so mad I can't see straight

So lemme tell you about disability. It blows. It blows hard.

So back in good 'ol March of 2008 when we learned we couldn't have kids, we kinda got pretty sad about it. That took a while to deal with. Depression doesn't go away in a day. So we focued on enjoying our new house and each other's company and basically - we table the whole kid discussion completely.

Fast forward to 2010 and we're starting to feel a bit better about life. Maybe we'll adopt, we think. A couple different friends are doing it... but every time we talk to them about it, it sounds SO hard. And let's be honest. We're really tired at this point. It's been a really hard decade and we're just not sure we're up for more and more and more disappointment. We'd really like to have at least one family member that doesn't have a history of abuse or neglect. Them therapy bills - them get spendy. Oh and did I mention that any reputable adoption agency would look at a crazy lady like me and laugh...

But then, in 2011, we realize: hey! You don't have to adopt a fully born person - there's this thing called embryo adoption. It's really much easier legally all the way around. And the added benefit is then my husband and I are on equal terms - neither of us is related to the kid - it's like adoption but with less paperwork! Pop one of them in me and we're good. But, says my husband - can we wait just a year or so? I'm at a really, really, REALLY, important juncture in my career and I don't have 10 seconds of free time to even think about this. 110% of his bandwidth is spoken for. Fine. What's one more year?

And then (because, OF COURSE) the stress of everything just finally reaches some kind of tipping-point-broken-camel's-back straw and I get sick AGAIN. Not crazy in the good 'ol fashioned, just pop some lithium in her and she'll be right as rain again sick. Sick like "we think you might have lymphoma" sick. Turns out I don't have lymphoma or lupus or lyme or any of the other horrible things. I have Chronic Fatigue. What is that, you may ask? Well, there's a whole division of the NIH currently trying to figure that shit out because no one knows. My interpretation: your stress level gets so high your immune system tries to attack itself. Fun times.

OK, so I deal with a year of feeling like I have the flu and finally convince my doctor to get me some Xanax and presto - yet another major hurdle in life cleared. I'm feelin' fine and the husband's major work turning point has been passed with flying colors and it's time to decide what to do. I run into my best friend and she asks "hey, isn't it time to decide what to do?" "Yeah, I say, we're thinking embryo adoption and since I just got stabilized on this medicine, we'll hire a surrogate." "that's crazy - I'll do it!" she said. Done and done.

Except. Except.

Our doctor doesn't want to. He's uncomfortable with no one being the genetic parent. He's worried we might just walk away and abandon the child at the hospital. Although he and my husband are colleagues and we're all neighbors and live in the same town and we typically spend $1000s when our dog gets any kind of boo-boo, we're ethically sketchy to him. Maaaaybe, his team will consider it he says. Maaaaybe if we sign away all rights with the lawyer and agree to take the baby no matter if it has 15 arms and 25 heads, he'll consider it. He'll be in touch he says. Before July 4th because then he has to go to a conference. If he won't do it we can just truck ourselves and our surrogate 3 states away to another place that will. NBD - he doesn't have to buy the plane tickets or get babysitting for my best friend's kids.

Ass.
Hat.

And all of this would be one thing if he were right. But according to our lawyer, he's not. He's dead wrong. The law would make us the legal guardians. He's just squeamish and hidebound and basically, a risk-adverse jerk-ass. Because we have disabilities, we don't get the same basic rights as everyone else.

Cock.
Waffle.

Did I mention we adopted a dog? She's very nice. We like her a lot. She ate a toxic mushroom last week and we spent $800 restoring her to health. But we're the ethically sketchy ones who abandon the helpless at the drop of a hat.

Fuck.
Wad.

To Stick

So I’m sitting here on my day off, watching “Eat, Pray, Love” and thinking about marriage. At its core, the movie is reprehensible. It’s about a scared woman who marries someone she shouldn’t (who I’m sure is lovely on some level but is predictably portrayed as a buffoon) and so abandons him to travel around the world with what seems to be an inexplicably large amount of money. And of course, it’s making me think about the fact that I am up to my eyeballs in a 15-year relationship (and almost 10-year marriage) and that IT is the adventure of my lifetime. I don’t need to travel around the world to find meaning in a plate of pasta or on a beach. I find meaning in the life I’m building day by day with my husband.

And dear god, is it SOME life. It is unbelievable what we have been through in these first ten years of our marriage:

• The world fell apart on 9/11
• I walked away a career I’d been building for 20 years
• I went completely crazy and had to be hospitalized for over 2 straight years
• I was arrested
• We were POOR
• We moved every 2 years on average - once, across a continent, leaving everyone we knew
• We learned we could not make babies and fell apart for a while
• We bought a house
• We built 2 careers with some success
• We decided that our families are unsalvageable and destructive forces in our lives
• We discovered that one of us has an orphan disease
• We spent SO MUCH money on therapy…

Lying in bed last night, we both discussed what to make of all this. A curse? A self-fulfilling prophesy? Behavioral patterns passed down by previous, suck-y generations? That one sounded the most likely. And how to proceed? Bury-head-in-sand sounded good as did pull-covers-over-head. But the amazing thing is that we both came to the same answer on our own.

We get up each day and continue to try to make a life.

Nothing else makes any sense. All other options are worse. I’ve tried them - I know. How amazing to roll over in bed and discover that the person lying right there next to you thinks the exact same thing as you do. And, on top of everything, loves you right back. THAT is an adventure.

