Looking for P

It was a dark and stormy day in a season of dark and stormy days, and it was even stormier in Seattle yesterday than at my home, a scant 165 miles away. Or, I should say, on the eastside, not necessarily in Seattle. I go to the eastside because that’s where I keep most of my people/clients/friends, but there’s one particular one in Seattle, and he’s been missing lately.

It’s not as if I’m after him for money. Every month his bank automatically sends me a check like clockwork, if clockwork were to include issuing payments for services rendered, or due to be rendered. They haven’t been rendered lately because said client, P, has been missing, and his bank account login has been locked somehow and I need him to unlock it. This happens sometimes, what with all the security measures.

But hey, every month my check comes, no matter what, whether I’m doing any work or not. It’s the conditions of my contract, which is mostly verbal, or email-ish. Eventually he’ll come around and I’ll have a lot of catch-up work, so it all balances out.

I’m worried about P though. He had some health issues this past year, with a diagnosis which is aggravating and explains a lot of the problems he’s had functioning this past year. He emailed me when he was diagnosed and was happy it could be treated, and he would, he said, be working his way back to health and sanity. Not that he wasn’t sane to begin with, but he’d been dragged down and out by his illness. We have a business relationship, but like most of my clients, the good ones anyway, we also have a personal relationship – I’m the sister he always wanted, and he’s the brother I never had. Oh sure, I have brothers, but not any gay ones, so P’s the gay brother I always wanted.

He went on his annual gay cruise, and when he came back he said he was following a strict regimen every day in order to build his business back up and to keep getting healthy. He was excited to be getting back to it, and to start anew.

And then poof, he disappeared again. Emails went unanswered. Voicemails were left. And no response. In an email last week I said that if I didn’t hear from him I was going to go knock on his door next time I was in the Seattle area.

That’s where I found myself last night, on the eastside, and it was still early evening, or late afternoon, and despite my desire to curl up in my hotel room with a good book or a bad movie, or both, I went out in the pouring rain to find P, to track him down to his lair, not knowing what’s going on with him at all.

First I called another client, one who leases to P, to see if she’d heard from him. I never discuss my cliens with other clients, but since she sends her lessees to me and knows I do their accounting, and it was what I considered an emergency, I thought I could ask her if she’d heard from him.

She hadn’t, not since their last annual dinner a month ago, but she was a bit concerned about him too, being incommunicado for so long.

It was a good day for driving, what with the rain. At least as good as it gets in the rain. But the closer I got to Seattle proper the better the weather got, so much so that when I got into Seattle the streets were dry, and there were patches of blue in the sky.

Every time I go to Capitol Hill I become convinced that I’m really a city girl at heart, and Capitol Hill should be my home. I love Seattle the most of all cities, for reasons that are still unclear to me, and if my life had gone a different way I might have become a city dweller, instead of the hardened suburbanite I seem to be. There’s so much green in Seattle, foliage pours around the city like green cotton candy, and there’s always water to be seen from some vantage point. The houses are mostly old and scenic, but mixed in are some newer buildings and some buildings that should be torn down. Streets are generally narrow, and navigating is a trick not for the faint of heart, which I usually am, but I was on a mission.

I drove by P’s building, a newish condo building, and by newish I mean 60’s/70’s, which is plenty new enough, believe me. Maybe newer, I don’t know, maybe older, but certainly newer in the neighborhood. I drove by because there was no parking, and the time of day meant there’d most likely be a parking problem. Everyone had gotten off work, and arrived home, and were planted there, because they could walk to stores, they could walk to restaurants, it’s a good walking area, it’s not as if there’s a need for cars, and so the streets were filled with parked cars.

After going by P’s building I went up a couple of streets, back down and around. His street, in particular, winds and is narrow more than usual, with oncoming cars having to wait since only one can get through at a time. I pulled up next to his building in a no parking zone on the other side (other being a relative term), and I pondered my options. I texted P. “Where does one park around here?”

No response of course.

I may have been foolish to expect any at all, but I’ve been worried about him and when I worry about people I try to get to the bottom of things.

“So,” I continued texting, “are you here? Because I’m here.”

No response.

