(Since this is a long one, I thought I'd kick it off with an encouraging picture.)
The Happy Wren (Thryothorus felix)
. . . a bona fide bird that is found in Mexico.
February is over. And I'm glad. I didn't much care for it this time around.
When I was in the hospital in 2003, my primary doctor felt that in my quest to statistically document my mood swings I was focusing entirely too much on the negative. She is the one who encouraged me to revise the Monte Mood Scale to include a Happy Meter of sorts, as well to differentiate "depressed mood" from "suicidal thinking." In hindsight, the suggestions make complete sense. Part of the strangeness of this disease is my ability to experience both joy and depression at the same time, sometimes with suicidal thinking, and sometimes without. And, strange as it may seem, I can feel suicidal without feeling depressed. And I can also feel suicidal while I'm genuinely enjoying myself. (I suppose if it made any sense it wouldn't be considered a mental illness, right?) Overall, though, the ups and downs of the three sections of the Monte Mood Scale generally mirror each other as one would expect them to. But — and again this was at the suggestion of my Menninger doctor — by splitting the day into thirds (versus just a single data point per day), it allows me to document (and hence see and believe) that even on my down days there are usually at least brief respites. It's been three years now since I was in the hospital, and with things tending towards the wrong direction of late, I've been struggling to fight this bastard from new angles. Something I concentrated on in February was trying to maximize each day's score on the "Joy Etc" scale. (One might think that doing so would be an obvious goal of EVERY human being — maximizing one's happiness, that is — but one would be wrong to think that, because I, at least, am just now starting to figure that one out.) Anyway, these daily rankings on the Joy Etc scale I began to think of as "Perky Points," after my therapist commented during a visit a couple weeks back that he hadn't seen me this "perky" in quite a while. Each evening, then, when I rated how that day went, I would judge the day's "success" more on how many Perky Points I'd earned, rather than on the number of depression or suicidal-thinking points I was accumulating. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but looking back at February I see that it had the third highest Perkiness rating of the past ten months, and actually nearly tied for second place. Unfortunately, though, by every other measurement February was even more dreary than January.
And, unfortunately, the Dreary Factor came to a miserable peak on Friday, February 24th. A tendency that's been gradually growing worse over the past three years is my ability to "postpone" plans to commit suicide when I find myself in a nosedive. On numerous occasions in my life I've vowed to myself "If I don't feel better by such-and-such date, then I will kill myself." In December 2002 I gave the universe six weeks' worth of time to bring relief into my life. I was less than 72 hours from the deadline when my therapist convinced me to see if hospitalization might offer the relief I sought. I didn't think it would, but I also wanted to be able to say that I'd tried every reasonable solution before I made that final, irreversible decision to end my life. In the three years since then, there have been a number of times when I've set similar deadlines. Obviously, things have always improved in time, but a disturbing trend has gradually became apparent: my willingness to suffer is diminishing. Last summer I began turning to Xanax more and more as a means of squelching intense psychological pain, and thus extending the period of time that I was willing to "suffer" the more excruciating stabs of misery. Since I don't feel much of anything when I'm stoned on Xanax, it's kind of like a time machine that propels me into that point in the future where relief arrives — a point in time that is well beyond any deadline I'm now willing to set. If we disregard the downsides of the Xanax-fueled Time Machine (e.g. the fact that Xanax is highly addictive, that its efficacy fades with excessive use, and that it often results in very disorienting episodes of amnesia), then it seems like an ideal "Break Glass In Case of Emergency" type of tool. My fear, however, is that one of these days I won't even be willing to get on the Xanax Time Machine — that the 45 minutes it takes for the drug to do its magic is too long to wait. Well, on Friday the 24th I skirted the brink of that danger zone — I almost decided that 45 minutes was too long to wait. Instead, I decided that NEXT time I have a day as bad as that Friday, I'll kill myself. At some point over the ensuing weekend, though (and perhaps it was while eating ice cream at Saturn with a small, adorable herd comprised of my niece and three youngest nephews, along with my Mom and my sister) it sank in that the time had come to eliminate the Friday evening scene that so frequently gets my weekends off to such a horrible start. The scene I refer to is the end of the work day, and if I'm feeling vulnerable for some reason (which is often the case by the end of the day on Fridays), then every time I hear someone talking about what they're going to do that weekend, what I actually "hear" is either "What sorts of fun things are you going to do without inviting Monte to join you?" or else "What sorts of fun things are you doing this weekend that Monte is too much of a loser to be able to participate in?" Plus the fact that so many of my coworkers are socializing with each other outside of work just makes it a kajillion times worse. I'm suddenly transported back to high school when Monte belonged to a single clique whose membership consisted solely of Monte. The fact that the activities that I'm "not being invited to" are often things that I wouldn't want to participate in anyway is no consolation — in fact, it fuels my self-hatred by giving me even more reason to conclude that I'm a loser. (And, naturally, when I'm not thinking in a rational manner, the fact that I frequently AM invited to join my coworkers in some outside-of-work fun somehow escapes me.) Obviously, when I'm thinking rationally, it's all just a bunch of nonsense. But such is the nature of mental illness. Getting back to the phenomenon of The Diminishing Deadline, the fact that my next deadline seemed likely to be less than 45 minutes, I realized that something drastic needed to happen. So, I quit my job.