(And funny enough, that’s what Julia Roberts discovers by the end of the film too…)

The Collector

I have a new diagnosis (or two)! More to add to my collection! So far I’ve been told I have:

- Major depression

- “Double” depression (major + dysthymia)

- Alcoholism

- Borderline personality disorder

And now, drum roll please:

- Generalized anxiety disorder

- Obsessive compulsive disorder

Frankly, I think all these diagnoses are sort of all bullshit at this point. I know I’ve met the diagnostic criteria for all of them at one point or another and I currently meet the criteria for GAD and OCD, hence the new “diagnosis.” But honestly, these don’t mean anything to me anymore. Nor does the DSM mean much to me these days. I know what I have and I know how to fix it (brains + cash + support + time).

Yet when my doc sprung this on me yesterday, it was still a disappointment. Half: “well, of course” and half “oh no, not again.” He wanted to leap right into a discussion of treatment options and therapeutic interventions and I was like…. Stop. Let’s just process the fact that you’re saying this to me. Let’s just process what this MEANS and feels like. Let’s start with identifying what was the chicken here and what was the egg.

I dunno, somehow, it’s really important for me to understand what came first. If you had cancer, you’d want to know that it was the chemo that was causing your nausea, not the cancer or some other, horrible, underlying illness. And I kind of think that this might be what’s happening here: getting better is causing some things to get worse. It’s like trading one, horrible debilitating illness for four, smaller slightly less annoying ones. Watch:

Age 0-7:

I know I started with a genetic susceptibility towards emotional sensitivity. I own that. I’m sensitive in all the good and bad ways that word connotes. I’m also creative and intelligent – another asset/liability depending on what day it is. Growing up, my home environment preys on this. My parents’ inability to regulate their emotions spilled over and made me even more hyper-vigilant. Their invalidation & narcissism alters my perceptions of the world and necessitates coping mechanisms like dissociation and near-psychotic (albeit creative) interpretations of reality. (I cannot control trees, no matter how much I believe I can. (I think.))

- Diagnosis at 7: gifted

- Treatment: play Battleship with the school shrink

Age 8-14:

Now, add to this mix an actual, tangible reality that I had to LIVE in every day with things like school and peer pressure and adolescence and loss… and I get pretty worn out. It’s hard to be the crazy one. It gets old. I want to escape. I think about death. A lot. Remember, the rules don’t apply to meeeee!

- Diagnosis at 14: major depression

- Treatment: go directly to hospital. Do not pass go. But maybe stop in at your local liquor store.

Age 15-27:

Wow. That whole crazy/hospital thing really got everyone’s attention. Maybe a bit too much… but, WOW. I’m gonna tell everyone I meet about THAT. Maybe even make it my new “thing.” Oh, and alcohol works great!

- Diagnosis at 27: double depression & alcoholism & borderline

- Treatment: how much money have you got? Double it and mail directly to the nearest mental health provider. Also: cutting releases endorphins! Do that.

Age 28-36:

So. Maybe I went a bit overboard… That whole crazy thing tends to make nice things like husbands and jobs and car keys disappear. Maybe I should try getting - and then keeping - my shit together. But to do that, I’ll have to hold on tight. Really dig my nails in deep and keep everything under perfect lock and key. Measure it out to the nearest microgram. And worry. Don’t forget a heaping spoonful of worry. That’ll help the medicine go down.

- Diagnosis at 36: GAD & OCD

- Treatment: to be determined.

Groups

I’ve done a LOT of group therapy in my life. Of course there were the endless hours of groups that came with every inpatient and partial hospitalization. There were various outpatient DBT groups, various AA meetings and even one outpatient CBT group. But nothing – nothing held a candle to the group my friends and I created on our own.

We all met in a PHP program run by a local hospital. It was a pretty good program, as these things go. There was the usual drama. A girl that no one liked killed herself. The damned “movement therapy” people forced us into sing-a-longs (with tambourines) in the middle of a day that bruised our self-esteem. There were insurance battles. The DBT therapist had a newborn and was so sleep-deprived that she couldn’t run a group to save her life. One of the social workers looked like a hobbit. We tried not to look enviously at the other outpatient programs for medical issues that looked better funded and frankly, cleaner.

Eventually though, the program ran out for all of us (did I mention the insurance battles) and we tentatively agreed to try and keep meeting. Maybe every couple of weeks, we said? A potluck at one woman’s house? We did it and it went WELL. Then one night, at the last minute, we couldn’t get in touch with our host. She was busy trying to kill herself we later learned. When she got out of the coma we started meeting again but now on a weekly basis.

Every Friday in Alameda we sat for hours and hours and listened patiently to each other. There were 8 of us. I was actually the youngest at 31. Everyone else was somewhere between 40-60. But it didn’t matter. We all had some variety of depression. Others had some axis II stuff going on and maybe some substance abuse thrown in for fun. But we all had something in common: at one point, all of us had wanted to kill ourselves and we just wanted to keep each other ALIVE. It became a support group for people addicted to the idea that suicide was an answer.

I’m going to stage a reunion in May when we go back for a visit. It’ll have been almost 4 years since we were all together. I’ve missed them all so much.

All of them.

All of us are still alive.

All of us.

