When I Grow Up

There's a thing that little brothers do that seems to make everything OK.  I don't know how they do it.  I don't know why they do it.  But they know when they are needed and they never fail to come through. They can see things.  They're visionaries.  Or prophets.  Or maybe they're just delusional.  Somehow, though, they always find the best in their sisters.  They have faith and they believe.  They encourage and support and fight .  And they always know when they should make an appearance.  Always.

Yesterday, I texted my little brother just to tell him that I love him; that he's one of the most remarkable human beings that I have ever met.  To which he responded with "I love you too, sis.  What's on your mind?"  Even though little brothers have the ability to make everything OK, it would appear that they are very skeptical creatures.  "Can't I just tell you that I love you?"  

"Of course you can.  But why?"  Really kid?  Really?  Because I love you and I miss you.  That's why.  Then he asked for what he refers to as the "SISREP."  That's the sister report.  "Listen Brother.  I don't have one.  I just love you.  Let's talk when you don't think I need something from you."  I was pissed.  Not at Conrad.  At myself.  Because apparently, that's what our relationship has been reduced to.  He only thinks I call when I need him.  That made my heart hurt.  I don't want to be that to anybody.  I don't want to be that leach, the energy vampire, as some might call it.  So I just told to him go back to softball.  

Then, between games he texted me  and said "I'll call you when I get home."  I told him not to.  Detroit is three hours ahead of California and he should sleep.  But he called anyway.  And, of course, I answered.  Because I needed him.  Duh.  How did he know that and I didn't?  See.  This is what I'm saying.  Little brother's know shit.  They're prophets like that.  

We talked for  awhile about his plans and his beautiful bride and his disdain for his job.  He made me think that it was about him.  Then, out of fucking left field, my baby brother told me that I am the embodiment of the the middle finger. I laughed.  Because what else do you do when your little brother tells you that you are a metaphor for a big "fuck you."  I told him while that might be true, it wasn't getting me any job interviews. Apparently, that position has already been filled.  Conrad didn't laugh though.  He said something that shut me up.  He said "You're amazing because you raise a little human being single-handedly, while your job disappears, the people around you hold you back society says you need to be 'x,y,z' and yet you stay you.  Not compromising your belief of how you should raise  a child and who you or he should be."  

"Sis, you are the embodiment of the middle finger to the conforming members of society who do it out of fear or laziness.  You are a middle finger in skirts and heels.  Basically, the best dressed middle finger in the area."  This is a fucking analogy that only Conrad could formulate.  And he wonders why I just call to make sure he knows that I love him.  

As we finished up more than two hours of FaceTime, solving the worlds problems and creating a better future for the generations that will follow, Conrad said "I love you, Ang.  I believe in you.  I have fought along side you forever.  And I will continue to fight by your side.  And when you can't fight anymore, I will fight for you.  I fight for you because it comes naturally, it's instinctual.  Also, you look like shit right now"  

I hung up because I didn't want him to see me cry.  I didn't cry because he told me I look like shit.  In fact, I don't think he actually said that.  I think that's just something I heard because I didn't want to hear the rest of it.  I cried because his words echoed somewhere deep in the hollow of my soul.  I laid down in bed and thought about everything we had talked about, everything my little brother had told me.  I didn't sleep for hours and I couldn't figure out why.  You'd think you'd sleep really well knowing that somebody loves you as honestly and wholeheartedly as my little brother loves me.

Then I figured it out.  It was the guilt that kept me awake.  It was the unnerving feeling that my brother loves me for something that I am not.  He loves me for something that he sees in me that I don't see in myself.  I woke up this morning and, for the first time in years, I knew what I wanted:  When I grow up, I want to be the person my little brother thinks I am.  

-Inner Peas

What It's Like

I started sharing my mental health struggles here about two years ago.  Since the inception of this blog, I have talked about a lot of things.  I have talked about life and love and the struggle for independence.  I have shared my experiences with anxiety, depression and survival.  In the earlier posts, I got a lot of really good feedback and positive reinforcement about how people perceive mental illness.  It was very empowering.  I felt validated when people would call or email or stop by and engage me in conversation about my experiences.  

