Um…wow.
I was browsing for a Valentine’s Day card, naturally for this time of year, and was impressed at the variety of cards on offer. Then I was surprised that some of them were pretty specific. Then I saw this one. I just keep trying to put myself in the mind of the person who designed it. I mean, a card for when someone’s child dies. Wow.
Those of you who’ve been with me for a while will know of my ongoing struggle with depression and other, as-yet unidentified mental difficulties. From crippling myself to the point of catatonia to self-diagnosing as autistic, I have been struggling with these difficulties for pretty much all of my life. Many years ago I was on heavy antidepressants and undergoing extensive therapy, and while it certainly didn’t turn my life around, it did help me through some issues at the time at least.
And then I just sort of let it slide. I stopped the meds, and…nothing seemed to get any worse. I stopped the therapy, and I could still talk to people. My head was still f***ed up, but it seemed like I didn’t need those things.
I met my wife. We had our child. And throughout all of this, on and off, I was on the brink. The interesting thing is that my “condition” has mutated and changed over the years. What was once straight-up major depressive disorder turned into depression with a whole lot of other weird stuff thrown in there, and now there’s kind of just the weird stuff left. Is that a good thing?
Sounds about right.
I haven’t genuinely wanted to kill myself for over six years now. In fact the thought doesn’t really pop into my head anymore. However, I was bawling my eyes out because we didn’t go out to lunch the other day (all right, there was a lot more to it than that, but it sort of sums it up). I haven’t self-harmed in over ten years, but I still sit and stare at things for minutes on end. I repeat phrases to myself over and over again when I’m upset, and my speech turns into torrents of vowels and consonants that might mean something in Urdu, but I really couldn’t be sure.
So while I’m not “depressed”, I’m certainly not right in the head. And…sigh…I’ve never quite figured it out. Sometimes I behave like a sociopath. Sometimes I behave like I’m autistic. Sometimes I behave just simply depressed, and sometimes I share characteristics with full-on psychopathic disorders. None of them really quite fit. Not bipolar…nope.
Suddenly I can’t wait; I feel like I need to talk to this person, desperately, as though my very soul depended on it.
So a year ago my doc gave me meds. After ten years, I started medications again, and it hasn’t been…unsuccessful. I started with a mood stabilizer. Did a little, but not a lot. Added an antidepressant; sort of helped. Added a booster for the anti-depressant, but had to reduce the mood stabilizer or I might freak out. Still…I don’t freak out quite so much. Anything else? No real change.
Sort of feel like I’ve got those things on my arms sometimes.
For years and years my wife has been urging me to seek help. Step one was the medications. Step three is, presumably, mental stability and the ability to not feel like that creep from Iron Man 2 with the frazzling tentacles everywhere.
So what’s step two? Therapy, it turns out. And two days ago – after years of procrastinating – I booked my first appointment.
And you know what? I feel so, so relieved. As if all of sudden I’ve been freed from a form-fitting vice that has been slowly crushing me for decades. I haven’t met the psychologist, have no idea whether we’ll get along, but just the knowledge that the answers (if there are any to be had) aren’t solely in my hands anymore is like a great release.
Is this what AA members feel like?
Remember this scene from Blade? Yeah, sort of crushed.
Suddenly I can’t wait; I feel like I need to talk to this person, desperately, as though my very soul depended on it. Who knows…maybe it does. It might all go wrong; she might say there’s nothing wrong with me and that I should stop being such a baby, or she might say I’m beyond help and should be institutionalized. She might just not like me (I might just not like her). But for now, I’m going to leave myself open and hope beyond hope that this will help. Because for the past several years now I’ve felt my mind slowly descend deeper into complete insanity, and I’m pretty sure at some point it’ll be too late.
You don’t think I’m expecting to much from the psychologist, do you?
A child and a grownup…but which is which?
It’s a funny business, living with a child. It’s a little bit like living with a mooching flatmate who is quite a bit smarter than you. (And shorter, which sort of makes up for it.)
You see, when you’re talking about children in the hypothetical (as in, “we might want kids some day”, or “aren’t your sister’s kids wonderful?”), they seem a little bit like kittens: small, furry and adorable. They’re supposed to giggle and coo and drink from a bottle and smile with a little toothless smile. Or say things like, “Daddy says mommy gets grumpy when she sits on rags, but I don’t see why she doesn’t just get up.” They’re supposed to hold your hand crossing the street, and be suddenly polite when your parents are over.
Uh…right.
What tends to happen is they cry and vomit on you, shit on your shoes and flush your car keys down the toilet, say things like, “Mommy, daddy said not to tell you he drank six bottles of beer last night,” and then suddenly they want to read to themselves at night, and tell you off for using bad language. There isn’t really a gradual change (at least that’s how I remember it); one day they’re a tiny little brat, and then suddenly they’re more of an adult than you are.
And that’s the funny – and scary – part. Children, of course, are supposed to emulate their parents. They’re supposed to try on mommy’s lipstick, cut themselves shaving with daddy’s razor, check themselves out in big brother’s high heels; it’s what they call growing up [side note: I think that might be where I went wrong]. And you think that you’re supposed to be in control of that process. After all, the whole reason to have kids is so that you can raise them in exactly the opposite way to how your parents raised you.
It’s perhaps as likely as anything that children come from here.
The thing is, you’re not. Whatever you think you will be/won’t be/ought to be/would be if your wife didn’t nag you so much, that’s exactly what won’t happen. You turn around, and there’s this little four-foot nothing person that looks and acts like…well, like you, only better. Naturally, you ask where on Earth this person came from. Who let them in? Do they have a driver’s license? Should you offer them tea, or put them on the next flight to Pluto?
Children make themselves from what they find around them. And that is probably about the only thing that you have any say in. You see, we’ve raised Little Satis (through no deliberate thought) to speak, to think, to read and to understand. I think what might have happened is that this opened his eyes to see what was around him. And what he saw was us telling him we love him, yelling at him because he won’t clean his room, reading to him at night, and telling him for the millionth time to turn the damn light off when you leave the room (us swearing, too). And this made him. Would you like to know how I know?
Because now he tells me off for leaving the lights on. Reminds me to give him his vitamin. Points out that mommy will be angry if I leave clothes on the floor. Wakes up early because he doesn’t want daddy to be late and lose his job. Tells me to write things down as they come to me because I know I’ll forget.
And quite suddenly, I’m not sure who the grown-up here is. He’s telling me my music sucks, and I’m really sure that’s supposed to be the other way around. He’s giving mommy foot rubs, and telling her she watches too much TV. That nurturing environment? All of sudden he’s taking care of us, the incompetent grown-ups.
Then again, maybe that isn’t too bad a thing. After all, we’ve already taken care of him for eight years; it’s about time we got something in return.
Satis Writes 