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.

Another Day, Another Walk

In this morning’s meditation circle, I find myself distracted, focusing for only two or three minutes at a time. I then spend the rest of the morning ‘cleaning up’ my office. It looks better than it did an hour into the project, but it isn’t the fantasy office of last night. But I have made a dent in the disorder.

In the early afternoon I’m ‘tech buddy’ at DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). The facilitator directs the conversation, while I admit people from the ‘waiting room,’ watch for electronic blue hands (and lower them after the member speaks), and hang out in case there are technical problems, which there aren’t. Chuck, our president, likes to say, “We’re building the plane as we fly it.” That made someone nervous: “How about we’re building the plane in the hangar?” Doesn’t quite do it for me. Then I hear, "We’re flying the plane in the hangar." That’s exciting.

When I’m done with the Zoom group, I step out of my office and the fragrance of baking bread wafts up the stairs. Jim comes over from the coach house and soon we’re buttering fresh slices.

In the early evening, two friends from church start a conference call with me as I walk. Then R’el calls. I planned to walk an hour, but I have no desire to turn around. I walk down the Battle Road, which has become my favorite route. After about 50 minutes, it seems I really should turn around and come home. Five and a half miles. It feels so good to be outdoors and on the move.

I’ve adjusted pretty well to being at home. Being a homemaker, I’ve spent a lot of time at home. But I still haven’t adjusted to the idea that most other people are home all day. When my friends called, I had to remind myself that they’d been home all day: I just picture them at their job sites. This evening our ‘ministering brothers’ from church scheduled a meeting for 8 p.m. I came home and was in my office when Jim called at about 8:05 p.m. They were all on the video call. I was waiting for a knock on the door

A Diagon Alley, of sorts

I just spent 198 minutes (I’m tracking my time, have been for 4 years) ‘moving’ my desk.

It started with a Zoom problem. I’ve been spending a lot of time on Zoom: two weeks ago I realized I’d been on five Zoom calls that day. The last, a 2-hour DBSA-Boston support group for people with manic depression (bipolar), was too much. Thankfully, I wasn’t facilitating, so I gave my apologies and signed off for the night.

I usually join the Zoom meeting in my office, which is in the southwest corner of the second floor of our Queen Anne house. My desk had been sensibly placed facing the southern window, looking out towards a huge maple tree. To my right was the western window, looking out beyond the driveway to our ‘soccer field,’ the back part of the yard where we play soccer, frisbee, croquet, and badminton.

The problem is that the morning light from the southern window washes out my face during my weekday meditation session. The afternoon light from the western window does the same to the side of my face. I love the view of the outside, so I didn’t want to draw the blinds.

So, I moved the desk to be diagonally between the two windows. Yup, it took over three hours. The actual desk moving didn’t take that long. Moving all the stuff surrounding the desk, and ‘rewiring’ the phone, internet router, lamps, computer power supply, etc. did. And the sweeping and dusting and mopping that I can’t help but do when a heavy piece of furniture is dislodged after years of dust settling.

After I finished, and logged my time, I felt elated. (But not TOO elated. That’s a calculus I constantly have to make: am I feeling good (like a neuro-typical woman) or TOO good (like a woman in hypomania)).

And then the questions began: Did I spend too much time doing an optional activity? Will I finish the job and organize all the displaced stuff (which is currently on top of the regular clutter that has been accumulating on the guest bed in my office)? Will I follow FlyLady’s counsel and attack the clutter in 15-minute segments or will I try to clean it up all at once? Will I crash and burn then?

Those questions can wait till tomorrow. For today, I feel light and airy. I love the new view: I can see out both window better than before, with the laptop screen now covering the bare wall in front of me. I can look straight up and see David’s portrait. Maybe I’ll add a few more pictures, now that I’m facing that corner.

Jim once advised a business client to paint his office. The man was stressed with running a start-up company and stuck. By painting his office he could choose to do something within his control. He was being master of his fate.