I got a lot of input from people I never would have imagined could understand or would even want to try to understand.  I got a lot of "I feel like that, too."  Or "I love someone who feels like that."  Or even "How do I help when you feel like that?"  It was mind blowing the conversations I had and the people I had them with.  But in all of the discussion I have had about mental health and stigmas over the last couple of years, nobody has ever asked me what it's like.  

In no way does the fact that nobody ever asked "what does it feel like?" detract from the value of the the conversations that have ensued because of it.  There has been tremendous value in acknowledgement, alone.  But yesterday, easily the worst day I have had in in years, or maybe ever, I got an email from the Hawaii contingent that read "how can i help" in the subject line.  I didn't open the email until this morning because I didn't know the answer.  But when I opened it, the question wasn't "how can i help?" it was "what does it feel like?"  

As I scrolled through the email, the tears I had been withholding for the last couple of months fell down my cheeks to the keyboard.  She wrote: "I don’t know about panic attacks from my own experience. I can only estimate that they are a more overwhelming feeling than what I have felt at times in the past when I felt I was caught up in a dark vortex that threatened to consume me. I imagine a panic attack is what it feels like to be swept into the throat of that vortex."  That was the most accurate likeness I have ever heard from someone who has never experienced the mental and emotional suffering of anxiety or depressive episodes.  When I read that, I cried more.  

And while it was so vividly accurate, it also seemed so very generic.  It's easy for people who have been swept away into such a vortex to relate to the analogy.  It's ominous and vicious and so very dismal sounding.  It's easy to relate to that when you have experienced it.  But it doesn't necessarily define what happens when you are being forced into the unknown of that oblivion. 

So, this is what it's like...It starts pretty benignly.  You wake up in the morning and there is an unspecified dread.  It doesn't necessarily present itself as fear or panic, but something doesn't sit right.  Maybe a premonition.  Like you know you are going to walk into the bathroom and the tub will flood or walk outside to find a flat tire on your car.  And even if those things don't happen, you convince yourself that they will.  Just because the tub didn't flood and all four tires were fully functional on the way to work, you can't shake the idea that something is going to happen.  You become hyper-vigilant.   There is a suicidal deer lurking in every shadow, there is a drunk driver in every headlight.  You finally get to work and hazards on the roadway have escalated to occupational hazards.  

You start to believe that you aren't capable of completing job functions.  You devalue yourself, and assume everyone else has done that as well.  Then you feel guilty for failing the people around you.  At some point in the day, maybe mid morning or mid afternoon, you find yourself laughing at asinine jokes or looking at the clouds rolling overhead, and for a brief moment you realize how silly you have been to take all of the shit so fucking seriously.  You pull the best positive energy out and finish your day.  There's a sense of relief as you make your drive home.  You made it.  You convince yourself you can do it again tomorrow.  And you believe it.  

Then when you get home, you close the door and lock it behind you, because you don't want that day getting back in.  As you do the dishes and put something in the oven for dinner, the fear sneaks back in.  Maybe you weren't wrong when you woke up.  Maybe, there was something out there, but you just escaped it.  Shake it off.  That's just fear trying to own you.  But by the time you should be drifting off to sleep, panic set's up a fucking novelty table in your brain.  So, you don't fall asleep until it's tomorrow, then you wake up, what seems like minutes later.  In actuality, it was only minutes later.  

You wake up again with an unspecified notion of impending doom.  It's a little harder to get in the shower.  It's a littler harder to get in the car.  It's excruciating to go to work.  You know it's ridiculous.  So you go.  But by the time you get to work, you have villainized  yourself to the point that physically hurts to walk through the door.  Your colleagues say "good morning" to you.  You curse them under your breath.  "Don't fucking patronize me."  The day plays out pretty much the same as the day before, only all the emotions seem to amplify.  Do that for a week or two.  Or maybe a month.  Throw in some extenuating circumstances and a good run of bad luck, and you just went from barely functioning to barely breathing.  