Worst day

I’ve had a lot of “worst days” in my life. Some of them were clearly terrible horrible days:

- The birthday my dad strangled me

- The day I tried to go to high school but was hospitalized instead

- The day they locked me in isolation

- The day I tried to die but was arrested instead

- The day I help my first set of commitment papers

- The day I tried to go back to the hospital voluntarily but was arrested instead

- A couple days later when the PHP I’d been attending for 1.5 years kicked me out over the phone for the above incident

On all these days, the defining characteristic was the sense that reality had completely broken down. Suddenly, all light and air was bent, as if through a lens. Anything off to the side was clouded in a blur but those things immediately in front of me seemed crystal clear. This Terrible Thing was happening and I could perceive every last detail of it in painful detail. I remember the way those rooms looked. The cracks on the ceiling of the first hospital’s admitting room. The size of the piece of birthday cake in front of me. The feel of the black, metal pay phone in the hallway of the hospital. The way sound reverberated off the Plexiglas window of the Side Room.

Sometimes this fracture of the fabric of space was helpful – a reminder that this shit wasn’t going to work anymore. There was something I was doing that I needed to Knock OFF. Get away from my parents. Get away from these hospitals, these policemen. These were not moments where I should linger.

Other times, it just felt as if I were living through a traumatic brain injury – a concussive blast in slow motion that was gradually creating tiny shears throughout my grey matter that would never heal. Afterwards, nothing would ever quite be the same - like an indelible mental limp.

I had one of those days a couple weeks ago. Nothing dramatic like a hospitalization or an arrest, just a horrible, horrible day where literally every possible thing that could go wrong did. All throughout, I tried to remember non-dramatic terrible days like this that I'd survived to tell about before:

- The day snow chains ripped out the ABS on my sports car just before my skis were stolen

- The handful of horrible, terrible, cry-all-night fights we’ve ever had as a couple

- They day we were thrown out of a B&B and went wandering across the muddy Scottish countryside, looking for a place that didn’t exist

- The day I met a professor who was having the kind of architecture career I wanted and realized I wasn’t nearly strong enough to do that

On all those days I still felt the same brain-splitting panic, the same cognitive overload during each of them. The feeling that

This. Is. A. Crisis.

And You. You are not capable of handling such things.

What happened a couple of weeks ago? It’s barely worth mentioning. I got up early to drive my husband to the airport through a snowstorm so I started the day exhausted. I drove to work a couple hours later through a subsequent ice storm to arrive at work a scared, angry mess. I returned home at 9:30 to discover that we had what I thought was a propane leak (terrifying) but turned out to be an empty tank (infuriating). For three hours I ran around the yard in the dark and freezing rain, calling anyone I could think of who could help, digging feet of ice and snow off of every surface, worrying that I was about to blow all of our worldly possessions and myself and the cat, sky high. I felt alone and terrified and confused.

- How could all this be happening and why had the fates conspired against little old me?

- How did I wind up so alone?

- Why did time and space seem so flexible and tangible all of a sudden?

- Why did everything seem so muffled and how long had I been shoveling?

And by the end when the heat was back on and my head was throbbing and sleep and food seemed like irrelevant novelties, I sat with that familiar old feeling: I don’t know how many more days like this can I face.

hidden in plain sight

It has been an extremely long time since I last posted. I didn’t exactly abandon this blog so much as I forgot I HAD a blog.

Why…? Well, I’ve been in hiding. Not any kind of witness-protection, government-sponsored kind of “official” hiding. More like hiding from the world and everything in it. If you recall (why would you – it’s been 3 years) we received some bad news in early 2008 that we could never have children of our own. It was devastating in a fuck-this-shit-I’m-giving-up kind of way. And giving up looked different for each of us. For me it looked like: bury self in job and wifely tasks. I figured if I could just dig myself a predictable little groove then nothing (good or bad) could ever find me and I’d be safe from future disappointments. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I stopped answering the phone or taking vacations. It was more of a mental program to keep me busy so that I didn’t have to think or feel:

8-9am: get up, make coffee, feed cat, kiss husband good-bye as he leaves for work

9am-12pm: work on computer

12-2pm: shower, eat leftovers for lunch, drive to work

2-7pm: work at work

7-9pm: drive to gym, workout while reading iphone, drive home, shower

9-11pm: eat dinner while watching DVR’d shows, work on computer more

11pm-8am: read in bed, sleep

Repeat as needed. On weekends I just replaced work at work with housework and voila! A pattern that allowed me to fill all mental space with work and the other minutia of life. Have I been productive at work – absolutely. They’re delighted with the robot they hired. My boss said yesterday that he wishes modern science had progressed to the point where they could clone me. Have I kept a well run home – yes. Our house and personal finances are tidier than 99% of Americans. (that remaining 1% are people that live in those little mobile 200 square foot homes and own two changes of clothes – oh how I envy them…) But have I really been living the last couple of years? No. I’ve been hiding, afraid to even turn on a radio station for fear of what havoc that unoccupied mental space will wreak.

So what is it that I’m so afraid to think about? How about the final, unassailable realization that despite all our efforts, we have become the local weird-o’s; different enough from the rest of society to no longer take pleasure in any of the things that mankind has created to entertain/distract ourselves from the fact that life is nasty, brutish and short. About the only things that seem to make us crack a smile are old Simpsons reruns, the odd Robot Chicken Sketch, theoatmeal and some old George Carlin videos. The only things that hold our interest are long, complicated movies, work, books and the Internet. We have jobs that are purely academic – we trade purely in ideas – which is pretty different from most of 2011 America.

We don’t have kids so that immediately alienates us from our now child-obsessed culture – oh, and not to mention all our friends who are knee-deep in exactly what they should be at this point in their lives: child rearing. Add all this to the years of trauma we’re both recovering from and well, we don’t feel like we fit in ANYWHERE.

