Truth Deep Within

My dreams can be dark these days, and bear hidden dangers.  A seemingly harmless (even boring) cubicle in some no-name office that I was visiting, my laptop, phone, and various personal items for some reason strewn on the desktop surface as I work.  Except suddenly the space under just that cubicle has turned to lava... the desktop sinks into it, the corner of my laptop is sinking... can I save everything fast enough? Bubbling under my feet and then trying to suck down everything I care about..... When I was young I had similar dreams whenever I was facing a major life turning point.  Should I focus on career or starting a family?  Should I take on that new project at work that will suck up all of my time but be good for my career?  The dreams involved water, being in a vehicle that went off of something (a bridge, a dock, a cliff, ...) into water and then the car ever so slowly floated down into the water.  Could I get out in time?  With the w...

Sometimes it's hard to talk even to people that love us. Hard to either pretend that everything is okay or have to talk about how everything isn't.  I know that they are trying to "be there" for us.  I know that they are reaching out in love.  But response takes effort, and right now all of my efforts are turned internally - keeping her together, keeping her whole, working her plan.  I invest time and energy in things that move that forward.  Want to have a friend sleepover? Watch a movie? Just sit close and do completely different things?  I'm in.  But a friend of mine wanting to talk or god forbid go out?  Nope, not on my radar. Unhealthy, yes. But true nonetheless. Because the truth is that I'm a hair's breadth from crying All. The. Time.  There's a knot in the pit of my stomach that just Won't. Go. Away. And leaving to go listen to music or do some other random thing sounds insipid. I don't want to talk about the latest tiny dram...

I can handle the fact that there are lows. I can handle the fact that the world isn’t all sunshiny all the time. No one’s is. What’s so hard for me to handle, from the outside, is the whiplash. The fact that everything can be relatively normal and fine for a moment and then… something happens. It doesn’t have to be something large, in fact sometimes it can be quite small. But whatever that something is, it destroys the world and suddenly everything is on fire. That smash - that crashing fall - that’s what kills me. I remember a West Wing episode where they were talking about something that had happened and how everyone was focused on inconsequential details.  CJ said something about it not mattering where you land, the fall is what kills you. That’s how I feel. That damned flying free-fall... with nothing to hold onto, no recognizable landmarks, no way to get my bearings, the fluttering of a badly tattered flag of hope whipping past us as we leave all known territories with no...

We’re working on telling the truth of how we feel - both of us. It’s so easy to just give into the polite social fiction that everything’s okay. By the time you’re an adolescent in our society you have some mask that you can slip on to hide the truth of your feelings - that your teacher is an idiot, that your parent is a tyrant, that you like that girl or boy that you would never admit that you like. As you grow older and face more social situations, you gain a variety of these masks that you can slip on and off, sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty. But every successful adult knows how to put on a mask and hold it together. When your child’s brain is telling her to stop, just to stop being, you need a new set of skills - how do you help an adolescent learn that sometimes the instinctive and “protective” mask that means no one asks them difficult questions also means no one can help them. It sounds so simple: “This will hurt you, tell us what’s really happening insid...

I know this isn't what the lyrics of the song are supposed to mean, but I can't help feeling parallels to mental illness - to mental health. The 10,000 wars... the wars that are fought every morning, every day in the brain. The struggles that I see her go through to stay on an even keel. I know I feel a smaller amount of it myself, but even that can seem overwhelming. So what must it be looking out from the inside of her brain.... The simplest things can be battles - can we leave the house, can she brush her teeth, did she take her meds, can we just for-the-love-of-all-that's-holy get to school. She asked to stay home again. Am I being a good mother by making her go to school or would I be a good mother to let her stay home where she feels safe, and snuggle and hide her from the world? I believe, deep in me I believe, that the answer is to go to school. I believe - I have to believe - that this will get easier. No plan survives first contact, but the more we face the wo...

Sometimes I wish there was a line... a clear bloody line that we could see and point to... that would show when it’s “better”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t even know what better is. I can’t describe it, I can’t perceive its shape, I just hope that someday we’ll know when we experience it. I can tell you what “better” feels like from the side of “not better”. It feels like it will be not worrying every moment of every day that she won’t be here tomorrow. It feels like it will be not worrying that she’ll lose this fight with her brain and we’ll lose her. It feels like it will be that I’m not fracturing into a million pieces on a moment by moment basis. Is that better, or is that just my hope? And maybe an unrealistic hope at that.  Maybe better is something smaller… Maybe better is just that she knows how to fight her brain, to beat it back when it tries to crush her soul. Maybe I need to adjust my expectations. That could be okay, and I know it’s a long road, path, or wha...

Do other mothers feel this? The listening when she's in the shower to be sure she's still "there". Standing a moment too long in the hallway listening for the small sounds: the movement of bottles of shampoo and condition, the moments when she sings to herself, the small sounds of life. The checking too often when she's sleeping - making sure she's breathing, soothing away the nightmares large or small without ever knowing which they are. This wasn't always our life. Before the panic attacks. Before the suicide threats. Before the constant ball of frantic worry lodged itself permanently in my throat, back far enough that no one should see the way it chokes me. And this won't always be our life. Our day we'll be past the therapy and the trauma and she'll be a grown up with her own life and this constant drumbeat in her head will be gone. And I'll be able to breathe, and swallow, and pray to any god that will listen that she will never ha...