A sigh for C

This last weekend, one of our number, someone like us all, had a terrible crash. News of this crash has affected me greatly. I have fallen before, from the horse of healing. It is the scariest thing in the world. One moment you are convinced you are going to be a normal person again one day, and the next you are staring at the ceiling begging for it to be over and wondering how you will ever manage to eek out another 50 years like this. You wonder why you. You fall deeper and harder than ever before. Falling is worse than being down. Anyone can tell you that.

C was getting off an anti-psych prescribed to him. I have done research on this anti-psych. It is mild, but still toxic. It is, interestingly, prescribed for anxiety and depression now too. But that is another story. C had cut his dose, and had been at a low dose for months. Then he faced a stressful weekend. Graduations, new people, new faces, finals, breaks of routine. This may sound like nothing to you all, but I know C, I know. I know how those tiny little pressures feel like anvils on your shoulders. I know how your back must ache where your adrenal glands sit overworked and exhausted. I know how the sugar sweet kick of epinephrine shines in your veins until you have had too much, and too much comes so soon. Then the ringing starts. Then the noises. Then you just have to be alone. I don't know what your symptoms are, but I will tell you when mine were the worst, right after too many stimuli.

M- you want to know what I think? I think it was too much stress at once, and he just got dropped. Ask W sometime what happens to me after a weekend of new people, travel, new foods, and unpredictability. That's when the symptoms all come back. And I get angry about them. The blood sugar flies up, and down, and leaves me on my back. I am sullen, depressed and confused . my brain doesn't work. Not in a normal way at all. It starts to misread things. And it takes days, sometimes weeks to recover. It doesn't seem right. We are young aren't we? We were invincible once. I think. Its hard to recall now. Still, it comes back, the health like the darkness. Maybe you just overdid it. We are all on a spectrum. Fine becomes, tired, becomes irritable, becomes worry, becomes anxiety, becomes narcissism, becomes martyrdom, becomes self focus, become paranoia. Its all a spectrum C, and maybe, just maybe, you got knocked back. I used to call it "getting blown back to the stone age".

I hate this. I am 32 years old, and I feel like an invalid sometimes.

I recall two evenings in Pensacola, hating myself for doing it, but slowly dialing the number of a good friend at 1 am. I knew I would wake him up. I knew he would know why I was calling. I knew there was nothing he could do, but I needed the voice, like a lifeline.

I remember crying, loosing floods of tears and anger and frustration. I remember how I could not cry except with someone there, because the panic might grow too strong. I never cried alone. You could not tell where it would stop. If it would stop. But I cried with people who cared about me. I yelled at them when they told me it was going to be ok, but I needed to hear it anyway. I was angry, and deflated.

But it was worse before I knew I could reach out. It was worse when I was doing it all alone. In those days, when I would fall hard, I would do the only thing I could to make it to morning. The only thing to bail me out. I would eat. not food, not real things, horrifically sweet things. I would eat cupcakes, and cookies, and brownies and candy bars, and doughnuts, and ice cream until I was in danger of vomiting. I would feel sick, so sick, humiliated, lost, and disgusted. But it would pull me out, and then crash me down into the darkness of sleep. When I would awake, I felt horrible, but I was not down anymore. At least not in the same way. I remember dawns, watching the sun come up, as I lay in a pile of wrappers embarrassingly purchased from a 7-11, or a vending machine, or Harris Teeter's. I took no joy in that sugar. It was medicine in a way. it was a safety net. I don't eat sugar anymore. I cannot stand sweet things. I tell people I never had a sweet tooth. But this is not true...I liked sweet things once. before they reminded me of the darkness.

C- You are down. I know it. I don't know why everything was going along well and now it is not. We are doing brain surgery with a hammer, and there are bad bad days and times. There are failures without answers; failures without even questions.

I wrote a poem once while in a hole in 1998. That was nearly 10 years ago. It seemed like I could have written it as little as a year ago, before I got well. I don't think you and I fall in the same way, but here it is anyway. Maybe it will mean something to you:

I am down in a hole.
Gentle dawning daylight dreaming above,
Serving simply though to sever,
the separation mine.
The real world beckons over head;
sometimes I am a citizen,
sometimes a tourist,
now just a dreamer.
Help me.
I am so small,
and my problems so large
but not large enough
to get me out
of this hole.

Its not great man, the poem that is, but you are not the first one to take a step back. You are not the first person to scream out in frustration and indignity at the cruel joke that is being played out. There is a future for you. I wish I could give you more. But for now, just know you are not alone.

WK.