Well, Thursday was right in her comment on my last post. I didn’t listen to her though. No, when the former friend himself expressed a desire to communicate I did it. I think that it was helpful to me in certain ways. For example, I was able to say some things that had sat boiling inside of me.  Probably more important to my recovery was the fact that when I got angry I said so. Vehemently said so. I think that the therapist in the hospital who pointed out to me that I wasn’t going to be able to heal until I let myself get angry was spot on. I can’t control the responses of others but I can own my own.

Belle, please know that you do have a voice and a way of communicating that is no less than the voice of others. I hear you and I appreciate you.

The most importnat revelation came as a total surprise. If I have a moment with another person that I feel deeply is significant ; it doesn’t matter if the moment is significant for them. In fact, it doesn’t even matter to me if they remember the moment. I can still have it as my own, and it’s no less precious.

In other news, Nathan turned 18. He has decided to go up to Canada to stay for awhile or maybe to live with a family member. I can give him my opinions and advice, but I can no longer control his decisions. So once again the topic of letting go is first thing on my mind. I can say good luck, and goodbye, and even tell him that he’ll have a home to return to if he changes his mind. But I have to let him go.

The part of this month that has surprised me is the fact that none of the pain brought me straight to my knees. I have cried; I have gotten pissed off, but I haven’t gotten into bed and stayed there. I am carrying on. I have continued to go to my doctor’s appointments. I’ve had a couple more steroid injections for my back and hip pain and they seem to be helping. I am starting yet another series of physical therapy. I am trying differnt medications for pain, depression, insomnia, and anxiety. My mouth feels like a desert from one of the new meds, so I have been chewing gum and sucking on hard candies and sipping water.  The doctor said that the dry mouth often goes away after awhile so I hope for that to happen.

I am in the process of waving goodbye while still letting it be okay for me to carry the memories of my own significant moments with me. I’ve never been good at closure or letting go, or whatever you want to call it. I just know that I have to figure out a way that works for me because the weight of it all is just too much to carry forward.

Does anyone know where Bonnie is? I just wanted to see if she’s doing alright and I’ve had no responses to the emails I’ve sent her.

I’m going to call this a rough draft because it originally came to me as a song when I was in the shower. I’ve been fucking around with the tune, and the verse chorus verse, and I don’t have a guitar or a piano here, and I got frustrated, to say the least! Still angry, except now with more tears!!!

The book we wrote together was six years long. He wrote the ending without me, years in advance. So not fair. I wish he’d warned me before I got so deep. I’m alive. He fed me his words. I fed him mine. I was never full, always hungry for more, counting down the moments until the words started again. I was butterfly flutters and all aglow. He was all smiles with eyes that spoke a language I never interpreted.

I knew what I wanted, was longing to just settle down together in the comfort of cloud like pillows of trust. His mind was set to wandering and he was longing to head east, where he could get to feeling alive. I just fed him more, hoping he’d know that
everything he was itching for was right here in me. He grew thinner no matter what I did.

When he lifted up his little empty cup for me to fill; I held up my empty bucket. It must have been overwhelming. I wasn’t being greedy, just being the me I was then. I thought I was doing most of the giving, didn’t realize how much I asked of him until tonight. I didn’t think that I wanted more than I needed.

He told me to run along, go play now; he had other writing to work on. I went off and waited without him. I am not a patient woman. I grew restless trying to crack the code of his messages. He smiled, even chuckled a bit, at my frustration.

Spanning time together, we went from our nine hour phone calls to rides home from work, sitting in our seats, silent. Rage came along for the ride. I slammed his car door hard. He took off, no longer waiting, watching to make sure I made it into my house safely. I saw him throw the five dollars that I had left on the dash for gas out the window.

Once he was ‘round the corner I searched for it by streetlight, finally finding it amongst a pile of wet leaves. He asked me later if I’d gone after it and I lied. He was so far under my skin he could tell the truth. I tugged at my hair nervously and waited for him to turn everything back around.

I don’t know how we got going in that direction, but once we did there was no turning back. I trusted him; he was the one who knew how to drive.

I was wrong when I told him no one was keeping score, but I meant it when I said that I didn’t want to play his game, but that I wanted to win.

Six more years have passed since our book read THE END.
I looked him up online, thought I was ready to just check in, say hey.
I found someone who knows him now and she emailed me and said,
“Hi! He has mentioned your name before. He is doing great! He seems happy and healthy!
What message do you want me to give him?”

I realized that I’d made a big mistake.
I hoped he hadn’t let her read our book, wondered if they’d written one together.
Now I wanted to see him one last time, study his face, and ask him why he went away.
I wanted to know what I had meant to him, back then, and why he spent so much time on me.

I typed out message after message, contemplating and then deleting. I’d thought there were so many things I wanted to say.
All the words are used up now, we had spent them frivolously.
In the end I wrote, “If you see him, say hello”, the nod ‘n’ wink to Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks” was for me, not her.

I hope he got to the place he needed to get to; a place of health and happiness that I couldn’t give him. He is not lonesome without me.
Now I know that he is alive. I can find just about anyone on the internet, but I can’t find myself. I asked my doctor about ECT treatment for this depression, hoping to have the memory of him zapped out of my brain. He’s doing great; he is happy, and healthy, without me.