I have a desire to return to the world of the living. I do. But this desire is consistently derailed by the reality that life just keeps getting harder and harder and harder. The easiest way to deal with the mounting difficulty is to lose myself in the program. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Put on movie, zone out, go to bed. Turn on computer, surf around, go to bed. Take on more work, look up, years have passed.

Blame v. Shame '08

I’ve been watching the debates and it’s got me thinking about how I just don’t understand conflict. I know the stakes are very, very high for this election. I don’t fault them for being passionate. It’s the stupid underhanded crap that bugs me. The thing that bothers me the most is how they continuously call each other liars. McCain will get up and accuse Obama of something. Then Obama will get up and say that no, McCain isn’t right, that he really did vote for that bill or whatever. Then he’ll say its McCain who did the Very Bad Thing. Then McCain will mutter horseshit under his breath and the moderator will interrupt and the whole cycle will start all over again. I like Obama because I agree with his approach and his positions but ultimately they’re both politicians and they both bug me. In my perfect election, the two candidates would lay out their platforms on the internet and then people would choose based on whatever plan they agreed with. None of this partisan bickering and nonsense.

But I don’t even like listening to people argue on the radio. One thing that’s bugged me since I moved to the east coast is the predominance of call-in shows on the local NPR station. In California, it seemed like there were more informational programs. I figure, I listen to the radio to hear a summary of what the most intelligent people are saying about a certain issue. If I wanted to hear what some idiot with a phone who couldn’t formulate an idea to safe his life thought, I’d go to the local hardware store. I can’t stand listening to people go back and forth, back and forth without there being a clear winner. Surely someone must be able to make a complex and well-stated argument these days? It seems like nobody puts any thought into how they put their point across.

But I know that I’m a rare case – someone’s who’s almost allergic to conflict. I hate making even the smallest mistakes because I assume someone’s going to take issue with me. If only it was within my ability to just do everything perfectly, then nobody would ever have a reason to fault me. But perfection isn’t attainable and someone’s always going to judge you.

- - -

I’ve been worrying a lot this week that our neighbors are judging us. We had to cut down a very large, very pretty, very old tree that sits smack dab in the middle of our front lawn. It wouldn’t be so bad except that we live on one of the major streets in town – right on the scenic route that winds along the shoreline. Dozens of runner, bicyclists, and classic cars roll by every day. I was sitting in my living room this morning, watching the people go by and thinking about how we need to get the curtains hung. Because, now that we’ve chopped down the tree, I can’t stand the audience. Before, when people went by, I liked thinking about how they saw our house. It’s very cute and scenic and I liked to think they were admiring it and maybe even a tiny bit jealous. Now, I wonder if they’re thinking, “Those young whippersnappers – they cut down that historic tree. Obviously, they have no respect for anything and they’re going to just destroy that property.” I drove through the center of town this morning and saw a bunch of people talking in front of the hardware store. I wondered if they were talking about those weird new people who cut down that gorgeous old tree – didja see it? I’m almost expecting an angry note in my mailbox. I feel like I want to post a sign on the front lawn that reads: “I swear, the tree was dying and was a hazard and we hated to cut it down and we promise that we’re going to plant another one soon!” And then next to it, there would be another little sign that read, “No, we are not selling firewood.”

Where's the fire?

Ok, we’ve officially been back on the east coast for one full year. Hooray. As it always is with these things, sometimes it feels like it’s been only a couple of months, sometimes it feels like much, much longer.

I had a lot of goals for this year – things I wanted to accomplish, changes I wanted to make. And I accomplished a LOT of them:

• We bought (and moved into) a house in a cool little town
• I made some new friends
• I found two good therapists
• I moved my piano here and started practicing again
• I found a new job that I like and that pays well
• We switched to all eco-friendly cleaning products
• We got to know (and spend time with) our 2 year-old nephew

And when I look at that list – it looks like a LOT! Big stuff too. So, why is it that I only focus on the goals I haven’t accomplished?

• I wanted to get down to Manhattan and see old friends
• I wanted to travel (visiting my parents doesn’t count)
• I wanted to volunteer and become active in the mental health consumer community
• I wanted to hike and bike and paddle and get outside
• I wanted to finish my book
• And join a choir
• And eat local and healthier
• And, of course… I wanted to exercise more

I see other people doing these things I want to do and I get jealous. And then, instantly, I switch and judge myself. I call myself lazy. And then I try to do more.

Sometimes, I think it’s great that there’s so much I want to accomplish in this life. I’m glad that I’m passionate and engaged and have so many interests. And sometimes, I think I just need to RELAX. What is the big, fat rush? I’m only 33. I’ll get around to everything. Maybe it’s a vestige of being suicidal for most of my life.

Just like everyone else

My husband and I bought a house. (Hence the hiatus in blogging.)

In general, it's been a nerve wracking experience. We’ve been renting apartments since college so we haven’t had to fix a faucet, mow a lawn or paint a wall in a very, VERY long time. It’s been a scary process - there’s so much to learn. We’ve had to learn about mortgages, taxes, septic systems, and home-owners insurance. They all seemed like stressful, grown-up things. What if you get them wrong? What if you make the wrong decisions? It was a lot to think about. It’s almost so much that some days, I didn't want to bother. I just wanted to curl up and stay in an apartment forever.

