I Have A Little List

I have a piece of paper hanging taped to the support beam on my side desk. 

Not MY petition but A petition

I’m debating the good it does. It’s a debate that will go on for a while.’

The paper is a petition, dated Dec. 29, 2015 and signed by eight co-workers and presented by two other employees to top management where I work. 

Basically, without naming me (cowards) they asked management to protect them from an employee (me) who was using “inappropriate, threatening and alarming language,” and asked management to provide a “safe, secure environment” moving forward.

The petition was ginned up by a former boss and pseudo-management co-worker, who took the ‘incident’ of Dec. 19, 2015 and ran with it in an attempt to get me fired. I don’t need to recount that sorry tale again – you can read it here.

The member of management who received the letter asked for written statements containing specific allegations from the people who signed. None ever came. No specific instances, no dates, times or locations were ever forwarded. Of the 10 people who had anything to do with this petition, five are gone and five remain.

The echo of the HR hack at my last interrogation still rings in my head: “the people up there you think are your friends are the ones that are reporting on you.

Yesterday, I sat in my office, on the far side of the floor, isolated and alone. This is the usual day for me nowadays. I try very hard to keep to myself and communicate with co-workers only when work needs to be done. I have exempted myself from all further get-togethers as a stray innocent remark made at a luncheon in June was used against me. 

And yesterday, the lonesomeness and isolation was making a mess of my mind. No matter how many distractions aside from my normal work I can indulge in, it’s tough to maintain a façade when your co-workers are outside your door, having an animated conversation with your supervisor. 

And you’re not a part of it. I could step out with a smile on my face and a “hey guys, what’s happening,” and watch the conversation die and the group break up. I can’t bear that.

So, back to the petition I have on my desk.

The reason I have it there is to get it through my thick skull that as bad as I want to have some human contact (I won’t even go so far as to say ‘have friends’) in this office, that the atmosphere has become poisoned enough that the HR hack’s warning (and my union rep’s warning) that I have no friends here.

" . . .a BLABBERMOUTH!"

And that I have to keep my big mouth shut. Because bipolar people tend to be notorious blabbermouths. Ask me how I know.

 

I really thought I could handle this. But every day that goes by gets just a little bit harder and it wears me down. 

I sit in silence and dread the sound of people approaching my door, coming up the stair, off the elevator or hearing the phone ring. I dread opening every email addressed to me. I didn’t used to be this way. 

I don’t know how NOT to be hyper-vigilant anymore. 

I’ve been this way since my mom’s health started to go downhill which was in the summer of 2008 and my bookstore started to fail because of the economy. Then I had to sell the bookstore in the fall of 2009 and move to South Dakota for a job in December of that year. Then I had to spend the next year (2010) with my bags packed waiting to fly to Cleveland whenever my mom would take another turn for the worst.

Then in December 2010, I started the job with the VA in Pittsburgh and moved here. From the very beginning there was a good deal of stress as my job duties and expectations were never clearly given to me and I never received one whit of training. It was ‘stumble as you go.’ At the same time, my mother’s health continued to decline and I eventually became her power of attorney and executor of her will. During the period 2011-12 I was constantly spending my weekends in Cleveland with my wife and arranging both my mother’s care and the disposition of our family home. This was NOT a very good period in my life. 

Mom passed away in December 2012. It took six more months to settle the estate and satisfy all the obligations. I really didn’t even have time to grieve. I still don’t think I have as I tend to avoid all the family albums in the basement, especially the ones from the last five years of my mom’s life.

Then in October 2013, the man who hired me left one step ahead of his own dismissal. Like many VA managers, a friend set him up in another part of the organization. I did not realize at the time, that this man had been my protection. I didn’t even know I needed protection. 

