Housekeeping

Just a note on the organizational structure of the blog.  I've created another page that will have the all of the longer posts that build upon one another.  This way, if you want to read them together you don't have to work your way backwards. It also will come in handy for new readers.

You will notice the link for this page is called,  "Past Tense in Total."

Present Tense - 12/4

One thing I’m worried about with this blog is that through telling my side of the story I’ll sound like some kind of super-supportive saint who is always behaving perfectly instead of just a person dealing with life as best he can.  I don’t always react perfectly or even well to some of the situations that occur.  It can be hard to hold it together.  Over Thanksgiving I did pretty well.  Jessica wasn’t feeling well, I knew this going in, and so I had it in my head that I had to be in control of myself.  I had to keep up whatever front would work to give my sons a happy holiday.  It can be easier to do that for an event – it’s kind of like getting psyched up for the big game. 

Day to day living is harder.  Sometimes I am so angry at Jessica that I want to scream.  I know she is sick, I know she doesn’t want to feel bad, yet I get mad.  I’ve been told this is normal.  People dealing with loved ones who have physical ailments such as cancer often have the same feelings. 

Yesterday was a bad day.  Bad for Jessica -- the night before she once again skipped a dose of Geodon in her off and on quest to be drug free.  This caused her to be unable to sleep and for her anxiety to spike.  It was a bad day for me too.  I was tired because when Jessica can’t sleep she also can’t stop herself from waking me and telling me her fears and concerns.  So, neither of us was in a good place when Jason starting having a tantrum about some school related project.  I threatened to ground him from sports if he didn’t stop, which caused him to storm out of the room.  Jessica was livid with my threat, telling me that my threats didn’t help but only resulted in him escalating his behavior.  At this point I just wanted to run away.  To just leave and never come back and when I walked out of the room Jessica yelled to me, “Please don’t walk away. I need you here with me.”  When she is feeling bad she hates for me to be away from her, even if it is in the next room.  I started losing my temper and told her I couldn’t take being tied to her.  I stomped around like a two year old and slammed a door and said again that I couldn’t take it.  Jessica started crying and I calmed down.  I hugged her and she started telling me how much she didn’t want to feel bad, and that she was scared and while I held her and wanted to help so much of me was still so mad.  I shoved all that anger and frustration back down and put on my game face.  But I’m no saint, I can’t always do this right and some days I know that more than others. 

Lost and Found

Cont'd from Coming Home...

 “Is Mom still there?”

“I’m sure she is,” I told him.  Truthfully, I wanted to go back to sleep and I was sure Jessica was finally exhausted and fell asleep herself.

“I’m going to check,” Jason said and trotted into the sitting room.

“Dad,” he said with a panicked voice. “She’s not here.”

I jerked myself fully awake and rushed over to him. 

“We’ll find her.  We’ll find her.”

With Jason right behind me we went to the door.  I threw on a coat and slid into my shoes.  Jason was out the door before me and was waiting by the car.  In the soft new dusting of snow I could see her footprints making their way out to the road.  It was clear from her tracks that she wasn’t wearing shoes.  I walked to the end of the driveway hoping I could see which was she had gone.  I went back to the car.

We backed out of the driveway and pulled into the street.  We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when we saw her.  She was sitting cross-legged on the side of the road, but still in the road.  Her hands were resting on her knees, her palms faced upward and her forefinger and thumbed connected to form circle. 

I pulled up next to her positioning my car so that it would protect her from any traffic that might come her way.  Jason jumped out of the car before I came to a complete stop.

He was standing next to her, his hand on her shoulder, shaking her while saying “Mom” over and over again.

I crouched next to her. Her eyes were closed and her chin was slightly upturned. The headlights from my car caught the sparkling snow around her. 

“Jessica,” I said.

She didn’t answer. I shook her.  She didn’t respond.  I pushed her harder.  Her body just seemed to absorb my energy and not move.  I stood and looked around.  A car came toward us slowing down as it approached.  The headlights silhouetted Jason.  His breath floated out of his mouth like smoke in the cold air.

I leaned against the hood of my car.