1993: I sat across from my psychiatrist. She never wore the same shoes twice. She asked me a lot of questions about my childhood. She asked me if I’d ever thought of harming my son in any way. I was horrified by the thought of hurting my baby boy. It had never occurred to me. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Tammy, what you need to realize is that your life will never be as bad as it was when you were a child.” I nodded, but I didn’t believe her. She was my psychiatrist for years. She was the only one I ever told about the times my dad tried to kill us.

1985: He was trying to kill my mom and us kids. My mom took us and fled. My brother refused to leave. We hid in a trailer. Dad killed himself in the basement of our house. When we drove up the driveway to the house that morning I already knew. I’d tossed and turned all night having dreams where I was choking to death. The threat to my life was over, but I kept seeing him around town. There he was walking down the sidewalks, there’s his face on a bus going by, oh shit and he’s that man in the store. He was everywhere. I started to feel him behind me when I was loading clothes into the washing machine. I would close my eyes and run. My mom came home from work and scolded me for leaving the lid up and the washer half full of clothes. The water was cold by then. I told her that I had to run from the basement and that I was sorry. She hugged me. She bought a new house. I wanted to ask the other five who had survived with me if they saw him but I didn’t.

2009 Mother’s Day: I am sick in bed, shaking with fear, unable to go to work. I can’t get my valium refill. The doctor says he faxed it in and the pharmacy says they never received it. Alex holds me and wishes me a happy mother’s day. “Probably your best yet, huh?” I couldn’t laugh at his joke then but he tries to remain lighthearted when I am in extreme distress. He recommends that I have a shot of Jack Daniels to calm me down. I refuse. I am afraid that it will trigger an alcohol binge.

The following Wednesday, I am sitting in front of a new psychiatrist. He asks me what happened the weekend prior. I try to explain about the panic attack I can’t stop. He bumps Effexor to 300mg and Valium to 30 mg. He adds Trazadone. He spends an hour with me and tells me I have post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and severe depression that is medication resistant. He snaps my file shut, ready to go, but before he stands he looks at me and says, “If you ever find yourself out of valium again and going into withdrawals, drink some alcohol. It acts on the same part of the brain that valium does. Don’t you go telling anyone your doctor told you to get wasted.” We shake hands. I make a mental note to tell Alex he was right.

I spent some time in the lock down facility. I am panicked the whole time I am on that floor because there is no escape. Only the employees carry key cards. The doctor who gives me a physical tries to make jokes. I can’t laugh. I am trying to behave in a way that will get me out of the lock down floor. For whatever reason, the severe psychiatric patients are locked down with the drug addicts going through their withdrawals.  They are so sick: some pacing and shaking, others vomiting into garbage bins, there is crying and face picking and wails I will never forget. I can’t drink water without supervision and I am watched as I piss. I wonder if I could break through a window and jump out. I want to be outside in the freeway polluted air, smoking a Camel filter. I pretend I am doing research for a novel. I sit still and observe. I want my cell phone back. I want to go home. Dr. Joke asks me how I am doing and I tell him it’s not like I thought it would be. I joke that I am looking around for the table with Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito playing cards. He says those days are long gone. He asks me if I have ever thought of hurting myself or anyone else. I lie when I say no. I have to sign a contract that if they let me move to outpatient I won’t hurt myself or anyone else. I don’t tell him that I imagine jumping in front of every fast moving vehicle I see. When I am finally set free they put me in outpatient loony bin. I am escorted out by card carrying scrub wearing men.

I am assigned a therapist. They take me to him. He is nice. He already has my file. He asks me if I’ve ever been raped or molested. I ask him if I can go home early. He sighs and says it’s time for lunch. I get into the line and wait. Sugar and caffeine are forbidden. People nibble candy from their purses and pockets; fill water bottles with coke or coffee. It’s finally my turn. I take my cucumber sandwich and sit at a large table. They have little packets of mustard and mayo, but plastic knives and forks are forbidden. I find that amusing. The groups of people sitting around me are talking about work as I choke down my sandwich with warm water. They are comparing notes on patients and discussing how to care for the nonverbal ones. I realize I have sat down at the employee table and try to eat faster. I have 15 minutes until I have to be back from lunch. Smoking is prohibited. I throw away my paper plate .I walk through the door right in front of the woman at the front desk and exit. I walk until I am standing over the freeway overpass and smoke as much as I can. It would be a perfect place to jump. I imagine my body down there, splat.

When I return to the building, room 2, I sit at the table ready for the class to begin. Some of the people I had eaten lunch next to come in and take their seats. They are not employees after all, they are patients like me. There are other patients in the chairs surrounding me. Some have their mouths wide open and the saliva runs down their chins and onto their shirts. Some patients are so drugged their heads fall over and smack the table, startling me. The therapists try to talk to us in calm tones, asking the ones who keep nodding off to please try to stay awake.
There is a woman in the corner reading Twilight with her headphones on full blast. The therapists try to remove them and bring her out of the corner and into the group. It’s a no go. She needs the music to drown out the voices in her head. She said they are telling her to do bad things. I close my eyes and thank the sky that I am not that sick. There is an elderly woman who sits at the front of the class surrounded by bags. I find out over the course of weeks that she believes the feds are watching her and that they will come into her apartment and steal all of her belongings while she’s gone. That is why she must bag them up and bring them with her. Her diaper leaks sometimes. No one says anything about it. Psychiatric facilities involve a lot more body fluid than I’d imagined. I carry hand sanitizer.