What followed then was a procession of detailed managers and two ‘permanent managers each of who lasted less than a year apiece and presided over tumultuous times for our section. The first one flooded the zone with new hires in the spring of 2014, many of whose names were on that petition. They were hired in order to get this manager a higher pay grade. When he didn’t get it, he left, but not before using his new people to gradually strip me of all the media relations responsibilities I had had under my old boss. I went from being the ‘go-to’ guy to being the superfluous clerk. 

He didn’t like me. It wasn’t a secret. He was influenced by others in the section who wanted to purge the people from the old regime. Had he stayed around long enough he might have succeeded. I called him on that and his lack of management effectiveness. I’m sure he didn’t like that either. I’m also sure he and the other employees in his little mafia briefed the new manager when he took over in March 2015.

It also strikes deep. Into your life it will creep.

I know this sounds like paranoia but it’s true. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has faced this situation. The new boss was worse than the last one. Within three months of his hire, the incident of June 8, 2015 happened which led to where I am now.

Eight years of looking behind my back. Eight years of worry and fear. More shrinks, more pills, more attempts at living a life where I could relax and enjoy life without the need for pharmaceuticals. 

Even if the magic job fairy came and performed a miracle for me now, I’m not sure I could dis-attach the wires and circuits that have made me what I am today – at least not for a long time. You just can’t turn it off that easily.

#ImNotAshamed

It’s a big day for this hashtag on Twitter.

You can find the movement at https://twitter.com/teamnotashamed

It’s designed to help young people speak out about mental illness and hopefully break down the stigma which leads to self-harm and suicide.

If you look at their face page you’ll see a panorama of smiling, young people staring back at you. I wish them the best. Maybe their generation will be the one to finally put stigma out of business. One can hope at any rate.

Many of them are from the UK (Team Not Ashamed is in NYC) where services, yes, even the NHS, are as shitty as ours but the big difference is there are FAR more non-corporate grass roots advocacy groups there than here. Here in US it seems, no one wants to do it unless they can get a corner office and an expense account (I’m looking at you NAMI).

In any case, I had a twitter exchange with a young lady from the UK this morning that basically had an ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude toward those who refuse to acknowledge her personhood.

Of course, she is young and can bounce back and find a great deal of grassroots support, as I have said, where she is. Not so simple in the US, as I have found. Copping that kind of attitude, as righteous at it may be, means usually a quick trip to the unemployment line, poverty, incarceration, even worse.

You know I’ve been there and I needn't repeat the story.

Am I ashamed?

Honestly, yes, I am. At least outwardly, I have to be. I live in a society where mental illness is still largely regarded as a personal moral failing and psychiatry has much the same prestige as quackery. While there are some parts of the US where the attitude is different, in most places, it’s still best to keep it to yourself and if you can’t do that, at least apologize for it if it offends anyone or gets in the way of making money.

In all honesty I would MUCH rather have the police called on me in the UK if I were having a mental emergency (or Germany, or France, or Denmark, or Norway, or. . . ) than in the US. Do I need to say why?

If I knew at 18 what I know I know, I would be in another country. Not because I hate America but because I would need to be in a society where people with my issues are more accepted – not necessarily more helped – but more accepted, especially in the workplace.

In the ongoing crisis with my Federal workplace, my union representative even cautioned me not to fall back on my condition for any reason even though the VA has programs for accommodating the hiring of people with various disabilities including mental illness.

“All they’ll hear is that you can’t do the job anymore and they’ll get rid of you for that,” she said.

But I can and HAVE been doing the job, and, I have been WORKING steadily since I turned 16. I’ve had a grand total of seven months of unemployment in 37 years.

Why now?

I ran into a group of people I should NOT have let my guard down with or been honest with in any way. I have this naiveté that people, especially in places like where I work, are decent and caring and helpful. I really have no one to blame but myself for walking into this and giving nasty people a sword to run me through.

If I am ashamed of anything, it’s that. I wish I could keep my guard up like other people. I don’t understand it, since I am usually a pretty paranoid person – just one who can’t keep from oversharing.

