mental health

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Shame

I write this blog because it helps me sort out my feelings, my thoughts about my life, and to share my experiences with some folks who either can relate or those who care about me. I do not ask for anything but a few minutes of your time if you are so inclined. But my last post brought gifts from some of you. You read my piece and felt for me and my family’s current situation. Your generosity and kindness was and is appreciated, and I am honored to call many of you my friends. I know you did what you did because you love me and the thought of me hurting in any way made you want to help. And I love you for it. I truly do.

But to be honest? I felt tremendously embarrassed and ashamed afterwards. I didn’t share to “get stuff.” I shared just to show this new thing I was experiencing and how frustrating (and humbling) it can be to eat from a food pantry. After the influx of gifts, I was kind of a mess for a few days until I had therapy. When I explained my dilemma to my therapist, she said something pretty dang profound. “Sometimes, Holly, it is our job to receive.”

*mic drop*

That one sentence changed my perspective on these gifts. I ended up using two gift cards for a trip my son and I had planned from last year. (We drove to Washington, D.C. to look at colleges and we needed snacks, friends.) I did refuse a few offers when I was able to, and others? I put some of the gifts aside for a little later when I know we’ll be more desperate than now.

Do you know what’s really disturbing about all of this? When my son and I went to D.C., we stayed with some old friends, who have become part of my family. My dear friend, a woman I’ve known for 30 years, had asked me about these cassava flour brownies that I made. I said that I got the flour from someone, but I could not say the words out loud, “I got it from the food pantry.” (Which, btw, that’s pretty great to get anything gluten-free from a food bank, and this was from our local high school’s food pantry.) I know for a fact that she would never judge me. Not for a second. Yet I was too ashamed and embarrassed to say that I got it from a food pantry. That shame is so deeply ingrained into me. I just want to starting yelling, “I have a good job, a fucking master’s degree, so don’t look down on me!”

But who is actually turning their nose up at me? Is it you? I don’t think so.

I think it’s me.

I shouldn’t be in this situation. I should be helping people that need an extra hand.

I should be you.

But I’m not. And I’m angry about it.

Then today, I brought this walker up from the basement. When my husband was on a respirator and in a coma back in 2020, this was given to him once he was able to leave the hospital. It was necessary then, so we kept it, hoping we wouldn’t need it for years to come. This morning, my husband’s knee was swollen, his neuropathic feet were hurting, and he was having problems standing up from his living room chair. Before I left for work, he asked me to get the walker from the basement. So I did.

On the drive to work, I couldn’t take a deep breath. I knew I was having an anxiety attack. I was thinking about my husband, my son was home sick, I was missing some friends I haven’t been able to talk to, I was feeling alone and scared…but I just needed to get to work. Once there, I pretended all was good until I couldn’t any more. I asked a colleague if they ever had anxiety attacks (I was pretty sure they had) and asked what they did. They sometimes would just go into the bookstacks and center themselves. So before we opened the library, I went to a section of the stacks, sat on the floor, and sobbed. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. I just sobbed and rocked myself. After a few minutes I was able to stand up and go back to work. A different colleague checked on me and we talked for a few minutes and they let me vent and cry some more, and that was the end of it.

When I was a Trevor Project volunteer, I helped many teens get through anxiety or panic attacks. Often I used the 54321 grounding exercise (name 5 things you see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste–the taste thing is always odd). But while my brain is freaking out, I could not name anything I was seeing because everything was a massive blur. Hell, I couldn’t remember the order of seeing, touching, hearing, etc. But today I learned that sometimes being alone to cry, drinking water, taking a brief walk or finding a place nearby to get a good snack, are all good things to help calm me down to a place where I can function again.

Did I feel a bit embarrassed and ashamed for having this mini breakdown? Oh yeah. I see people every day who have no home, who keep every possession they have in a shopping cart, who only eat what is given to them. And I’m crying over a husband who can’t work and a life that I wasn’t expecting?

Well…yes. I am. Do I wish I could suck it up and just get on with whatever life I have? Yes, yes I do. And somedays I do a great job at it.

But today wasn’t one of those days.

You know what, though? Tomorrow is a new day. So there’s always hope that I’ll function tomorrow, that I’ll be able to get up on time, exercise, eat well, and smile more often than not.

That’s my goal.