When I do my one on one time with my therapist I ask him about all of the patients who are nurses, CNAs, LMTs etc. He says that those in the care giving industry are statistically number one on the list of people who seek help there, followed by teachers, and then insurance salesmen. I laughed, just about the insurance salesmen part. I ask him where and how the doctors go for treatment. He pauses for awhile before telling me that they go to hospitals outside of the one that they work for, and that they don’t identify themselves as doctors during the group sessions.
As the days go on I start to like the structure there. I start to worry about some of the patients when they don’t show up for a day or two. There is a woman with trickatilamania who sits across from me. Once, when I was speaking during group, she announced that my voice is a trigger for her. She asks them to stop me from speaking. I hate her suddenly; her head a pattern of long curly hair and softball sized bald spots. I over think why my voice would be a trigger. She cries a lot and lets the snot run free. There are tissues everywhere in the room. I don’t know where I fit in.

I encourage a few others I feel comfortable with to come out and smoke with me on the lunch break. After a few weeks more and more patients are there now. There is a tiny little 20 years old girl with two babies at home. She likes to spread out on the grass and close her eyes to the sun. She came to the treatment center from the hospital where she was treated for a suicide attempt. She wears the tiniest outfits, little halter tops and shorts, overall shorts with no top underneath. Her arms and legs are covered in scars; fresh bloody cuts over old purple skin where she had started to heal. She tells me that they have taken all of her meds away now that she had tried to OD. I want to hug her but I don’t. I have never seen someone with that many cuts on their body in my life. I talk to her about ways to take care of herself while taking care of her babies. I bring her a recipe for edible play dough she can make with her kids. She offers me a hook up on the opium poppy seeds she’s been buying. I just laugh.

There are a few patients who swap their pills with others, the smell of marijuana hangs in the air and that guy named Josh under the tree there is smoking heroin. I can’t imagine that a group of us who have decided to have our lunch outside goes unnoticed but it’s never mentioned inside the hospital. I crave coffee but since it’s forbidden inside the building I sometimes walk around to the little corner shop and buy a cup. It’s nasty but I chug it hot, just trying to get something into me to make it through the rest of the day. I wonder if I’ll ever be OK and what OK is.

There is a pregnant woman in the program. She dresses up each day in patterned thrift store dresses, stockings and heels. She makes no attempt to hide the track marks on her arms. She smokes Marlboro Reds and talks in the group about wanting to get sober before her baby comes. She is six months pregnant. She’s always asking people for things: a piece of paper, a pen, an Advil. She deals drugs to some of the other patients. I recognize it immediately because I used to be part of that world and I’d recognize the drug/money pass off anywhere.
I am standing alone during lunch on a sunny day, not far from where Josh sits with his rolled up tinfoil smoking heroin, when she approaches me. “Do you have a tampon?” she asks. I immediately dig into my purse and pull one out for her, but as I do I can’t help but look at her swollen stomach. “Are you bleeding? You should call your OB/GYN.”I say.  “Nah”, she answers, “This is my ninth pregnancy. I’ve had eight miscarriages already so I’m sure everything is fine.” She staggers away on her high heels, the backs of her feet covered in Band-Aids. I remind myself once again that I am not the doctor here. I am a patient. I try not to judge her, but I do.

With my insurance running out I begin to feel more pressure to be better. In a private one on one with my therapist he asks me if I am starting to feel the effect of the doctor doubling my Effexor. “I am beginning to think”, I spit out, “that this quest for happiness is bullshit.” He looks taken aback and he comments that I seem irritable. I look at him sitting there calmly and I tell him the conclusion I’ve come to, “I think that life is just a series of hrumph moments, sometimes punctuated by joy, or sadness, in varying degrees.”
He looks at me for awhile before smiling. “Tammy, you just described life.” It hadn’t occurred to me before that this could be true. I had imagined that most people were happy most of the time, with a few ho hums bits and grief only on occasion. “So how do I get there?” I wanted to go from the constant sadness to the ho hum. He didn’t really have an answer. When I left that day I didn’t know it would be for the last time. I made the decision the following morning that I had learned all that I could there. The medical bills piled up.

December 23, 2009: I sit in front of my psychiatrist. He asks me how I have been feeling and I try to explain that going through the physical therapy has brought up a lot of old memories and emotions. Taking the huge step of wearing a bathing suit and getting into the pool at the hospital every week was hard, but I did it. I tell him that I joined a book group and that I am now attending family functions instead of hiding at home. I think that this is all good news, but he wants to know what I have been doing about getting enrolled in college. “You’re not twenty anymore, but you’re not sixty either. You still have time.” I can’t explain to him that I want someone to take me there and stay by my side as I go through the process of enrollment. I can admit to him that I am scared that I am going to fail. “You’re not going to fail.” His response surprises me. I wonder where it comes from. Is it because he makes $300 per hour to talk to me? Is it because he been seeing me for over a year and he really believes that I can do it?