“Dad, what are we going to do?” asked Jason

I ran my hand through my hair and stared  up into the clear sky.  I remember noticing the Big Dipper and for some reason started thinking about when we lived in Maryland.  We had a little house there where we had started our family.  I was just starting out after the military and college, and Jessica was doing coporate nursing.  She thought it was so silly that I’d bought glow in the dark stars and stuck them to our bedroom ceinling in the form of various constellations.

“Dad?”

“I don’t know buddy.”

“We can’t leave her sitting there.”

“I know. I guess I have to call the police.”

“No,” Jason said. “I don’t want them to arrest her.”

“They won’t arrest her.  They will just help us get her to the hospital.”

The last thing I wanted was to call the police, but I had no idea what else to do.  I couldn’t leave her in the road, in the cold, sitting half in a snow bank and half on the wet pavement.  I couldn’t get her in the car myself.

Reluctantly I dialed 911 again.

“The police will be there shortly,” the tinny voice said.

I hung up and waited.

Present Tense - 11/20

Jessica continues to struggle, but not as much.  Still anxious and full of fear.  She can't sit still for any length of time and can't relax.  She is in the phase of feeling bad where she questions every choice she has ever made.  I try to tell her that she did the best she could, and anyway, there is no going back.  Nothing really helps.  I really want her to go to a counselor, but she won’t.  The only time she has is when it was ordered as part of her release from in patient care at the hospital.  The only help she gets is an alternative therapy called Body Talk (which I think is a load of crap - all placebo effect when it has positive results at all).  It is selfish of me, but I get so tired of this life.  I want to have a normal life with friends to things with.  We’ve lost most of our friends as her illness has gotten worse.  I shouldn’t complain.  Some days I just want to go back to the life we had.  Most days I’m okay with that not being possible.  Today I’m just feeling sorry for myself.  I will snap out of it, it just sucks when you are in it.

Present Tense - 11/12/12

Jessica hasn’t been doing great.  Her anxiety is really bad.  Her face has that tight look that scares the hell out of me.  What also scares the hell out of me is that she just told me that she has stopped taking her antidepressant – Effexor.  Apparently she has spent the last month weaning herself off of it.  Since her last hospitalization in May 2012, she has been prescribed Geodon (and antipsychotic) and Effexor (an antidepressant) and has mostly stayed on both.  By mostly I mean she takes the Geodon, but less than the doctor would like, and until recently, was taking the Effexor. I'm not entirely sure the latest downturn in her well being is connected to going off the Effexor, as she has had problems even while taking it, but it certainly can't help.

She has always been resistant to medication.  She says she doesn’t want to become addicted to them and rely on them for her health.  I’ve tried to use the argument that if she had a heart condition, she wouldn’t worry about being addicted, but it doesn’t go far with her. 

I can tell she is in a very bad place right now.  She is starting to apologize for feeling bad – which is a bad sign – and is worried about functioning if I am not home with her – a terrible sign.  I don’t know what to do for her.  When I try to convince her she to take the full dose of Geodon, or to go back on to the Effexor, she accuses me of just trying to push medication on her without regard to her getting better.

Present Tense - Intro

As most blogs are meant to be more than a retelling of events that have already occurred, I’ve decided to include posts regarding events that are occurring now – posts that I will call “Present Tense.”  I think that even without the entire back story the posts will makes sense.  I’ll have the first Present Tense posted soon, so be sure to check back.

Coming Home

We convinced Jessica to come home.  

Jason and I had followed her for a block or so before she finally stopped.  I got out of the car and walked up to her.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“It’ll be okay.  Just come home.”

“The messages are telling me to leave you guys but I don’t want to.  I’m scared.”

Her eyes were wild and darted occasionally.  Ever since this started, her eyes had taken on this kind of caged-animal look.  Honestly, they reminded me of the way our cat looked at night when he was bouncing off the walls wanting to go out.  The rest of her face looked tight.  I don’t know if that is really a good description, but that is what it seemed to me - tight.  She looked almost like another person.

“You don’t have to leave us,” I said. “I don’t know why you are getting messages saying you have to leave us, but the messages are wrong.  You don’t have to leave.  I love you.  The boys love you.”

