Perfectly Normal People Can Be Crazy

Daughter number one has bi-polar, we think. Personally, I think it is something else. But whatever it may be called, it causes problems for her, interferes with her life, and requires medication. We frequently have small crises and calls to schools. But she has changed, because now when we have these crises she is able to identify where she went off track and to profess a sincere intent to try and avoid the problem behavior in the future. Her therapy is successful in that she mostly understands what is going on and where she needs to change her behavior, even if she’s not yet able to successfully do those things all the time.

Daughter number two has no diagnosable mental illness, although she is a teenager. She is able to handle all of her many activities, her heavy school load, and always be on time without any prompting from me. She gets good grades and puts lots of effort into her chosen after school activities. She is mostly a happy, cheerful, talkative young lady. But every now and then, without any warning, the wind changes and suddenly everything I do annoys her, and request I make results in protests and deliberate indifference ( and I’m not talking about heavy duty requests here. I mean things like “go get your coat so we can leave” kinds of things). This morning I wanted her to brush her teeth before we left for school. “Momma!” she wailed. I stopped, unable to think of a good response, since she always brushes her teeth and she knew she was about to leave for school, so there wasn’t anything about the circumstances that tipped me off to the coming weirdness. After that, everything I did or said elicited a huff, eye roll, or contradiction. Even my statement in the car that it was cold today got a snippy response as to how it wasn’t really cold because it was above freezing.

So, daughter number one and daughter number two both have “issues” as we like to say. Is it better to have big issues by know you have them, or to have little issues that you completely deny? At this point, I’m not at all sure.

January blue sky

January has been hard on the depressed people in my household. I find it difficult to comprehend, because we live in a part of the country where the sky stays blue all winter long, unlike where I grew up, where it really is gray all the time for months at a stretch. So when my depressed people tell me that the lack of "light" is why they are struggling, I find it hard to understand, since we already live where other people come in the winter to get light.

My incomprehension aside, this has been a tough winter for my family. My husband finally got so lost in his depression that he could no longer cope with it by himself, so I spent several days last week hunting down low-cost mental health services. My husband and I have no health insurance (our kids do, though), and while we could swing a visit to the doctor and even some medication, treatment for depression is certainly going to require multiple visits and we won't be able to swing that. So I did finally find a source that will allow us quite a few visits to both a doctor and therapist at significantly reduced cost. The earliest appointments were about a week out, so we won't start visiting providers until the end of this week.

The interesting thing, though, is that as soon as my husband learned that help was coming, even though it was a week away, he started to feel better. It's almost like once he committed to leaning on someone else, the pain began to lessen. I'm mighty glad, and can't wait to get him to the help he needs so that he can relax even more. It was painful for me to watch him.

It was also painful to be the one on the other side. All the household responsibility falls to me when he sinks so low, and although he can still get up and do certain tasks, he can only do them if I specifically assign him to do them and there are only certain ones that he can do. And he cannot handle any real life problems, like our rapidly dwindling funds. I avoid talking to him about my own stresses, because so often it exacerbates the problem for me rather than helps, as he is likely to have a major anxiety, self-hating epsiode if I tell him we're having problems. When he is not depressed he is a wonderful partner. When he is depressed, he's not only not a help, he's an additional problem. So on behalf of myself, I am also glad he is going to see professional personnel this week.

Money is Tight

Being self employed is tough at times. My business is one of the few that does not live for the holidays. In fact, my business came to a dead stop this past December, as everyone decided to put off seeking what I have until "after the holidays."

Which means that I am seriously behind in my income, and delaying every expense I can possibly delay. I do not want to tell my kids because I am afraid that they will worry unnecesarily. We literally do not have any money for anything right now, but that will change in the very near future. In the past, though, my kids have proven to be most excellent at worrying needlessly. While I need them to economize and delay purchases, I do not need them to fret about whether we will have food tomorrow (we will). So I decided to just not tell them. But that means they are mystified when I keep not getting things they've asked for or told me they need. Like, buying lunch at school instead of taking one from home. Or not replacing the game boy cord right away.

It's not that my kids are spoiled, they just don't know why I'm saying no, and since they're not really asking for "stuff," I think they believe I'm either incredibly absent-minded or that something is wrong and I just haven't told them.

I am expecting income any day. I just don't know which day that will be.

What Obama Said

Here's what I heard President Obama say in his first speech as president:

Many people made huge sacrifices to come to this country.
Many people took huge leaps of faith to settle this nation.
Many people worked long and hard and fought with their lives to make this nation better.

And all these people said they did it so their family, their children, could have a better life.

And WE are those children for whom the sacrifices were made. We are the children and descendants for whom the better life was sought.

So we should stop whining, we should stop waiting, we should get up off our butts and enjoy what we have and work to keep it good for all.

The Kids are Normal Today

The sixteen year old slept all night and got up at 11am, now is glued to the computer.
The two girls are PLAYING HAPPILY with each other.
The autistic one is sitting motionless on the couch watching a movie.

Now, just so you can see why I am freaked out, here's what would ordinarily be going on:
The sixteen year old would have been up since about three am, and would now be picking on his brother.
One girl would be pacing mindlessly in the yard with her earbids and ipod, oblivious to everyone and declining (monosylabically) to do anything with anyone.
The other girl would be twirling neurotically and chirping at me to do one thing after another and whining when I set limits.
The autistic one would be pacing, filling a diaper every 20 minutes, and periodically letting out a squeal of such suddenness and volume that everyone jumps.

I don't know what's going on, but I like it.

Depression Hurts Everyone

"Who does depression hurt? Everyone."
That's the tag line on a recent commercial for some anti-depressant medication. The gist of the message is that family and friends of a person with depression suffer about as much as the person who actually has depression. The most poignant scene in the commercial for me is the dog who doesn't understand why he and his person can't go out and take a walk.

That may be the most truthful commercial made in quite a while. This past weekend I read a book on borderline personality disorder, but written for people who do not have the disorder, but are connected to someone who does. BPD is often marked by frequent, major crises of the huge-can't-be-easily-ignored variety.

Depression, by contrast, is usually much quieter and it is, at least on the surface, much easier for those around a person with depression to simply go on about their lives as usual, albeit without the ful participation of the person with depression.

That is not the reality, though. Depending on how close the relationship is between you and the person with depression, it can make you act just as depressed if you are not vigilant about taking care. The worry and concern for the person with depression is only one small part of the problem. Simply being around someone who charges the air with negativity and despair - however unintentionally - can cause your own psyche to respond by depressing your usual energy and momentum.

It's a bit like when a person close to you dies. There is a period of time where you feel guilty about enjoying anything because the loved one cannot, and you feel it would be a betrayal to go on laughing and planning for the future when they cannot. The period of mourning is natural and expected for most people.

Living with a person who is severely depressed can have the same effect. If you are used to sharing a worldview with someone - like a spouse - who suddenly has a wildly depressed worldview, it is hard not to fall into the same view. It is harder still to avoid it without feeling guilty, and the feeling of guilt can ultimately result in the same outcome for the non-depressed spouse: a mimicking of the symptoms of fatigue, inability to complete tasks, and so on.

I work at home most of the time. It took a long time for me to realize that my periodic epsiodes of non-productivity, sometimes leading to tragically close calls with our family finances, were directly related to the periods of severe depression my husband goes through. Now, I simply leave the house and work from libraries, coffee shops, parks, or even my car parked in a store lot rather than stay in the house and do nothing because of the hopeless feeling that pervades everything when my husband is going through a bad period.