I dialed and got voicemail.

I texted, “If I get a ticket I’m billing you for it. Unless you call me now.”

An empty threat. For all I know, P could be in the Bahamas on another cruise, having a great time.

I decided I should get moving, so I drove away. I was determined to get to the door somehow to at least ring the buzzer.

After driving around and around I ended up at a Safeway, and I parked the car again. There was a feeling that I needed to pee. If you’ll pardon the expression. So I went inside the Safeway, bought some brownies just in case of emergency and a toothbrush and toothpaste, having forgotten mine, and then was unable to get into the restroom. It was locked, and everyone was busy, and I didn’t want to walk up to an employee and say, “I have to pee!” So instead I left.

It wasn’t as if it were an emergency.

I sat in the car for a few minutes. I wouldn’t have minded walking the six or seven or ten blocks to P’s building, but there were big signs saying that my car would be towed if I left it there, and I wasn’t in any sort of mood to have my car towed.

The sun was just starting to set, and it was beautiful outside. It’s not as if a walk would be a bad thing.

So instead I drove off, made my way back to P’s building, and still could find no parking within a four block radius.

It occurred to me that indeed the peeing would have to be dealt with, so I went back to the “main” street and found a QFC, another grocery store, and parked in their lot. Again, big signs warning me my car would be towed if I wasn’t a customer.

I went inside and walked all the way around the store and saw no restroom. On my second trip around I found a tiny frying pan to buy, and then I asked an employee where they were hiding the restroom. City supermarkets don’t have as much space, and this one was pretty crowded as it was.

“Down aisle one, through the double black doors to the left,” he said.

I followed his directions. Ah, through those black doors, the ones that are for employees only. I found myself in an empty warehouse. Empty but for the pallets of food everywhere. I looked around, saw no restroom. It was evening, and apparently there’s not  many people around in the evening. I looked around again and found the restroom behind a pallet of canned goods. There was a big sign on it, something about no customers after 10 pm, but since it wasn’t anywhere near 10 pm I thought it was safe. I tried the door, there being just enough room for a person to squeeze in there. It was locked, with one of those numbered locks on it.

Argh. I looked around some more. There had to be people somewhere, didn’t there? Around another corner was someone. It was hard to tell if he was an employee or another lost soul – he was dressed as if he’d walked in off the street, and he might have been high, or he might have been ingesting too many yeast fumes.

“I’m looking for the restroom,” I said, and he mumbled back something that sounded like, “mrhghkjfkljdl.”

“Oh,” I responded, but clearly I had no idea what he’d said.

“It’s over there,” he mumbled, sort of comprehensibly, pointing to the errant restroom, “but he’s in there.” At least that’s what I thought he said. I don’t know who “he” was and I didn’t care. I just wanted my turn.

I stood there.

He mumbled something else.

“What?” I said.

“Can you leave now? This is a restricted area.” At least that’s what I thought he said. It may have been, “I think your sheep wandered off.”

Oh.  Suddenly I felt embarrassed, as if I would be featured on the next episode of Cops if I didn’t hurry up and get out of there. What? Were they making subatomic fuel cells? Was this where the peace talks were going to happen? Were we expecting the President to wander in, no doubt to look for a restroom?

I left quickly, back out through the double black doors, back out through the store, out the door, and out to my car, and I found myself crying. Damnit! All I wanted was to find out what had happened to P, and I really had to pee, and I get kicked out of QFC! I never liked QFC anyway.

There was a homeless guy out on the street selling the current edition of the homeless newspaper. Isn’t that awesome? That the homeless have their own newspaper? I, unfortunately, never have cash, so I couldn’t buy one. Anyway, I didn’t want the homeless guy to see me crying. Right. Because he might take pity on the poor rich girl.

I got in my car, headed out of the parking lot, and found a Walgreens on the next block. I parked in their lot, where all the signs said, “Parking for Walgreens only or we’ll tow your ass and you’ll never see your car again.” I love the city, but they’re a little anal about their parking.

I walked into Walgreens, hoping word hadn’t spread that there was a crazy lady wandering the streets trying to get into a restroom. There was an employee sitting on the floor, pricing many little plastic wrapped objects.

