As he lay on a gurney in the emergency department of Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Erik grew increasingly upset. He had called the police to report a theft from his apartment, but wound up being taken to the hospital.
The ER staff quickly determined that Erik, 40, who has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and PTSD, needed urgent psychiatric care, but there wasn’t much they could do.
Like many hospitals, Memorial doesn’t have a psychiatric unit, and all of the psychiatric units in the nearby facilities were full. Erik, a bright, articulate and devoutly religious man, had to wait nearly two days on a gurney in the ER before he could be transferred.
Mentally ill patients often languish in hospital emergency rooms for several days, sometimes longer, before they can be moved to a psychiatric unit or hospital. At most, they get drugs but little counseling, and the environment is often harsh.
A few thoughts on this:
–This is disturbing as hell when you consider the fact that when you listen to the phone recording from just about every therapist’s office, you are directed to the nearest emergency room in a crisis situation. Someone in a desperate state goes to the ER as directed only to find no help.
–The typical ER is an infuriating place to be because you almost always wait for hours unless you’ve been brought in by ambulance or you have blood pouring out all over the floor. I don’t necessarily blame ER staff for this. They never have enough resources. Some will debate me on that, but I’ve been in enough ERs to make the observation.
In the final analysis, I think the main responsibility for fixing this problem starts with the upper-level hospital administrators and boards of directors. They need to make it a priority to have emergency assistance for people with mental health emergencies.
If there’s a good reason they can’t do this, and I doubt there is, then mine and other therapists need to stop telling people to go to the emergency room.
In my opinion, employers have no legal right to deny someone a job simply because they were diagnosed with a mental illness. They do, however, have the right to pass over a candidate who doesn’t seem up to the job.
My friend Danielle Goodwin shared a personal example of someone denying her a job because she was honest about what she had:
I interviewed several times (making the cut each time) for a national-level position worth some big bucks last year. They used emotional intelligence testing and the whole nine yards. I passed everything.
I went for my final interview with the president of the company (all of the lower committees had recommended me to be hired). Everyone had told me the guy asks stuff that no one else has ever asked you and to be totally honest because he can spot a liar…so he asks me piercing, direct questions about my childhood abuse. I was completely honest with him, and I found out the next day he told everyone else everything I told him and that because I was hurt as a child, I definitely couldn’t function in their company.
What a jerk! He had the right, I guess, since it was just an interview…but why dig in so deep and ask me those things if you’re just going to hold it against me without ever seeing my work product and ethic.
If anything, adult children like me work harder, work more efficiently, and produce higher quality work according to the research.
The guy who interviewed her, told everyone about the conversation and turned her down was an asshole. Pure and simple. A lawyer could have had a field day picking that bastard to pieces.
At the other end of the spectrum is this comment from Beth Horne, president and CEO of The Horne Agency, a marketing and advertising firm. She has lived this from both sides, as the mental illness sufferer and as an employer. She wrote the following via the United States Mental Health Professionals group on LinkedIn:
I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 twenty years ago. I received treatment and have been stable for years, thanks to excellent therapy, medication and education. Before returning to school for my PhD in Psychology, I worked in Marketing/Advertising for several large media companies before opening my own advertising agency. I was open about my diagnosis with my employers during my interview process, and it never hindered me from being hired. In fact, I never interviewed for a job I did not get, due to my work record, resume and references.
I think that my work performance more than made up for any issues I may have had regarding my disorder, such as sometimes having periods of depression or getting a bit manic when life changes occurred. I worked very hard NOT to let them affect my work performance or reduce my ability to generate revenue for my company.
However, I have been in management with these companies and had employees with mental issues who did not take care of themselves and they became liabilities to the company and had to be let go. Some would refuse to take their medication and attend therapy, some would miss work continually or be so over-medicated they were in a constant stupor, unable to perform their duties. I had one woman who came into the office in such a manic state I had to ask her to stay in her office until she could have her husband take her to her doctor, and to please refrain from taking any sales calls, for fear of her ruining client relations.
