Tag Archives: mental health

Goodbye Easy, Hello Happy

Recently a string of minor inconveniences has detoured me from getting any kind of daily exercise, and the combination of this with the holidays, a nasty recycled virus, and some extra responsibilities have left me feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and now, according to my all-wise therapist, depressed. I am Patient Zero for mental illness. I already have SAD, ADD, and chronic Just Let Me Take a Nap-itis. Now I’m depressed. Really? Just now? I thought I was born depressed.

In all seriousness, this happens to me every winter to one extent or another. This winter, though, I have gained weight. More than the usual oh-no-its-time-to-give-up-the-second-glass-of-wine weight. This is a sneaky, perfidious weight. My sluggish mind acknowledges that action must be taken, but it is cold outside, and I’ve been playing phone tag with the trainer at the gym to get a new workout planned, and my jeans HURT me. I should take them off. There’s not a lot one can do without wearing pants, except nap. I should nap.

And so it goes. I just want things to be easy.

I was talking to a friend recently who was returning to the grind of medical school after a month off. He was remarking on how easily he had adapted to doing absolutely nothing, and how that scared him because he had some relatives who’d ballooned to four hundred pounds and had not left their house, had not left their sofa, in a decade. “It runs in my family!” he said, looking mildly horrified.

I don’t have to shake the family tree too hard to find my own versions of what I might become if I let things slide, but this only occasionally prevents me from practicing a slew of bad habits. This winter it’s getting harder and harder to find external motivations for doing what my internal motivators have decided to nap through. What if my internal motivators don’t wake up? What if they just go on a long, long holiday and leave no forwarding address? I can see the handwriting on the wall, folks. Inside me there is a fat, alcoholic, hoarding, crazy cat lady living on the public dole and the only thing I have to do to let her emerge is nothing at all.

I don’t want to have to exercise to be thin and fit. I don’t want to have to get up early to get anything done in a day. I don’t want to have to wrestle out all the terrible paragraphs onto a page before one beautiful sentence emerges. I don’t want to have to fight with an acquaintance to have her become a friend. I don’t want to have to embrace a lot of ugly truths about myself before I find the grace to extend forgiveness to someone else, and yet I’m greedy. I want to be, and have all these things.

I just need to say no to the Easy Button.

My therapist says to start with one thing at a time. Get back to exercising every day. I’ve promised him I will, so now I have to do it or lie to him next time. I hate the cold. I’ll blow my knee or shoulder out if I start a new workout without the trainer. The fat lady in me wants to take a nap immediately. But the greedy lady in me wins. I put on three complete layers of clothing and waddle out into the arctic freeze to do three miles.

It is positively blissful.

Still No Room at the Inn

A different kind of Christmas story, but some of the characters feel the same. There’s a fourteen year old girl. She’s not pregnant, but she carries a heavy load. There are shepherds scattered throughout this tale, a high school principal, a guidance counselor, a police officer, keeping watch. Like the original story, a journey must be made, lodging and assistance is required and time is of the essence, but the innkeeper in this story is not a busy, distracted hotelier. It is an overwhelmed and completely impersonal mental health system.

Zero in on the setting for this drama- not a crowded, filthy stable, but an empty, windowless cell in the psychiatric lockdown unit of a suburban ER. No manger for a bed, rather a two inch thick vinyl covered mat on a bare tile floor. There are shepherds here also. They wear military type uniforms. They confiscate and lock up your possessions, show you the stance you are to take as you are “wanded” for contraband, and control the door in and out of the unit, in and out of your cell, a door with no handle on your side. They are just doing their job. Our fourteen year old young lady, scared and confused, bears her load with grace and dignity and waits for help.

Like the stable on that long ago night, the lockdown is crowded. Neighbors arrive on stretchers, in handcuffs, sometimes other restraints. They bring their people, just like our young lady brought you. We make a strange little collective, a collage of humanity, the dazed, the raging, the profane, the apologetic, the apathetic, and the sad. The sensory deprivation of the cell, the brightness of the light, the lack of information about what to expect, what to hope for, tests you.

A bed in one of three in-patient units in the city… that’s what you wait for, but like the original Christmas day, you are in a crowded city teeming with activity. Information is fed to you in little scraps sandwiched between thick slabs of boredom spent waiting for more little scraps until you feel like a lab rat staring at your door, listening to conversations in the hallway, watching the activity that passes by. With no clocks anywhere, time doesn’t pass so much as pause. The challenge for a fourteen year old in such a place is to keep her humor sharpened, to wield it defensively as needed, and sometimes to flatten it like a shield across her heart when the impossible looms.

Unlike our young lady, you are allowed to exit the lockdown and re-enter the larger world. When you do, the contrast is unsettling. It is December and all the world is planning a party. Swags of evergreen and twinkle lights drape the hospital doorways. The halls are swarming with cheerful ladies in green jackets selling cakes, cookies, wreaths. Tables are lined up featuring jewelry, bobbles, handmade crafts from around the world. You can barely navigate through the common areas. Even in the hospital, people are shopping.

A wise man finds his way to our girl’s cell, a pediatrician. He is kind, and gentle, but he cannot provide a bed at an in-patient unit. Another wise man, a psychologist bearing gifts, recommends two books to read when our fourteen year old returns home. He is apologetic that he cannot find a room at the in-patient unit.

A day, a night, a day.

It is Christmas in America, and I am looking everywhere for Jesus.

Maybe Christmas is just a holiday for happy people. Maybe the way we celebrate Christmas, the commotion, the gift buying and giving, the lights, the music, the hype and expectation of it all does nothing to invite the sad, the discouraged, the frightened, the lonely. A crowded church full of joyous, well-dressed people singing familiar songs does not automatically banish the demons that prey on the downtrodden. Nothing about a brightly lit tree or a house full of relatives can fill an empty heart. No gift that comes in a box or a bag will make up for returning home to a broken life at the end of the day.

A fourteen year old wakes up on a December morning and isn’t certain she can make it through the day without hurting herself, but like the young woman in Bethlehem whose baby comes early into an overcrowded world, there is no room at the inn for her. It’s a different kind of Christmas story, but it’s the one I lived this past week.