“Do you have a restroom?” I asked, willing to face the consequences if they did not, which might mean peeing out in back of the Walgreens where all the homeless people do their business.

She didn’t say a word, but all the little plastic objects slid to the floor and she got up, led me to the back of the store, took me through the black doors, and unlocked the bathroom for me. I wanted to hug her. I wanted to tell her that she was my favorite person in all of Capitol Hill.

Instead I thanked her with my words and went into the restroom.

Once that mission was complete I went shopping. I always go shopping if I’ve used the restroom because I’m fairly certain that if I were to leave and not buy anything, after using the restroom, they’d have my car towed just for the fun of it. Besides, I like to show my appreciation by spending fourteen dollars or so, a small price to pay to avoid what could have been a very embarrassing situation.

I got back in my car with my new goodies. My bags were starting to stack up. And then I pondered my next move. I was going to get to P’s door if it was the last thing I did. If I had to make a special guest appearance on Cops as the crazy lady wandering Capitol Hill making small purchases and trying to break into restrooms. “I only wanted to find P”! I’d scream, as they led me away in handcuffs.

Again I circle P’s, and I noticed that a few blocks down and a block over, or vice versa, there was a space or two. Let me make this clear: I do not parallel park. I know what you’re thinking. A city girl has to be able to parallel park, right? No. I will live in the city and park only in my very own driveway, which I will have when I live in the city. But these spaces had enough room so even I could parallel park, so I circled again, having missed it the first time, and then went back around and down the narrow winding street and parked.

By this time it was dark, night having fallen as it tends to do when one is busy searching for restrooms, and it still wasn’t raining, lucky me, so I took my brownies, just in case of emergency or in case I could bribe P with them, and I went walking. I walked by houses which were both mysterious and inviting, patches of lawn, houses broken up into apartments, stately older houses with bright windows, and dark sullen houses. Down the street, up a narrow alleyway, or maybe a street, who can really tell? and over to P’s building. Still no parking in front. I would have felt abnormally stupid if there was a parking spot in front.

I stood in front of the door buzzers and momentarily panicked, not sure I remembered the number of his unit. Fortunately there was a directory, so I stopped panicking. I rang the buzzer for his unit. And nothing. I texted P again. “I brought brownies,” it said, on the off chance that he was hiding inside waiting for someone to bring him brownies.

You don’t know. It could happen. I would come out for brownies.

I was hoping that he was with someone who was looking after him. Or that he was off vacationing somewhere. So I rang the buzzer a few more times, and then I called him again. This was only the third call, but there was a message that the voicemail box was full, and no more messages could be left.

That is not a good sign.

I did one last text, and this one said, “Apparently your phone is off and you’re not home, because if you were home, you’d let me in.”

What else could I say, having proven myself to be an abnormally worried accountant? I considered pressing other buzzers, since there are residents who know P, some quite well since he’s had dinners for some of the older ladies who reside there, and was there helping one die last year, but I didn’t have a good reason to suspect anything. What kind of person goes around alarming the neighbors and asking questions?

Not me. I don’t know any of his friends, though I do have the name of a former partner and still good friend somewhere, if I can find it. I need to find it.

I walked away, no answer to the mystery of P. I don’t know where he’s been. I don’t know how he is. I don’t know if his illness has gotten bad again, or if he’s off on vacation in the Bahamas, unable to endure more Seattle rain. This is not entirely unlikely, given the recent weather and his state of mind. I know nothing. I do know he’s not languishing around his condo, since he would have responded somehow.

I walked back to my car in the dark, mostly not tripping over the uneven sidewalk. I drove north and east, and it started raining again on the eastside. I got a salad at a drive through and took it back to my room. I ate my salad while watching “Without A Trace,” and it occurred to me that I would not do well as an FBI agent. The best I can do when looking for someone is to stalk them, which apparently isn’t very productive. But perhaps the FBI has a better training program?