If someone knows they have a mental issue/disorder, it is a personal choice whether or not to accept their diagnosis and get help and follow their treatment. Is this always easy? NO! But if they are to function in the work environment, it is their responsibility to do anything and everything in their power to stay as healthy as possible. If this is not possible for them, then it is time to look into disability.
Employers need to understand that not everyone with a diagnosis of a mental illness is like another…there are people with bipolar disorder who have little problem going on with their daily routine with just therapy and medication, while others find it impossible to blend into the work environment. I use bipolar disorder as just one example, but there are many others, as we all are aware. I have a mother who has a mild form of OCD and is a supervisor at a hospital. What better profession could there be for someone who will always be strict about following rules, cleanliness and excellent patient care than an RN? Or like my brother, who also has the same issue, works in IT?
Both are successful and well-adjusted, and their coworkers probably have no idea they have any mental problems whatsoever. So before they judge and dismiss a potential employee because of ignorance, they should look at the person as a whole and not just their diagnosis.
Beth, you are so right. Thanks for sharing.
Like Beth, I’ve been judged by my workmanship and not by any mental health issues I’ve disclosed. That has been the case for me in every job I’ve ever had.
I’m very fortunate.
There have also been times in past jobs where my workmanship suffered because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was refusing to even consider therapy or medication, and I sank lower and lower.
I was reinforcing the stigma instead of breaking it.
Today I succeed because I refuse to let the struggles render me useless. Like Danielle, I fight harder and longer, and I never give up.
Better to be part of the solution than the problem.
The most insight on Mike comes from Katherine Doot, an old friend of Erin’s and recent discoverer of this blog. She lives in Arizona now, but as a Haverhill native she got to know Mike pretty well. Here’s what she had to say:
Mike in fact is a Vietnam veteran who does in fact have SEVERE PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. He has medication that helps, when he can take it, but as I was told, the medication is often stolen from him.
Sadly this poor man lives in his mind every day reliving the horrors that he saw in Vietnam and cannot escape.
I had run-ins with him when I lived in Haverhill. Was I scared? Of course, but the man deserves respect for going to fight in a war in the name of our country. He deserves compassion for the nightmare that is his reality, and just maybe a bit of sympathy because of the lack of all of the above.
I work at an office that serves veterans, and at this office I have seen many of the Vietnam vets, most in better condition than Mike, but most have some sort of mental condition that stems from their war time. I feel sorry for what these brave soldiers gave up. Every chance I get, I make sure to take a moment, to shake their hands, and to say thank you for doing what they did. Sadly most of them are shocked by the simple words, and it brings me to tears every time.
As I said yesterday, I’m lucky. I struggled for years with crippling mental illness, but that was nothing compared to this.
This whole affair has also reminded me of all the homeless veterans I’ve seen in Haverhill and Revere over the years.
There’s always evidence that the guy on the street is a veteran. There are the service tattoos and the jacket patches. Many of them saw things that were hard to live with, and they were rendered mentally ill. Instead of getting help, they wound up on the street because they couldn’t hold a job or stay off drugs and booze.
It would be high-minded of me to say we need to do better for our veterans. But it’s been said so often it’s pretty much lost it’s meaning. We like to praise our veterans on Veterans Day or July 4. But once the holiday is past, we go back to treating them like shit.
Because they’re homeless and, as a result, they’re dirty, scary and unpleasant to those who have lived far more comfortable lives. And, don’t you know, we LOVE to judge people even though we know nothing about them.
I’ve had my struggles. We all have. But I have no idea what it’s like to be on a battlefield.
I do know that a lot of people — good people who have sacrificed for God, country and family — have taken tragic turns in the line of duty. It’ll always be this way because life’s unfair.
Do these guys deserve better from the rest of us? You bet your ass they do. Including “Crazy Mike.”
When someone is on the street and hungry, we like to say they did it to themselves. Or we say we gotta help them and then do nothing. I’ve done both.
They did drugs. They stole and lied to people.
But the fortunes of man are never, ever so simple.
