Joy
Guilt
Loneliness
Fear
Hope
Curiosity
Empathy
Sympathy
Curiosity
Lust
Love
Sadness
Anxiety
Excitement

Now, pick as many as you wish and identify the emotions as color, weather, landscape, music, and object. If you need help getting started, you can begin with “If this emotion was a ___, it would be _____” Take it wherever it wants you to go.

Here’s my response to this writing prompt.

Dull smoky grey, raw clouds heavy with tears plodding heavily across the sky, an eternal flat desert of nothingness, the blues turning without end on an ancient Victrola, an unwashed, unshod, hungry child with no mother in sight.
This is sadness.

Come-Fuck-Me-Pump red, rolling thunder that ends with the earth moving, Softly undulating hills covered with moist moss and heady flowers, smoky jazz in a candle-lit room, chocolate melting down a warm, hard belly.
This is lust.

Cobalt blue, cloud-to-ground lightening charging the air with energy, a thin dirt road cut into the side of a steep, tall mountain, the mosh pit at a Dead Kennedys gig, the particle accelerating atomic generator in Switzerland.
This is excitement.

Blood red, an earth-cracking tornado, a cave of razor-sharp stalagmites, the cacophony of an orchestra pit warming up their instruments, a plane falling from the sky.
This is anxiety.

The end of last week was the end of the health insurance, and GenPsych has been nice enough to extend a few weeks for me without charge, as they feel I’m not ready to go yet. My extended in-law side of the family is in Lake George this coming week, and I’m being allowed to go mid-week to the end of the trip, which is wonderful, because they could have refused me permission to go. My argument was that I would be able to utilize the tools I have to make it through the week, and also that having my family away on vacation and not being able to spend any of it would be counter-productive to my progress. They agreed, and I’m taking a train up and meeting them. Half the week sounds like just about the right amount of time to me – I’ll get to spend time with my family, but won’t be overwhelmed. I can also take time for myself without feeling guilty or judged, as everyone knows where I’ve been this summer and what I’m going through. I’ll come back and attend classes for two weeks before graduating.

The anxiety and depression are still present, but don’t feel as though they are the major factor in my life. The doctors say that I’ve been dealing with this all of my life, and even though getting clean and sober in 1989 has helped, and the cognitive therapy I’ve done by myself all these years also helped, I need to expect to live with a degree of this for the rest of my life. As long as I can use the tools I’ve been given to combat the majority of it, I think I can do it…especially with realistic expectations.

This week will be a good test for me, and I’m looking forward to the psychological challenge as well as the beauty of Lake George, and trying to be present in the moment and enjoy myself up there for once. I am hopeful that I’ll get the most of the trip this year.

Matt has asked me to meet him in the city. I’ve developed a rather intense case of agoraphobia. He’s planned something fun, a surprise for us for this evening. I haven’t been thinking a lot about this impending date, which I knew was on the calendar, because I didn’t want to find a reason not to come, and I was afraid I would allow  my anxieties to wiggle me out of it.

I know for a fact that on our way home this evening we will be laughing about the wonderful time we had.  I want to have fun,  romantic times with my husband. It is just that time leading up to it is torturous for me. 

Is it the fear of the unknown? Lack of control?  I don’t mind being surprised, and as a matter of fact it is difficult to pull the wool over my eyes  – and I have no I’m here where we are going this evening. as a matter of fact, now that I am on the train on my way I do think I feel excitement instead of anxiety.  but I’ll be damned if I could tell the difference until now.

I’m glad I was writing as this experience was unfolding, I will think of it as a cognitive behavioral experiment in self-awareness and certainly a positive tool for my toolbox …if I can get my ass past the anxiety blocking the door,  the possibility of fun and excitement awaits.

****

I got in and took the taxi to a predetermined location. Matt when standing underneath the awning for The Colbert Report….He had scored tickets to be in the studio audience!  We met up with some good friends, and got some street meat afterwards.  We had such a good time,  and laughed until our  cheeks hurt.  It wasn’t until we realized that we’d missed the next train and wouldn’t be home until well after midnight that the anxiety sank back in – our son is alone at home and not fond of the dark. He certainly won’t sleep until we get there. Damn, and we were having such a good time…

I am watching my life
From above my body
Passing me by
Like a Mardi Gras parade I can’t join.

A happily codependent marriage
With a prince that won’t leave me
Two bright, loving children
Being raised by an ever-present ghost.

The spectres of my history
Have stripped my soul of emotion
My desperation to live my life
Eludes my most earnest efforts.

I can’t let go the hope
That I will be a part of my own family
But I fear I’m missing it all
Is it too late to save the past?