But, everyday, for some unknown reason, I didn't give up. I keep searching online for the best house. I kept driving around neighborhoods and talking to friends and going over our budget. At night, when I should've been sleeping, I thought about gardens and curtains and all things I needed to learn about. But something, some deep-seeded drive, kept pushing me to become a homeowner. I think that there’s a part of me that saw buying my first home as a rite of passage. It’s seemed like a necessary step to becoming a full-fledged adult - and I was curious to see what THAT was like.

And so we found a house - and fell in love. It's a beautiful house in a beautiful place. It's way better than we ever thought we'd have. It's like someone decided to make the perfect house, then put it on the market, and waited almost a year until we came to find it.

So we're learning - what it's like to be a homeowner, a member of a town. I keep wondering - will we develop a kinship with the people who have lived in this house over the last 150 years, with the people down the street? We’ll get to go to town hall meetings and decide if our tax dollars will pay for that addition to the library. We’ll get to rake leaves and plow our driveway and buy appliances and do all those things that everyone else does. Everyone else.

Today we bought mulch. It was wonderful.

Completely unrelated

I was reading postsecret this morning and one of the secrets reminded me of something unusually hilarious that happened this fall.

I was deep in the throws of "account management" during the months of August and September this year. We had just moved and it seemed like all I did was try to remember all our important accounts - bank, insurance, magazines, ect. - and spend hours calling them up so they'd have our new contact info.

But when I tried to login to our new dental insurance plan, I couldn't remember what our login name was. I tried all the old standards, our email addresses, everything. But nothing was correct. So finally, I called their tech support line.

"Can you give me a clue?" I asked the lady on the other end. "Like a category or something?"

"Ummmm..." She said hesitantly. "Well, do you have a pet?"

"Yes!" I gave her our cat's name. "Is that it?"

"No..." She said. Then after a long pause, "It's ok. I'll spell it for you. A-S-S-M-O-N-K-E-Y."

"Oh. Um. Thanks." I said horrified. "Um, I'm sorry. When my husband gets frustrated he tends to swear at the computer. Let's change that to something else, ok?"

Now what...?

So. I'm back.

And all the tests are back. (the incisions... they're still healing)

We can't have children. At least, not biological ones.

Apparently, we're going to be the weird people in the neighborhood who don't have kids and nobody knows why but frankly they'd just as soon avoid our house on Halloween because, well, grown-ups without kids are just depressing and creepy.

I just keep telling myself that we'll have lots of disposable income. That we'll be able to travel a lot. That we'll keep eating spicy foods with lots of vegetables and won't have to buy jumbo packs of frozen Costco chicken nuggets. My car will stay snot and goldfish cracker free. There won't be any knocked-up, meth-addicted, baggy-pantsed, fourteen-year-olds with 1.8 GPAs sneaking out to have oral sex at OUR house.

On the other hand... no strollers. No onesies. No first grade school music recitals with construction-paper pilgrim hats. No first Mets game. No grandkids. Nobody to take care of us when we're old. Nobody to give my childhood blocks or music box or matchbox cars to.

Sure. Maybe we'll try to adopt. Maybe we won't get our hopes up only to have them smushed down by the malevolent ogre we call fate. Maybe we won't get our hearts broken all over again. But honestly, if you know us, that possibility seems pretty absurd. For us, life = one bad thing after another.

Time flies when you're... fucked.

Remember that last post? The one about the fertility clinic?

Right. So we went. We got lots of tests. (By the way, if anyone ever offers to take real-time x-rays while injecting iodine into your uterus - I'd pass. Ouch.)

And, (drum roll please) we're fucked. And not the good kind of fucked - we're screwed (and not the good kind of screwed). The "Houston, we have a problem" type of problem. A LARGE problem.

I'm not going into details but suffice it to say that the odds aren't good. According to our doc, there's a 10% chance we can still get pregnant with medication. There's a 10-20% chance it'll take surgery and IVF. And there's a 70% chance that we'll never, EVER, be able to have a biological child of our own.

And here's the absolute kicker. The odds that we'd be able to adopt are equally grim. Few people/foreign countries would be brave/stupid enough to give me, a thrice committed formerly suicidal, alcoholic borderline, a real-live human child. (Gotta tie everything back to the crazy - this is, after all, a blog about mental illness. Wouldn't want to disappoint.)

[many pages of bitter musings redacted]

So. Here we are. Potentially childless OR facing surgery on tender, unmentionable bits.

Fan. Tastic.

Maybe we'll just buy some more cats.


PS. If you know me in real life, don't call. We're in a bitter/nasty/tragic mood and we're not giving out details. I'll be in touch when we know more.

PPS. Yeah, I know, what did I expect when we moved back to New England... but, COME ON. Is there any freezing rain/ice/sleet left or is it all stuck to my car and my driveway? Dear god, I hate you too. Love, Juniper

Musings of my inner luddite

Ok, so we’re at the point here where I think I can safely say…

I’m not getting a baby anytime soon.

We’ve been trying to get pregnant for fourteen months with absolutely no success. Yes, ok, we didn’t give it our BEST try every single month. We were stressed and busy and tired some of those months. In December and August we didn’t try at all. (Neither moving boxes nor my parents’ house at the holidays gets us in the mood.)

But most of those months… we did everything right. I read the books. I charted my temperature. I got real up close and personal with all my… well suffice it to say that I learned A LOT about my reproductive cycle.