There’s always something in the history of each of us that shapes the decisions we make and how we live otherwise. I’ve made many bad choices in my day. But God’s Grace has carried me through.
May the vets on the street find that same Grace.
I bunked with a Vietnam veteran who has PTSD last year when I was on team for a Cursillo retreat.
He’s been through the wringer over the years. He saw terrible things in Vietnam, and he came home to people who were spitting on soldiers instead of praising and thanking them.
I thought it was appropriate that a guy with PTSD would be rooming with Mr. OCD. We had a lot of laughs over that.
But here’s the thing: This guy doesn’t bitch about his lot in life. He’s retired, but he spends his days helping fellow veterans.
And he’s active with the Cursillo movement.
The tragedy of service bent him in every direction. But it didn’t break him.
There’s hope for all of us.
Even “Crazy Mike.” He walks the streets talking to himself today. But with the right kind of help, who knows what kind of goodness he may be capable of.
Here’s the part where I lose some of my Haverhill friends. I don’t care.
In any city there’s a guy like “Crazy Mike.”
The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment.
But I have to believe that God put me through those earlier experiences in the hope that I’d come out of it wiser and more compassionate. If I in fact have, then I need to be the guy to stand up for “Crazy Mike” and others like him. I need to start by never making fun of someone in that condition again and, if I’m lucky, take a few people with me.
A friend of mine mentioned today that he was more than a little disappointed in some of his friends for “liking” a Facebook page dedicated to “Crazy Mike.” I looked up the page to find that the page has 1,166 “likes.”
The description of Mike reads: “Walking any and everywhere, Yelling at cars, Using imaginary machine guns, talking to myself, Having a court trial while walking down the sidewalk, Screaming racial slurs, Sleeping in and around Building #19 1/16, Lighting chips on fire in Market Basket.”
He yells at cars, you say? We all yell at cars. It’s just that we’re usually behind the wheel pissed off because someone cut us off in traffic.
Using imaginary machine guns? I’ve seen plenty of so-called sane people do that while talking about their favorite scene from “Lethal Weapon” or “Con-Air.”
Screaming racial slurs? That’s wrong of him, but many of us have used the same awful slurs. Not because we are racists, but because we tend to master stupid talk when we’ve had a bit much to drink.
Talking to himself? I do that all the time, and I’ll bet more than a few of the “Crazy Mike” page likers do it, too.
Sleeping in front of Building 19? That’s just because he’s not as lucky as those of us who have a home to sleep in. I’m sure there are twenty-somethings who like that page and still enjoy the comforts of their parents’ houses.
It would be easy for me to say you people are hypocrites and shitheads. But I am, too, so I would just be piling on another layer of hypocrisy.
Instead I’ll just end with this:
We are all God’s children. We are all crazy to varying degrees.
We all have the capacity for big acts of wisdom and bigger acts of stupidity.
Instead of laughing at this “Crazy Mike,” just thank God you’re not in his shoes.
I’d like to know more about Mike, now. We all have a history that molds us into who we are. I’m wondering about his story.
Did he fight a war and come home with post-traumatic stress disorder? Maybe, maybe not.
But if nothing else, his story — one of mental illness — deserves to be told.
If someone does a lousy job at work, they deserve to be fired. If someone does the job well but is fired because they have a mental illness, that’s an outrage.
Mood music:
[spotify:track:0OGwOky2l941SPRkE56kU9]
This morning’s tirade brought to you by this comment posted on the LinkedIn NAMI group discussion board:
I lost my job as Director – Communications from a regional Chamber of Commerce after disclosing my 30 years of living and working with bipolar in Dec. 2009.
Now after trying to find another job, I applied for SSDI. I just got rejected with a letter saying,”The medical evidence in your file shows that your condition does cause restriction in your ability to function, however, while your condition prevents you from doing previous jobs, you still have the ability to do unskilled work.”