Despite the fact that so much of what triggers my depression occurs at work, the truth of the matter is that I love my job — and I love my coworkers and my coworkers love me. When I'm thinking rationally, I do not doubt any of those facts. I am surrounded on all sides at work by caring, compassionate people who genuinely understand and respect the fact that my irrational thinking is caused by a bona fide illness. I cannot imagine finding a more hug-friendly, loving environment in which to earn a living. And, when I realized that I HAD to resign (and it's quite accurate to say that it was a "realization" and NOT a "decision," as I don't feel as though I had any choice in the matter), the sadness was incredible, and I cried and I cried and I cried. I cried some more on Monday morning as I told my boss that I had to quit. And I probably cried again when I realized that he was eager to find some arrangement for me to safely remain employed at the Credit Union. I hadn't expected that such an arrangement would be possible. The CU is a non-profit that doesn't have the resources to provide charitable employment for people whose abilities don't correspond to the organization's needs. But after closely examining what I CAN contribute, and comparing that to the needs of the CU, we found that there was significant overlap. And after obtaining the (apparently genuinely enthusiastic) endorsement of the Executive VP and the CEO, we settled on an agreement to transition me from full-time Head Teller to part-time Teller, with a flexible schedule that is generally skewed towards those times when I'm most mentally stable — that is, early in the week, and early in the day — and probably averaging a bit over 20 hours per week. To say that I'm "glad" we were able to come up with such an arrangement is the understatement of the millennium. I've worked at the CU since I was in my early 20's. I've witnessed incredible changes and growth, and I've met zillions of wonderful people. Out of the fifty or so current employees, there are only four who've worked there longer than me. (My 82-year-old coworker Jane will probably keep at it well past the century mark, so I may never reach #1.) The thought of leaving all that behind is hard to imagine. (Note the rational-ness of not wanting to leave the CU, and contrast that with the "appeal" of suicide which would mean leaving a whole lot more than just the CU.)
My hope (and, indeed, expectation) is that by taking this step of reducing my hours by nearly 50% I will be able to more fully commit myself to achieving the healing and personal growth that is necessary for me to someday return to full-time employment. It may only take a few months. It may take a few years. But by keeping my foot in the door of the CU, I'll at least be a somewhat productive member of society. One of my biggest fears was that I'd end up so messed up that I wouldn't be able to work at all, ever again, and that I'd spend the rest of my life hiding under the covers reading The Hobbit over and over and over again, eking out a meager existence on monthly disability checks.
So, there is reason to be thankful, and optimistic. And finally, I want to end this edition of The Monte Report with some poetry. (No, I didn't write it myself.) It's rather morbid poetry, but in a way (which I'll explain shortly) it's incredibly inspiring. I've only recently learned that one of my (long-dead) heroes in life dabbled in poetry, more than 150 years ago. With apologies to said author (for changing a word or two), here is a bit of a poem he wrote as he struggled with his own demons of depression:
O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.
I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.
But I am an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains —
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.
And now away to seek some scene
Less painful than the last —
With less of horror mingled in
The present and the past.
O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince,
That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,
And leave me ling'ring here?
Pretty depressing, eh? I'm only half-way through the book I got it out of, and I expect I may have more to say about it later once I'm finished. But this poetry was penned by Abraham Lincoln something like 10 or 15 years before he became President. Lincoln spent much of his 20's and 30's in agonizing, suicidal despair. By enduring through and beyond the bad times (which, for him, never really ended entirely), he went on to change the world. And I find that very encouraging. Though I don't anticipate becoming a politician, I'd like to think that I, too, have the potential to follow a similar world-changing path, if only I can persist until I master the art of wriggling out from underneath these mountains of pain that haphazardly try to obliterate me.
Thanks for listening.
Love,
Monte
P.S. I expect to have February's Mood Scale data up on the Mood Scale blog within a few days . . .