And now, in addition to my baby-less state, I’m noticing some… unpleasant changes. At least five times since we’ve been trying, my period’s been a WEEK early. Not a few days early – a full, freaking WEEK. And when this happens, it lasts days longer than usual.

So this week, I went to see my new gynecologist. Seems like a nice lady. Wasn’t horrified by my psychiatric history.

She says I have “unexplained infertility.” Fantastic. Just what I wanted. Another diagnosis for my collection.

She referred me to the University Fertility Clinic. As if my weeks weren’t busy enough doctor’s visits.

You wanna know what I think?! (WARNING: No, honestly, you don’t and should probably stop reading RIGHT NOW.)

I think this is natural selection at work. I’m the weak zebra in the herd. I’ve known it for a while now.

• My eyesight’s crap.
• My GI system’s temperamental.
• My psyche’s all broken and held together with scotch tape.
• There’s massive gobs of heart disease in my family.
• I’m a good 30 pounds overweight.
• I have ingrown toenails and a urinary tract that gets infected if you look at it wrong.
• I can’t even hold a freakin’ soda can for pete’s sake!

If I were left to fend for myself in the wild I’d be eaten by a cheetah in about 30 seconds. (Ok, I’m smart - maybe I could outfox it for a few minutes but that’s probably about it.)

So why, given all of the above, do I have the arrogance, the gall to think that I have the RIGHT to reproduce? I’d just be weakening the species. Sometimes, I wonder if the responsible thing would be to leave well enough alone, listen to nature and forget medical science. Maybe it’s better to let the bad DNA end with me.

Except for my husband. He's got some pretty nice DNA. It'd be a shame to let that go to waste.

How I got my (new) therapist II

Step 4: Call my insurer. My new therapist’s clinic didn’t take my husband’s insurance, despite the fact that he works for the biggest employer in town… But really, who can blame them for not wanting to negotiate their rates down and submit to scrutiny from case managers. So, nervously, I called my insurance company.

Um… I said, I just moved here from California. I was seeing a therapist there. I want to see someone here. I have a history and diagnosis of major depression. (I didn’t say Borderline because – hey, insurance doesn’t cover personality disorders! Subterfuge - what fun.) Oh, no problem, they said. “You have unlimited visits and we don’t require pre-authorization for visits.” That sounds… good, I thought.

Um… what if I find a therapist I like but they’re not in your network? That’s fine, they said. “Just download the claim from our website, submit it and we’ll pay 70%.” Also, not terrible news.

Step 5: Paperwork. I asked my therapist if they’d help me with the claims. No, she said, “we’re not really set up for that.” Uh… I’m not really ‘set up’ for it either! I’m just the patient. But I don’t have a choice! Good point, she conceded.

So I did the forms. They were incredibly complicated. But I’d filled out similar forms in CA so I worked it out. I called the insurance company one last time, just to double-check some details. Oh yeah, I said, “as long as I’m calling, I wanted to ask. You guys pay 70% of ‘reasonable and customary’ for out-of-network providers. What do you consider reasonable and customary?” I was put on hold. For a long time.

Turns out, they consider $130 per hour a reasonable rate. My therapist charges $150. That meant that each week I’d be paying 30% of $130 PLUS that extra, unreasonable, uncustomary $20. Add to that the $15 per week for group. So my therapy was going to cost us about $75 a week. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a LOT of money.

Step 6: Negotiate. I went to my therapist and oulined the situation. I asked if the clinic would be willing to offer me a reduced rate. Would they lower their hourly rate just $20 or even $10 to make up for the difference in the insurance? It’s not my fault they don’t take my insurance. It’s not my fault the insurance sets their rates absurdly low… I picked THEM instead of some in-network bozo that knows nothing about personality disorders*.

*My insurance company did provide me with a list of hundreds of in-network providers. How would I use this, I wonder? How would I know if any of these people know how to treat my VERY controversial, VERY divisive, VERY tricky diagnosis? Should I call all of them and see who’s taking new clients? The good ones are likely booked up. Should I interview the ones who ARE available? That would take lots of visits and co-pays! And ultimately, I’d still be paying $30-40 a week for an in-network provider.

My therapist said that she thought it was a reasonable request. She’d talk to her partners and get back to me. She got back to me today. She said that neither she nor practice could afford to reduce their rates right now. She suggested we talk about it again in January and see if things have changed. I was disappointed, but I felt… responsible.

Step 7: Pray. I’m sure there’s a yearly maximum or some other catch hidden somewhere.

How I got my (new) therapist I

Step 1: Research. I asked all my therapists in CA if they knew anyone in New England that specialized in Borderline Personality Disorder or DBT. (I figured if they do DBT, then they know all about Borderline) Then, I searched online for “DBT therapists in my state.” When I was done, I had a list of about a dozen people. I could eliminate a couple of people just based on their titles: One sounded too intensive. One ran a partial hospitalization program. One worked at a mental health center for low-income and low-functioning clients. One specialized in depression. Two were researchers, not practitioners.

Step 2: Phone interviews. I emailed or called the rest of the list. Most, but not all, got back to me and said that they’d be interested in working with me. Then I had a phone interview with the remaining few. By which I mean that I interviewed THEM. I eliminated one person because she was only available one day a week. I eliminated another because I didn’t need couples therapy.

Step 3: In person interviews. By now, there were only two left from my original list*. I made appointments to meet with them as soon as I arrived on the east coast.

*Along the way, the people I had contacted had given me more names of providers. I discovered, to my delight, that I had actually, on my own, already found and contacted almost ALL of the practitioners within 10 miles of my home! I decided to hang onto the other names in case the first couple didn’t work out.