It doesn't matter what you do or who tries to comfort you, you don't see a purpose.  In fact, you see a burden.  The insufferable darkness that  you can't escape, the weight of the burdens you place on others is suffocating.  The weakness that you exude is a crime only punishable by solitude.  In the off chance you allow another being close enough to see your vulnerability, the only option you have is to apologize.  Apologize for wasting the limited oxygen produced by Earth's vanishing forests, because you aren't worth anymore than that.  You are a fucking waste.  

And that's what happens.  It doesn't matter how many people call or text or visit or get on planes to make sure you are OK.  You are a fucking burden on humanity and you don't deserve the time those people are investing in you.  

That's what it's like.  It's like drowning while you watch everyone around you breathing.  

Close Enough

Radley and I were supposed to be on a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Oakland to Lihue this morning.  I only made that decision last night.  Seemed reasonable at the time.  Spend an entire paycheck on airline tickets to cross an ocean to go hide in a tropical paradise.  Sounds familiar.  I just did that two months ago.  Had a great trip to Hawaii last time, what would the harm be in making it a two-fer...This time while a kid who has school and field trips and extra-curriculars to account for would also be traveling.

Seemed like a pretty sound idea. So, I bought the tickets last night before I even told anyone that I was planning it.  Because I wasn't really planning it.  It just sounded like a good idea to get the fuck out of storm's way.  See, I have been in this perpetual fight or flight status since the beginning of the  year.  So, every time I get uncomfortable, I think it's a good idea to remove myself from the situation.  Only, for some reason, getting out of the situation makes me more uncomfortable than just dealing with whatever the source of the discomfort is.  I liken it to what crazy people do when they when they escape from the straight jacket:  the straight jacket was uncomfortable, but processing everything outside of it's comfort is horrifying.  So, essentially, I guess I liken myself to a crazy person?  Not an unreasonable leap, I suppose.  

Anyway, back to the flight we were supposed to be on this morning.  Theoretically, we should have been on the road by 6:AM to make our 9:35 flight.  I didn't sleep well.  I never sleep well before an early flight.  The terror of losing money on a missed travel arrangements haunts my entire being.  It just seems so wasteful.  But the travel industry has made enough to subsidize entire countries on their inability to be flexible.  So, this morning, when I woke up in a state of terror, I knew I had just lost an entire paycheck on two un-executed fight plans.  

I called the airline, canceled the tickets.  They were very generous to credit me, for the cost of $400.  Then I called my dad.  I left a message that would probably be unsettling to the most disconnected of parents.  He finally called me back when he woke up and said "can you fly later in the week?"  The suggestion terrified me.  I couldn't even leave the house, how was I supposed to get on a plane and fly across an ocean later in the week.  Two hours later my phone rang.  It was him again.  He said "There is a direct flight from Lihue to Oakland tomorrow.  I will see you in the evening."  All I could say was "OK."  

It's weird.  When I find myself sifting through the deepest, darkest, most rancid shit I feel I have ever seen, I retreat.  And people from all over everywhere seem to know it too.  After my dad called and announced his intentions to be here tomorrow.  After that man decided that he could walk away from the jobs he was responsible for and the people who are depending on him to meet deadlines, I naturally felt like the biggest dirt bag on the planet.  Why didn't I try to stop him?  Why didn't I tell him to go to work and to not worry about me?  Why didn't I just tell him I had a lapse in judgement and I am so fine that a trip across an ocean is completely unnecessary?  That is what I have always done.  So, why didn't I do it this time?  I didn't do it though.  And it made me feel worthless because I couldn't even formulate a series of cohesive words that would have made half sense.  

My dad told me that he's coming because his parent manual states that "when daughter's need hugs, dad's are required to get on planes.  It says it right here, Angela," he told me.  I laughed.  Then I felt like a bigger asshole.  Because that's not strong, fierce, and independent.  It's not what my parents raised me to be.  That's needy and insecure.  It's having your daddy come post a bond on your emotional deficits.  Basically, it means that you are a jerk and you can't handle life so your daddy is going to stop his entire fucking world to come make sure that you don't need to be committed.  

While I lay there, mulling over my emotional deficiencies and the gift I have for making people put their entire fucking existences on hold because I am always in some new and, unyet discovered,  dysfunctional state of turmoil, my phone started blowing up.  I wanted to take it to the corner and throw it into traffic.  

