Nightmares of my Father and other things

I must write this out because I fear if I don’t this day could be worse than I’d imagined.

I already clawed my way out of bed 10 minutes late, had a cup of coffee and a small bowl of cereal and knew, just knew that I would have to call off sick today.

I didn’t want to. I hate calling off sick. But the overwhelming tiredness, the shaking hands, the seizing feeling in my chest told me I would be a complete, useless mess if I went in to work.

Waking up at 9:45 a.m. confirmed that feeling. I am still feeling out of sorts, tight, nervous, jumpy, etc.

I went to my new psychologist yesterday. It was part two of ‘everything that ever scared the shit out if you – family edition.’ Last week was work and modern times edition.

I should say something about getting a mental health diagnoses. Most of the time, you can only get an ‘official’ diagnosis from a qualified psychiatrist, that is, one with an MD after their names. 

Occasionally a Psy.D (Doctorate in psychology) will do the trick. But getting one from an MSW (Master’s in Social Work) counselor is a bit rare.

Yesterday’s session – ever see those Hitler scenes from the movie ‘Downfall’ or pretty much any movie featuring Hitler and his emotions get the best of him and he rages and gesticulates and such? You know, pretty standard Hitler stuff (note: I hate using Hitler as an analogy but right now the bastard is the best one I can think of)?

That was me. Talking about my family. I was shocked at how worked up I was. I had covered this ground with other shrinks before but I never gotten quite this worked up.

My shrink was concerned and told me we needed to get off the topic because she wanted me to leave in a settled state of mind. I understood this as Turnpike driving is bad enough without me processing another beating from my father.

She wanted me to look her in the eyes. I had not been doing that the entire session or the one before. Because what I was telling her embarrassed and ashamed me.

“There is no doubt in my mind that I can diagnose you with PTSD,” she said. I questioned, she was firm. I asked her to talk to my psychiatrist since Dr. H-S is protective and cautious of her diagnoses.

My shrink would. But she held firm. It was that obvious after two sessions? Yes, she said, and, really, nobody has ever broached PTSD with you before? No, I replied, no one had.

And so, I went home and everything seemed OK. I had dinner, did a little Internet surfing, watched Jeopardy, talked about it with my wife, all the usual.

Then I went to bed and the gates of Hell opened.

Not even here, not even now or maybe even later, will I recount the dream that woke me, finally at 3:15 a.m. It was one of those dreams that you clutch the covers and look around a darkened room convincing yourself that this is the real world, not the one you just left.

I clawed my way backwards out of bed, trying not to wake up my wife, downed an Ativan and went to the bathroom to try to get my shit together.

I will tell you the dream was about my father and a cat my mother had. It involved a weapon. And that’s as far as I will go.

It was, without a doubt, the worst dream of my life. And, it had seemed to go on for hours. In dreams, it may have indeed lasted that long.

I must have sat there for 20 minutes at least – shaking, breathing hard, trying to concentrate. Our cat came and sat next to me. Our cat seems to know when we need some company, so I was not surprised. She did not nuzzle me and jump up and demand petting as she normally would. It’s like she knew I didn’t want to be touched but just to have someone there.

The other thought I had is, it’s interesting that my father, dead since 1983, could transcend the decades to reach out and touch me again and make me hate him all the more. Some shrinks talk about giving someone space in your head. I guess he never left or something else is going on I’d rather not believe. Because this is not the first time I’ve had a nightmare about him – just by far the worst.

I managed to go back to sleep with more Z-Quil, a half Ativan and some meditation music. I knew that if I stayed up from that point I would just be re-living this dream over and over.

It didn’t work. I woke up less than two hours later and knew I had a problem. But I did my best to get up and try to shake it off and go to work.

So here I am. I have a day to try to work my way out of this, forget the feels as best I can, and not fear sleep tonight although I think that’s a given.

So, I understand my shrink’s concern about covering certain subject matter. Yesterday’s session must have somehow planted a ticking time bomb in my subconscious that went off in my sleep. 

Recounting the subject matter covered in the session and in my dream, I think it’s a good bet.

Why this reaction now when previous re-tellings didn’t spawn this reaction? All I could think of is the cumulative aspects of the last 10 years – taking care of my infirm mother, watching her slowly die while trying to protect her estate from a sister whose boyfriend threated to kill me (in front of my mother). Also: my job, the SWAT team raid on the house and then the 18-month inquisition at work that followed – all of it, wrapped up in one awful package.

Here on the couch, in a darkened living room, trying to write it out, am I. It looks like rain. The cat has left me and I just had a piece of raisin bread and a cup of tea. I don’t know how to process the rest of the day. I don’t know what my co-workers are thinking of me having taken the balance of the afternoon yesterday to attend this session with an eye appointment looming Thursday.

Yes, I always worry what they think. Because one time what they thought about me almost got me killed in front of my wife. A ‘mistake’ the current director refused to apologize for since wasn’t in charge then. I thought I’d forgiven that; I guess I haven’t.

I know when I come in tomorrow, I will work twice as hard, twice as fast, to make up for it – out of fear, no more, no less. I can’t escape the place, I told my shrink, so I will have to deal with it or lose everything.