And I see a presidential candidate that can be counted upon to look at mental illness in the usual American way. You slackers won’t get any sympathy from Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton may be making false promises, but she’s at least being respectful.

So, for me, it’s not so much shame that’s the issue, its despair. And I think that’s a lot more dangerous. 

Goodbye to all that

First, an announcement. 

I think it is best for my own mental health at this point to drastically cut back my participation on Facebook. There are several reasons for this that I won’t bore you with but I would say the main one is that it does nothing to help my depression or associated conditions. In addition, I spend far too much time on it that could otherwise be spent on more productive activities, such as writing.

In order to help myself break this addiction, I have taken it off my sign in page for Firefox.

I find that the longer I spend on Facebook, the more depressed and upset I get. One of the things that has bothered me for a while is the constant reminders by Facebook of past posts which I would rather not be reminded of. In addition, pages that I have made for other reasons are constantly popping up in my main feed to sell me more eyes on.

In the last few days, I have pestered by Facebook to buy ads for one of these pages, featuring a photo of a woman I have never seen before.

I can be found on Twitter although I am prepared to curtail my activity there if things get out of hand, which, so far, it hasn’t. Whether it is a good platform to promote this blog is too early to tell but that is the main reason I am remaining on the service.

For many people like myself, I think we come to the point that the longer we participate in social media, the worse we feel and the more our interactions with the real world fade in obscurity. For some, this is a godsend, for others, it is dangerous to their mental health.

In the past 18 months, I have experiences a number of negative events that have put me into a position where perhaps, some pulling back of the reins can be interpreted as self-care. One of the main reasons I increased my presence on Facebook this year was not just to promote this blog but to try and enlarge my circle of friends, having lost all chance of forming lasting or even decently superficial relationships at work.

I have found, at least in my case, that it is true that you can’t go home again, nor should you try. The nature of human relationships in the digital age has changed drastically from even 15 years ago and social media, for better or worse, forms the cornerstone of our relationships to each other and the world around us. I believe this is dangerous for one main reason: the desire to be loved and accepted engenders the creation of an unreality in the way people present themselves on social media. 

For instance, old classmates are not the way your remember them. They have re-engineered themselves to the point where you wonder where the past left off and the present presents. In any case, Facebook presentations have become the digitized versions of those god-awful end of the year Christmas letters we used to get telling us the grand, glorious and god-like experiences of some distant in-law's family over the past year. With Facebook, that sort of nauseous shilling is now a 24/7 proposition. I don't know about you, but it must be exhausting constantly tending to one's personal shop window.

And, after all, this is what life is all about anyway, right?

In short, nothing is what it seems. This is not just for individuals but for corporations, media outlets and pretty much any other human endeavor that uses social media to grow their brand or whatever the term is today.

It was different in the past since there were fewer channels of communication that built more of a commonality of experience. Those of my generation remember that we had three news networks to watch, for instance, a presidential debate. Now there are countless avenues to experience this event, but more importantly, you can choose the political ideology you identify with as a lens with which to view the event.

Many herald this as liberating, and to a degree, it is. Those who claim media bias are no longer bound to watch anything that doesn’t agree with them. What they don’t realize is the way they have ghettoized themselves into their own little echo chamber that continually reinforces their worldview to the point of paranoia and fanaticism. This works for the left as well as the right, and the amazing thing is, neither side can bring themselves to admit it.

For those of us who give living in American society at least some of the blame for exacerbating our mental conditions, the only way to protect yourself is start to disengage. Merely being careful consumers of news and culture, while always recommended, is not enough. It is too easy to be influenced by repeated images, slogans and propaganda without even being consciously aware it is happening. 

The effects can be felt long after exposure, and tend to manifest themselves with anxiety, depression and even rage that seemingly comes from nowhere. These messages, even though they may reinforce our worldviews, can be so disturbing to our gentler natures, that they overwhelm our sense of empathy and rationality some point where they are generated from our subconscious in relation to some stimulus. 