"Hi" 

"How are you doing, sister?"

"Sorry I haven't talked to you in a few days.  What's up?"

"How did I just drop my phone in a plate fruit curry.  That shouldn't even be possible?"  

Too much.  Too fucking much!  Then, as if I got hit in the head with the smart stick, I realized that they were all looking out.  They all had taken time out of their day to make sure I knew they were still thinking about me.  I resolved, at that minute, to be honest with them.  Because let's be honest.  If you tell someone what you are coming apart at the fucking seams, and they still want to talk to you, you have people.  

I was honest with all of them.  I told them that I'm not real functional right now.  I apologized for being that fucking guy.  I never want to be that guy.  Ever.  But they all said the same thing.  Maybe not in the same words.  They said:

"don't apologize. I've never lost faith in you."

"I am here for you."

"If I could, I would take away your crazy."  

"How's your hygiene?"

Really?  How's your hygiene?  Then I got it.  Because my people fucking know me.  Rach asked 

"When was the last time you brushed your teeth?  Did you take a shower today?"  I thought for a minute...thought some more.  Then I admitted:  "Yesterday.  I took a shower yesterday.  I brushed my teeth at the same time."  Silence on the other end of the phone.

Then she said "close enough."  

-Inner Peas

It Hurts to Think

I was a very serious child.  My mom always tells me I was a happy, jovial little girl.  But I sometimes think that is how she wants to remember it.  Or maybe she has the benefit of life's experience that she sees the past with different hindsight.  Either way, I don't think I was ever really jovial.  I was always very solemn.  Not necessarily melancholy, but I was very introspective.  I saw everything through a blue/green filter.  I guess that's probably pretty normal for the illegitimate child of two hippie parents.  There was never a black and white.  There was never a definitive line. There was never a clear direction.  While my parent's probably gave me more to think about than my peers who had two corporately employed parents, they also gave me the curse of thought.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change anything about my childhood or my parents or, for what it's worth, the rest of my life.  But I will say this:  thinking is really hard.  When you don't have someone to tell you how to think or what to do and you have to make your own decisions, life get's complicated.  My parents were amazing in that they never placed any undue expectations on me.  They would say things like "be the President of the United States or bag groceries at Safeway.  Do whatever makes you happy, Angela."  Or they would say "Get an education, but don't become a pretensions asshole.  What you know isn't who you are."  They gave me the whole world as options. They would have been proud of me if I had chosen to shelve books at the library or if I had have gone to law school.  They were good that way.

But on the librarian to lawyer scale or the white bag to white house scale, I don't fit in anywhere.  Even my hippie parents don't really know what to do with me.  I joined the Coast Guard right out of High School, because as much as my parents wanted me to be my own person, they couldn't afford for me to do that.  I think they hoped that it was some thing I would do until I could afford to become one of those other things.  But I held on to it for 17 years.  My parents have told me repeatedly to get out of it.  That I can do more and I deserve better.  I'm not sure what that means.  I'm not sure the I understand the direction I am supposed to take from here.  What am I supposed to be when I grow up?

I can tell you what I don't want to be when I grow up.  I can tell you that I never want to be the person who hates getting up in the morning because they hate their job.  I don't ever want to be the person who has to demand that people acknowledge their importance.  I never, ever, EVER want to be the person who has to remind people of decency and human kindness.  I don't want to be the person who walks out of meetings because adults can't act like grown ups.  I especially don't want to be the person who has to demand respect.  Because respect commands respect.  And if you have to tell someone to respect you, either you have failed as a human being or...OR..you are surrounded with people who respect the wrong shit.

I will also tell you what I want to do when I grow up.  I want to be a gypsy.  I want to be wild at heart.  I want to have a rebel soul.  I want to be that girl in the Karmann Ghia who would drive until there was no more gas.  I want to be stuck on the side of the road, on an almost impassible road, waiting for a tow.   I want to be the girl who chased the sun down every beach from Fort Bragg to Stinson to Faria. I want to be the person who walks into meetings disheveled and out of place, just to make everyone else uncomfortable I want to be the woman who is so passionate that she doesn't stop to think about rent or employment or jail time before she throws dangerously sharp objects at assholes who think they are better than everyone else.  I want to be the girl who was determined to swim with the dolphins and was willing to take out a 2nd mortgage out to finance the house in the stars.  I want to be her again.