It was raining when I left Seattle the next day. It was raining on the eastside when I got up, when I went to breakfast with a great friend and her two charming daughters, and it was raining when I left the eastside and took the 520 Bridge to Seattle. I could have skipped Seattle altogether, but I like driving over the bridges. It rained all the way across the bridge, and everything was grey. The water was grey, the skies were grey, the buildings on the Seattle side were all grey, the rain giving everything a foggy tint of grey. Through Seattle and south, all the way to Olympia it rained.

Through a bout of diarrhea which delayed my progress for hours, it rained. But last night, on Capitol Hill, the weather was perfect, for just that one block of time, so I could walk Capitol Hill and ring buzzers.

Why Americans Shouldn’t Panic

I just came across this headline while supposedly preparing a tax return. Sometimes my attention wanders and I take a look at current headlines, and this one popped up.

And why shouldn’t we? Do they have any idea how close it is to April 15^th? I’ve course I’m panicked!

Perhaps they weren’t talking about my tax deadlines. I don’t know. I didn’t read any further. Instead, I commenced to panic. Just tell me I shouldn’t do something, and I’m gonna do it, gosh darn it. It’s my rebellious streak.

On the other hand, tell me to panic, the world is coming to an end, and I’ll sit back and wonder what I should have for lunch, lunch being far more important to me than the end of the world.

Not that I’m not fond of the world – it is where I keep all my stuff, and I am uncommonly attached to my stuff. Some of it’s not worth much, most of it probably, but it’s my stuff and I like it.

There’s not much I can do about all the things I’m not supposed to panic about. Most things I fear never come to pass, like taking the wrong turn off the interstate and finding myself in an alternate reality, so I’ve found it easier not to worry about it. If I do find myself in an alternate reality I’ll worry about it then.

As it is, reality is enough of a problem, isn’t it? Don’t we have enough going on that we don’t need anything else to add to it? The possibility that (insert major disaster here) can strike isn’t so much as if but when – eventually everything happens somewhere. The uncertainty that conflict will break out in (insert conflict area here) will also happen, at some point. And there’s not a thing I can do about it.

Instead, I sit here on the sidelines and wait for things to unfold. Have you noticed how things are unfolding ALL THE TIME? It’s a constant sideshow, if one were to consider the rest of the world a sideshow and not the main event.

I’ll confine my panicking to what I can control, which at the moment is keeping my clients on good terms with the IRS. Talk about a catastrophe waiting to happen – the slightest slip up and the IRS won’t hesitate to panic. I’d think they were in a constant state of panic if I didn’t know that most of the panicking is done by computers who spit out deficiency notices as if their lives depended on it.

However, computers don’t have lives, not like we know them, and they’re not likely to band together to defeat us mere mortals, no matter what the newscasts say. Or maybe that theme is for movies and TV shows. I can’t tell anymore. There are so many things to be cautious about and to arm ourselves against, and sometimes it turns out to be the thing you least expected it to be.

Prepare for the worst. Expect the best. Or is it the other way around? 

Of Meltdowns and Mania

Everyone's jumping on the Charlie Sheen bandwagon, and while I normally avoid jumping on bandwagons due to my propensity to fall off and injure myself, sometimes I have to go ahead. I'll nurse my bruises later.


Have you ever seen someone in the throes of a complete meltdown? My experience has more to do with psychotic episodes and blazing fits of fury (not fists), but they're not dissimilar. In each case, bystanders wonder, "What's going on, and how can I make it stop?" 


Perhaps not in Charlie's case. He's a media sensation. There's 24 hour reporting of his every inane utterance, his every illogical action, every further step down into his perverse reality. If I were a reporter, I'd latch on to everything that came out of his mouth, I'd be hoping for new spectacular shenanigans, I'd be hoping for even more melting, because that's how I make my living, isn't it? By showing the world celebrity, and what happens when it goes off the rails. Charlie's an easy newsmaker these days. Not only does he provide news, but he gives those of us without celebrity the opportunity to say, "Wow, look what happened to him. Celebrities do have issues!"


And then we can be happy we aren't one of them.


There are, unfortunately, people living through this same thing every day. They're not famous, they're not celebrities, and no one finds it amusing. It isn't a commentary on how celebrity can get so out of hand we can't recognize humanity in it because it's regular people, people like you and me, and they're in need of help. They aren't amusing. They're every bit as entertaining as Charlie, if mental illness can be said to be entertaining at all, but since it is with Mr Sheen, why not? 