I was diagnosed with bipolar in 1980, have bouts of depression, social anxiety, migraines, gerd and visable essential tremors in my hands and legs. I cannot stand unsupported for more than a few minutes and the tremors make me not want to leave my home and when I do anxiety worsens them. I can take medication to calm the tremors but those meds also negatively effect my memory, errors, and cognitive abilities.
I know most people get rejected but I am almost 60 and have worked in public marketing communications at managerial levels since 1984. What should I do?
I felt I needed to disclose as the work was socially demanding and my tremors showed.
I felt in disclosing that especially a Chamber of Commerce would be somewhat more understanding. Instead they became hostile and took away my startegic job duties and bumped me down to a typist.
Now, let’s start with some clarifications: If this person’s illness prevented them from doing their job, that does put the employer in a bind. I get that. If her condition has suddenly nosedived and it prevents her from doing what she used to do, that’s a tragedy.
The question I have is this: If someone loses their ability to do their job because of heart disease, a terrible injury or cancer, do they get dropped cold by their employer? Do they get treated in a hostile manner? Not from my experience.
I’ve known many people who developed a disease or got in an accident, and none lost their jobs. Their seat simply stayed empty and, in some cases, temps were brought in to do their work until they either recovered or resigned. They were treated with support.
If this woman did her job admirably for many years and just recently hit a period of intensified mental illness, she should be treated like the cancer or heart patient. To fire her because she’s “gone crazy” is, in my opinion, unacceptable.
It’s as insidious as, say, putting limits on coverage for mental health care.
These stories ratchet up the fear level for those suffering from depression, OCD, bipolar disorder and the like. It proves to the sufferer that mental illness is still viewed as a less-than-legitimate illness, something that’s more a figment of the sufferer’s imagination.
I’m not an expert. I can only base my opinion on personal experience. But I’ve heard enough horror stories from other people to know this crap is for real.
I try not to engage in political debate because this is such a personal issue, though sometimes I have to make a point on current events like I did when Health care Reform passed last year.
I do know this, though: Many good people have died because of mental illness. They were ashamed and afraid to get help because of the stupid notion that they are somehow crazy and either need their ass kicked or be institutionalized. So they try to go it alone and either end up committing suicide because their brains are knocked so far off their axis or they die from other diseases that develop when the depression forces the sufferer into excessive eating, drinking, starvation, drug taking or a combination of these things.
There’s also the ridiculous idea that a person’s workmanship becomes valueless when they’re in a depression. If someone misses work because they have cancer, they are off fighting a brave battle. They are fighting a brave battle, of course. No doubt about it.
But depression? That person is slacking off and no longer performing.
I’ve been able to debunk that idea in my own work circle. It helps that I’ve been blessed to work with exceptional, amazing and enlightened people. At work, I’ve gotten nothing but support. I do my job well, and that’s good enough for them. That’s how it should be.
Luckily for me, I got rid of my fear and anxiety long ago, so I’m going to keep sharing my experiences. It probably won’t force change or tear down the stigma single-handedly.
But if a few more people get just a little more fight in them after reading these diaries, it will have been well worth the risks.
As for what the woman above can do about her situation, the folks in the LinkedIn forum offered some good advice. The best, in my opinion, came from mental health advocate Bonnie Neighbour:
You have two possible areas of recourse. You can sue for unlawful termination. I am not referring to that choice with the rest of this comment.
Or you can appeal the SSDI denial. Something people need to k ow that is not commonly talked about is that, in deciding on your application for SSDI. the Social Security Dept. will only request records from your doctors, etc. one time. If the applicable records are not submitted within the time frame (and it’s wires short) the Social Security Dept. Decides upon (and they most likely will not tell you the time frame but it’s a matter of weeks) they will automatically deny the claim. You can appeal and get the appropriate records submitted for the appeal. Thus is one reason so many people are denied.
For those who have not applied for SSDI but who may in the future, the prudent thing to do is collect all your records before you begin the application process and submit them all at once. If you depend on hour doctors’ offices to respond the a request by the Social Security Dept., the likelihood of receiving a denial based on incomplete records is huge. And you will most likely never know why.
Good luck.
