, indicating to me that it was locked. The desk was kind of small, just a table really, cramped with neat stacks of books and file folders. No family pictures, nothing personal. A phone, a lamp, a pen and pencil holder, a box of Kleenex. The walls were a worn looking peach color and I remember wondering if there was some psychological reasoning for having that color on the walls.
In he came, with a cup in his hands. It was tea, because I could see the little string hanging off the side. I stared as he got himself ready for the session, sitting down, adjusting the chair, reaching for the clipboard. He was nicely dressed again, and I wondered if it was the wife again that laid out his clothes each morning. Glancing down at his feet, I thought he had big feet for a man his size, maybe 5’8? I’m so bad with guessing someone’s height and weight.
In his hands were the forms that I had filled out the previous week. Straight into my eyes, he told me that he’d rarely seen someone check off so many stressors. I was angry with myself, thinking that I had probably exaggerated my past, been overly dramatic. Boy, I must be sick if I’m doing that. Am I looking for attention? What is my bloody problem? I’m so pathetic.
He seemed curious with me.
I started to explain that it was all situational, that I’d always had a lot to deal with and this in turn would make me feel down. I had a great life, a good job, good family, I was just having a tough time getting over this whole Japan mess. I don’t know what is wrong with me, usually I can bounce back really quickly. Well, my mother was also staying with me, and this caused me some stress. She’d always been high demand, and if only I could get her to understand that she needs to change, for herself, then my life would be better, too. How could I help her to change? If I can help her to change, then things will be good. Then she can give me a break and help me, help me to rest.
The doctor knows she will not change, he knows I have to change.
He felt that I would benefit from psychoanalysis. This was extremely expensive at $220.00/hour and based on my income, I could definitely not afford it. He asked if I’d be interested in a less intensive approach, weekly psychotherapy sessions. I didn’t ask him why he decided to accept me as a patient, I just felt glad that I didn’t have to start everything again with someone new, and fill in all those bloody forms.
The doctor explained that many of his psychoanalysis patients attended regular sessions with him daily throughout the week. The typical Freudian scene with the psychiatrist as the patient lies on the couch. Actually, this is true, as the psychoanalyst sits behind the patient while they are lying down. This is done so the patient cannot read responses or reactions from the doctor. Many of his regular patients even had their own blankets and pillows there, tucked behind the armless couch. I would see these “regulars” leaving their sessions, while I sat waiting for my turn in the waiting room, wondering what made them have to come and see this man four times a week. To be a fly on the wall….
I was curious about the differences between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Freud’s “talking cure” to me seemed like a lot of bull, and like many people unfamiliar with the psychiatric process, I deemed the whole thing a bunch of fucking crap. I just wanted the medicine and I’d be fine. When my mother would stop drinking and start to take care of herself, I would be fine. I said this over and over. The medication could help me cope, and I didn’t feel as much. I would be fine because I’ve always been fine, THANK YOU.
He pursued and asked me questions about the depression. How long do I think I’d been depressed? Ever since I came back from Japan.
What were some of my coping mechanisms? I didn’t really have any.
How was I doing at work? Great.
The girls, how old were they? 9 & 12.
Do I think they noticed when I was down? No.
I lied like a cheap rug. Lie, lie, lie… I was doing OK, just having a few problems getting back on my feet, and, my mother drove me crazy at times.
The questions about the depression, how I was feeling now, how did I feel in my past, the history of the depression, the patterns of the depression… the continuing questions about THE depression. It’s frustrating when someone doesn’t listen to you! In that frustrated, “I told you so already” tone, I said again to him, my depression was always situational. Something always seemed to be going on, and this was why I was so depressed all the time. It comes and goes. I was exhausted most of the time by all of this and if I had more sleep, then it would all be easier to handle. I just needed more energy.
His gentle eyes looking into my eyes, he stated that there is no such thing as “situational” depression that keeps going on for years. When people experience a loss, which is usually the onset of a depression, they may become depressed, they will grieve, but the normal course of a loss and the bad feelings associated with it will get better. The continued feelings of exhaustion, non motivation, lack of joy over a long period of time are symptoms of clinical or chronic depression.
I told him that I was not clinically or chronically depressed. He pulled out the DSM IV book and made me read the symptoms out loud. “Doctor”, I started with that tone in my voice, “I think sometimes I’m overly dramatic, it’s not that bad.” He came back with, “Do you notice other people feeling the same way that you do? Sleeping all the time, not being able to keep up with the daily life activities?”