I remember years ago, the Most Giant Asshole Rush Limbaugh pontificating that “fear is a great motivator.” It was, as he admitted, easy for him to say. Decades later, that fear would produce Trump. Fear is never a great motivator. If you rely on fear to motivate other or yourself, eventually, you’ll break down your people or yourself. Perhaps some thrive off it, I don’t know. The Limbaugh legions (who have now moved on to the even more execrable Bannon bastards), would probably attribute it to being a ‘snowflake.’

The personal is the political indeed.

But somewhere, deep down inside, a little growing voice tells me I am stronger than I know. To have gone through all of this and not jumped into a homemade noose is a good thing – taking nothing away from the poor souls to whom the pain was too great. We live in a society where the suicidal are hounded into their grave as a kind of sport. But my heart aches for each misguided soul to whom the pressures of the world and the fight against their illness, have become too great to bear. They have my sympathy – not my condemnation.

I feel battered this morning. But for some weird reason, I will get up and go back there tomorrow – a place that pains me every time I step on its grounds. I will fight the fear, not only of that, but of crowds, traffic, cops, my own government, and, most of all, the demons of the past. There’s still something in me that wants to fight – that insists I fight.

But today, I must get my shit together.

Requiem: Amy Bleuel

Amy

I suppose I should write something about the death of Amy Bleuel, the founder of Project Semicolon.

Amy committed suicide.

It saddened me greatly, but did not surprise me.

There is a dirty little secret in the depression/bipolar community that we don’t talk about because it goes against the eternally happy you-can-do-it ethos slammed down our throats in America:

15% mortality rate.

That, strictly speaking, is the fatality rate for people with bipolar disease, not necessarily depression. It is the number of people who will die as a direct result of their disease either by suicide or some other behavior associated with the disease that results in death.

Some cancers have a lower fatality rate. Yet, we see cancer as a medical issue to be addressed with great resources. We see mental illness, as a corporate society, as something to be tolerated within boundaries while Big Pharma develops one useless drug after another.

The dirty little secret is no one can tell, no one can predict, no one knows for sure whether the smiling, outgoing, full of life person you knew on Monday isn’t going to be swinging from a rope on Tuesday.

And the scary thing is – the person with the illness generally doesn’t know it either.

So did Amy, who was a depression sufferer with other attempted suicides, wake up one day and Klingon-style, declare ‘this is a good day to die?’

Perhaps, but we’ll probably never know; and that is the worst part.

Experts prattle on about ‘suicide prevention’ as if there was some kind of ethereal naloxone for mentally ill people that can ‘sniff’ out those predisposed to suicide and offer some kind of fix to get their tortured brains to see things ‘a different way.’

It’s all bullshit. We exist by the grace of God, if you’re a believer, by sheer luck and circumstance if you’re not.

Amy Bleuel, like every one with this illness, fought it every day. And every day, like the rest of us, she woke up wondering what hand her brain was being dealt that day. Or, think of it this way – every day you get up and roll the dice. One day it comes up snake eyes. Why? No idea. One day your brain says, that’s all.

That’s all I can stand. Take the pain away.

And no amount of cheery self-help bullshit or bootstrap mentality is going to have any effect. Sorry.

One day, all the king’s horses (psych meds) and all the king’s men (mental health professionals) can’t put your shattered brain back together again. Self-medication has reached its limits and your brain told you that finally on this day, you could indeed, fly.

We still do what we can in terms of reaching out for help, taking our meds, battling the demons within. But the one thing no one talks about is the demons outside – a society and economic system that is unforgiving to those with these illnesses. Never discount the effect that the world we live in can deal from the bottom of the deck or load the dice any given morning.

But since society won’t change and it’s still winner-take-all, dog-eat-dog (and getting more so), at some point there is an existential angst that contributes mightily to the brain’s decision to push the button.

Amy’s whole cause was to get the survivors and the sufferers to find each other and find strength and support. It was also to use that semicolon tattoo as a way to try to educate a society on how many of us are out there fighting in ways you’ll never know.

But there was something else. Amy was a believer. She believed in a God of love and mercy and tried her best to express that in everything she did and said.

“Faith for me plays big around the aspect of love and hope. I have had the opportunity to have people come into my life and love me with a Christ like love. Through that love I am empowered to continue my story and spread that same love to others. To have faith in something bigger than yourself allows you to keep striving for something more, something bigger.” – Amy Bleuel

I don’t know what to say. There are no guarantees. One day, for reasons no one else will understand, it will be the day. People search for reasons but sometimes there are no reasons; there are only reactions.

If I could give any advice at a time like this it would be this: understand that no one really wants to die. They just want to feel like they are needed and wanted, not shunted aside as a societal embarrassment. They want dignity and respect, not frightened stares and mumbled excuses.

For whatever time people have on this earth, they need a mission that connects them with what is real, what matters – not the false values of consumerism, but the interconnectedness of human souls that, working together, can truly save the world.

“People want to know they’re not suffering in silence, you feel alone like no one cares, to know someone is there, that is what these people go forth with, they take this energy to better themselves,” Bleuel said. “I think it’s just opening the minds of society. I would hope through my stories and platforms that they would see these are everyday people, just like you, and they’re attempting to make their lives better, but here is what they struggle with.”

“I wanted to start a conversation that can’t be stopped,” she said, “and I believe I’ve done that.”