I know that our time is running short so I ask him the question that has been weighing heavily on my mind for most of my life. “Do I have to go through life feeling so incredibly sad all of the time?” He responds that it is not normal for someone to feel sad most of the time, as I do. He suggests adding another medication to my list, a tricyclic antidepressant, checking back with me in a month, and if I’m still feeling so sad adding a drug called Abilify. I want to ask him if he could prescribe something with a weight loss side effect as well as a daytime boost of energy, but the timing seems wrong. I thank him and leave.

I see my dad riding with me in the elevator down to the first floor. He’s not stuck at 57 this time. This is what I imagine he might have looked like had he lived. He has shrunk in size and has difficulty walking. I think about that and feel no rage against him. He would be approaching his 82 birthday. In my mind I want to believe in God and in a place where people who die go and spend eternity in peace. I don’t believe it. I want to believe that maybe my dad is now my guardian angel. Before I take the two hour bus ride home I go to the chapel in the hospital and sit in silence for awhile. I feel empty but calm. I feel stronger.
I imagined that 2009 would be the date on my death certificate. Now it feels like more of a rebirth. I have no idea what’s ahead but I feel ready.

Remembering Summer's Peaches

A Fraction of the Apples

Just One of the Varieties of Tomatoes I Preserved

My First Try at a New Dog Treat Recipe

In the months following my discharge from the psychiatric hospital I became fixated on food. Not on eating food, but on researching prices until I’d found incredible deals, buying frequently used items such as flour, yeast, oil, dried beans, rice, etc. in bulk and learning how to store them correctly, and taking advantage of some incredible produce prices in the summer. I learned a lot about myself through this. I realized that in many ways I express my love for my family through food. I had to let go of the need to please everyone every time and just know that I was providing my husband , myself, and our teenagers with the healthiest, tastiest food I could find while still sticking to the very tight food budget. I was then, as I am now, having trouble focusing on books or TV or my writing. In the kitchen I felt as if I was keeping busy doing something worthwhile. It helped to throw my mind into making applesauce, or bread, or spaghetti sauce. It helped me feel less afraid about not having as much money as we used to. I knew the medical bills would be coming in soon, and even though my therapist had directed me to focus on getting well and not on money (ha!) I felt responsible for the burden I was placing on my husband’s shoulders.

Looking back now at the year 2009 I can clearly see what decisions I had made that led up to the time in the hospital. I ignored all of the warning signs that trouble was looming and continued to work too much, sleep too little, and consume far too much caffeine . I was so consumed with guilt and worry over leaving my children at night and then sleeping during the day. I constantly missed doctor’s appointments and let my prescriptions run out because I was so tired and taking hours  on the bus to go to different visits seemed to be a bad idea because it cut into the small amount of time I had each day for sleeping.

Tonight I sit here, not cured, but accepting of the fact that I need treatment still. I have been doing my physical therapy because I must take this gift of time and strengthen my back. I continue to see my primary care physician as needed and my psychiatrist for medication management. It is quite a process, but I am pushing myself to learn how to take care of myself.

Christmas will come, whether I feel ready or not. All of our utilities are on. We have a roof over our heads.  We were able to purchase gifts for Nathan and Polly. I have taken both of them to the doctor and dentist and they are healthy. For that I am so grateful. Both of them are doing well in school and have friends with whom they socialize happily. Polly managed to pull her math grade up from a D to a B and I am so proud of her, as that was the subject she was really struggling with. I now have more time to spend with both of them and just a seemingly simple thing like having a family movie night at home with a bowl of popcorn means a lot to me.

The time that I spent earlier in the year stocking the freezer and pantry are paying off big time now. Not having to constantly run to the store on foot or bus in the cold and rain is so nice. After being invited several times by my 22 year old niece Audrey to join her book group I shared a copy of the book with her from the library, read it, and went to the book club last Tuesday. I was tempted to cancel because I had a bunch of painful dental work done the day before and I had been informed that the group started with dinner. I knew that Audrey would be disappointed and so I went anyway. I ate mashed potatoes and chewed on one side of my mouth and nobody cared. I don’t know why I was so worried.  I was able to talk about the book with the group. A few of the women I knew from my past but hadn’t seen in years: Audrey’s grandmother, her mother, and her aunt. I was concerned that seeing them might bring up some painful memories for me, and it did. There was a moment during dinner when someone asked some questions about things that I had done in 1985. Poor choices that I had made at the age of 12, immediately following the death of my father. Before I could slowly inhale I felt a sob rising up in my chest. Time froze and I wondered about the correct protocol involving cloth dinner napkins and tears. A woman I hadn’t seen since 1988 rose, grabbed me some tissues, and turned to the inquiring woman,” Stop being mean! This is obviously a painful subject for her, and she was only 12 at the time. Jeez!” I dried my eyes and smiled my thanks. The moment had come, the moment had passed. My initial reaction to flee the house dissipated and I was able to get my breathing back under control. The subject was changed and the night went on.

Having gone made me feel proud of myself. It also made me realize that I can have personal limits. I know that is probably common knowledge to most, but to me it was a good realization. There are certain subjects I don’t wish to talk about with most people. There are certain decisions I made as a child that I am tired of apologizing for.