It's become a spectator sport. What will he do next? 


If you live with someone who has mental illness, or if you know someone with mental illness, you know it's not a picnic. It is not entertaining in the least, no matter how unintentionally funny they may be. Okay, perhaps now and then there's an occasional laugh, but that's usually to ward off the alternate choice, which would be crying. Or hysteria. 


Charlie needs help, but he's not likely to get it. He has no reason to. He's getting all the attention he craves, people are eating this up, they're loving this train wreck. Give someone in this situation more rope, and he'll use it to make a bigger spectacle, and if that means hanging himself with it, so be it. We keep giving Charlie more rope to hang himself with. 


When my ex-husband was mentally ill and psychotic I could have given him a knife and said, "Go to it hon!" and let him play out his fantasies, but that's not really productive, is it? But celebrities? Let them at it. They're here to entertain us, after all, to provide a diversion from our normally humdrum lives. 


I don't have the answers. I just know that people who have these sorts of issues need people around them to speak the truth to them, to help them, and to urge them to get help. They need to know they're more than their illness, that their illness neither keeps them from being loved or from loving, and that it's an impediment, but it does not define them. Right now, Charlie's illness defines him, and once if he loses that, what's he have?


Nothing. So keep on keeping on Charlie. We're all watching.


For great information on bipolar, read Julie Fast's blog at http://bipolarhappens.com/bhblog/

Day One of the Cure

The good news is, it can be cured. The bad news is . . . well, there isn’t any bad news. Perhaps this isn’t necessarily good news to you, but it’s certainly good news to me. For awhile there I thought I was doomed to a life that consisted mostly of sleeping, and it’s not as if I have anything against sleeping. Sleeping is fun. Done properly, it can be entertaining as well. But one cannot sustain a life with nothing more than sleep.

And therein arose my problem. Not only was I sleeping a lot, I was tired. Oh sure, you think they go hand in hand, but they don’t necessarily. Overall, things were heading downhill. I had several good hours a day, but not nearly enough. By good hours, I mean productive hours. I have to have production. Not that I’m some sort of factory, but my business is a numbers factory.

First I had to find a new doctor. The last doctor was okay, but he was also two hours away, and every trip was a major expedition. Just being tired and in pain didn’t merit a day of travel. I assumed it was the fibromyalgia making a stunning comeback and bringing chronic fatigue with it. I told myself that I could get past it, like I have before.

Then we got new insurance, and with it new local doctors. The first doctor that my insurance said I could go to left the area two years ago. I’m discovering my new insurance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But what is? Seriously, what is all that it’s cracked up to be?

But I found one, and even knowing that I would be told to “lose weight, exercise more, eat better,” I went on the off chance it might be something that wasn’t all about me and my bad life choices. I eat pretty damn well actually, by which I don’t mean I eat a lot, but that we eat little processed food, if by processed food you mean canned tomatoes. Anyway, not to get into my food choices here, because no matter what one says, there will be a thousand people deriding my decisions as bad choices, but I eat a lot of the right things at the right times in the right proportions.

My new doctor didn’t say any of that though. What she did do was blood tests. What a novel idea! I’ve never recovered from the childhood teaching that if I was sick or damaged, it was probably a lie that I made up to get sympathy/out of something, or because I was just lazy. I still believe that, sometimes, because I was impressionable then.

But look at that. My thyroid is low, and no wonder I’m dragging around like I have giant weights attached to all my limbs. And this, ladies and gentlemen, we can fix easily.

Today was the first day of my medication. I stumbled out of bed at an ungodly hour (8 am), took my pill, and stumbled back into bed for a few hours. It’s not as if I’m expecting immediate results. I’m revising my food policy and eating foods I should be eating for this, and avoiding bad foods. (Bad foods don’t always wear black hats and come swaggering into town for a showdown, but they’re just as dangerous.) And I’m giving myself a break.

I’m not experienced in this giving myself a break thing, but I’m working on it. So day 1 of my return to good health is proceeding. After an extremely healthy lunch that someone else made (I had enough to do making myself presentable), some work in the office, then a nap.  