I’m just tired, that’s all.
As far as I was concerned, our time was up and I stood up and walked out. That wouldn’t be the only time that I would decide when the session should end and leave abruptly.
In my third session with him, I sat pristinely, looking as normal as I could, makeup on. He asked how I was feeling with the increase in dosage of Prozac. I think I was starting to feel better. Then he dropped the bombshell, he didn’t like Imovane and he wanted to wean me off. He would not renew my prescription and suggested an alternate sleep medication called Trazedone. My GP wasn’t going to give me any more Imovane either, so I didn’t have a choice. Trazedone is an anti anxiety medicine which is used to help with sleep, and it didn’t have a typical hangover or long term side effect. Many pilots use Trazedone to help with sleep to adjust to the time differences. I didn’t care, I just knew that I’d try any drug. Giving up Imovane didn’t thrill me as I’d developed quite a liking for this addictive little pill. The doctor advised me how to slowly cut down on my dosage.
When we started the session, he sat and waited for me to speak first. I initiated the topic. I can’t recall what we talked about. I’m sure it was about how I was feeling.
I answered his questions coyly in very much a female way, thinking that I was exuding my charm to win him over. It was important to me that this man like me, and not realize that I had problems. Give me the medication now, please, then I will quietly leave and come back regularly for refills.
He told me to stop flirting with him. I was shocked, but also knew what he was talking about. I was busted and he wasn’t going to allow himself to be manipulated. I told him that I had abused some pain pills, but I lied to him about continuing to use the T3’s. I faked myself into being happier than I was. His face was always calm as he continuously kept notes on his clipboard. It seemed as though he kept writing on the one page, writing in the margins when he ran out of space at the bottom. He began to tell me that the process starts with how one feels about things. That was what he was interested in, feelings. Oh, boy…yeah, here we go.
It’s more difficult to express feelings than it may appear. It’s easy to complain, but when you have to face the truth and reveal how something or someone affected you, it’s a confirmation that it happened. Psychotherapy is not about the truth as it happened 10 or 15 years ago. Who can really say what the hell truth was? It’s about your truth now. If truth be known, the situation that I may have experienced years ago had felt to me like “green.” Maybe it was green, but how I feel about the way that it’s affecting me now is “red.” Over the years, it’s developed into a red truth for me, and this is what I need to focus on:. How I’m responding to situations today, choices I’ve made as a result of my experiences in the past. How have the people and stories in my past affected my behavior now? How do I perceive this, relate to it, and react? For me the beginning of psychotherapy was to learn to not lay blame on others for my reactions. I can understand this as a child, and I was a 40ish child, bitching about my life, but not ready to change a danm thing in it. Not willing to look at my motives or reactions. I never grew up in mine own, as I was always my mother’s daughter.
It took me months before I could understand the concept of how my past created my present reality. I saw this for the first time when I became obsessive about a house in a lottery. Tickets were $100, so I couldn’t afford it, but I skipped paying some bills and bought a ticket. I took my mom and the girls and we went on a tour of the house. It was everything I had ever wanted, and I felt it was owed to me. I made deals with God, that if I won the house, I wouldn’t abuse the medication anymore, I’d clean the bathroom every week, that sort of shit. I’d go by and walk through the house when I was by myself and fantasize about our first night in our new bedrooms. I bought two more tickets, which I still couldn’t afford, but felt that because I wanted this so badly, I really should win. The house was worth about $3 million. At this time I also bought a lottery ticket for $30 million. I didn’t care if I won the lottery, I would rather have won the house. It made no sense. The doctor reminded me that I could buy 10 houses if I won the lottery. Why was it that house that I wanted?
He pointed out that I didn’t want a house, I wanted a home. I had moved over 30 times as a child and never remember living anywhere long enough to make friends and feel as though I fit in. I wanted that home. It was at this point that I realized that my buying expensive lottery tickets to win that house didn’t make any sense. My fantasies about living in that house comforted me. If only I could own a home. I had a desperate need to be in a home, not a house. My thinking that the two were the same was distorted. This was the first time I realized that my past affected my present behavior. I could actually see this process starting to work. In my desperation for a home, I had pathetically based my hope on the lottery house.
I didn’t win the lottery, not even a bike or magazine subscription. Rip off.