Last May I felt as if suicide was my only option. Today I am looking forward to what 2010 will bring. It wasn’t easy to get here, and it is still filled with pain and challenges. There are bits of joy mixed into my life too and for that I am grateful.

As an aside, I am a ridiculous perfectionist when it comes to things I bake. I can’t post that photo of the dog treats I baked above without mentioning what I learned from trial and error. The original recipe called for rolling the dough out very thin and then cutting it into squares and baking them for 25 minutes. I followed the directions, except I just cut them into pieces with a pizza wheel, and I will admit that I placed too many on the sheet pan because I was feeling lazy. The ones around the edges began to bake faster than the ones in the middle and I had left no room to move them around. Another thing that had bothered me was the mess. I was looking to save money by making dog treats at home, but the clean up was horrible, as the dough was very sticky and difficult to roll with a pin. The second time that I made them I doubled the batch and after it was mixed shaped it into logs that I then placed in the refrigerator. When the dough had firmed I took a log out, sliced it with a knife and baked them that way. It was so much easier. Yes, I realize that I just wrote a whole paragraph about dog treats. Oh, and my German Shepherd? She loved all of them, even the ones that I thought were too dark. If anyone is interested in the recipe let me know and I’ll post it.

Edited to add that I posted the recipe for the dog treats in the comments section of this post.

Last week I found out that one of my former coworkers had committed suicide.  I went through this whole range of emotions. He was only 25. I had been planning on calling him to wish him a Happy Birthday as it’s just days away, but that day will pass and 25 he shall remain forever.

I went over the many nights we worked together in my head, looking for signs I must have missed, finding nothing but more questions. I had this feeling that I needed to do something, but I couldn’t imagine what that might be.  I’m not foolish enough to believe that I could have saved him, but I would have tried.

My thoughts kept returning to his Mom on the East coast, and to his little sister, and the  times we had sat together drinking pints of beer after work. He had planned on returning for a visit home. He felt guilty that the years were slipping by. He wondered aloud if the letters and little gifts he was sending to his much younger sister meant anything at all. I assured him that his sister was undoubtedly thrilled to have any contact with him whether it be phone, email or letters and encouraged him to keep the lines of communication open with his mom even if it was hard at times.

He has returned home now, his body anyway, where he can be buried close by his family. Last night I finally sat down and wrote his family a letter and slipped it in a card. I can only hope that my words can one day offer even the slightest bit of comfort to them.

In honor of his love of music, and Sam Cooke in particular, I wanted to post the following song.

Hold On

Damn, I had forgotten how isolated and depressed I can feel being a stay at home mom. I am reminded of when I was pregnant with Nathan; I was the lead party chef supervising a small group of women on the graveyard shift. They were always kind to me, and I wanted to be the type of boss who worked harder than her employees, and never asked them to do anything she wasn’t willing and able to do herself. I wanted them to respect me, but thinking back I guess I wanted them to like me too. There was one woman who was a born again Christian. She was a hard working, kind mother of two, and as long as she wasn’t trying to convert me we got along well. Being an unmarried 18 year old, I was nervous about telling her that I was pregnant. I played fat for awhile but it soon became obvious. After I told her about my pregnancy she asked me constantly when Alex was going to marry me.
There I was: broke, 18, pregnant and working for $7.75 per hour with no insurance. Alex was out of work and I was traveling 90 minutes each way by bus to a restaurant where I constantly picked up extra hours out of a desperate need for cash. I had an envelope hidden in my desk at home. The outside was marked Crib Fund. At times I needed to sit down to rest when before I’d been able to work twelve hours straight no problem. I lived on 7UP and those little saltine cracker packets they served with the soup. I hated Alex at times. He hadn’t asked me to marry him. He hadn’t wrapped his arms around me and told me that everything would be OK. I was mad at myself too, and I kept thinking that if Alex would just get a job and I could be a stay at home mom I would be happy and I would never complain ever again.

Finally Alex did find a job, and I was able to rest for a few weeks before Nathan was born. In the beginning I felt OK resting during the day while Alex was at work. I was recovering from pregnancy, labor and delivery. I was breast feeding. Then I started to feel guilty. The laundry piled up, as did the dishes, and I had no idea how to go grocery shopping with a baby and no car. When Alex would get home from work I would have him watch Nathan so I could have a shower. That shower was the highlight of my entire day. One evening as I stepped out of the tub, wrapping myself with a towel, I glanced at my face in the bathroom mirror and burst into tears. This sucked too! I had envisioned myself at home with my baby, making all of our food from scratch, and greeting Alex at the door every evening wearing a crisp clean apron and saying, “Hi honey, how was your day? Dinner is almost ready.” I felt like a complete failure. I knew that for thousands of years women had managed to keep house, cook and raise children, I just didn’t know how they had managed it. I didn’t expect to be bored, and so fucking lonely.

Over the years I have tried being both a SAHM and a working mom. Both options have their pros and their cons, as I am sure a lot of you with children know. My self worth is and always has been tied closely to my ability to earn some income. I am not saying this is good; I am just being honest. I like having a check with my name on it. Another thing that work gives me is structure to my day and a chance to interact with my coworkers. To be honest, I don’t have any friends. So when I need someone to talk to I either talk to Alex or I call my Mom.