I’m taking this recovery thing slow. Not so slow you can’t notice, but slow enough that I’ll keep up with my naps for the time being.

Besides, I have really good dreams.

Mental Illness and Drug Abuse

Last week I made the cover of the local newspaper, thanks to last week’s post. (http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/jan/14/shootings-spur-local-woman-to-share-tale-late-ex-h/) I’m hoping no one notices that isn’t really about me, though I find myself in the awkward position of talking about my subject matter while trying to blend into the background.

That’s been my life so far – blend into the background, and no one will notice me. Know what I mean? Mostly it works. I have a hard time breaking into social and business circles. I stay in the background, but I have things to say. Follow me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MoniqueCWriter and you can see how it goes.

One of the questions on last week’s newspaper article concerned drug usage among the mentally ill – specifically, with Stew. The commenter noticed it hadn’t been mentioned, and seemed to think it was some sort of oversight.

I never think to mention his drug and alcohol abuse because there wasn’t any. It is true that many mentally ill do self-medicate, often unsuccessfully, but that certainly isn’t always the case. In some cases people turn to drugs and alcohol because nothing else is working, and they’re desperate.

Sure, Stew used meds, many of them over the years. Anti-psychotics. Pills to help him sleep. Pills to help him wake up. Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills. Pills to make the mind calm down, so effective he needed another pill to wake the mind up. Usually there were 5 prescriptions at a time that he was taking daily. Stew would be the first to tell you that meds saved his life.

But illegal drugs? No, there were none. Drinking? Back before he became ill he’d occasionally have a beer, but it had to be a good beer. He’d never been drunk. Then again, he was a big guy, and it would take a lot to get him drunk, and he’d never attempted it. Once he started on the med merry-go-round alcohol was out. Pepsi was his drink of choice, and I don’t think there’s been any correlation between Pepsi consumption and mental illness. He didn’t smoke either. The no drinking, no smoking thing were two of the things I loved about him. My previous husband had been a prolific drinker and smoker and I was really tired of it.

We like to think that mentally ill people have caused their own problems. It would make it easier for us to dismiss them out of hand. “Deserved what he got, didn’t he? All that drug use fried his brain.”

Simplistic. Each person who has mental illness has their own story, and many of them do not involve self-destructive behavior. They do often involve trying to get past their illness before really knowing what’s wrong, which is like trying to treat cancer when you think it’s a minor infection.

When Stew moved back to California to live with his parents he went to the local mental health facility and they were confounded by him. He didn’t have problems with drugs and alcohol and he had all his teeth. He was an intelligent guy who had issues. But by then he had started stabilizing, fortunately. There are many like him, people who are just trying to make sense of what’s happening to them when the entire world seems to be askew.  

Then there’s the idea that if we just round up the mentally ill and treat them all their problems will be solved. I wish it were that easy. But what treatments work? Everyone is going to react differently to available psych meds, and some will benefit from a combination of meds and therapy, and some won’t. Then there’s finding the right therapy. Stew talks about that, in the book we’re writing (he’s done writing his portion, I’m still working on mine). How many different meds was he tried on? How many therapists? He’s lucky he did find a good therapist, and he’s lucky his med combination, despite serious side effects, eventually started to quiet the angry voices in his head.

Until you experience a demon in your head telling you to kill yourself I don’t think you can pass judgment on those who do. It’d be easier if we could though, wouldn’t it?

Next week: watch me be funny again. I can still do it, I swear.

Mental Illness Ain't No Picnic

This is not what I’d wanted to write on the occasion of Stew’s birthday, but circumstances seem to have a mind of their own. Today, January 10^th, Stew Young would have been 40 years old, if he hadn’t died of cancer 3 years ago. It’s hard to imagine Stew at 40. It was hard to imagine him at 37, since he’d gone backward in time a bit and was just getting ready to return to a semi-normal life and adulthood when the cancer struck.