How about you? Are you ok? No matter what I’m going through, I’m still here to listen. It’s the least I can do for you, like you’ve done for me. ❤

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The Gagging Seagull

Just over a week ago, I decided to take a break from social media. I’ve often had a difficult time with Facebook in particular, mostly because I compare myself to others way too often, and sometimes I just get jealous. Not even envious, but that nasty feeling you get when you become enraged because someone was hanging out with someone else yet didn’t invite you. Or a friend that you thought shared everything with you, was off on a vacation that you had no idea was happening. Shit like that really shouldn’t matter, but it did matter. So instead of unfriending people or blocking them or all of that bullshit, I just shut it all down.

When I told some colleagues at a meeting recently that I was taking a break from social media, nearly the entire room oohed and aahed and many said “Good for you!” or “I wish I could do that.” One colleague told me she left Facebook 8 months ago and never looked back, but can’t shake Instagram yet.

We’re kind of fucked up, aren’t we?

I’ve always loved sharing photos on FB and Insta, pics of my kid, my cats, and myself after a run. Having a supportive community can be tremendously helpful, and to be honest, I’m damn proud of my running. I’m still not losing the weight I want to, but my legs are getting stronger and I’m getting faster. Something I didn’t think I could get at 50 years old. (And maybe it’s my last hurrah, but I’ll take it while I have it.)

But in the past few weeks, I felt like my brain was too full. I constantly felt overstimulated. I didn’t want to know about anyone else’s lives anymore. I wanted to concentrate on the people I actually see or talk with every day. I wanted to be more present in MY life, and leave some others behind.

My son’s mental health has seemed fragile this past month and my husband has quit his job and is about to start a new one. I’ve been upset at the management of the Trevor Project and at my one year anniversary last week, I put in for a leave of absence. Work has been good, but very challenging these past two weeks. A lot of life has been happening and I just needed the world to quiet down.

I recently finished reading the novel, “We All Want Impossible Things” by Catherine Newman. It’s about two best friends, Ash and Edi, in the middle of their lives, but Edi is dying from ovarian cancer. Edi ends up staying at a hospice near Ash, and the book is about their love and friendship and how fucked up Ash feels. It’s beautiful and hilarious and infuriating. And so damn real.

I laughed out loud through many parts of the book (and sobbed at the end), but there’s one part in particular I want to tell you about. Ash, the woman telling the story, shared a memory about a visit she had with her parents. They went to a fancy seafood restaurant where they ate clams and lobster and looked out at the sea. The sky was a perfect blue, and in the window they were looking out of, stood a seagull, choking on a starfish. It would gag and barf and 3 of the starfish’s legs were sticking out of its mouth, just a few inches from their table. Ash’s mother commented with all seriousness, “This is lovely,” and Ash laughed. “Absolute perfection with a gagging seagull in the middle of it sometimes feels like my entire life.” (p. 125)

When I read that paragraph, I started to chuckle. Then I put the book down and laughed…and laughed….and laughed. I wasn’t laughing in the kind of way where you can’t breathe, but it was this prolonged, deeply felt joy and recognition kind of laughter. Just this past year I’ve been able to see some of that perfection and can look past the choking seagull. Both are always there, and some days I can only stare at that damn seagull and can’t see anything else. My grief for my lost family or even for the way of life we’ve lost as a result of my husband’s health can be overwhelming some days, and it takes everything I have to not put that seagull out of its misery. But other days? It’s blue sky for miles.

I’m hoping that I’ll have the fortitude to get back on social media and greatly minimize the folks I keep in touch with. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep using the AMAZING amount of time I have now to read and write and enjoy my little life. Either way, I’ll still be here.

Take care of yourself, friends.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”–Audre Lord

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Hold On Hope

Habits are hard to break, aren’t they? I’ve bitten my nails for my whole life and I’ve finally stopped doing that…mostly. But now I tear at my nails instead. It’s marginally better? I drink coffee each morning before I do much of anything else. It’s not really the best habit because I use sugar and creamer. I’ve cut my sugar in half, but I can’t seem to get any further than that. Honestly, it’s a habit I don’t want to break.

What do you do when your habits seriously hurt your health? Smoking, drinking excessively, eating fatty or sugary foods–not to mention addiction to illegal drugs or pain medication–are all activities many of us participate in, but when your health is deteriorating due to these habits, how do you stop?

What if you are the partner, friend or child of the person with these harmful habits? How do you help the person? When is the time you step back…or turn your back?

In August of last year, I wrote this: “But…shouldn’t there be a time when we finally say, ‘I will no longer take care of you. I will remain your partner until death, but I can no longer help you if you refuse to help yourself.'”

I’ve discovered that there is indeed a time when I will say these sentences and that time is now.