My original plan to return to college was something that scared the hell out of me, but I was excited about it. When I was laid off from my job after taking Family Medical Leave that plan was put on hold as I filed for unemployment and then dealt with interview after interview with the man who was deciding the case. I ended up winning, probably because my employers weren’t returning his phone calls. I had documentation proving that I was laid off eight days before my Family Medical Leave ended.

I joined this food buying club in my neighborhood where people get together and order food and since it ends up being large quantities we get the food for the wholesale price. It took me a little while to get the hang of it, as there are several different purveyors offering different things, and there are several different dates during the month when you have to have your order and payment in by or you miss out until the next order. Before I applied for membership I told the head of the group that I don’t drive and she said that she lives close to me and wouldn’t mind dropping off my orders. I have tried to give her gas money but she always refuses. When she asked me what I did for a living I told her that I was an artisanal bread baker and a pastry chef. She exclaimed that it would be great if I could teach bread making classes to the group. One thing about me, I hate training people, even when I am being paid to do it. I told Alex about it and admitted my regret over those words. “Why the fuck didn’t you just say you were a housewife?” was his response. I realized that it just didn’t sound good to me. I wanted to BE SOMETHING. I was ashamed of myself and when asked an innocent question by a woman who went to college and earned letters to place after her name I wanted to at least have a trade to be proud of. Why do I care what others think? Why do I define myself so much by what I do or don’t do for a living?

So, to make myself feel better about not working I have been working extra hard at home. In addition to my fall garden I have been buying cases of tomatoes, apples and peaches. I have a freezer neatly stacked with tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, applesauce and apple butter. I peeled and sliced the peaches and froze them too.  I even made salsa from scratch and tried to freeze a couple of pints of that. I’ve never frozen salsa before so I’ll have to see how it tastes after it thaws. I have been making huge pots of soups and freezing those to have on hand for fall. Sometimes I like to open the freezer and look at the fruits of my labor. It makes me feel good to see everything neatly stacked and labeled. Yes, I do realize that I could have canned everything instead but I didn’t want to mess with it. Plus, Alex won’t eat home canned foods because he read somewhere about someone dying from improperly canned food and he never shakes stories like that. I’ve also been growing my own bread starters and baking at home. It’s fun now that it’s not a job.

My sister called me yesterday to ask if I could babysit her three kids some Friday in October. I told her that I would check my calendar and get back to her. When I did I realized that my calendar is just scattered with various doctor’s appointments and the physical therapy for my back. Ouch.

I always get excited about the mail even though it’s always bills and junk mail. Yesterday I received a letter that read in part, “Recently President Obama announced that people who receive unemployment benefits may receive financial aid to pay for job training or education. You may be able to continue receiving unemployment benefits while enrolled in an approved training program. Studies have shown workers with more education and training have more secure jobs and higher wages.”  (Duh)  It used to be the case that those who were on Unemployment weren’t allowed to attend college because you had to be available for work 24/7.

I am excited about looking into this because school was what I had wanted to do in the first place. Thank you Obama!
Hopefully I will find a job training program. My primary care physician took some new images of my back last week and gave me a stern lecture about finding a new way to make a living. She said something about me ending up in a wheelchair within a couple of years if I continue at this pace and being totally narcotic dependent by the time I am 40. Zipping around on a Hoveround while wasted on Percocet sounds pretty awesome, but I’ll give this job training a try.

Besides, my freezer is getting really full and my kids just want to eat Hot Pockets and spicy hot Cheetos anyway.

I’m certainly not the only one who danced with her siblings on the coffee table day after day, inspired by the Jackson Five, practicing my singing and my dance moves wearing just my stocking feet.  I’m not, right? My brother dropped out of our band after the first rehearsal, my eldest sister was soon to follow. Maria and I remained side by side; I got more ambitious with my dance moves now that there was extra room on the coffee table. I slipped off several times, but I got back up. It was so important to practice. I knew deep down inside that this was going to be my ticket out of the hell of my home. It never occurred to us to practice on the floor. We had to be up as high as possible and get in every second of rehearsal we could before my Dad came home. He couldn’t know of our plan, but one day he would see me on TV and be so sorry.

Thriller was the first album I ever owned but it was a painfully long wait. I had a cassette of “Off The Wall” that my cousin made from her copy. I could tell the whole tale of how bad I wanted that record, but I knew that my Mom couldn’t afford it, so I said nothing. I could go into detail about how all of my classmates had it, and I hated them for it, but I consoled myself, knowing that one day they would say they knew me when. The details don’t matter much.

The part that I remember was after the months of longing to own that album, or even just a tape of someone else’s copy, my birthday rolled around. My Dad never bought us gifts, but my Mom would always figure out a way to come up with a little something for us on our birthdays and Christmas. When she handed me that square wrapped in tin foil after dinner I reached out for it, hands shaking, certain that it couldn’t be Thriller. It was a brand new copy, still sealed in plastic.

That’s what I thought about today as I worked in my garden, thinking of Michael Jackson’s death. I have been ignoring the media coverage for the most part, although it’s almost impossible. I just wanted to quietly reflect on the role his music had in my life, and on the hours of joy his songs gave me in what was for the most part a pretty rotten childhood.