When we finally met, I interviewed them, politely, in depth. I told them about what I wanted and needed. I asked them about their perspectives on Borderline. And I tried to listen to my initial, gut impressions. I liked one a lot. I didn’t like the other one. A lot.

But I’d found someone I liked. Now I just had to pay for her.

I can live without the bon-bons. But daytime TV... that's a different story.

So I got myself some employment… and instantly became BUSY. (hence the lack of blogging in recent days).

I kinda had to get some part-time work – unemployment was eating holes in my self-esteem. I don’t wanna work full time but it turns out, I gotta do SOMETHING or else my head starts to feel all bored and slosh-y.

Getting the jobs was easy to the point of being embarrassing. Basically, I sent my resume to six Craigslist ads for tutoring positions. A DAY later, five of them wanted to hire me. It took the 6th a couple of weeks to read their email and then they wanted me too. This of course, made me feel completely proud and guilty and conflicted all at the same time. (Ah black and white thinking, my dear old pal… what would I do without you.) It’s nice to be wanted but getting a job shouldn’t be that easy! I’m left assuming that all those Ivy League words on my resume are doing the heavy lifting – and not me. (Cue the impostor syndrome.)

But could I just take one job and be satisfied? Oh no, I had to pick two. It’s like I’m “controlled by [a] Puritan Lady, some witch of industry who lived inside us, kicking us with her buckled shoes, making maniacal demands: every minute had to be accounted for, an arrow aimed at a target.” Also, It turns out that I’m a sucker who can’t say no. Must. Please. Everyone.

So, on Monday & Wednesday afternoons I’m tutoring at a non-profit charter school in the “inner-city." On Tuesday, Thursday & Friday afternoons I’m teaching at a for-profit, boutique tutoring center in a fancy suburb that provides tutoring from a psychological perspective.

The Monday/Wednesday job has been good for the soul. It's only a two hour commitment each day and I get to feel like I'm doing good - helping kids who really need it. On the other hand, it's a bit depressing. These inner-city kids are SO behind and I feel like my little interventions can only make a tiny dent. At least the student I’m paired with is finally starting to look at me like a human - not a very pale, alien, life form.

The Tuesday/Thursday/Friday job has been almost the polar opposite. Most of the kids I’m working with have limitless resources. AND they’d love to fill up all my free time. I'm supposed to work for four hours on Tuesdays & Thursdays and attend a staff meetings and professional development lectures for a couple hours on Fridays - only about a 10-hour commitment… right? But, add a couple of extra hours of training a day and last week I was working almost 20 hours. I mentioned that the Monday/Wednesday job ends in December and they’re already planning to fill up those days too.

It’s flattering that they want to spend all that time developing my skills and selling my services to clients but…

Do I let on that I have a mental health disability and can’t do everything? If I tell them I have a disability, I open myself up to possible discrimination and judgments. If I don't tell them I have a disability, I worry that I'll come across as this slacker dilettante who only works part time because her husband keeps her in bon-bons and daytime TV. (ok granted, I DO watch a lot of daytime TV...) I know I shouldn't disclose my diagnosis in some settings but sometimes I feel like people just won't SEE the real me unless I do. I know that this is probably the reverse of how people with other disabilities see the issue but then again, with mental illness, people can't see your broken bits.

I don't bite (anymore)

So last Friday, I finally worked up my courage and wrote Paul & Denise a note. I tried to make it as non-crazy sounding as possible.

(although, I decided at the last minute to leave the note on their door instead of putting it in the mail which in retrospect may be construed as a bit stalker-ish...)

I said that we had just moved to the area because of my husband's new job (which I mentioned so they could Google him and see how nice and cute and respectable he looks on his website). I said that I heard they lived nearby and was amazed to discover (through the alumni directory) that they lived in the same apartment complex. I said that if they wanted to get together we'd love to see them but if they didn't that I wished them all the best. (I wanted to respect their sense of privacy. If I am/have become a horrible memory, I don't want them to feel... invaded. I mean, they lived here first.)

But I never heard from them. Now I'm thinking I probably never will. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I emailed a friend from college to tell her about the note. She congratulated me on being brave. She pointed out that it's good to say things that are lingering in our brains and won't let us move on. At least I won't have to worry about awkwardly running into them in the parking lot. They know where I am now. If they don't want to see me, they can take preventative measures. They can avoid me like the plague.

Still, the whole thing has left me feeling a bit... like a menace to society.

I keep trying to tell myself that lots of people (even people without Borderline!) get into feuds. Lots of people have an ex or a nemesis they worry about running into. But if that's true, why do I feel like this conflict (and it's associated anxiety) is yet another tax I have to pay because of this disorder? Why do I feel like there are scores of people out there who remember me as difficult, pathetic or just plain nuts? How do I explain to them that I've changed, that I've earned a second chance? That it wasn't really my fault that I acted that way but I AM sorry for my behavior.

I wish I could get all those damaged relationships out of the friendship freezer. I'd warm them up and tell them how much I've missed them for all these years.

All I want for christmas is a forklift

So I’m back. Sorry for the hiatus.

To say I’ve been busy would be the understatement of the year. There were THINGS to take care of.

You see, every single THING we owned (including our car, our bodies and our cat) had to be carefully packed and hauled across the burning August wastelands of all those red states. Man is it hot and dusty and scary in those states. (They don’t clean their gas station restrooms very well either.)