The fickle finger of Fate
Turns my cheek
With scraggly nail to face her
“I’ve had no time to file them,”
She says with a wry smile.

I have them signed up to work Community Service hours this summer, and I’m trying to find things for them to do while I’m not here, but I don’t want kids in my house when I’m not here, and I’m worrying about the kids wandering the neighborhood; well, more Gillian than Aidan, he’s 15 and I trust him to make good choices. I trust Gillian’s choices too, but at 12 years and 80 pounds, she is so tiny I’m still afraid she could get grabbed. Even knowing she screams louder than a siren, I still worry. And she’s isolating, not wanting to spend a lot of me with friends. I can set up playdates for her, but I’m not around a lot to reciprocate, and I’m trying very hard not to let local parents know what I’m struggling with right now. I don’t want it to effect how her friend’s parents feel about her, and we live in a very small, suburban area.

The other aspect that I need to take into account is that I haven’t been present even when I’m present. I haven’t been emotionally or even mostly physically available to them, I’ve been so depressed and detached. or anxious and distant. I’ve been learning skills to stop this negative behavior, and change it for the better, and I’m already incorporating it in the time I have with them.

How badly am I damaging them while trying to get well? Is it better that I’m *not* here while I’m not well? They’re more or less used to me this way, sad as it seems. These untreated issues have persisted for years. I suppose the damage is done, and the summer is almost over, but I feel such deep sadness at the thought that so much time has been wasted with me unable to connect to my family. One thing I’m told over and over at my program is to stay away from the ‘coulda’s’ and the ‘shoulda’s’ and the ‘woulda’s', so I will try to concentrate on the positives and know that I’m doing better today than I did yesterday, and hope that tomorrow I’ll learn even more skills to bolster my parenting.

My therapist has told me that they’re not out of the house yet, so there’s still time. I need to make the most of that time to reconnect to the people I love, and believe that it’s not too late.

I never thought I’d be the one
to walk away
to run away
it’s always seemed like the man’s job
in my perception
in my memory

When all of this came down, and I knew that I was going into an Intensive Outpatient Program, I spoke with my sister-in-law about how to handle the family aspects of the situation. She is a nurse, quite liberal, and often a good sounding board when I’m not sure about what to share with my in-laws. They are a very conservative bunch, and have the Irish-Catholic sensibility of “Let’s not talk about it” as opposed to my Jewish “Let’s over-talk everything”.

This pearl of wisdom dropped out of her mouth: “If you had something wrong with your kidneys, everyone would be concerned and want to know what they could do to help…Why should this be any different? If your kidneys were damaged, it wouldn’t be your fault. Your brain chemistry is damaged. What is so shameful about that? It’s not your fault.”

First, did you grow up in the same family that my husband did? Secondly, you’re right…What *is* so shameful about mental illness? I’m not walking around muttering to myself (well, not most of the time..). I leave the house fully dressed (albeit often without a smile). I’m not a danger to myself or others (except when I run with scissors).

Elyn Saks, professor at the USC Gould School of Law, wrote an article on why mental illness is so stigmatized for the Huffington Post Healthy Living edition. Having suffered from Schizophrenia for 30 years, I comfortably site her as a reliable source.

People who wouldn’t dream of saying a racial or ethnic slur glibly talk about nut cakes, lunatics and crazies. Perhaps they stigmatize the mentally ill because society always marginalizes people who are different. Or people may blame the person, not realizing that mental illness is a no-fault brain disease that you can’t just will away. Then again they may feel unconsciously that they are to blame. Finally, people may have an unconscious fantasy that mental illness is actually contagious — so one must stay away.

But in this moment, we should ponder how we think about and respond to people with severe mental illness. We need either to get them to seek treatment, or force treatment on them. And that will require all of us to resist stigmatizing what we don’t understand.

I’m so glad there are people like Ms. Saks out there, putting a positive – and rational- face on Mental Illness. Perhaps if, as she suggests, more of us can come forward and put a more positive face on this topic, the social stigma might begin to be put into a slightly less hysterical perspective.

And yes, I just had to add that. We’ll blame it on impulse control, because it’s expected of me:)

And step out into the light of awareness
And the substantial world of being

The class was asked to think about the ‘hats’ we wear in our lives. Which is my true self? *note* – This one might be a bit hard to connect to, because it’s so specific to the imagery that was going through the inside of my head. I’d love your thoughts on this….

Is there a brass ring at the core of this carousel – circus animals devised of wood, steel and lacquer? Or am I a sum of these caricatures – Debilitated distortions, refracted reflections of the viable counterparts built from flesh and bone?