Category: Mental Illness

What Do You Get When You Cross A Desert Box Turtle and Jack Russell Terrier?

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

I’m afraid that my spouse will leave me one day.

Not because of anything I did or said, but rather, because of the things I didn’t do.

My bipolar disorder is treated by amphetamines.  And when they begin weaken I find myself incredibly tired; painfully tired.  This fatigue is called the cliff.

My spouse has the energy of a Jack Russell Terrier and wants to play and play and play.  Problem is, I’m sullen, I’m racing on amphetamines, I crash at turn three.  And he keeps up the frenetic pace: movies, plays, parties, happy hours, garden walks.

Like now.  I’m so tired I could cry, but he’s invited me out for a movie.

How often can I say “no thanks, I’m so tired,” before he finds another Jack Russell to play fetch?

It’s not that I don’t want to see a movie or play, attend a dinner party or picnic at Ravinia, stroll through the Botanic Gardens or Morton Arboretum, I simply don’t have the energy.

I’ve tried to fake it, fallen asleep during concerts and movies; so fatigued that I don’t even stand up at intermission; mind-numbing sleepiness causing me to forget names of close friends or our destination.

How many respectful declines will he hear from me before he invites a surrogate, my body-double, my understudy, my replacement?

 

After Reading This, Stop It or Justify It

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 3 Comments

Practically every drinking-age adult has, at one time or another, usually while extremely drunk, publicly pronounced their ideas, sentiments, questions, ultimatums, proposals, tantrums or a million different things which, under normal circumstances, i.e. sober, would never eek past their lips.  These are gargantuan declarations!  These are reasons for avoidance, distance, even termination.

And usually forgiven and forgotten.  And rarely, if ever, does the persecution of both the drunk and the debacle continue on for years.

So why can’t people who live with mental illness be granted the same degree of forgiveness after a manic episode that left behind a degree of destruction comparable to that of a bender?

Why is being out of my mind different than drunk out of my skull?  How are the senseless rantings of a brain gone haywire different than the senseless expletives and threats of harm screamed during labor?  Is it easier to forgive mistreatment when you understand the cause and empathize with the sufferer? 

Our society (by-and-large) is hell-bent on maintaining a safe distance, a polite disinterest, and muted intolerance of mental illness by refusing to educate itself.  Does the defense I most often hear, “It’s because they don’t understand what you’re going through,” justify bullying, abuse, denial, exclusion or acrimony?    What is it about mental illness that the majority of American’s find impossible stand?   It’s ignorance; civil ignorance.  If you’re ignorant you’re not required to empathize.  So educated people can mistreat me due to their ignorance of my disease.

Maybe that’s why there are people (who used to be close friends) that remain angry about what I said four years ago while I was losing my mind.  Because they have a right to be as ignorant about my mental illness as they like, but I’ve got to watch my P’s and Q’s so I don’t piss anyone off while I’m in a manic phase.

Why is forgiveness conditional?

Oomphlessness

~ Harlan Didrickson

It’s odd, this.

All my life I carried some kind of drive, as though the first-baseman-mitt-sized hands of a dad pushes a shy son to join the group; nudging, like the dog’s wet muzzle flips your hand like a pancake in order to be petted; knocked, like the brass-ring a toothless lion holds loosely between jaws, and which falls against a brass plate sounding more like the dinner bell than the formal announcement of a visitor.

This propulsion, like a jet plane, carried me to soaring heights where earth stretched like a night watchman and people, critical to life, shrunk so small so quickly that they hardly mattered.  Wouldn’t you think things of such importance could be seen from above?  Monuments can be seen; impact can be seen; destruction can be seen.  But people or their self-designations like importance or starvation or anger or bigotry or religion or anything, anything they’ve said or thought or threatened you can’t see.  You can see evidence, like ugly scars; at night lights dot the darkness like worn drapery holding back dawn, but some areas appear engulfed in flames, such a wide swath of light that I’d heard it told that the moon, once proud of its subtlety, is thinking of moving on, to Mars or Neptune maybe, a planet looking to adopt a real satellite, not some space junk.

The experts (who, self-admittedly, know very little about mood disorders, and even less about proper treatments) have identified this lack of oomph as a signature symptom of depression.  Ironically, the less oomph the more depressed.

Perhaps people have created a number of different systems all designed to manage oomph.  Clocks are oomph speedometers; birthday’s are oomph reminders; corner offices are oomph autobahn; retirement accounts are oomph cruise control.

Without oomph it would appear that I have no where to go and no reason to go there.  When you live with a mental illness you’re still in the same pool with everyone else.  It’s just that you’re knee-deep at the shallow end while everyone else with oomph keeps swimming back and forth and back and forth and will eventually join you here at the shallow end.  As they pass one or two might’ve noticed your inertia and may ask why you weren’t swimming, do you know how to swim, are you afraid to swim?

Oh no, I reply, I am oomphless; my brain doesn’t produce oomph; but in a world that places a high value on one’s degree of oomph, I think it’s better that I look like I have oomph because everyone that has it, is absolutely convinced that everyone has it, and those that aren’t using theirs are. . .

Are not oomphless.

Personal Assistant Career Application: Word Problems

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

So you’ve always wanted to be a personal assistant to the wealthy, the famous, the powerful!  Oh, the perks you tell yourself; the glamour; the benefits; the cocktail conversations!

