A Funeral, A Novella, A Niece, and A Revalation

I went to a funeral yesterday. He was the son of a very good friend. Her family and my family have been friends for 30 years. Her mom and my mom used to call each other Laverne and Shirley. I used to babysit her and her brothers. At 20-years-old, this young, man committed suicide. During the service, I realized that I was really angry at him. I was angry at what he put his mother and grandmother and brother and sister through. I was angry at what his son was going to have to deal with when he became old enough to understand what his father did. I'm pretty sure that most of the tears I shed yesterday were tears of anger, rather than sadness. All I could think was, "The selfish, little bastard killed himself. Typical." Life didn't turn out the way he planned when he was 14, so he killed himself. Perhaps you think I am being harsh. Perhaps I am. But I can't help the way I feel about what he did.

These feelings reminded me of when I studied the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin in college. I was just as angry, if not more so, at the protagonist in the story. She committed suicide, too.

Taking place around the turn of the 20th century, The protagonist was given a choice of staying with a husband who thought of her as property for the sake of her sons, or divorcing him to become the woman she wanted to be and never seeing her sons again. I was angry at the character for not actually making a choice. It was argued in class that suicide was a third choice, but I was never able to accept that. Who did suicide help? Her sons were still without her: the sons she felt she couldn't abandon through divorce. It didn't actually do anything to fight against what was causing the torment, either. (You know, the fight for women's equality.) In fact, the only purpose it served was to run away from a conflict, and that made me mad, mad, mad!

I guess it's natural to assume that because of my reaction to these two situations, I don't think suicide is the answer to anything. You would be wrong. Sometimes, I do think it is the right answer.

My niece, the one who had the heart transplant, chose to die. She was almost 12-years-old, and she had spent more than half of her life in a hospital room. By the time she decided she had had enough, her body was rejecting her heart, again, and most of her other organs were failing, as well. Were there things that could have been done to extend her life? Maybe. But she would have been hooked up to machines and in constant pain. She didn't want to do that, so my brother granted her request to be taken off all of her medications. She never would have seen 20. She probably wouldn't have even seen 13. She was tired, and forcing her to stay alive only served the purpose of keeping her around for us, her family. That didn't make her death any harder to bear, but I don't feel that her decision was a cop-out. I don't feel like she was running away from difficulties.

I'm not saying that I wasn't angry at my niece. I was. It's part of the grieving process. But as I moved through my grief, I realized that I wasn't really angry at her. I was angry that I would never get to see her, or hold her hand, or study with her, or tuck her in, or go to the Renaissance Festival, or do a million other things with her ever again. I wasn't angry at her for choosing to end the pain. I was angry that she had to make that decision. Maybe I'm angry at God, or the universe, or whatever, but I'm not angry at her, anymore. I just miss her.

There is a time to fight, and a time to give up. Elizabeth fought as long and as hard as she could, and she only gave up when there really wasn't a reason to fight anymore. That's why my friend's son's death angers me so much! He was healthy, young, and intelligent, but he was also spoiled, selfish, and entitled. (I'm not going to sugarcoat his defects just because he is dead, so don't yell at me for it.) His death feels useless, meaningless, like he was running away from something rather than putting an end to something. Maybe that's why I'm so angry.

Or maybe it's because I spend every day clawing myself through every hour trying not to think about how easy it would be to kill myself. Trying not to think about how much I want my pain to end, but don't want to increase the pain of my family and friends. They say that if you have a plan to kill yourself, you're more likely to do it. Well, I have several plans. I've thought of various ways to kill myself for over 25 years. I've even gathered what I needed once or twice, but I never did it. I believe that suicide for no reason other than to escape, to cause pain to someone else to alleviate my pain, is selfish. You may not agree with me, but that's okay. You don't have to. This way of thinking, though, keeps me from taking my own life every time. It doesn't, however, stop me from wanting to die.

As I'm writing this, I find that I have thought of another reason for being angry. I'm angry at my friend and her family for not recognizing that her son was in so much trouble. Heck, I'm angry at MY family for continuing to not recognize the struggle I face every day. I've talked to them about my disease, disorder, situation, illness, whatever you want to call it, but still they make comments and jokes about things that they seemingly don't realize I am going through. Yesterday my mother said something to me and got offended when I didn't laugh. She asked me why I didn't laugh, and I told her that I would have if she hadn't been talking about something I was going through. My Swiss cheese slab of a brain won't let me remember what she said, just that it hurt knowing she didn't realize what she was talking about was something that affected me, and it wasn't funny.

Is that what was going on with my friend's son? Did he have severe depression and generalized anxiety disorder, too? Did no one try to get help for him, get him diagnosed? Did anyone bother to try to understand his disorders? Did people tell him to just "get over it," or to grow up because life wasn't fair? Did his friends and family make comments and jokes about mental illness that made him feel like he couldn't be open with them? Did they know that he was ill and still make those jokes? Did he feel like no one cared, too?

Maybe I'm not really angry at my friend's son, after all. 

On Writing, Job-Seeking, and Feeling Like Crap!

So, I figured out one of the problems I have trying to write every week. I don't have appointments every week, so I don't have much to report, accept for my daily struggle with uncontrollable emotions. (And that gets boring hearing about after a while.)  Before I started therapy, I thought it would be on a regular schedule. Maybe I watched too many movies or something, but I really thought that I would get assigned a therapist, and then I would be assigned a day and time to see that therapist every week or every other week. But it's not like that. I see my therapist anywhere between every 3 to 6 weeks, depending on her schedule. I feel like I need more structure in my therapy. I mean, I already feel like life is just tossing me around, and I can't grab hold of a rescue rope. It would help if that rescue rope were being thrown to me at regular intervals. I don't know. Maybe I've just been watching too much T.V.. Maybe this is the way therapy really works.

