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.

Flagpoles and Spines

I apologize for being AWOL (absent without leave) for four months.

Today I read a ‘morning musing’ email from  FlyLady Marla Cilley: "You Might Be a Perfectionist If..." I’ve been a perfectionist about my blog. If I can’t dedicate several hours to it, I don’t post. So, here’s an experiment: I pledge to post here daily, by 9 p.m. through April. I just changed my email signature:

Blog “updated DAILY in April”.

I am a proud member of DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). When Jim and I started self-isolation on March 13, I felt secret relief that my volunteer commitments, including facilitating at DBSA once or twice a week, would halt and I could re-set. I felt overbooked but unwilling to give anything up. To my dismay, The DBSA Board swung into action. They met in video-conference each day for over two weeks and launched online support groups for people with mood disorders and their family and friends. It was an intense experience for me, in fact, I started going hypomanic for the first time in many years. Now that the online program is in place, the time commitment has lessened (and the hypomania has receded (dang!)).

I’ve discovered, in an unexpected and deep way, that I am part of a community of generous, caring people who understand mental illness because of ‘lived experience.’ Many people have stepped up and given time and effort to maintain our connections with each other during an uncertain time when many people are experiencing anxiety and isolation.

Khare, DBSA-Boston's technical guru, works every day to improve our online experience. For years he has been our meditation specialist, generously guiding a weekly Meditation Circle. Now he offers one every weekday.

How comforting it was to  see familiar friends this morning. Khare suggested an image I've been thinking about all day: a flagpole and flag. The flag is whipped by a strong wind, then ruffled gently, then hangs limp. The experience of life can be as disruptive as strong winds, but I can be the flagpole, not the flag.

I've never bonded with the standard meditation metaphor that my thoughts are clouds to be observed dispassionately, letting them drift by without trying to prevent them or hold them. But this has possibilities. My thoughts can be like wind: coming and going, unbidden and, unpredictable. They can be benign, helpful, practical, distracting, distorted, depressed, or hypomanic. My spine can be my flagpole. My backbone gives my body structure and strength. It supports me, whether I sit, or stand, or lie down. It isn't brittle and in danger of breaking, but strong and supple. With a healthy spine, I can be solidly grounded.

I’ve never stayed with meditation; I'd get restless and bored. But this practice is different. I awoke this morning feeling anxious, fully awake but unrested, and reluctant to get out of bed and face my life. After twenty minutes with my eyes closed, I was ready to start my day afresh. Not energized, exactly, but fortified.

Indecision

Before David got leukemia, I had a habit of driving down to the New Jersey/New York area regularly. I would make a loop, staying in the Bronx with Peter, Xiomara, and Andrew, then driving to New Jersey to be with my parents. On my way back home, I’d stop by and see my brother, Mike in his residential facility. With David’s illness, those trips stopped. Sometime after his death, I resumed the trips. Mom and Dad had both died, so the loop changed: I’d visit Mike in New Jersey, feed him supper, drive to Manhattan to have supper with R’el, then onto the Bronx to spend a few days with Peter, Xiomara, and the kids.

Mike died in January, a week after I had visited him in his New Jersey nursing home and made the loop. In February, R’el and Peter’s family went to Florida for February vacation, so I took the month off. Next week, Jim and I are going to take a two-day trip to the Bronx. My first solo trip since Mike's death will be in May. I’ve been paralyzed about it. It should make things simpler, to drop the trip to New Jersey. But it makes it more complicated emotionally.

Isn’t it an odd thing. Much like my indecision about which support group to attend, or whether to just go home, eight days after Mike's death, the question of how exactly to do these trips, the logistics, the when and where, overwhelm me. I emailed R’el with my dilemma and she cheerfully wrote back, suggesting travel options and offering to look into anything I needed help with. All of which I could have easily researched myself, but which seemed beyond my capacity.

A friend of mine at Compassionate Friends, my bereaved parents’ support group, said she thought she’d been holding it together until she looked at a restaurant menu and realized she couldn’t decide what to order. Yes, it’s exactly like that.

For our monthly family book group, we read and discussed Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Jim and I also watched the excellent 1993 film, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. The main character, Stevens, is a butler in a great English country house in the 1920s to 1950s. He is extremely proper and reserved: he values “dignity” above all else, including human relationships. It’s a heartbreaking story. At times of great emotional crisis, all Stevens can express, even to himself, is that he is ‘tired’. That’s how his emotions find expression. For me, indecision is the expression of my grief.

Compassionate Friends

I went to Bereaved Parents of Middlesex County tonight. It’s a part of The Compassionate Friends, a support group for parents, grandparents, and siblings of a child, grandchild, or sibling who has died.

I hadn’t been for a long time: nearly a year and a half. But I had an experience last week at our church’s wreathmaking party: the first much-anticipated holiday event of the season. There’s a program (this year it was Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols complete with a harpist), and the  optional making of wreaths. (Mine hangs on my kitchen porch.) The congregation sings a few Christmas carols. I love Christmas, especially the music. But as the first chords of the organ sounded, I started to weep, holding myself so I wouldn’t shake with sobs. Slamming into an unforeseen brick wall.

A few days later I was visiting a friend in the hospital and told him of my experience. “There’s no expiration date on grief,” he wisely said.

So, tonight I went to Compassionate Friends. I actually went last night, but found one other mother standing outside the darkened church building. We had a good, healing conversation. She asked, “Does it get better?” I wish I had words for it: better is not quite it. But, yes, I can now feel happiness and even joy and can hear a helicopter without being overcome with gut-wrenching emotion.

We later found out the meeting had been changed to Tuesday. I had received an email about the change, but when I received it I wasn’t planning to go, so I'd forgot about it.

Each story is different: the commonality is the heartbreak and heartache. I had forgotten the closing tradition. We stand together, holding hands around the table and speak our child’s name, “Good night, David.” That is very powerful and catches me off-guard every time. I can barely speak his name. I realize that I’m not able to truly wish David good night. I’m crying right now, as I write this. It’s a lonely, desolate feeling.

It’s a comfort to meet together, in “the club no one wants to join.”

Chord Progression

On Sunday, at choir rehearsal, I was learning the alto part to “O Holy Night” for our Christmas program. Suddenly, my throat seized and tears welled in my eyes. I couldn’t sing.

I try not to be noticed when I cry. But my friend, Christy, noticed and whispered, “Are you okay?”

Afterwards, I told her, “Sometimes the music just hits me.”
“Isn’t that why we do it?”
“But it makes it impossible to sing.”

What are those harmonies? I took a music appreciation class in high school, taught by my beloved orchestra conductor, Mr. Ragno. He was a true mentor and friend to a group of us students. We would sit in his office for hours, talking  with him. He was genuine, compassionate, and took us seriously. But that was 45 years ago, and how much knowledge could he have poured into my brain in one semester?

I just googled 'Ragno Westfield NJ' and found his obituary. He died two years ago, at the age of 86. Jim and I met him on the sidewalks of Westfield back in the early 1980s. He was as gregarious and Italian as ever. I'm glad we saw him. I wish I could tell him that I still think about him. He's a real-life Mr. Holland.

Yesterday, my friend and piano teacher, Cami, helped me pick out the chords in "O Holy Night." E-flat major, c minor, g minor, f minor. Chord progression: I-vi-iii-ii. Intense. I feel pierced and vulnerable.

“Isn’t that why we do it?”