Finally, thankfully, she got into the car.

Jason spoke up right away.

“Mom I’m sorry you aren’t feeling good.  If this is because I slept over Josh’s I won’t do it again.”

My heart broke a little listening to Jason.  Of all the pain I’d felt in the last hours, the pain of Jason’s statement was almost unbearable.  It struck me how quickly kids, and all of us really, look to blame ourselves for things.  To an adult, the idea of Jason’s sleepover causing all this turmoil was ludicrous, but to Jason it was possible.

Before I could reassure him, Jessica spoke, “It’s ok honey, and it’s not you.  I love you.  I haven’t been a good mom to you.  I want you to know how much I love you. You deserve a good mom.”

Jason was crying as he said, “But you are a good mom.”

He reached into the front seat to put his hand on her shoulder.

We got her home.  It was almost 3am.  I got Jessica upstairs to our room and Jason into his. Harry was in his room, the door closed, hopefully asleep.  

“I know it will be hard, but try to get some sleep,” I said to him.

“Just don’t let her leave again.”

“I won’t,” I replied and kissed his forehead.

Jessica lay in bed but she was still in the same sweats and light shirt she had been wearing when we left for the hospital.  I sat on the bed next to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s ok.”

“No, I mean I’m sorry for everything.  I’ve done so many bad things.  In my whole life I’ve done so many bad things and I’m so sorry for them.”

Jessica had not done a lot of bad things in her life.  She was and still is a nurse.  She has spent most of her life helping people.  And though our marriage like others had its ups and downs, she was not a bad wife, nor a bad mother.

She sat up next to me and took my hands into hers.  

“I need you to look right into my eyes while we talk,” she said.

“Ok.”

“I’ve tried to help people but it has all been for ego,” she began.

I began to protest.

“No listen.  I haven’t been a good person because even if I’m doing something good it isn’t for good reasons.  It’s because I wanted people to see how great I was or something.  That’s why the messages are telling me to leave.  I have to learn to really help people.  You know I’m a healer, but I haven’t been healing like I’m supposed to.  You have to look at me when we talk.”

My eyes must have drifted off of hers.  It’s actually quite hard to not break eye contact while talking to someone.  I brought my eyes back to hers and she stared at me with her intense caged eyes.

“I haven’t been a good mother either.  I get mad too easy.  I don’t always put the kids first.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I told her.  “What you are saying isn’t true. It doesn’t make sense.  You know all you’ve done for this family, for your kids.”

What she was saying didn’t make sense.  She was a wonderful mom.  She loved her kids as much as anyone could.  She did everything she could for them.  She gave up a corporate nursing career to stay home with them.  Everything about this situation felt so weird and wrong to me, and everything she was saying about herself was so weird and wrong.  It was like some other person was confessing to me all of her sins, sins Jessica had not committed.

Abruptly she sat up.

“Where are you going?” I asked.  I was worried she was going to take off again.

“Just to the bathroom.”

I watched her walk down the hall and into the bathroom.  I slowly lay back onto the bed.  

“Where did Mom go?” Jason called out from his bedroom.  His room was directly across from ours, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he was still awake and vigilant.

“It's ok buddy, she just went to the bathroom.”

Jessica returned and got into the bed next to me.  She stayed stiffly on her back.

“Let’s try to sleep,” I said.

“Ok.”

After fifteen minutes or so Jessica sat up again.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t sleep.  I’m going to go sit downstairs.”

Before I could say anything she was down the hall and down the stairs.  Jason was quickly out of bed and in my room.

“Where is she going?” he asked.

“Just to sit downstairs.”

“I’m going to,” he said.

“She’ll be ok.”

“What if she leaves?”

“Ok, we will both go downstairs.”

Jessica was back in the sitting room, on the couch where all this began.  Jason and I sat in the TV room on another couch.  Jason slumped against me, his head on my shoulder.

“Let’s not fall asleep Dad.  I think she will leave if we do.”

“Okay.”

I understood his fears and I didn’t want to tell him I thought the same thing.  So we sat.  I faced the sitting room where Jessica was -- her back was to us and I could see the silhouette of her head above the back of the couch.