Now that I am in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy I am being taught about thinking errors, among other things. One of the examples the therapist used for a thinking error was the thought that life owes you something. I’ve been thinking that for 30 odd years.  I still think my plan would have worked. After I saw The Partridge Family I begged my Mom to buy a bus and drive us around so we could make it big.

I have been feeling really shitty this past week, and also incredibly irritable, so I’ve been trying not to talk or write much for fear of lashing out. Anger. I feel so much anger and I have always buried it, equating it with violence and fear. I am frustrated, stressed and afraid. A lifetime to get to this very point and my insurance is telling me my time at the hospital treatment is almost up. Having lived for many years without medical insurance I know full well to be grateful for the opportunity I’ve had. I just haven’t a clue what the next step should be.

I sat on the edge of the worn green couch, sipping warm black coffee and trying to remember how to make small talk. I tried to remind myself that I had to do this. I had to meet the parents and visit their homes before I could just leave my child there to play.

After we talked about the Holocaust, of all things, she leaned in closer. “Say”, she asked with a smile, “does your daughter have fleas? As soon as my daughter started playing with your daughter at school, she came home with fleas.”

I was hot with anger. I felt the need to defend my children, my home, and my pets. Unfortunately, I also started to feel incredibly itchy.

Oregon State Hospital

The number one thing that I wish to say is that the kindness and support I’ve received here from my readers has meant so much to me. I printed out the comments and I carry them with me one the bus to and from the hospital. I am still struggling with agoraphobia, depression and panic disorder, so it helps me to have something to pull out and read when things feel helpless.

Number two, and this one was perhaps the hardest for me, was that I have recognized that I am very sick at this time and so I made the decision to ask Alex to place a paypal donate button on the sidebar. A few people have offered assistance and I have been hesitant to ask for help. I am trying to remember how good it feels for me to give and that others might feel the same. I am on FMLA right now with no concrete date as to when I’ll be well enough to work again. I went ahead with the application process for social security disability with the help of my therapist. The process takes 3-5 months and there is no guarantee that I’ll be approved. If anyone is willing and able to donate it would be greatly appreciated and I can promise that I will spend my life paying it forward.

I understand now my Mom’s comments about me being brave, and of her being proud. My Mom dedicated her life to various care giving jobs. She spent some time working as a CNA at the Oregon State Hospital, the building where One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed, and I realized that I’ve never really talked to her about that job. I used to think that was cool when I was a teenager, the fact that she worked in an insane asylum, but I am guessing that it was as far from cool as a job could be.

The treatment program I am in at a hospital here in Portland is the hardest thing that I have ever done. The primary focus at this stage is for the patients to work on the basics, a list of ten things to do to help us deal with our mental illness. I’ll type them out here later in case they might be useful for anyone else. It is a fairly simple list of ways in which we are to take care of ourselves i.e. eating frequent small meals, getting sufficient sleep, practicing different methods of relaxation etc. I imagine that this list is common knowledge for many people, but I never learned how to take care of myself and my coping mechanisms have been mainly self destructive my entire life. There are psychiatrists to diagnose and prescribe medications, but most of the one on one time is spent with the counselor we are appointed. The counselor comes up with a list of classes that he/she feels will be the most beneficial and we use these schedules to move from room to room as the hands on the clocks dictate. There are also group therapy sessions. It is heartbreaking seeing so many people suffering, and it is in my nature to want to reach out and help them. I have to remind myself that I am a patient there too, and that there is a staff to help them. I can offer up a few supportive words or even just a nod to acknowledge that I understand what they are saying . I also find myself moving the tissue box closer when someone breaks down and weeps because the first few days I was in there I ended up in tears several times, and no one should have to cry into their hands while a circle of strangers watches.

My mood goes up and down. I think that I am feeling better and then I find myself slipping again and it is disheartening. I am trying to recognize that this is a process. There are certain things that are off limits for discussion during groups. Vague references to past abuse are allowed, but no dwelling and no details. Admitting, for example, that you have a problem with self harm, such as cutting, is allowed, but no graphic details. It is believed that words such as those I describe can be triggering for the other patients. Some of the counselors will allow you to speak to them privately about past abuse, others believe that although it is normal for these memories to resurface , that they are not to be dealt with now as we are supposed to be focusing on the here and now and learning how to care for ourselves. I like my counselor. He is easy to talk to and very supportive.

My future is unwritten and that is OK. I am trying to realize that it’s not too late and that it  is actually a sign of strength for me to get up everyday and to try again rather than hiding in my house, or trying to escape by sleeping too much, or by trying to numb the pain with drugs and alcohol.

Thank you.

If you’re not a long time reader you can start here, or not.

After my abysmal fishing performance at the GI Joe fishing school my dad set his mind to spending the weekends taking me to various liquid spots to practice. We went to rivers, lakes, and even to the ocean, where I quickly learned to run out when the tide went out, cast out my line, and then stand there as the water came back in. I exclaimed at the strange sensation of the force of sand meets water under my feet that led me to believe that I was moving, although I was fairly certain I was standing still. “Shh”, I was told. “You will scare the fish.” I envisioned their slippery rainbow bodies, their heads turning at the sound of my voice, ears I couldn’t recall seeing listening to the sound of my chatter.

