The madness has subsided. We’re safe and comfortable, which I realize is more than I can say for a lot of people in New Jersey, Queens, and elsewhere. We were far from the worst of it, I know. But I figured I might as well set everything down now before it washes away like so many trees and debris.
I would hope that those of my friends who thought it was ‘all a bunch of hype, just like Irene’ are now sufficiently chastened. But I don’t think even those of us who took it seriously expected something on this scale. As of Monday evening I was envisioning something like the following: staying in while drinking wine and eating all the snacks we’d stocked up on and playing Settlers of Catan by candlelight until the power went back on in a day or so, at which point we’d switch to watching movies until the subways came back in another day or so and I no longer had an excuse to stay home from work. Continue reading →
On a night in Corpus Christi, along the old Gulf Coast, I came up from quiet water to see the Nehi moon. It was orange, the color of soda, but instead of effervescence it hinted at airborne filth, a heavenly stain turned loose by an earth so long ignored by the selfsame sky. Rain had forsaken the land. Continue reading →
Author’s Note: It has been brought to my attention by an insightful reader that this post could be perceived as presenting psychiatric maxims and advice. I want to be clear for anyone reading this that I have no psychiatric or medical training. This post is written purely from the perspective of a layperson with bipolar disorder and is not intended to diagnose, treat or judge any illness or disorder. I apologize retroactively for any lack of clarity on my part.
In a recent Crasstalk comment thread, I made the mistake of writing the sentence “Catherine Zeta Jones is pretending to be in rehab for bipolar disorder.” Although it was certainly not my intention, my very poor choice of words made it seem that I was flippantly saying that Ms. Jones was faking her illness. Perhaps my comment is even worse considering that I do know much better than to make light (even unintentionally) of serious matters.
In hindsight, I know that I should have clarified my point by writing, “Catherine Zeta Jones’ publicist says that she is in rehab for bipolar disorder.” The point I was trying to make is that for an A-list actor, the stigma of admitting to treatment in a psychiatric facility is far greater than the stigma associated with going to rehab. My theory is that drug addicts – regardless of the severity of their addiction – can always say their behavior was a result of temporary weakness, whereas people with mental illness are often viewed as inherently and irrevocably defective. Chemical imbalances in the brain that must be treated with medication are deemed far worse than chemical imbalances in the body that require medication.
Ms. Jones has been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, which is markedly different from bipolar I. (Bipolar II is characterized by more lows than highs, and the highs are rarely manic. Bipolar I is characterized by less severe lows and intermittent manic highs.) But I think the media lumps the two together because it’s more “exciting” to potentially have a manic-behaving celebrity, as in the case of Britney Spears’ paparazzi-fueled meltdown and hospitalization. But regardless, I think that arguing over degrees of mental illness is both missing the point and enhancing the stigma. I also think that the media’s tendency to publicly “out” people as being bipolar – even if they are exhibiting clear symptoms of the disorder – is victim-shaming at its worst. (Charlie Sheen comes to mind.)
Not every celebrity can be as open as, say, Carrie Fisher, who publicly talks about taking 8 different meds to manage her bipolar I disorder. I can understand a famous person not wanting to be painted with the mental illness brush. I think Catherine Zeta Jones is to be admired for acknowledging it. Of course, the extenuating circumstances of the personal stress she’s been under have clearly been a factor, but she could have instead chosen to say that she was suffering from exhaustion and face far less public scrutiny.
The brouhaha which my crass comment regarding Ms. Jones created in the comments has made me rethink my own situation. Despite my ebullient friendliness online, in many ways, I am a private person. I didn’t want to offer up as a defense for my remarks the fact that I have bipolar I disorder, because I didn’t want to be perceived as (1) insane, (2) self-hating or (3) unsupportive of other bipolar people, none of which is the case at all. I was merely recognizing the social stigma of the disorder – a stigma so great that it leads to inpatient psychiatric care being euphemistically referred to as rehab, and creates a hierarchy between “good” bipolar (II) and “bad” bipolar (I).
Having dealt with bipolar disorder consistently for eleven years (I was diagnosed a decade earlier) I can tell you that it’s challenging at times, but as long as I’m on top of things, I can consciously forestall circumstances spiraling out of my control. I take only one medication and manage my moods and thoughts quite diligently. Sleep is the best leveler I know of, and I make a concerted effort to keep my body healthy and balanced in all other ways as well. Bipolar disorder does not have to be a dramatic, violent life-interruptor, although mania is often portrayed that way on TV and in movies. It helps to have supportive people in your life; everyone close to me is well aware that I am bipolar, and my family and closest friends don’t judge me for it.
It is my intention to clear up the misunderstanding I created by offering a piece of my personal experience. It is obviously my hope that those reading this will open their minds to the possibility that bipolar disorder – and mental illness in general – is not the death sentence many people have been led to believe. There are varying degrees of the disorder, and I know that I am fortunate to have a milder version of bipolar I. Rather than look at it as a curse, I prefer to look at it the way Jimi Hendrix did: “Manic depression is touching my soul.”
UPDATE: bens made a fantastic — and crucial — comment that deserves to be in the body of this post. He offered some explicit clarification regarding the connection between drug abuse and mental illness that I had completely missed. Here is his comment in its entirety:
Drug addiction is a mental illness. You are mentally ill if you are a drug addict, plain and simple. Not everybody who goes to rehab or goes to a psychiatric facility for “drug addiction” is a drug addict, but for those who are genuine drug addicts there’s no way you can say its not a mental illness.