Anyway, I mentioned in my last post that I'm seeing an employment councilor. Right now, she's seeing me every week, and this past week she gave me a couple of job leads. I've heard back from one of them already. You guessed it. "Thanks, but no thanks." Hey, at least they actually let me know I was out of the running. None of the other jobs I have applied for over the last 2 years has done that. So, if nothing else, working with an employment councilor has led me to more polite employers.

I also applied to teach for a non-traditional school that utilizes online courses with one-on-one teacher time. I was really excited about that one. I had the interview 2 weeks ago. They said they would be making a decision last week. I guess I didn't get it, because they haven't called me. I was supposed to do a follow up call last week, but I didn't. I started to, but when I tried to find the correct phone number to call, not only did the website not have the number I needed, but I couldn't remember the name of any of the 4 people I interviewed with. I cried. Then I looked up memory loss and menopause and found out that it's pretty darn common for women who have surgically induced menopause to have major memory problems for the first year afterward. Apparently it starts to get better again after that first year. Now...if I can only hold on until October...

So...what else is going on? Hmmm. Oh, yeah.  I feel like crap physically and mentally. Everything hurts, and I wake up feeling more tired than when I went to sleep. While I don't cry at the drop of a hat anymore, I still cry every day, sometimes more than once, and for weird things. For example, the other day, I started thinking about my niece coming home on leave this week and started to cry. Not happy tears, even though it makes me happy that she's coming home, but big, ugly, pain-filled tears. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY! While I was crying I was saying to myself, "You're happy she's coming home! Why in the hell aren't your tears happy, too?" I kept trying to convince myself that they were happy tears, but I know how happy tears feel, and this wasn't it. WTF!

Anyway, my doctor and I have decided to address the sleep issue, since nothing else is helping all that much, and studies have shown that poor sleep can be a major factor in physical and mental health issues. He asked me when the last time was that I woke up feeling refreshed. I told him I couldn't remember. I can't. For all of my adult life, and at least some of my teen life, I only remember waking up feeling like I hadn't slept, feeling in pain. In fact, a lot of times, the reason I can't get to sleep is knowing that I'm going to wake up feeling worse than when I went to sleep! He thought it was time for me to do a sleep study. I think so, too. I'll be doing an at-home study next week. That should give a preliminary diagnosis and determine whether  I need to do a full study in a sleep lab. I'll let you know later.

One other thing that I have to talk about is how horrible I feel to complain about my life when I have a very dear friend who has so many more problems than I do. Her life has been so hard. She's one of the smartest people I know, and like many smart people, high school bored her. But because of the time and place we grew up in, rather than help her, society told her she wasn't worthy. She dropped out of school and became a bit of a party animal. After a couple years of parties, she decided to take control of her life and joined the Job Corps, where she was raped so brutally, she was told she would never have children.

But then came a son from a truly horrible boyfriend. She got rid of the boyfriend, but kept her miracle child. She moved in with her parents, and has been with them ever since, but they had major health problems, so she spent as much time looking out for them as she did for herself and her son. Of course, they looked out for her, too, though. While her son was still a baby, she mangled her dominant hand in an industrial accident and has never regained full use of it, even with multiple surgeries.

Things went okay for a while after that. We lost touch due to a misunderstanding, my fault, but came back together around 2004 when we were brought back together by a mutual friend at college. (I'll forever be grateful to our mutual friend for that!) After graduation, we ended up working for the same soul-sucking pharmacy benefits management company.

Shortly after I left the company, she suffered a debilitating stroke that put her on social security benefits. While she eventually recovered much of her functioning, she still had speech issues and some slight motor issues. But then she and her father were in a major traffic accident. They both survived, but her father was placed in a care facility that neglected him. He passed away after being in the facility only a couple months.  It took a big toll on the family. On top of that, while my friend was in the hospital from the accident, they discovered that she had a softball-sized malignant tumor on one of her kidney's. They removed the kidney, and after about a year of radiation treatment, declared her cancer free, though they will be keeping a close eye on her other kidney.

Through all of this, she has been MY rock. She has been the up-beat one. She has been the one that tells me it's okay to be who I am. It's okay to not be okay. And then last week she had another stroke. This one was much worse than the first. I went to see her on Monday, and she can barely speak. She understands, but only a handful of words come out of her mouth sounding like words. She is also paralyzed on her right side. But she still smiles when anyone comes in the room. She still gets excited when she sees the flowers and gifts her family and friends bring her. She still has positive things to say. It makes me feel so angry that life has beaten her up so much. Of all the people I know, she has had the hardest life, but she has remained the most positive. She is my hero, and I wish I could be more like her.

But I also feel guilty. I think to myself, "What are my problems compared to hers? Why do I have depression and anxiety when she is the one who is actually having the shit kicked out of her by life?" I start to question why I can't be more positive, why I can't just pull myself up by the boot straps and soldier on? I know it's because her brain is not wired like mine is, but that doesn't make me feel any less guilty. I know that what I have is a chronic illness. I know that my illness is legitimate. I know that my life hasn't really been easier than hers, just different. I know all of this, but I still feel guilty. Did society do this to me? Do I feel this way because people who don't have psychological illnesses don't understand how my illness works? Or is it my illness that makes me feel this way? Is my illness simply perpetuating itself by feeding my guilt? Or is it a combination of both? I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that I'm having a hard time understanding myself, right now. I kind of hate me because I can't be more like my friend. I kind of hate her because she can't be more like me.