I would say that the world is mad. The ongoing train wreck of this year’s presidential campaign is simply the latest and the most egregious example. Although there has always been a dark side to the Internet and social media, the tribes that Americans have sequestered themselves into are now so sharp that we are seeing raging, hate-filled flame wars between family members and long-time friends online that we have not seen since the Civil War. 

"the Democrats left us defenseless against the aliens, impeachment is the only answer"

Without going to deeply into the subject for now, I believe we stand at a very perilous time in American history. Some have described it as a turning point, which can be good or bad. I believe that no matter who wins the election, the fabric of commonality that used to unite Americans to some degree has been shattered and cannot be rebuilt. Even if there were, say, an invasion by aliens, I believe we would see furious arguments between the warring factions of the left and right on the right way to fight the invasion and who is responsible for our unpreparedness, even as our world is being destroyed.

As it is now, by our hands, being destroyed. 

It does not do me any good to continue to try to influence public opinion by way of social media. I believe now, that that way lies madness. It may be that this vast odious sandbox was indeed constructed to corral public opinion in such a way that all energy would be expanded by wars within the system, keeping them out of the streets. The fact that this has not worked in all cases, specifically with the anti-police brutality movement, is a testament to the helpless frustration of those in underprivileged communities who feel they have nothing left to lose.

Self-care for the terminally anxious and worried folks can take many forms, some of them self-destructive. But I think pulling back from the madness that is enveloping us, not a surrender to the forces of darkness, but a simply acknowledgement that for many of us, over the course of our lives, we have done the best we could. And, the effort has degraded our energy and our souls in equal measure and that it is time, in the necessity of preserving whatever peace we can find left in our souls, to disengage. 

I have fought this for a long time but I have to admit that as time goes by, I lack the will to care anymore. I cannot stop what is happening. But I can stop the deleterious effect these events are having on my state of mind. Forever addicted as a news junkie, I know that I will never totally disengage, but I will withdraw as far as I can.

For all my friends, acquaintances and those who stumble on this blog, I leave you to your own battles and wish you well whatever your cause. But I can’t and won’t be part of your crusades any more. You would find my true feelings to be offensive anyway, and best we just take care of our own concerns.

Thank you for visiting my grave - but first a word from our sponsors

This blog, despite what some may think, was never meant to change social or political history. My radio show was supposed to do that and, although the effort was a good one, at a for-profit enterprise, it was doomed. What the blog is all about is (1) therapy writing for me to express things that I am reluctant to do personally and (2) a diary of sorts that acts as a written gravestone or testament. 

You may know that there are some cemeteries that will sell you an interactive gravestone that flashes images from the deceased’s life and audio of their words and others that knew them. This, of course, is somewhat crass but understandable from a society that has taken the idea of ‘personal branding’ even to the grave. 

If some people wish to give a spin on their thoughts, beliefs and actions through that medium, fine for them. I’ll do it the old fashioned way, with words and stories.

Walking out of my comfort zone

Some things you just do.

Because they mean a lot to your wife.

Even though going downtown on a (good God!) Saturday morning and marching around for two miles is NOT my idea of a leisurely way to start the day.

But. . .this was the Pittsburgh Step Out Walk to Stop Diabetes and my wife is diabetic and she's been doing this walk forever and we've been married six years annnnnnnddd. . . I've never done the walk.

Of course she drove.

We get there and park and walk down the street without being mugged.

Things went south in a hurry when, while waiting to check in, I stepped in a big mud puddle.

Shaking that off, I got my nifty t-shirt, absently-minded picked at an ingrown beard hair and bled on it.

My wife noticed, pointed it out to me and I tried to do a field-expedient pre-treat of the blood stain my smearing spit on it.

You do what you have to.