A third option for you is to find your passion and start doing it — even if it’s volunteer only. For it is by living a fulfilling and passionate life that we stay healthy and can find and maintain mental health recovery.
You can pursue option three while considering option one or two.
Welcome to another installment of Stuff My Kids Say. Life is full of daily struggle and it can be hard to stop for a moment and appreciate one’s blessings. Fortunately for me, my kids are good at pulling me back down to Earth. And, I realized this past weekend, so are their friends.
I think you’ll walk away feeling that life isn’t so tough when you’ve seen it from a child’s perspective.
This episode is brought to you by our weekend Scouts camping trip to Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts, where we spent the night on the battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts.
Duncan, seconds before being "offed" for being a Nazi invader
One of the challenges of hanging out on a battleship is that Duncan just wants to run around unencumbered by his old man. He likes to hang out with his older brother and his friends, who don’t always want to hang around with him. They are 10 and he’s 7. To a 10-year-old, it’s just not cool to let a 7-year-old hang out with you.
So off Sean goes with his buddies, Jack Dalton and Lukas Rouleau. Sean considers Lukas to be one of his best friends.
Describing Lukas’ value as a buddy, Sean says:
“The thing about Lukas is he turns every party into a war game.”
The three run off and Duncan goes to follow them when he’s pulled back by my hand on his jacket.
Annoyed, Duncan says, “I don’t understand why I can’t run around and why I have to hang out with you, Dad. The camp leaders did say ‘enjoy.’ You’re not my idea of enjoyment.”
He gets over it quickly enough, and we make our way to the top of the ship, where he settles into the captain’s chair on the bridge.
Then, in his moment of glory, Sean, Jack and Lukas appear. The three have been searching the ship for Nazis to kill. They look at Duncan and decide he’s one of the evildoers they’ve been looking for.
Jack puts his thumb and finger into the shape of a pistol and executes his Nazi catch at point-blank range. Satisfied, the older boys run off in search of more bad guys.
Duncan, looking like someone just pooped on his birthday cake, lets out a mournful protest.
“Daaaaad! Those morons shot me again!” he bellows.
I decide to help him get over it by crawling down to the lower decks. Somewhere along the way, he sees a repairman crouched into an opening in the wall, hand reaching for tools.
“Dad, why is he making repairs to the ship?” Duncan asks, adding, “He’s wasting his time. The war’s over.”
Later we reunite with the older boys. Lukas has been on this adventure before, and knows where the bombs are hidden. He warns his friends:
“No one should sleep in one of the bunks above Jack’s dad.” Something about wind.
Later, just after lights out, Lukas warns that there are additional wind problems.
“Guys, Jack’s gonna fart and we’re all gonna die,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. I understand his concern. It’s pretty tight quarters with nowhere to escape from the random clouds of gas.
Sean checks out the our bunks, where we will later be at the mercy of some ill wind
I don’t sleep a wink, but we all survive the night. Just after 6 on Sunday morning, we hurry back to Haverhill with the Dalton boys. Sean and Jack have to be at church by 8:30 because they’re both in the “Passion Play” at the children’s Mass.
We stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and breakfast. Jack asks for a coffee Coolata and is shot down. Sean says to me, “Dad, I’m going to need a lot of energy today. Can I have a Mountain Dew?”
Ten years old and he’s already relying on Mountain Dew. I shudder, then tell him no.
John Dalton, the other dad on this adventure, warns the kids not to get chocolate all over their faces, which would surely reveal the breakfast choice to Mrs. Dalton, who would be none too pleased.
I’m more stoic about the whole thing. Sean and Duncan never keep such things from their mom. They tell her they got doughnuts at the earliest opportunity, because they want her to know that they won.
The kids do a great job at Mass and we go home. A few hours later, the house is full of family for one of Sean’s two 10th birthday parties. Compared to the rest of the weekend, this is pretty tame.
At bedtime, I read Duncan a book about how to deal with your feelings when you’re angry. One page notes that it’s OK to get angry with God for life’s unfair twists, as long as you keep praying and get over the need to blame Him for everything.