Prior to the cancer thing, Stew was severely mentally ill. By that I mean he was more than depressed, more than anxious, he was occasionally a full blown psychotic. Not too often, fortunately. It’s not the sort of thing one wants to repeat if one doesn’t have to. Over the years he fought his illness he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, schizo-affective, borderline, bipolar, depressed (and who wouldn’t be, with all that going on?) and with major anxiety. Again, see the depression comment.

Throughout the day I’ve seen comments on various websites regarding the Arizona shootings. I’ve seen people comment that the shooter should have been receiving help, that his parents should have done something, that perhaps something should be done about crazies before something else like this happens.

Really? This is an original thought?

As if we hadn’t considered that before.

Let me tell you what happened with us. I was married to Stew when he started becoming mentally ill. It was a slow descent, and we kept thinking that he was getting better, or would get better, and when necessary, when he was suicidal, which he was several times before the Great Psychotic Break that led to years of uncertainty and pain, he would even take himself to the hospital. He was good about that, about seeking help. At the time he had a job, and health insurance. He worked for a large health insurance company, so insurance was a given. But what could they do for him at the emergency room? Talk to him, make him promise not to hurt himself, and then send him home again, that’s what.

So we’d go home again and hope things would get better.

When the Great Psychotic Break came it brought with it blood, all his, and I took him to the ER. They signed him up for daily outpatient treatment, and he couldn’t return to work for weeks. When I went to tell his boss what was going on he stood there and listened, and then visibly stepped back from me, as if I were carrying the contamination of mental illness with me and might infect him. He then began walking away, backwards, waving feebly as if shooing me and mental illness away.

Despite having been a valued employee and a likeable guy, Stew’s co-workers ignored him during this time. Perhaps they thought it was one of those where the less said the better, but Stew would have greatly appreciated knowing anyone cared. After having contributed to cards when others were sick and helping others out when they needed it and being ignored during his crisis, he felt more isolated than ever.

This is how it starts, the isolation. Let’s ignore the mentally ill guy and no one will catch it.

He returned to work and everyone pretended nothing had happened. But it had. Anyway, he didn’t get better. He’d get far worse before he’d get better.

Stew lost his job because he couldn’t work. He had six months of disability, and during that time we had insurance through Cobra. He had a psychiatrist, a therapist, and many meds. Some made him sleepy, some made him angry, mostly they made him dull and foggy, and he became a ghost of himself. He saw things that weren’t there. He heard voices that weren’t there. He struggled with knowing what was real and what was not, and with his parents two states away and me the only family we attempted to make him better.

The diagnoses changed, he didn’t fit into a category. And then the disability and the health insurance ran out.

So then what? We struggled through. His meds cost several hundred dollars a month. His psychiatrist eventually fired him because we couldn’t afford her. His therapist hung in there and kept treating him even when we could only make token payments. I was working, but I spent at least several hours every day making sure he was safe and not suffering too much, so my income was spotty and I was always tired. His parents sent money. We went various places to see if he could get help. By then he was living in his own apartment. At one agency we were told there was nothing they could do because he still had a roof over his head. “Come back when you’re on the streets,” they told him, “And then we can get you on the list.”

Oh good. I left messages with no return calls. I insisted his psychiatrist, who had fired him, provide a scrip so he could keep getting his anti-psychotics. She provided it grudgingly. I monitored his medications. I kept track of him. And both of us lived in a state of isolation. He ran errands for me and when I became overwhelmed he’d talk me out of it, or try to. Sometimes we both collapsed under the weight of our isolation and desperation. I sold anything I had that had any value.

And one day he went to a political rally with a knife, not sure why, but knowing he was angry and that a candidate had to be stopped. Who knows why these things happen. His rages were legendary, though he never ever hurt anyone. The political rally was a bust because he couldn’t find a parking space. Sometimes no parking is a good thing, no? When he came back to my apartment and told me I was straight with him. “If you ever do anything like that again, or give any indication you might, I will have to call 911 on you.”

And I would have. There was also the incident with the car dealer when his rage almost got the better of him, but I dealt with it.

Our mental health system is in bad shape. It’s not always easy to get help. Easy? Sometimes it’s impossible. Sometimes family members can do everything they can and it’s still not enough. Sometimes the mentally ill try everything they can and still can’t get the help they need.