I have become the person I didn't want to be when I grow up.  I fight to take care of people who don't my name.  I fight with people who don't care about other people.  I make other people look really good, when they would otherwise look like assholes.  I am tired.  All I want now is dolphins and sunsets and stars.  I want hugs and smiles and twinkling eyes.  All I want is to be who my parents wanted me to be when they told me I could be anything.   It hurts to think about that.

-Inner Peas

Helluva Life

A few years ago, right before I started this blog, I was experiencing the worst mental health episode of my adult life.  The anxiety and the depression were insatiable.  The emotion was constant and paralyzing and physically excruciating.  I couldn't get out of bed.  I couldn't go outside of the house.  I didn't buy groceries for a week.  I showered once, maybe twice in 18 days.  I didn't answer phone calls or text messages.  I locked myself so deep in the pit of my fear, that some around me wondered if I would ever be able to find my way out.

I don't how what motivated me to get out of bed on that frigid April morning, two years ago this month.  Of course, I don't really know what triggered the 18 day isolation that came before that either.  Regardless, I got out of bed on Monday April 21, 2013.  I took a shower.  Put on some makeup.  Threw a banana at my kid.  Got in the car and drove to work.  I shook uncontrollably on the 9 mile trip down Bodega Avenue, forcing myself to not pull over or turn the car around.  When I walked into work, I was met by about 20 pairs of glaring, critical eyes.  I could hear the thoughts of everyone I walked passed "Where the fuck have you been for the last three weeks?"  Their judgment was deafening.  

Of course, it wasn't judgement.  It was more concern.  Or confusion.  Maybe even a little surprise that I was still alive.  After all, the only thing that had kept me connected to the outside of my house for the previous 18 days were the text messages I got from people who reminded me to shower and the meals that showed up on my front door step from neighbors who thought I was turning into Howard Hughes.  But I did go back to work that morning. 

I remember very vividly being so self conscious about having to explain my absence. But as soon as the phone rang at 7:02, I forgot about trying to make excuses for myself.  I logged in.  I looked at my desk.  I checked my email.  I remember being astounded that people were still calling the clinic, still leaving work in my "to do" box, still stealing all the good pens off my desk, and still sending emails to me.  It was round mid-morning when I went outside to smoke that I actually thought to myself "That's weird.  Even though I haven't done anything for the last three week, the world is still doing its thing."  

I keep thinking back to that morning on April 21st, two years ago.   The only reason I remember it was April 21st is because I wrote it down when I got there.  With a green ball point pen.  Because that was the only pen I could find.  I wrote "21APR" I don't even know what prompted me to write it down, but I kept that piece of scratch paper in my purse for a very long time.  I can't tell you why, but I have held on to it like it was the Holy Grail.  I didn't look at it very often, but when I rummaged through my purse and came across that green hen scratch, it always made me think.  

So now, almost two years later, I was sitting in my kitchen this past Sunday night.  Cleaning out my purse, because my motto is "clean purse, happy heart."  It's stupid, but I can never find anything in there, so I always feel like I need to clean it out.  Anyway, last Sunday at the kitchen table, I pulled out everything and put it all into two piles.  Just like I always do.  The shit that I need.  Things like my wallet, key, and wine tool.  The other pile was the shit I don't need.  Like receipts, gum wrappers and half eaten granola bars.  I immediately took the pile of shit I don't need out to the trash can.  As I organized the shit I do need, I realized that the green scribble was missing.  

