A Young Mary Johnston

Last August, I hired my friend, Lori, as editor and cheerleader for my memoir.Then, early in the coronavirus lockdown, I experienced hypomania, that elevated state that can be the precursor of psychotic mania (hypo = below). I wasn't sleeping well and Jim and I were concerned.Perhaps writing about mania was triggering an episode, so I stopped writing it. After two months, I'm ready to restart.

In November of 1995, I woke up in a locked psychiatric hospital, shattered, crushed, devastated. I felt I'd returned from the awful decay and corruption of death. A few weeks later, I sat in a church meeting, convinced that I didn't belong, totally worthless and unworthy. I knew no one who had been psychotic, no one who had manic depression. No one.

I want to be the mentor that I didn’t have. The wiser woman who has been there, lived through it, who can assure the confused, frightened young woman that mental illness is just that: an illness. Unique in it’s effect on the mind and spirit, but manageable.

A few months ago, at Lori’s suggestion, I framed a snapshot that my dad’s cousin took in Washington State the summer before my psychotic break. The Mary in the picture grins, right hand on hip, leaning against the tan tent trailer. Annie leans against her with a five-year-old's grin. Skinny David folds his arms, his black wristwatch visible. Peter smiles from beneath a red baseball cap; R’el stands behind him. Matt’s hand rests on little Sam’s arm. Sam’s blue shorts barely peek below his large white T-shirt.

Mary’s smile is jubilant and confident. She’s in her element, fulfilling her dream of many years: driving to each of the 48 states, dipping into Mexico and Canada, and taking the whole summer vacation to do it. She has spent hundreds of hours pouring over a road atlas, counting the tiny mileage numbers to calculate reasonable day’s mileages, reading travel brochures, planning which National Parks to visit, consulting Woodall's to find campgrounds. Now she's doing it.

In three short months she’ll wake up in a hospital, wrenched back to sanity with an injection of a powerful anti-psychotic. She’ll be told she must take medication for the rest of her life. That she can't control her mind, can't be reliable without a daily dose of  pink pills. They will tamp down her enthusiasm, dull her intellect. But what's the alternative?

During those first dreadful days and weeks, she will feel alone and frightened. I want to be with her.

Distraction Tracker

Several month ago, I heard Nir Eyal talk on a podcast about his book, Indistractable. I bought the book.

With his encouragement, I started a ‘distraction tracker.’ After I decide on a schedule, I make a note in the tracker if I schedule one activity but do another. I note the planned activity, the distraction, and what I'm feeling.

My email inbox is often the distraction. Time and time again, I plan to open a word document to write or plan a lesson, but click on my inbox, just for a minute: there might be something urgent. I click on one email, and then a Facebook notification, and then start a competition with myself to see how low can my unread inbox go, while sabotaging my plan.

The inbox is a frequent distraction, but the behavior is driven by anxiety. Fear of failure and the compounding fear that it will take a lot of time before failure is obvious: that I'll work several hours on a project and have nothing to show for it.

This isn't a new topic. Jim wrote about it in one of his "Family Letters" to our kids back in 2009. R'el calls them "Harry Potter Eggs": tasks that are "hanging over her, difficult, forbidding, and important." He identifies nine reasons a task may become an egg. My personal favorite is "Glorious Fantasy": imagining an unattainable perfection, it becomes impossible to start. Or the task may be out of my comfort zone, or I haven't planned enough time for the it. There often is an unresolved conflict: an unavoidable confrontation, trade-off, or unpleasant truth I don't want to face.

I expect I'll deal with Harry Potter Eggs for the rest of my life. I hope I do. The alternative is to never attempt anything of worth. I sure hope I get better at it.

In Eyal's talk at the 2018 Habit Summit, he suggests making time for distractions. Do I have the discipline to schedule and limit my distractions? I don't have any pithy solutions. Just keep on tracking.

Dry Mouth

At 9 p.m. on October 17, 2020, I developed a side effect.  I can pinpoint the time because I was driving home from what used to be my monthly visit to NYC to see R’el and Peter & family.

I noticed a cut at the tip of my tongue and abrasions on the sides of my tongue. I compulsively rubbed my tongue across my teeth. For the next two and a half months it bothered me. At my regular appointment in January, the dentist assured me it was nothing serious. There were no visible cuts or abrasions. The tongue was ‘shiny,’ which indicates irritation. It was dry mouth. He recommended a mouth rinse and a gel. I left the office swimming in placebo effect. Hearing that it wasn’t fatal and was treatable eased my mind. I’d never had a sore for over two months.

I bought a few products and experimented with them. The symptoms waxed and waned. Back in the Bronx, with Jim, for Presidents’ Day, I woke up at 5:28 a.m. Unable to go back to sleep, I googled dry mouth. It’s a usually a defect of the salivary glands. Neck radiation can cause it. Most often, it is medication-induced. Lithium blocks a neurotransmitter that controls the salivary glands, and thus can cause dry mouth.

Although I was on lithium for seven years after I was first diagnosed, and had been back on it for over eight months without a problem, it seems it must be a drug side effect.

Being able to visualize the problem helped deal with it.

I always thought dry mouth was a wimpy complaint. Just drink more water. I mentioned it in my support group and discover another member had dry mouth. Because of her career choice, which involves a lot of public speaking, she had changed medications. I decided to work harder at overcoming it.

It’s not thirst. Drinking water moisturizes my mouth, but as soon as I swallow I'm dry again, even drinking two quarts of water a day. I noticed that my mouth feels good when I first wake up. My saliva is slightly thicker then and it coats my tongue and mouth. The mouth rinse is viscous as well, the gel even more so.

After a Zoom meeting Jim pointed out that I make funny noises and move my mouth in an unbecoming way. It seemed impossible to stop: my mouth is constantly irritated. But, I don’t want to be the weird woman who is always sucking her teeth and pursing her lips. So I went on a campaign. I sipped water constantly. I found a mouth care kit: a mouth rinse, gel, and a small spray bottle. I stopped swiping my tongue against my teeth. After about a week, the cut on my tongue disappeared. There is still one tender spot, on the gum inside my front teeth. I’ve burned it countless times since childhood, usually while biting into a hot, cheesy pizza. I’m sure the tissue is permanently damaged and more susceptible to injury. I compulsively suck it.

I'm using the spray bottle often. Sugarless cough drops occupy my tongue, so I laid in a supply of sugarless cough drops and candies.

It’s a small problem. But it feels good to have some control and fight it.