That’s exactly how I feel.

Gardening after Dusk

It's after 8 p.m. when I go out, so I bring my high-powered headlamp, clippers, and trowel. I remove some more onion grass from among the sprouting irises, then move to the front stone wall and balustrade. I’ve always imagined David’s garden here. But why? To make something new and ambitious. With Jim’s help I realize that dream is self-destructive. It would require a backhoe, literally, to remove the quince roots and introduce gentler plants. I know, we tried several years ago. I hired two teen-aged boys and they dug at the roots for several hours. When their dad came to retrieve them, the hole was about two feet deep and they were standing on a thick snarl of roots. Their dad wisely pointed out, a backhoe would be needed.

This year, I will leave one quince bush, centered nicely in front of the stone wall. Our neighbor commented about it's lovely coral blossoms. I'll trim all the other starts down to the ground. Mulch and be at peace. Why does the simple way, the possible way, seem like defeat?

I’ll focus on this: David’s garden will become a reality this season.

Spring comes slowly to New England. It arrives here sooner than to central New Hampshire or Maine. But slower than to New Jersey, where I grew up. I like it that way. It gives me time to get used to it. It's nearly May, but still too early to plant tomatoes. I'm not behind yet. It’s not too late to prepare my raspberry beds. Plenty of time to improve a flower garden for our beloved son.

David's Perennial Garden

Our one-acre property has several gardens. The front lawn rolls down to the sidewalk from the 1895 Queen Anne. A stone banister leads away from the enclosed front porch towards the driveway; two azalea bushes stand as sentinels at the end of the walkway, glorious now with lavender blooms. With the cool spring weather this year, the early blossoms of azaleas, forsythias, daffodils and hyacinths are lingering.

Between the house and driveway is a large side garden of flowers and shrubs. Early in the spring of our first year, 1994, hundreds of crocuses bloomed, purple and white and yellow. One year I counted them: over 500 blossoms. In recent years, a lone crocus or two is all that appears. One fall some good friends and I planted several hundred bulbs: two plants emerged. Our local rodents, squirrels and chipmunks, had a feast that year.

The coach house stands behind the house. Beyond it is a vegetable garden with a storied past. Designed in the 1980s, its brick and stone walkways divide the ten raised vegetable beds. I had gardening dreams when we bought the house in 1993. But the reality of raising six children(ages 2 to 12 that first year) and running a busy household made large-garden management a low priority.

In 1995, we went on our famous Cross-Country trip: 48 states, three Canadian provinces, and a Mexican state. 15,900 miles. Six kids, a pop-up tent trailer, and me the sole adult for seven of the ten weeks of that summer. By fall, the garden had been taken over by weeds. We continued to garden, but year after year, uncultivated nature took over. After several years of neglect, there was a six-foot sapling with a two-inch diameter trunk in one of the beds and myriad weeds of all shapes and sizes.

All the kids had garden duty. Our David was a faithful, uncomplaining worker. He spent many hours trying to reclaim the brick pathways: their cracks were always filling with weeds.

Yesterday I planned to work in a garden. At 7 p.m., Jim told me to go, before it got dark. I donned my blue coveralls, found my gloves and trowel, and went to the side garden. I had been afraid that pulling weeds out near the sprouting irises would damage them, but it didn't.

As dusk settled, I didn’t want to stop. With the high-powered headlamp I recently bought, I could see in front of me nearly as well as in daylight. Around 9 p.m., I dumped the detritus onto our dead-weed pile, satisfied with the work of my hands.

When David died, nearly five years ago, I planned to create a memorial garden. I wanted it to be new, in front of the stone banister, and just for David. But this morning, as I surveyed the side garden, it felt right to dedicate it, which has been successful for many years, to him. There is space to plant new perennials.and everyone who visits our house will see it. I want David’s garden to bloom this summer.

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit. (If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.) - Cicero