And then you get to the problem whereby many different mental illnesses mimic symptoms. You could be doing drugs because you’re depressed, have bipolar disorder, have a geniune addiction to drugs, because you’re self medicating anxiety symptoms, etc. There’s a lot of overlap and misdiagnosis.
The first thing anyone will tell a patient seeking help at a rehab is that “you can’t easily put the toothpaste back in the tube.” Its something that doesn’t go away.
For CZJ, she probably went to a dual-diagnosis rehab, to get the appropriate level of care. She’s most likely abusing substances, hence the rehab. Just going to a psych facility not tailored to treat her addiction would only be treating part of the problem.
I used to have this theory about adulthood, that you aren’t actually a for-keeps, responsibility-driven, “adult” until one or two things happened.
You have a child.
Your parents die.
It was a convenient theory because the day after my eighteenth birthday I moved to New York, three thousand miles away from anyone I knew. Normally, this would have the event that triggered entrance to the world of “adults,” but I wasn’t ready to claim that title and its attendant responsibilities (Who is at eighteen?). So, I crafted a sort of bill-paying, binge-drinking, working full-time and going to school full-time pseudo-adolescence for myself. It carried me through conservatory, college and almost a full year out in “the real world.” I could fuck-up (within reason) all I wanted because this was not yet my Official Adult Life. Nothing counted, yet. Given the fact that I was committed to never having children and my mom was still young, I thought this maturing theory would give me a couple decades of freedom.
Then, one spring night, my forty-four year old mother had a massive brain hemorrhage.
Learn it. Live it.
Looking back it’s insane that we all didn’t see it coming. Well, no, correction, I DID see something coming. She was having at least one nosebleed a day paired with crippling headaches and she kept going to the same doctor and urgent care provider who told her one ridiculous tale after another. My mom is a head-in-the-sand kind of lady, so she never sought out a second opinion. We had a huge fight about it, about two weeks before the stroke. But, like most fights between mothers and daughters, nothing was resolved.
I was in D.C. when it happened. I traveled for work and instead of going all the way home to Seattle, I decided to stay and spend the weekend catching up with some college friends. We got stunningly drunk. I made it back to my hotel room around three or four in the morning. Just as my beginning-to-pound head touched the pillow, my phone, that was on the desk, on other side of the room, began to ring. Before I could even make the decision to ignore it, I was asleep.
Two hours later it rang again.
Through the thick, pain-soaked, ears ringing haze I sensed the doom that goes along with all late night phone calls. I drug myself across the room to answer. It was my uncle’s voice, telling me to get home as soon as possible, the ER doctors couldn’t stop the bleeding and that my mom was probably going to die. Soon. My family is nothing if not blunt.
I could write several separate pieces about everything that happened in the next ninety minutes. How to arrange grieving flight travel. How to deal when the guy you’re dating, who is in the place you’re going, refuses to just pick you up at the airport and drop you off at the hospital so your family can stay put, because he has Laker’s tickets. How to not curl into a ball on the dirty hotel carpet and cry until you pass out. How to manage all of this when you have The Worst Hangover You Have Ever Had In Your Life.
This is what emotional puberty looks like.
I made it in time. D.C to L.A. in about eight hours door-to-door and my mom was still alive. My grandma and I lived in the ICU for the next few days. There are so many things about strokes you don’t know about until they hit you in the face. One of the big ICU recovery benchmarks after a stroke is a “swallow test.” My grandma and uncle abandoned ship. They couldn’t deal with seeing mom possibly choke on some water. It was just me, her, the nurse and about a gallon of my terror-induced sweat.
She drifted in an out of consciousness for the next few days. The only person she recognized in midst of her delirium was my grandma. That was fine with me. I don’t think I could have dealt with my mom calling out to me for help. It was bad enough being the unspoken point person.
Things improved steadily within the next ten days, except that her entire right side was paralyzed. Two different rehab centers, thousands of hours of therapy and time have not significantly improved the situation. She can walk short distances with a cane and take care of almost everything herself inside the house, but she is disabled, confined mostly to a wheelchair, and probably will be for the rest of her life.
There is only about a twenty year age difference between my mom and I. This seems astronomical when you are five, not so much when you are twenty-four. I love and like her dearly. This is a very good thing because she (and my grandma) will be living with me, within three or four years of my graduation from law school, for the rest of their lives.
I can count on one hand the years left of my life where I can just float around, sleep late, bring men home, study whenever I want, come home late, hell, just BE alone whenever and for however long I want. It’s like knowing almost the exact date you will one day wake up instantly married with kids.
I don’t mean to sound bitter; it’s just overwhelming to see it in writing. Mostly because, while I am a Type-A, obsessive compulsive, I am also a free spirit. I never planned to “settle down.” I loved being able to pick up and run back and forth across the country. I had hopes of being able to run across the world a few times. Sure, it still could happen, but it will require a lot more planning than just popping over to the North Face store for a large backpack.
However, the worst moment of my life was thinking I was going to be on some stupid fucking airplane when my mom died. I consider everything that isn’t that, the last three years of adjusting, the next decade of planning (and more adjusting), my accelerated membership into adulthood, all a fair trade for the continued presence in my life of the woman who regularly emails me pictures of baby koalas.
Seriously? Look at that! That is totally worth all the yelling at real-estate agents I’m going to have to do in Seattle, land of hills and stairs. ” What part of “HANDI-CAP ACCESSIBLE” do you not understand?! I’m not paying you a commission to show me fucking stairs!”