Duncan says something stunningly insightful for a 7-year-old. Or, perhaps, he’s just proving again that kids have a clearer picture of the world than we grown-ups have:
“Dad, I don’t see how people could get mad at God,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because while we’re all busy getting upset down here, we have no idea what God is doing up there.”
That’s probably the best way I’ve ever heard someone explain that God has a plan and we have no idea why things happen the way they do.
But Duncan is pretty certain about one thing God’s not doing up there:
“I know this much,” he says. “God’s not picking his nose, because he doesn’t like that.”
Since Duncan’s favorite color is pink, I get pretty pissed when I see stories about the high-and-mighty going nuts because they mistake a color for a gender or sexual orientation.
The latest example is this J. Crew ad, where a mom is painting her son’s toe-nails hot pink:
People have been going absolutely crazy over this, suggesting that the boy will be scarred for life and need thousands of dollars of counseling when he gets older.
And then there’s the fear that — shudder — the kid will grow up to be gay. American society will decay around the edges, and we’ll all be dope-slapped for this on Judgement Day.
I always knew nail polish was nothing but trouble, a bottle of sin dropped on our laps by Satan himself.
“Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your ‘innocent’ pleasure,” Dr. Keith Ablow wrote in a Fox News op-ed. “If you have no problem with the J. Crew ad, how about one in which a little boy models a sundress? What could possibly be the problem with that?”
Erin Brown of the Media Research Center took the criticism a step further — after being sure to remind readers that J. Crew is a fashion favorite of First Lady Michelle Obama — accusing the company of exploiting young Beckett to advance the cause of “liberal, transgendered identity politics.”
Good fucking grief.
There are more reasoned comments in that article, stuff that I agree with:
Sarah Manley, who set off a similar firestorm last Halloween after posting photos of her young son dressed up as his unconventional idol: Daphne from “Scooby Doo,” said of the J.Crew ad, “If the roles had been reversed and the photo…had been of a little girl playing in the mud with trucks, nobody would have batted an eye.”
“So go back and look at that picture in the J.Crew ad, will you? What do you see? Do you see pink nail polish on a boy? Or do you see a little boy named Beckett, with beautiful blond curls, and a mom who looks like she is impossibly in love with her kid, in the very best way? Because that’s what I see.”
That’s what I see, too.
This is one of those issues where Duncan has taught me a lot.
He has a pink winter hat and a pink knitted coin pouch. When a priest saw him wearing the hat last year, a look of concern came over him. “Well, I guess there’s still time,” he said.
One Sunday, Duncan showed the school principal his coin pouch. “That’s an interesting color,” she said. The pouch was stuffed with coins Duncan couldn’t wait to put in the poor box.
I once asked Duncan why pink is his favorite color. His answer: “Because girls like pink. And I like girls.” Innocent words from a 7-year-old boy.
And yet there are those who try to tell me this is dangerous. He could grow up gay.
This is how you start a child down the path of social anxiety, pain and dysfunction. You take something as innocent as a color choice and start suggesting there’s something wrong with him.
When I was a kid, I got hassled over the more old-fashioned stuff, like being overweight. I also kept believing in Santa Clause longer than the other kids my age. Being fat meant being damaged, unworthy of the same respect everyone else got. In high school, I used to watch teachers belittle students who dressed like hippes. The kids were drug-injecting wastoids as far as some of the teachers were concerned. I knew some who were, but I knew others who were not.
Make a kid feel stupid over how they look or what they wear and after awhile they’re probably going to start believing they are damaged goods.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the pink fear crowd have their hearts in the right place. They just want children to be happy and grow into “normal” and happy adults.
But their thinking is flawed.
Here’s my take on the J. Crew ad: It looks like a typical fashion ad: over the top, depicting people with overly big smiles. But it’s harmless.
Hell, I remember painting my own finger nails red as a teenager because I wanted to look like people in the glam metal bands that were all the rage in the 1980s. It was harmless. And trust me, it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for girls. I was having no luck with the opposite sex in high school, mind you, but nail polish had nothing to do with that.
