Category: Mental Illness

Life At An Amusement Park

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 4 Comments

It’s been going on for five days now, minute by minute mood swings making me feel like a shooting gallery duck; dense anxiety like heavy fog, and a degree of indecision that stops my movement like a pause button.

indecisiveFor instance, this morning I couldn’t decide between chocolate milk or hot chocolate, behaving like the child at the soda fountain musing over nuts or no nuts. Ten minutes of my partner hustling through the house when at last he stopped, uttered some variation on a familiar expletive, poured a tall glass of cool milk, dumped the equivalent of a chocolate cake into the milk, dropped in a spoon, spun it about without dissolving anything causing it to resemble a freshly unplugged toilet, then brusquely presented it as though I was a fussy child, followed by that variant expletive and walked into the backyard.

I ask, is this the behavior of a fifty-five year old man, highly educated, and graced with an innate aptitude for johnny-on-the-spot decisions?

hammerToday was the first day of my 96 hour ride on the infamous carnival ride, The Hammer, in which you swing forward and back forward and back, etc.  Today was also the first time of my 96 hour disturbing mental yo-yo that the Midway seemed like an appropriate place to live. I’d fit in quite nicely with the Fun House, the Freak Show, ping-pong ball goldfish toss, and the notorious ring the Coke bottle.

But there’s been nothing amusing about my minute-to-minute change in behavior, the confusion which renders me speechless, the marathon of apologies, emptiness to the depth of a wino’s bottle, and then a creeping attack of self-doubt, self-worth, even writing was tortuous (when I suppose its most honest.  Did you ever have those days when you wished they speed past like flashcards?  It’s only until that damned disappointing sun, weak incapable of tossing out a solar flare and incinerating the cloud cover that I felt calm. No more staring into a day of gray disappointment.grayday

Night time is the best time for me. Inside the house is quiet and familiar like an old dog and outside is awash in black and could be anywhere in the world.

 

Which Is Which?

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 9 Comments

aa-allnighter
Night after night after night after night for the past three weeks I’m awake well past 4:00 am.   Last night I was awake until 3:10 am, just awake, not anxious awake or fearful awake or even we-leave-for-Prague-in-six-hours awake.  Just awake even after swallowing three milligrams of Clonazepam.

I still awaken at 7:30 or 8:00 or 9:10 am.  Today my day didn’t start until 3:00 pm.  But I can’t untangle the ball of yarn because I can’t pinpoint the beginning of this wakefulness: Is it one of three dire maladies that come and go like my sanity was a delicatessen (and bedeviled generations since expelled from Pandora’s Box with other evils) or if the distress of my brother’s death only appears in solitude; then today this torment advanced by adding a threatening malaise. Teasing the debilitating effects of mental illness with the expeditious death of my brother, my routines have been stirred, causing an atypical night/day composition causing great distress and exhibiting itself in one of three years in great part by one three infirmities: 1) Mania (this ain’t a party; 2) Depression (which routinely involves sleep; or, 3) Grief.

But today, today the symptoms were clear: sleeping well into the morning, sitting on the side of the bed for two hours; no concept of passing time.  When I first was diagnosed we accepted odd sleep patterns as a component of bipolar.griefpoem But now, when the inevitable death became evitable, my grief churned the sediment of negative memories, their decay rising to the surface like the Magic Eightball, and I precisely recall that day or incident or mounds of work to what?  End in death? Four years now sours like wet rags lying on the basement floor for two weeks and turn into deep, powerful, and dangerous emotions like hate, retribution, and bitterness which poison even my brightest memories like an elixir or potion.

And today I feel like shit; disinterested, loathsome, hopeless, belongings reduced to ordinary objects; all over, two men smiling or laughing in picture frames remain unrecognizable; too many functional, but inefficient appliances, especially my computer.  In order to simply write I’d have to troubleshoot half a dozen issues:the writing is slow to the surface anyhow, and when buoyant is likely to blather on about how shitty I feel, and how long am I expected to stave off this darkness?

Oh yeah, and when will someone like me rush to my side and avail his own life to repair mine?  When will that be? When do you think? How long did you wait? When generosity runs as thin as this a damning selfishness takes a seat at my table: “Hear you’re tired of saving people even when you’re risking yourself. Hear you’re looking for your “generous man” to shoulder your burden and top-off your short-comings.  Well, today’s your lucky day, ’cause they sent me instead. I’m what you’d call Selfishness.”