Jason shook me awake.

“Dad you fell asleep.”

“Did I?”

I did not know I dozed off.  It was like a blank sleep of exhaustion.

“I think I did too,” Jason said. “Is Mom still there?”

“I’m sure she is,” I told him.  Truthfully, I wanted to go back to sleep and I was sure Jessica was finally exhausted and fell asleep herself.

“I’m going to check,” Jason said and trotted into the sitting room.

“Dad,” he said with a panicked voice. “She’s not here.”

The Begining

“Why won’t Mom get in the car?” Jason asked.

Jason was my 10 year old son.  Why his Mom wouldn’t get ion the car was a question that I wasn’t sure how to answer because I still wasn’t sure I knew the answer.

“She’s sick buddy.  Something is making her not think right,” I told him.

“I wish she wasn’t sick,” he replied.

I did too.  I wished it very much.  But that isn’t where we were.

Where we were was driving slowly down one of the side streets in our small city, shadowing what looked like a homeless woman but was really my wife Jessica.  It was about two in the morning, it was February and it was cold.  Wet snowflakes sputtered in the air.  My wife shuffled slowly down the sidewalk.  She wore a large loose coat with a sweatshirt underneath that made her look bulky and large.  She carried a cloth grocery bag that was really a quickly thrown together sort of emergency supply kit – it contained some fruit roll-ups and energy bars, a sweater, a blanket, a flashlight I think, and some other things I didn’t see when she pulled it out of the trunk (I didn’t even realize she had this kit ready to go, never having noticed it in the trunk).  Her long brown-but-graying hair that was usually neatly braided or pulled back now swirled around her head with the wind and intermittent snow.  She wore skateboarding shoes my teenage son Harry had given her when she had originally refused to get in the car after leaving the hospital emergency room in stocking feet about an hour ago.

An hour ago.  

More like a lifetime ago - when we were in the emergency room.  Jessica had been brought there after I called the ambulance.  She had been meditating in the sitting room, trying to make herself feel better.  The past week had been a hard one for Jessica.  She had been more anxious than usual.  She was worried about our oldest son, Harry, graduating high school in a few months.  She was worried about our food being contaminated with Fukushima radiation.   She was sure government agents had been in the health food store where she worked trying to find some reason to shut it down.  Most of all she was tortured by “messages” she had gotten in her dreams about a cataclysmic event that was soon to occur in the United States (as I write this, I’m struck by how clearly insane some of her thoughts were, yet at the time I was able to somehow convince myself she wasn’t ill.  Perhaps it was because her thoughts gradually became extreme, starting with reasonable suspicion and ending at clear paranoia.  Also, it wasn’t until later that I learned the “messages” she got telling her things also occurred while she was awake).  She was not sleeping, and not only that, she was waking me up to tell me important revelations she was having, dreams that had meaning, or important thoughts that were coming to her.  She was exhausted and I only slightly less so.

She had been in the sitting room for quite a while when I realized how quiet she was.  I thought perhaps she fell asleep, so I went in to check on her.  I found her lying on the couch, and though her eyes were closed she didn’t seem to be sleeping.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She didn’t respond.  I shook her lightly and still she didn’t respond.  I shook her harder.  Terrified, I put my hand on her chest and was relieved that I could feel her breathing.  I shook her again to no avail.  I slapped her face lightly, then a little harder.  She made no response.

My oldest son Harry came into the room, then my youngest Jason joined us (my middle son Corey was over a friend’s house).  They each called to her and shook her, much as I had, and both to no avail.

Finally I called the ambulance.

The EMTs found her in the same state.  They could not rouse her either.  All of her vital signs seemed normal.  They began to load her onto a gurney for transport to the hospital.  Once in the ambulance she regained consciousness.  

“I want to stay home,” she said.

“We have to find out what’s wrong,” I told her.  “It will be okay.”

I let my sons know I was riding with Jessica in the ambulance and that I would call them as soon as I could.

On the way to the hospital, she went out again.  It was so odd, so bizarre.  One minute she was talking, the next she was flat out.  As we pulled up to the hospital she came to again.  They wheeled her into an exam room.

