My mother appeared to me a very solitary figure. I didn’t see her surrounded by like-minded folks. She spent much of her time engaged in quilting, sewing, gardening, canning, cooking, fixing, laundering, wrangling, feeding, transporting … ad infinitum. When did she have the time to mix with those who thought, read, felt, created? I know that she did. The public library in my home town was created in part because of her efforts. The community theater owes its existence to a group that included her. Our house was dotted with creative projects that she brought home after her Homemakers club met: a macramé plant hanger; little curly-cue papers glued to a matting background in the shape of flowers. And as much as I thought they looked pretty cool, at least from the vantage point of a 5- or 10-year-old, her attitude more often than not was one of dissatisfaction with what she had created, a tight sigh, an exhalation of “Well.” She was expert at leaving the sentence incomplete, her frustration fully expressed by the power of the unvoiced.
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In 2005, after years of dealing with an undiagnosed and then, finally, treated depression, I was pronounced subclinical bipolar by a new psychiatrist. A recent cross-country move necessitated finding a new physician to review and prescribe meds, and this guy started from scratch.
He asked lots of questions, which I suppose is appropriate for an assessment. What is your daily mood? Is your depression the blue type where you don’t want to get out of bed – or is it the anxious type? (The anxious type.) Does your mood usually stay the same during the day, or do you go up and down? (Well doesn’t everybody?) Do you get mad pretty easy? (No. But once I do … ) Do you ever become violent when you get angry? (Again, doesn’t everybody?) I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions, but I want you to remember the phrase “big blue world”. Keep that in your mind while you’re answering. Tell me the phrase after we’re done. I waited for him to ask for the phrase at the end. He never did, and I didn’t remind him. I wonder if that would have made a difference.
Then there was the battery of associations, name as many words that mean this, how many words starting with “f” can you name? Go! (fashion, fun, Funyons, fix, fixation, fixative, friendly, friendless, fantastic, fantasy, fidelity, France, fabulous, furry, fender, flipper, flippant, fuck …) Time’s up.
I cried when he explained why he thought I fit the profile – no, why I fit the profile – no, why I am bipolar. At the time, I couldn’t explain why I was upset. I just was. His desk was a mess, piled with paper, small office books and bookcases (I always wonder if these people have really read all those books, or if they’re good office props ..) and his voice that he said he had “hurt” which alternated sometimes in the same word from fully voiced to a hoarse whisper. He sent me home with meds that actually are for seizures, but have an of-label use as a psychotropic. I took one the next morning and felt as though my brain had just flat-lined. Where was the chatter, the hum assuring me that I’m alive? Nothing. My head was dark, abandoned by its own thoughts. I hated it. So I called him and told him thank you, but I wouldn’t be taking the meds and didn’t believe his diagnosis.
I understand now that the reason I was so upset about his assessment was that he had just proclaimed that one more thing was wrong with my brain. Migraines. Alcoholism. A stroke. Depression. Bipolar. Additionally, with this final item, I had strayed into DSM Appendix territory. Two years later, I had another psychiatrist make the same diagnosis, and, beaten into submission by my own struggle to keep acting like I was just great, thanks, I acquiesced and took the meds that Dr. Number One prescribed in the first place. Now, I don’t really care about it anymore because first of all, everybody has something going on, they just don’t always do anything about it, and second, the net result is the same and I’m essentially still who I always have been. So who really cares? But at the time, I still had a lot invested in looking good. I didn’t want one more thing.
My mother’s refusal to seek diagnosis and help for her high blood pressure, her refusal to get help for her own depression, her refusal to accept or ask for help even when her body finally gave out as she was dying, is understandable now. Completely understandable.
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I have never been a person who believes in the onion theory, this whole saccharin, “peel back the layers and it might make you cry.” Bullshit. I have always lived from the inside out, my awakenings preceded by interior shifts akin to tectonic activity. Physiological and psychological plates shift and grate against each other. Pressure builds. Sometimes there’s an explosion.
One time, I confided the fact that I had a stroke to someone I hardly knew – a poet I had just met at a writing conference. As we spoke about the phenomenon, she shared her struggle with depression. I shared my perception about tectonics of psyche. She asked about aftershocks. I paused a long time before I said, “yeesss.” But, I added, not the sort that I felt immediately, or even could recognize at the time as aftershocks. For example, I continued to smoke after I had the stroke, even while I was in the hospital, sympathetic aides would wheel me down with my heparin IV drip to the main entrance (all rooms were non-smoking by that time, not the case when I was hospitalized a few years before for pneumonia.) That every time I had a headache, not even a migraine, I wondered if it was happening again; every time I ate candy with peanuts – every time I exercised and my heart rate exceeded 130 beats per minute.
My mother was also tectonic by nature. She was like California – a shift – a boom – another shift, more shakes. In the Golden State, the temblors never end, but are part and parcel of proximity to a key continental plate that can’t help but move. The earth is in constant flux. An earthquake only relieves pressure of the moment, it can not bring final relief. The five of us kids were like scientists helpless to predict who struggled to predict Mother’s disturbances for the sake of safe evacuation. These episodes never really brought her relief, but were an ingrained way of life, which begs the question – which ones were the aftershocks? Any of them?
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