I looked.  I looked again.  I check all the pockets.  I checked the pockets of purses I haven't used in months.  I couldn't find it.  So back to the trash can I went.  Like a shameless fool, I started pulling things out of the grey bin. Sifting through last weeks garbage, even though I just thrown the shit I didn't need away.  I dug through all of it.  ALL.  OF.  IT.  When I was elbow deep in coffee grinds and chicken bones, I had the good sense to have Radley open the door and turn on the shower for me.  You know, that way I didn't leave e coli and salmonella in my wake.  
I got in the shower and washed it all away.  Got up the next morning and went to work.  Like I knew what I had been doing all along.  But, I don't know what I am doing at all.  I have been finding myself really close to that place I was two years ago.  I have been having a hard time functioning and feeding myself.  I have been overcome with fear and sadness a lot lately.  Feelings I hate.  Feelings that I have been able to keep at bay, for so long, with that fucking piece of paper.  But it's gone now.  So how do I remind myself that I survived the worst of it two years ago?  How do I remind myself that I am strong enough to beat it again.  How to I tell myself that adversity is a part of survival?  

Then it hit me this morning.  It's other people.  Other people are the reminder.  It's not a security blanket. It's not two numbers and three letters.  It's other people who are the reminder.  Just as that first day back at work after after my fear and sadness almost consumed me, now I have to look at the universe and see how it doesn't stop just because we stop.  Two years ago, my withdrawal from humanity didn't stop the work from piling up.  It didn't stop the bills from being paid.  It didn't stop one of my best friends from losing a baby.  

As I sat there this morning, at the same smoke pit that brought all the clarity to me two years ago, I looked back on the events of the past week.  Monday, I got a call from my girlfriend who got laid off from her job in private practice, due to "budget restraints."  They told her she could collect on her vacation on her unemployment benefits.  Just like that.  Same fucking day. They didn't even give her a slap on the ass on the way out.   Also on Monday, I found out that the program, and the educator, that have been most influential in my child's life are both on the bureaucratic clock.  Tuesday,a dear friend of almost two decades, lost his first born grandchild to a three year battle with cancer.  Same Tuesday, a baby arrived.  The first born to two really fucking amazing human beings.  Wednesday.  I couldn't get out of bed.  Well, to be fair.  I did get out of bed.  I even got in the shower.  But by the time I got out of the shower, I was so overcome with nausea and fear that I just sat in the shower until I could compose myself to find clothes.  

Yesterday started to feel a lot like that April two years ago.  I got a couple of text messages from my girlfriends.  One said "you aren't at work.  How are you?"  Another said "Do you want me to stop by tonight?"   I had dinner made for me by friends who just wanted to make sure I was "OK."  It was really eye opening.  Not just because I have really fucking amazing people in my life.  But also because they see my pattern.  That pattern kind of started to scare me.  

So, yet again, I woke up this morning.  Got in the shower.  Threw some makeup on my face.  Got two human beings dressed.  Shoved a banana at my kid.  Made coffee and drove to work.  Listened to NPR and learned about two fabulous new bay area plays on "Second Row, Center."  No sooner did I get out of the car, did I get two new photos and a text to accompany them that read "the newest addition."  Another baby.  I smiled as I walked by the front desk, cold as hell and yelled "It's 35 degrees!  Sleeves up, boys!"  I went to my desk.  Did work.  Remembered it was Tim's birthday. 

I drove down to his building at lunch to tell him "happy birthday"  I stepped out of the car and found my footing, I was cussing at my skirt for always riding up in the car.  As I slammed the door, I heard a soft voice call after me: "Hey Ang."  I looked up from my shoes and my skirt and I saw him.  I saw my friend.  Of nearly two decades.  The one who just lost he first born grandchild to a three year battle with cancer.  I had been avoiding him.  Because what do you say to someone who just lost a child from their life?

The first thing I did was hug him.  The second thing I did was demand: "Why the fuck are you at work?"  He looked at me as if I should know the answer.  I told him "you are all in my heart.  All of you."  He said "I took a couple of days off.  But what am I going to do at home?"  I had no answer for that.  I had no insight or cunning advice.  I had nothing.  We talked for a couple more minutes before he looked at me and said "The worst part is that I can't do anything to ease the pain of my daughter's loss."  

I looked at him in the eye, like I only do with people I love, honor and respect and told him "Mart.  There is nothing you can do.  Losing a child is the most unnatural experience we can have as parents."  He hugged me again and walked away without another word.

That's the weird thing about life.  As much as you life it,..As much as you hide from it...As much as you try to beat it...Life keeps happening no matter what happens.  

-Inner Peas