Someone from a drug company hands me an apple. Apples are cool. There are several drug companies companies on hand pushing various diabetes treatments while giving out lots of cool swag. Wife takes swag, I decline. I do take some coffee from the local grocers. If I forget any of these sponsors, they're all on the back of my T-shirt.

By the way, they have port-a-potties that actually flush some kind of blood-looking liquid. I use one and am impressed. 

We get in line for fruit, energy bars, water and bagels. We split a bagel, I am impressed that they do not skimp on the cream cheese.

We are accosted by numerous mascots. I'm not a fan of interacting with people in furry suits (surprised?) and I avoid Iceberg, the Pittsburgh Penguins mascot and some kind of giant purple dragon. I think there was another stuffed human furry but I can't remember what it was.

"At least we don't have Steely McBeam," my wife says. "That would be really scary."

Au contrare, my dear. Look down at the starting area.

I don't know what my wife has against Steely.

Anyway, at some point this walk has to begin and after several speeches it does. I am instantly accosted by screaming children. Now, I have to be honest. These are little girls who scream. You know the scream - the kind that pierces eardrums and volcanic rock. The kind of banshee shrieking only a 2-year-old girl is capable of. Boys are noisemakers too but they usually bawl rather than scream. I can't stand either but boys bawling and whining usually has a 10-foot noise radius. The little girl screaming can be heard for at least a mile.

If you want to unnerve me instantly, that will do it. The little girl is in a stroller. We pass the family but with my lumbering gait, they quickly catch up and I bug my wife to let them by. Even though the little girls has been bought off with a juice box, somehow I know it's only buying some time.

We meet other groups of rowdies and I land up walking behind my wife so these bands of unruly diabetes walkers can pass by. I don't want to hold anyone up.

We cross the Hot Metal Bridge. Unlike the Liberty Bridge, it does not catch fire, nor shake, but I am on guard.

We then walk the trail along the Monongahela River toward the midway point. It is along this path where we first encounter angry reckless bicyclists who did not realize 1300 people were have the unmitigated gall to take up their precious bike paths of which our mayor is so proud.

My head is on a swivel for them as they suddenly appear out of nowhere shouting "PASSING ON YOUR LEFT; WALK ON RIGHT!"

Yeah, uh, go fuck yourself.

Other non walkers emerge from the bushes on the trail. They look like runners and are equally annoyed. They could be decoys for muggers so I keep my eye on them.

We grab out water and the midway point and I steel myself for the return trip.

On  the way back we dodge more angry bicyclists and annoyed joggers. I notice that we have been following a group of folks that include a. . . little person? I don't know what the correct term is so I'll use the term from television. It annoys me that at 30 inches tall she's walking faster than I am. So it goes.

And then it happens - the stinging pain down the right side of my right leg. No doctor has ever been able to give me a straight answer as to what causes the pain, it just happens, usually while walking or standing too long and usually at the worst possible time. I had taken two Aleve pills prior to with my Neurontin to prevent this, but they fail. Of course they do.

Crossing the bridge again, I start to limp slightly and fall further behind my wife, who, helpfully takes pictures in order for me to catch up.

The view. Can't beat it.

I stop to rub my leg and then, gamely with jaw set, march on toward the finish line. And then it happens.

"Sir!"

You talkin' to me?

"You're leaking water."

So I was. I was carrying my water bottle upside down for some reason.

"You'd take the next drink and find it was empty," she said.

So I would. I feel stupid. I thank her, right the bottle and move on.

Startled by a loud noise, I realize it's a train.

I limp slightly over the finish arch and, although I need to sit down, the DJ is too loud so we move down the river a bit.

And it's over. I have survived the Pittsburgh Step Out Walk to Stop Diabetes. I am relieved, my wife is happy. I had raised almost $250 online from some nice generous people. I walked to honor their pledges but mostly for my wife and hopefully, someday, for a cure.

My wife is happy with me and that matters a whole lot more than the sting in my leg.

I took the selfie. I appear to have a tree growing out of my head, but it's all good.