Then all those THINGS had to be unpacked, cleaned and obsessively put away somewhere in an aesthetically pleasing pattern.

All the THINGS we couldn’t move had to be replaced – so in came new ink cartridges, food, toilet paper, spray cleaners, cat litter, and light bulbs.

Finally, every little THING needed to be re-registered and re-approved to exist in our new state.

• Gotta organize the money – new checkbooks, grocery discount cards, jobs and IDs to park at the jobs. And 4 million change of address forms so everyone knows where to find us and our money.
  
• Gotta organize the bodies – new health, dental & eye insurance, a new veterinarian, gym memberships, optometrists, and gynecologists.
• Gotta organize the car – new oil, license plates, registration, and insurance policies.
• Gotta organize the ass – new couches, scratching posts and security systems to protect the precious couches. Oh, and new gas, power, phone, and cable TV subscriptions to make sitting on the couch worthwhile.
• And don’t forget the brain – new therapists to organize the brain, of course. More on that later.

So now that everyTHING is all clean and legal… now we just have to live.

Oh yeah. And buy a house. So we can do all this all over again in a few months.

Like “Goodnight Moon” only in reverse

Well the movers were sure productive! They were supposed to come and pack yesterday and load the truck today but instead they decided to do everything in one day.

Soooo… we are leaving town in an hour - a day early.

Yesterday evening felt ODD. We furiously cleaned the apartment until it almost looked… well, it still looked like crap. This felt pretty stupid (since the place is a crap shack and the new owners tell us they're remodeling) but we don't want to take ANY chances of losing our security deposit. And then we spent one last night in our now empty home. My husband kept saying “it still feels like we live here… but we don’t.”

And honestly, it’s about time because this apartment well… it tried our patience.

Good-bye front door that stick so bad I have to yank it open with two hands and my body weight.

Good-bye ugly view of very loud neighbor’s balcony.

Good-bye seasonal leak and big ugly patch on the ceiling.

Good-bye dozens of cracks in the walls.

Good-bye filthy wall heater (yes the only heat in the entire 1000 square feet!) that smelled and threatened to blow us all up.
Good-bye porch so filthy we never used you except to grill.
Good-bye nasty-ass broken down old filthy cabinets. There is not enough fire in the world to clean you. And say good-bye to your friend, burnt formica countertop.
Good-bye rickety shower doors with not-so-decorative doves.
Good-bye window & bonus soap holder - each with hole rusted through.
Good-bye bathroom floor with so many, many uncleanable gunked-up caulk-filled patch jobs.

So good-bye apartment and good riddance. We never really liked you.

And good-bye Bay Area. We really liked living here for the past eight years. We’ll miss your sometimes green, sometimes brown hills. And your grass cutting goats.

Wish us luck.

A world of thanks

Oh jeez… this could get maudlin.

I had my typical pre-move day today – lots of cleaning, packing and organizing. But (interspersed with the 400 change-of-address calls to every company we have an “account” with) I could detect the growing scent of inevitability.

Tomorrow is my last session with my psychiatrist.

I’ve really liked working with this guy and I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye. I worry it could go like this.

When I first met him four and a half years ago, he sort of reminded me of a young Santa Claus - heavyset and jolly with a graying beard and thinning hair. But THOROUGH. In all the years of meeting new doctors, I'd never had such a thorough intake. Besides the usual medical and administrative paperwork, we talked about my entire history. He asked me about each phase of my life: how it felt, what did others think of me, and what problems did I have. I gave him a sketch of my parents and all my other relatives. The interest he showed was so intense that he almost seemed a little hyper.

But that’s just what he’s like. Every day. So engaged he’s almost… wired.

We shared a relentless determination to figure problems out. When we made a discovery our smug satisfaction couldn’t be contained – it was like discovering an extra limb. I’d get pissed when I couldn’t make use of every second of our time. Our discussions could get pretty abstract, filled with odd metaphors and references. We traded favorite psychology books. Like sleuths, we traced my deepest motivations back through action, motivation and behavior. We decoded my history like a puzzle - discovering the structure of my oh-so-labile emotions. He always seems glad to have a patient who was analytical and smart.

He could be a bit too bold at times but I liked that he had opinions about things. We didn’t always agree - my job as a patient was to exaggerate my misery and explain how things weren't working. His job was to exaggerate his competency and confidence. Normally, I liked how his sense of humor contrasted the extreme seriousness of our task. Sometimes though, it gave me the sense he didn’t think my problems were a big deal, that I was making a lot out of nothing. I'd get annoyed and so we’d fight and bicker. I hated that he had all this experience and information I wasn’t privy to. He’s seen hundreds of patients so maybe my problems seemed tiresome. Maybe I was freaking out while he was just screwing around.

Most importantly, he let himself be warm and genuine and close in an appropriate way. When I was going through a particularly rough patch, he’d call me while he was driving home from the office. Doctor-patient bullshit be dammed. We were both living, breathing, human beings and treated each other like such. Were we a good match? Yes. Was it good luck? Sure, probably. Did he do a good job? No question about it.

Sometimes it made it harder, knowing that under any other circumstances we’d be friends. And I didn’t want to NEED his attention because… well, what would I do with all the other hours of the week? Besides, I was tired of being sick. I wanted to be better. And he wanted me to be better.

And so,

gradually

and with his help,

I got better. Finally.


Thank you Mike. When nothing else did, our conversations gave me a sense of purpose.