As for Duncan, he can like whatever color he wants to like. If you have a problem with that, you can come talk to the boy’s ugly, still overweight Dad.
I’ll probably tell you you’re being shallow and judgemental. I might even tell you you’re being a dickhead.
I had mixed emotions as I drove to my therapy appointment this morning.
On the one hand, I was pissed that half my morning was getting blown out for the appointment. I wasn’t happy about all the tasks bearing down on me, either. On the other hand, the coffee I got at Starbucks was pretty damn good and the ride allowed me to get my fill of vintage Ozzy and Randy Rhoads.
I walked into his office with my extra-large cup of caffeine, as I always do. He commented on my having brought drugs to the appointment again, so I told him about my delight at discovering a coffee blend recently called Jet Fuel.
Then I unloaded about how Holy Week was very late this year, colliding with the kids’ vacation week and a crap load of Scout activities and various other appointments.
It’s nobody’s fault, I told him. It’s just one of those perfect storms that sometimes downpours all over the calendar.
A few years ago I would have been feeling enormous pressure. I’d be binging my guts out over it. This time I’m just a little cranky. That’s progress. I even stopped to hold the door open for a guy whose arm was in a sling on the way into the building.
I patted myself on the back for remembering to do a good deed in the middle of my crankiness.
The therapist listened patiently, then cut to the question he always asks me:
“So, are you going to try yoga sometime soon?” he asks.
He loves to talk about yoga. It’s his favorite subject.
It’s not mine.
I switch the subject, telling him about the nice cigar I enjoyed with a friend last Sunday.
“I see,” he says.
He takes me through the complete inventory: How’s the medication working? Am I less moody now that the days are getting longer? Am I getting enough alone time with my wife? How’s the blog doing? Did I remember to pack my Prozac before flying back from the last business trip?
He asks me what I still want to improve about myself. I tell him I’m still learning to live in the present, instead of drifting between the past and the many different futures before me. I’m also still struggling with the concept of patience. I’m still a badly impatient person, especially toward my youngest son.
It’s not long before the yoga comes up again.
“You know yoga helps keep you in the present and learn techniques for patience, right?” he says with a wide grin. He loves when he scores a point.
“I just can’t see myself ever wanting to do Yoga,” I tell him.
“There was once a time when you couldn’t see yourself not binging or suffering anxiety attacks,” he shoots back.
Those things were different, I respond. I was desperate to deal with those other things. Nothing today makes me feel so desperate that I’m willing to try yoga.
“I see,” he says with that grin, as he always does when he’s not buying my answer.
Two of my closest friends, God Bless ’em, always think they can read my mood in real time based on something I wrote in this blog a day, week or month ago. But sometimes the written word is just a snapshot in time — a feeling that either intensifies or goes away in short order.
The conversation usually goes something like this:
Friend: “So, you’ve been kind of down lately, huh?”
Me, startled by the comment because I’m in a good mood at that moment: “What do you mean?”
Friend: “Your blog posts have been kinda dark lately.”
They’re just behaving like concerned friends, and I love them for it. But it illustrates the bigger challenge of writing a blog like this.
Since I deal with the darker side of human nature, the tone will inevitably be cloaked in black. Even when I write about feeling hopeful or joyful about something, it can come off dark because to express why something feels joyful, I have to compare it to some of the more depressing episodes in my life.
I don’t apologize for that. It’s the way it must be. You need to experience hell to understand just how good heaven is. And you need to paint an image of both so the reader will know the difference.
The fact of the matter is that I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have bad days, bad moods and outright depressive episodes.
Back when I was mostly unhappy and pissed at the world, I could display sunny moods that gave people a false impression of what was going on inside my head. It’s actually pretty typical for an unhappy soul to come of as happy because they mask what they feel through copious amounts of humor. Humor is a great coping mechanism. Abraham Lincoln certainly understood that.