After a recent hospital stay for my husband due to a medication failure, a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and a disastrous and degrading (to me) doctor’s appointment, I am stepping back. It is now up to my husband to take control of his life. He knows all of this now. We’ve had a “come to Jesus” meeting as my old boss, Bill, used to say. I won’t attend any more of his appointments unless he is physically unable to drive. When he asked if I would go to an appointment if he asked me specifically to go, I told him I’d have to answer that later. Right now, the answer is “no.” I have a list of his medications, but it’ll be up to him to let me know if anything changes. When he asked me yesterday if he should pick up canned hash to have for breakfast the next day, I told him I wasn’t answering those questions anymore. He could make that decision, that choice. And he did.

Does all of this seem too personal to put out into the universe? It is. It’s also really difficult. I know I have at least one friend who understands everything I’m feeling right now, and maybe there are more people out there who get it, too. You’re not alone.

Marriage is hard. Relationships are hard. Parenting is hard. Co-parenting is even harder. Watching someone hurt themselves when you know it affects more than just themselves, is rage-inducing.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself falling back into that bad habit of emotional eating. I’ve always done that when I’m angry, and these past 2 weeks certainly proved that. Fortunately, I’ve been able to attempt running once more, and that has helped my moods tremendously. I wish it could help everyone, but at least I’m able to find patience as the result of my exercise and can listen to my son and husband when they need me. At this point I’m not sure I can do much else.

I know for a fact that some people will read this and think I’m heartless or selfish and should do more to support my partner. “You’ve been married for 25 years! You don’t just sit back while their health is in jeopardy!” But what if your own health, albeit mental health, is in jeopardy? What about your child’s? The old man can do this. He is completely capable of making good choices. I don’t care if you think I’m heartless or selfish. I know I’m not. I love my husband. I will until I die. I am still here. But right now, he is the only one who can help himself. Will I give him a pat on the back when he does well? Absolutely! But will I criticize him when he doesn’t? Nope. I’ll do my damnedest to just nod my head and say “ok.”

These changes will be damn difficult for everyone in our household. I will hope for the best, but expect the worst, which is my usual M.O. 😉 Now enjoy this song about trying to find some hope in a messy situation. Hugs to you all.

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Strength

Since my doctor gave me the go ahead to gently start walking and running again after my likely stress fracture, I’ve only been out a handful of times. Two weeks ago I ran and although it was tough and slow and my lungs hurt, it still felt glorious to have the freedom to run again. Then I took a few days off, rode my bike and lifted weights…and my leg started to hurt. No swelling, but a similar type of pain. So, once again, I took a few weeks off.

After a week of occasional walks, I just had to try again this morning. Sunday mornings have been my typical long run days since I started running a decade ago. I’ve done all of my half marathons on Sundays, and had hoped to run my marathon on a Sunday. I tend to feel antsy on Sunday mornings if I’m not getting ready to head out for a run. My body starts to zing a little, like I have this bit of nervous energy and I often get butterflies in my stomach.

But Sundays are also extremely complicated for me. My brother and father both died on Sundays, so emotionally I am not at my best. The Sunday my brother died, I woke up early that morning, knowing that it would be the last day I saw him and the last day he would be on this planet. The day my dad died, I was woken at 2am by a phone call from my stepsister to say that Dad was in the hospital and I might want to get there. That Sunday was filled with the phone call to my sister telling her she should come to the hospital, talking with doctors and nurses, and watching my stepmother having to make that decision no one wants to. So…yeah. Sundays still fill me with a bit of dread.

But this morning, after reading a book and eating a light breakfast, I geared up for a walk. Not a run. I just needed that fresh air and what little sunshine there was peeking through the clouds. But after a half mile, I needed to pick it up. Just a little. So I jogged for a bit, then walked. I did this for about a mile and a half, then realized our friend, Bam Bam was following me.

After chatting with him for a minute, I headed back home. I ran the mile and a half back with my hamstrings aching, my hips feeling tight, and feeling extraordinarily heavy. You know, I’ve been riding my stationary bike and lifting weights and walking when I can, but there’s nothing like a run to make you feel weaker and more out of shape than you ever thought possible!

But I finished the 5K, walked a bit, stretched, and felt…alive. And tired. Crikey, I was tired! But that good tired when you know you’ve exhausted your body to a point that muscles ache and your brain goes quiet.

I wish that running was not so intrinsically tied to my mental health. I wish there was something inside of me that could make me feel good about myself like running does. It’s something I hope to work on in the near future. But for now, I’m just happy I got to run. ❤