But on the occasion of Stew’s birthday, this is what I have to tell you, and this is what he wanted you to know. Dealing with mental illness is really hard. If you haven’t had voices in your head telling you to cut your own throat you may not understand how very difficult it is, how very isolating, how it can be so very hard to tell the difference between reality and what’s only in your own head.

When Stew was dying of cancer he was more at peace than I’d seen him for years. He wanted to live, and he’d begun recovering from his demons. But once he was told he was terminal he realized that this was one way to ensure he’d be free of the demons forever. Death could not compete with mental illness. For him, it was a release.

I am so sorry that people died and were injured in Arizona. I’m so sorry we pretend mental illness always happens to someone else and we shouldn’t be concerned. I’m sorry about so much. I’m sorry that today Stew isn’t here to celebrate his birthday with us, but we’ll celebrate anyway, because he would have wanted us to. And I will keep telling his story, like I promised I would.

Shrek for the Holidays

New Year’s Eve we watched Shrek again, with crab and steak for dinner and 2011 in front of us like a bright shining experience waiting to happen.

I was 12 when I first discovered Shrek. Suddenly the world had possibilities – even if I looked like an ogre I could be happy!

That was my first lie of 2011. I’m obviously much too old to have seen Shrek when I was 12. I like to get the obvious lies out of the way early in the year so I can sneak in the less obvious ones later.

My love for Shrek isn’t just because it’s Eddy Murphy’s best work EVER, though one can never have too much of an annoying talking donkey who goes by the name of Donkey.  No, it’s more than that. And it’s not just Shrek’s rejection of a world that rejected him first, just because he’s an ogre, though I do identify with it. Not that I’m an ogre or anything, but it is easy to write off a world filled with cruelty by retaliating and closing one’s self off.

Not that I would know, mind you, except for that short ten year period we’re not to speak of.

Mostly my love for Shrek is because the upkeep for being an ogre is so much easier than the upkeep for being, say, a princess. If one’s a princess, one must always look princess-like, which includes much grooming, hours and hours at the salon every week, utmost care not to chip one’s polish, a clear complexion, form fitting princess dresses which require a tight corset, and a perpetually cheerful disposition. One is not supposed to be both a bitch and a princess, unless one is playing the part of the antagonist, and there are few instances of evil princesses. Princesses are pure and sweet until they become queens, at which time they’re allowed to become a bitch. It’s a clear progression, and rules must be followed.

But being an ogre! Now there’s something I can get behind. Once an ogre, always an ogre, unlike princesses, who are supposed to upgrade to queens. Perpetual princesses are not highly regarded, are they? Ogres, on the other hand, aren’t supposed to be lithe, nor are they supposed to be well groomed. In fact, I’m pretty sure grooming is entirely optional. The preferred color is green, and the preferred disposition is ogre-like. Now there’s something I can get behind. After all, who has time to be a princess? It’s a lot of work, much more work than being an ogre.

And with Shrek, my suspicion that one can look like an ogre and STILL be happy is confirmed. It is especially helpful if one is to marry an ogre. Not that I married an ogre, heavens no. I lucked out. But as someone who once considered herself much like an ogre (e.g., unsociable, unattractive, lived in a swamp, yada yada yada), I feel validated!

Don’t we all want validation?

And better yet, validation without the upkeep! Ogres don’t even have to wear stilettos! No one expects much of ogres. Ogres just are. If I have a bad hair day, it’s completely okay. As an ogre, I’m lucky to have hair at all. But if I’m a princess and have a bad hair day, well, that could ruin the numerous photo ops I have throughout the day, couldn’t it?

Ogres don’t have photo ops, which is yet another thing to be thankful for, if one is an ogre.

On the Ogre – Princess range most of us fall somewhere in the middle. I’m okay with that. Green isn’t my best color, for one thing. I don’t particularly enjoy swamps.

But I can certainly get behind the concept.

Shrek makes me happy, even while it confirms my theory that if people would just talk about things with other people we could avoid a whole lot of misunderstandings. But without those sorts of misunderstandings, movies would be a lot shorter, so I suppose it serves a purpose. Besides, I do like a movie I can sing along with.