Some of the most gifted comics in history lived brutally unhappy lives. Charlie Chaplin and all Three Stooges come to mind. Curley’s life was downright heart-breaking. Why he never picked up a machine gun and unloaded in a Hollywood parking lot is beyond me. Henry Rollins, a pretty dark fella whose spoken word performances are actually quite funny, once made this gem of an observation:
“I’d rather be funny than happy.”
I used to latch onto that quote for comfort. Fuck it, I’d think to myself. I’ll never be happy, so I’ll just be funny.
That’s just as true today as it was during my deepest period of unhappiness.
Just as my dark streak is all over my writing today, even though I’m a much happier person.
How can I be happy when life can still be so difficult? I guess it was a case of lowering my expectations. By not expecting too much out of the world, I’m let down a lot less often. And as happy as that makes me, the statement is still pretty fucking dark.
It just goes to show life isn’t as black and white as some make it out to be.
The bottom line is that my writing will always be somewhat dark. It’s the product of where I’ve been. I’ll also continue to go through my periods of depression. It’s a chronic condition to be managed. But you’re never really cured.
When I wore it like a kid — which I did well into my 30s — melancholy could radiate off me like the stench of a decaying body. I’d walk into the room, and while I might be cracking a joke and smiling, you knew I wasn’t in my right mind. The body language said it all. My eyes said it all. And my inability to stay in that same room for long said it all.
Now, I can walk into a room and stay there for hours, talking freely with people and not really worrying if a piece of the last meal is hanging off my facial scruff.
But under that, I can still be depressed.
It’s all good, because while depression can still make me unpleasant at times (just ask my wife and kids), it can’t make me unhappy like I used to be.
I’ve learned that happiness is a state of inner peace and the feeling that if you keep trying to do what’s right, everything will actually turn out alright.
I prefer that to a simple good mood, which can be all too fleeting.
A huge challenge of learning to live life in the middle lane is that much of my spiritual growth and sobriety-abstinence has come to revolve around the belief that like a shark, you either swim or you drown. Or, to earn my recovery and faith, I have to run for my life.
This leads to a lot of confusion on my part, and the result is a life thrown out of balance (a topic I covered in the post “Back Where I Belong“). But every once in awhile, people who are smarter than me bring home the point that there’s an art to the running; a way to do it without leaving people who need you in the dust.
The new pastor at my church, Father Tim Kearney, drove home the point in a column he wrote for the weekly church bulletin about how it’s much more important to do God’s work than to simply talk about how important it is. He used a Mother Theresa example where she’s listening to a young seminarian talk about the need to care for poor, sick, starving children. She hands the young man a baby to feed and take care of and walks away. Why talk about how important it is when you can just do it?
I’m not sure I captured the example with 100 percent precision, since I’m working off of memory at the moment. But you get the idea.
The second example came during my 12-Step study meeting last night, where we focused exclusively on Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The evening’s speaker was an elderly woman, sober for many years now, who explained that this step is what has made it possible for her to live the other steps, which are all about action.
The need to meditate and pray so you can jump into action the right way.
It’s not like I didn’t already know about this. Erin makes a point to sit in a chair, do a reading and pray about it just about every morning. But she’s always been more patient than me.
I think yesterday God was talking to me, trying to remind me that yes, action is what’s needed, but that action and running are not the same thing.
Father Kearney’s example of action revolved around patience and slow, deliberate movement — not bouncing all over the place like an atomic tennis ball.
That’s something I still need to work on.
The other thing I’m learning is that action can and should be close to home as much as possible, not all over creation.
All this will be put to the test in the next two weeks. Saturday I take the kids on a 2-hour drive to Fall River for a Scouts camping trip at Battleship Cove (we’re bunking in the bowels of one of the battleships). The next morning we have to be on the road by 6 a.m. to get to church in time for Sean to do his part in a “Passion play” for the Palm Sunday children’s Mass. That afternoon, we’re having one of two birthday parties for Sean’s 10th birthday. From there it’s vacation week, complete with painting, cleaning and various appointments.
It’s the action of being present for family — the most important kind there is.
And for me, sometimes, the hardest action to master.