On Being the Black Sheep

~ Harlan Didrickson

It’s been five weeks since the death of my older (by two tiny years) brother, Richard.

aa-driptowelsOne mid-afternoon as I was visiting him in the ICU he easily slid into a nap. So I closed my eyes amidst a midafternoon’s bath of sunshine, until the first reel of a daydream began: It focused on a man-in-mourning transfixed! He watched as the Life Miracle slowly dripped from him like he was hung yet unwrung towels that became lighter and lighter as water continued to drain. A voiceover added that water is movement, and movement is fundamentally incapable of staying anywhere for long, especially where it: 1) Isn’t valued; and, 2) Isn’t wanted. I awoke startled, seeing a nurse tending to Richard. In hindsight the man in my daydream was me and I was there to observe dying, to witness the broken pipe my brother had become, and in his case, disinterested in repair, hopeless in patches, and instead, quit. Autocratically, decidedly, and determinedly.

Is autonomously dying rightful? If so, it’s hidden down deep in the fine print that no one reads except those searching for any way out like a trapped diver short of oxygen?

Clearly Richard found his karmic precedent and pursued his resignation with silent bravery and resolve. I’ve been told by childhood acquaintances who have remained in Milwaukee that they’ve overheard self-promoted clucking of crassly ignorant and insensitive hens quoting St. Peter himself, “Richard did not simply give up: The mere thought is preposterous and queerly unorthodox for a son as dedicated to his mother’s care. Give up? Just, quit? Not Richard . . . but that baby brother, the one that went to college . . . For eight years . . . then wouldn’t come home to his dying mother; oh no, had to live . . . in . . . Chicago with his pal . . . No, it’s something I’d expect from him, from the Black Sheep of that family. “aa-blksheep

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Just Ask and then Listen

~ Harlan Didrickson

aaapaperworkI’ve struggled for months with a question:  How do I accomplish, with zero tolerance for failure, the assessment, strategy, implementation, occupation, research, study, report and application, monitoring, compromise of personal values, extortion, catastrophic emergency, invasion of personal papers, rehab facility decision, $1,000 down payment, retaining attorneys to guide strategy for Title XIX approval (zero tolerance for failure), leading the unraveling of real estate, bankruptcy, discharge, fraud, malpractice quagmire and retention of law firm to defend our interests in our private property, without allowing sobbing emotions, hopelessness, and the fact that my older and only brother will never return home?

The first time he asked, “Am I ever going home?”  I did everything I could to keep my composure so I could ask him to hold the line as I bellowed through a weeping and deep, deep sorrow for my partner to pick up the line.  And then my sanguine veneer burst and the mourning and loss aaaweepingand sadness and exhaustion and anger were released like Pandora‘s evils of humanity.  It was then that I damned myself for my own humanity; it was this humanity that undermines brotherhoods and best friends, silently damning a single vein then discarding the blind, the weak, the imbalanced to . . . exist among other damaged examples until his emancipation appears upon his death.

“Where am I supposed to find the strength to yet again marshal a campaign to establish and confirm his welfare for the entirety of his now crippled life?  I screamed as a fresh bout of sorrowful nausea racked my formidable frame!

And then I heard it.  Faintly, breathlessly, as though it had traveled a great distance at extraordinary speed.  And then I heard it again clearer, distinct, simple.

“It’s your job,” it said, “Not your Life.  Administer his guardianship with authority and leadership.  Then one day after you’ve navigated his life through a dangerous channel you’ll surrender your charge and let him set his own course.”

The following day I began the intrusive deconstruction of his financial, legal, medical and administrative life with the same degree of organization, tenacity, and dominance as I’d done quite frequently and consistently successful my entire career.

That was my job.  

aaatriumphant

 

Rare = “$$$$$”

~ Harlan Didrickson

arareobject1rare: adjective

DEFINITION: exceptional, extraordinary, rarefied, recherché, scanty, unimaginable, few, admirable, A-OK, cat’s pajamas, commendable, cracker jack, exquisite, hunky-dory, meritorious, praiseworthy, superior, valuable, worthy, superior, 24-karat, elite, exclusive, exquisite, popular, precious, top-drawer.

I’ve never owned or bought or inherited or found or stole any thing that’s been classified, determined, researched, and stamped rare.  The arareobect2moniker rare is itself rare!  According to the free website, Rarity Guide (www.rarityguide.com), the nomenclature “Rare“ is far more than the number of units produced.  “Instead, we factor in many additional factors including popularity, demand, age and collectibility.”  On their website they stress educating the public and collectors about collectible objects.  The sobriquet rare is mentioned only when an object reaches the threshold of eighty-one percent (81%) to one hundred percent (100%): The most sought after objects in a collectible category.
Except in medicine where a condition or disease when codified rare indicates under-funded research meaning that the tightly budgeted, yet interested researchers exhaust their paltry budgets thus terminating further research and flatten the idyllic hope for a treatment long before it’s ever presented to the prudent pharmaceutical companies.
arare oject4
It’s simple: It’s unprofitable to manufacture a treatment which less than one percent (1%) of patients living with these diseases will be prescribed.
So, diseases are rare as well, but no one is a collector.  Now, what am I going to do with the four I have?
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