I always looked forward to these weekends alone with my father. We would head out painfully early; a morning person I never was, but my dad would take me to cheap breakfast joints before the little road trip, anything with a breakfast special of $1.99 or less. He never let me order for myself, and although I tried the tactic of staring longingly at the carbohydrate rich stacks of pancakes with the mysteriously soft whipped butter atop the pile, or the art of the waffle bigger than my head on a plate covered with juicy berry compote and a whipped cream perimeter, passing me by in the arms of the waitresses with the special swing to their hips they all seemed to have as they danced in between tables, he was sensible with my order: eggs, pork of some fashion, hash browns or toast. I couldn’t abide by the runny yolks I tried to choke down with the warm free water. I tried not to watch as he slid his buttered toast across his plate each time, sopping up the bright goo. Once, after hearing him order his eggs sunny side up, I blurted out to the waitress that I wanted my eggs sunny side down. This brought laughter from her, and he placed his hand over mine and whispered, “Over easy.” I was afraid for a moment, but then I saw that unnamed sign is his pale grey blue eyes that signified amusement.

Not once did I catch a fish. I was secretly glad, because although I wanted to please him, looking at the fish he caught made me so sad. I used to whisper apologies to them in my head.

My mom told me years later that at night when she and my dad would climb under the covers and whisper together about what their four children would be like when we were grown he used to say, “That Tammy, she’s going to be a vegetarian.” Hearing that, I was surprised that he had figured that out so many years before I first gave up eating meat for good. I had thought that I was hiding that side of myself from him, but he saw it.

Years later, an adult now as well as a parent, I found myself curious about the restaurants he would frequent in the wee hours of the weekend mornings while the rest of us slept in. Later he would rave to me about the eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and the choice of pancakes or toast. He explained to me that given the fact that he attended church everyday, sometimes several times a day, the first being in the wee hours of the morning; the last being the evening mass and the recital of the rosary, this extreme devotion to the lord earned him the right to eat a nice breakfast at a restaurant.

I started to take my children to the very restaurants he had told me about. Nathan and Polly were always pleased by this. I, unlike my father before me, let them order pancakes every time, figuring I’d fill whatever nutritional deficit later in the day. I ordered all of the foods he had told me about and found that when you pay $1.99 for a breakfast special you really do get what you pay for. The eggs were often cold, never soft and fluffy in their scrambled state, but rather rubbery. The hash browns arrived either in a puddle of oil or dry and burnt crisp. I never ate the meat; I just pushed it to the side of my plate, but it was grey in appearance and suspicious in its origin.

My kids loved these trips with me to various breakfast joints and so I continued on, herding them on and off busses until we had hit every last one of them. Sitting at the counter next to Nathan and Polly, who were once again sliding the whipped butter over their stacks while eagerly eying the syrup, I looked down at the fruit salad I had ordered with such high hopes. In front of me rested a plate with a scoop of cottage cheese and a pile of un-drained canned fruit cocktail swimming together.

There was no other explanation for this; the quality of these restaurants had to have declined in the years since his passing. My father was an extremely frugal man, but he took himself and the whole family out to eat frequently. He was a man who truly loved a great meal. His whole face would light up when he described to me one that was particularly memorable. No detail left unnoticed, the bread, the roast beef cooked to perfection and smothered in gravy that was neither salty nor lumpy.

I glanced around again at this place he had raved about so many times. I saw the aging booths, their yellow now looking dirty and worn instead of the bright sunny hue I imagined they once were. As my eyes scanned the tables they came to a rest on a well dressed man in a large corner booth. His suit was impeccable; his jacket carefully resting beside him. The booth was large, so large he looked comical sitting in the middle of a table that would have held eight comfortably.

He looked relaxed, comfortably reading his paper. I looked once again at my fruit salad; it was getting less palatable by the second. What the hell was booth man eating? Looking back at his table I saw a few empty glasses before him, the ice in varying stages of meltdown. There were no plates on his table. At that moment a lovely pony tailed waitress appeared before him with a fresh drink.  She cleared the other dishes away, apologizing for the delay in a thick Russian accent.

Inside my stomach a lump formed, a lump of sadness, of self reproach for not having caught onto this whole thing sooner. I wiped my children’s sticky hands and faces, helped them slide down from the counter stools, and shook my head no to my waitress’s offer of a to go box for my untouched meal.

Later, while visiting with my mom, I waited for the right moment, or for one that at least felt less wrong, before I blurted out, “Remember all of those mornings when dad would come home all animated and speak of what we had all missed out on by not going to mass with him at 6 am?”
Her jaw has been off center since my dad shattered it in a drunken rage and it never healed correctly. It clicks in and out and I know that it pains her, but we don’t speak of it.

“All of those places serve cocktails”, I say, stupidly now.

“You didn’t know that?”

“No, I thought…” but I don’t know what I had thought. Perhaps I had just been looking for a piece to the puzzle as to why the man I had hardly known had taken his own life. I knew that I mustn’t have been worth living for.

My mom reaches for the kettle for all of life’s moments, the joyous, the saddest, and everything in between. We waited together for the boil, silent, our bodies close, but not touching. She pulled out the fine china teacups and saucers and began to set the table.