Nurses checked her out and asked her questions.  She seemed fine physically, they told me, and the doctor would be in soon.  Before they could officially admit her to the emergency room, she decided she didn’t want to be there.

“I’m being told I have to leave,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m getting a message telling me to leave.  I’m leaving.”

“Wait,” I said.

I rushed out to the nurses’ station to tell them she was leaving.

“We can’t make her stay,” the nurse who had first seen Jessica told me.

I rushed back to Jessica who was making her way out of the room.  She had no coat or shoes, just the light shirt and sweats she had been wearing when the EMTs had arrived at our house.

“Jessica, wait.  Let’s get you checked out.”

She had never behaved like this before, and I was unsure what was going on.

“I have to leave.  I have to leave and be homeless.”

“What?”

This made no sense to me.

“I am not humble enough.  The message I’m getting is that I’m supposed to live homeless in order to understand everything.”

She left the building and I was fast behind her.  I convinced her to wait long enough for me to get my son Harry on the phone and have him drive to the hospital to get us.

“I can’t go home with you. I’m sorry,” Jessica said.

“Just wait until Harry gets here, please?”

I was fairly begging her.

She gave in and agreed to wait.  She shivered in the cold, coatless and shoeless.

Finally Harry arrived with Jason in the car with him.  Harry got in the back and I slid in behind the wheel.

“Let’s just go home and talk about this, ok?” I asked.

She would not join us in the car.

She said, “I need some shoes.”

“Let’s get some at home,” I said.

She started to walk away.

Harry yelled after her, “Here Mom, take mine.”

She returned to the car and put on his shoes.  She asked me to pop the trunk.  She pulled out the cloth grocery bag and a coat and started to walk away.  I got out of the car and followed her.

I pleaded with her, “What’s going on?  Why are you doing this?  Just come home. Don’t do this to the boys.”

“I’m not doing this to hurt anyone.  The messages I’m getting are saying I have to.”

Not knowing what else to do, I let her walk away.  I drove the few blocks back to our house.

“We can’t let her go Dad,” said Jason.

“I know.   I just don’t know what to do.”

I decided Jason was right, I couldn’t just leave her wandering around.  I dropped Harry at home and Jason and I went to find her.

“Why won’t Mom get in the car?” Jason asked.

And I didn’t know, and I felt like this was the start of our descent into maelstrom.

A welcome and an explanation

My wife is mentally ill. She has schizophrenia.  These are hard words to write, to read, and especially hard to live.  But I’ve had to embrace them, to accept them as true and to deal with them.  This blog then is part of that process.  I have been encouraged by a friend whom I have helped to create this blog.  I feel silly saying I’ve helped him – really I just listened to him, as did others in the support group.  But our stories were very similar, and it helped him to know that others have gone through very similar experiences and lived through them, just like it helps all of us to know that our suffering is not unique.  So I guess by my  living the closest thing to a normal life I could I have helped my friend see how he might do the same.  

The purpose then of this blog is two-fold.  One purpose is a sort of self-therapy -- writing therapy to help myself.  The second purpose is the same trite but useful purpose all personal stories have – to let others know that what they are going through has been gone through before.  So the entries you read here (if anyone in fact does ever read them) will be the story of my descent into the maelstrom of mental illness.  The title is from the Edgar Allen Poe story “A Descent into Maelstrom.”  I named it this because being a part of a loved one’s slide into mental illness is very much like Poe’s description of being pulled into a vortex of whirling water.  The panic at the beginning, the terrible pull towards what seems certain disaster, the clarity that comes with accepting and then observing the happenings – and then the hope that arises when you see things escape destruction – all of the descriptions from Poe’s story seem to be a perfect metaphor for this terrible journey.

The future entries will be my attempt to chronicle what has happened as well as what is happening.  I will be writing the truth, though I realize the truth can look different depending upon one’s viewpoint.  I hope I don’t make myself look like some kind of saint or martyr.  That’s not my intention.  Just getting all of this on paper and trying to make it all makes sense is all I am looking for.  If anyone out there stumbles upon this blog and finds something useful in it, that is more the better.

Thanks for reading.