To be a successful personal assistant you’ve got to produce, produce, produce anything asked of you, since you are an extension of them (but one they keep hidden like a blemish or disfigurement – which you’ll quickly discover).

But here’s an excerpt from a “PA Application” specifically asking how you would handle odd situations in order to avoid adding further stress to your boss’s life.  A PA is, after all, the gasket between their boss’s expectations and the reality which most of us endure.

In this section you will be presented with a series of actual situations which faced top-level Personal Assistants.  Please select TWO and in a brief essay,
describe how you would handle the situation.  Your answers will help us assess your creativity, dedication to service, and results orientation.  When you are finished, put down your pencil, remind yourself that every working day as a PA will resemble this test, oh, and you’re top salary will be $10/hour.

1.  Your charge, an adept 14-year old boy has recently been expunged from AOL and his mother (your boss) insists that the charge did nothing wrong, and insists that his privileges be reinstated immediately (including a formal letter of apology and one-month free service).  When you discuss the situation with the charge he insists he did nothing wrong.  You contact AOL as the family representative and discover 2 issues: A) The charge was kicked-off because he was downloading reels of porn videos; B) Only the Mrs. could reinstate the account (given it was her account).

2.  Your boss owns 3 dogs, all of which move to Fisher’s Island for the winter via the family jet (as was explained to you during your interview).

Dog 1:    Silky Terrier (size: Toy: 7″ tall x 9″ long (excluding tongue), 5 pounds),
and is a constant traveling companion via a shoulder-bag carry-on.


Dog 2 & Dog 3:     Bullmastiff (size: Gargantuan: 27″ tall, 135 pounds),
guards country property in neighboring state; aloof; maintain a distance.

You are summoned into your boss’s office and told that the next weekend is when the “pets” should travel to Fisher Island.  Wonderful, you’re thinking, strolling across the tarmac, the toy terrier in a Louis Vuitton doggie bag, and the 2 Mastiff’s flanking you on both sides.  You climb the small stairs into the Bombardier Global Express and make yourself comfortable while attended to by handsome staff.  “The Gary hanger?” you ask.


“Gary?  Oh no. . .impossible; we’re taking that to Valencia for the Ryder’s Cup. . .”  Well, you think, should I ask about the Citation or the Astra (normally on a 24-hour hold for Nanna); “Waukegan then, the Astra or. . .”  She stops you with a flip of the hand; “I thought you’d figure it out, but I guess I have to spell it out. . .O-H-A-R-E.”  “Commercial?” I gasp.  “American.  And the Mastiff’s are in the country so you’ll have to get them there, then drive them to the vet for papers or something. . . American has cargo limits of which I’m certain you’re apprised. . .”   Now what?

3.  As powerful as she is in corporate America, she’s able to master only one recipe: spaghetti.  And she uses only one brand and only one size of the very specific brand: Decca No. 12 (not No. 11 or No. 13).  She plans on making New Year’s Day dinner for 25 Fisher Island friends and expects Decca No. 12 to be amply stocked when she opens the pantry door.

It’s December 29 at 3:30 pm when you discover that no grocery store of any size or affiliation in the state of Florida carries Decca No. 12.  You call the family’s local grocer here who will immediately send a case to Fisher Island.  On December 31 at 1:30 pm Immelda calls from Fisher Island inquiring about the spaghetti; she assures you that it hasn’t arrived and the Mrs. will not want to start the New Year (furthermore, hasn’t ever started a New Year without Decca No. 12 since 1968) without the ingredient which assures culinary success!  What do you tell Immelda?  What do you do next?

Good luck and we’ll score your test and post the results!

What It’s Like

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 2 Comments

 

Upon awakening I remember that today is just one more day in a long line of days and while I know there’s an end to the string I can’t yet see it.  Still under the weight of Clonazepam I haven’t heard Jenni bounding down the stairs ready for a romp.  This hour or two is what I call my lay-over: I’m between medications neither of which are therapeutic; both of which masquerade symptoms of my mental illness.  Heavy and lethargic I pause a moment bedside to take a 30 second assessment of mood, same as last time, whenever last time was.  My memory of yesterday is monochromatic: I’m aware that things happened, but their details blend into the blizzard; yesterday and yesterday’s yesterday and all their predecessors simply disappear during the night.  Even painful arguments, bad news, anger and disappointments flee and aren’t carried forward, but get stopped at the border; most get turned away; a handful are waved through, arbitrarily, and sit idly, stuck, their reason or purpose kept by officials at the border; memories without purpose are like pieces of truck tire littering the highway; of no use.

My medicine awaits: nine orange pills like little life preservers, taken at three different times throughout the day.  The Teva variety lift you quickly, like a propulsion ride at a theme park, but their half-life is only a few motivated, buoyant hours until the bridge disintegrates beneath your feet and down you go, debris tumbling to the bottom; the lethargy is impossible to escape, like a tar pit or a muddy slope, incapacitated you reach for your next dose.  My goal every day is simply to be productive and purposeful.  Incomprehensible on my own.  I hate the fact that my daily life couldn’t produce if not for these nine orange pills.  But without them depression causes my torso to ache, it demands darkness and silence, it prohibits hope, it sleeps.

As usual, at this hour I’m so tired I struggle to fix dinner, to talk to my partner; watching TV, if I wasn’t eating I’d be asleep.

This is what it’s like.  Probably a good thing I won’t remember this tomorrow.