Epic dream

Julia and Anna were busy - they were off with friends or at a concert or some such, something that kept them out of the dream. Aaron and I had been invited to this huge party that SarahScott was holding for her son's fifth birthday, and so we said sure - the kids aren't available that day, is that all right? She said yes, that's fine, and that it was going to be an amazing party. 

We realized we needed to buy a gift.  We stopped at this shopping square that was very near a building that looked not-exactly-entirely-unlike DARPA, but was located out in the middle of nowhere Virginia near this shopping square. The square advertised that it had the perfect gift for anyone, so we figured this would be just the place to go. I dropped Aaron off at the DARPA-like building, he wanted to get something from inside - apparently he'd worked there before and had left a big water bottle he was going to go in and fetch while I bought the birthday present.

So after I dropped Aaron off I parked outside the square and I was going to get in when a man and his young boy got in my car. They were dirty, not filthy but definitely unkempt, and I said, "What's going on here?"

The man looked up and me and said, "Please miss, my son and I just need to rest. Could we nap here, in this car? We promise to not be a bother - only my son will feel more safe if you lock us in. We'll crack the windows. Please?"

Something in the man's dark grey eyes or in his voice made me believe him. Trust him. I said, "Well.. okay.  Sure. I'm just going to be in buying a present, and picking up my husband. I'll not be gone long."  

The boy was already asleep and his father wrapped his arm around him and half-closed his eyes. "Thank you, miss."

Okay, that might as well happen. So I first ran to the DARPA-like building.  Aaron was just coming out of it and I explained the situation to him. He was alarmed when he saw them in the car, but relaxed a little.  "What're we going to do with them?" he asked. "We're going to a birthday party."

"SarahScott is the kind of person who would understand. We'll bring them with. His son looks about five or six, they can have a good time together maybe? Maybe get a quick shower?"

Aaron nodded and we explained the plan to the man. His son was still asleep in his arms. When I said, "Now I'll go buy the present," the boy woke up as though he'd never been asleep. "May I come with you?" he asked. And he had just the most beautiful voice I had ever heard - like soft music, a low and well-played clarinet perhaps. I said, "Of course, sure.  Come on.  Ask your father if it's all right."

Aaron stayed in the car talking to the father. While we were in the store, the boy picked up a book. "This. Here. The angels want James to have this." 

"I never told you the boy's name."

"I... I guessed."

I eyed the child warily for a moment and frowned. His hair was strange. It looked dirtier than it had a few minutes ago. Must be the change in light. He was blushing however and I said, "Well, a good guess.  That is his name." 

The boy relaxed, possibly sensing I believed him. I said, "Hey. Do you like books?"

He light up. "Do I!"

"Let me get you a book. Pick one out."

He picked out a book at least four years older than I would've expected a slight boy of 6 to read, and I nodded approval and felt a familiar tingle in my toes. I really love working with people who have massive untapped potential. I rubbed my eyes when I saw him bouncing with the book. His hair looked cleaner, lighter even. It was verging on a dishwater blonde or ash light brown, and not the dark greyish mess it had been. I was sure it was different.  I looked up to see if the lights were brighter but it didn't seem odd.  He tugged on my sleeve. 

"What're you looking at?" he asked. "Have you read this book?"

I had not. I shook my head and then said, "Nothing.  Looking for a clock. I want to know if we're late. Let's check out and go."

The cashier gift-wrapped the book for James and gave the other book to the boy who ran out to the car. His father hugged him and he got buckled in.  Aaron and the man were talking earnestly, but friendly. Aaron nodded to me and said, "Let's get going."  He seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been, but the father was looking out the windows with a dark expression.

When we got to the party I explained to SarahScott and she was warmly welcoming of the man and his son. There were easily twenty kids inside, there was a place to make ice cream castle sculptures, there was an indoor rainbow sand table and ball pit and dress-up costumes, knights and princesses and turtles and ninjas galore. The boy disappeared into the thong of children like children are wont to do, and I explained about the book present to SarahScott. She laughed and said, "Well James loves books so I'm sure it'll be fine." We talked while she was preparing a giant roast.

The father looked exhausted.  I excused myself and said, "Hey. Do you want to take a nap?" to the father. "I'm sure your son is fine..." and I looked around and spotted the boy.

His hair was the palest, finest blonde I'd ever seen.

"W... his hair..." I said, pointing. My mouth hung slightly open.

"I should explain," the father said. "Let me... can I show you?"

I nodded, still watching the boy.  The father pressed his thumb to my forehead.

And suddenly, with that, I was in a fifteenth century castle. A beautiful princess, long blonde flowing hair unbound, no shoes on her feet, was dancing with a prince alone. They were laughing, and he was proposing to her. "But will your mother accept me?" she asked. "My kingdom is poor."

"It matters not to me! I love you!"

But the queen came in, and she laughed, low and angrily. "My son won't marry any woman who can't even wear proper shoes," she said, her chin tilted, haughty and cold.  

The princess despaired. The prince despaired. They decided to visit a magician who opened a portal to the future for them.  "Get shoes. Come back," he advised. "She'll have to accept you then."

The portal took them to a busy shopping hub in Rio. The prince turned in his crown for a pretty penny at a shopkeeper who offered to buy it from them, and he bought the princess a beautiful pair of shoes. Two beautiful pairs. They stopped and spoke with a man who I recognized at once as the homeless fellow I was sitting? with, watching the scene play out in front of me. He was a witch doctor there in Brazil, handsome and laughing and telling their future. "You will not end up where you wanted, but where you must be," he said.

They stayed three days in Rio, and in that time, the prince fell in love with a beautiful exotic woman who barely spoke his language at all. They robbed the princess in her sleep, took her court gown and her new shoes, and took the portal back. It closed behind them.

She ran to the portal and her hair was flaming crimson with anger, falling to black as she realized the portal closed. 

Alone, she wandered in a nightdress. The witch doctor took her in and they fell in love.

The scenes faded and I said, "How did you come to be homeless?"

"When my wife died, I lost everything. My heart, my joy, my life. I couldn't eat, go to work, nothing. Our house was taken."

"I'll help you," I promised. 

And I knew, as though I could see it, that a new portal had opened and a witch had come to find his son. I knew I had to protect them.

On the nature of beauty

What is beautiful to you? Is it something you can clearly define - do you have a certain standard for what you find beautiful? I'm not even certain the word has its own meaning. Beauty seems to be an entirely subjective construct. I could say that the ocean is beautiful - but if someone you knew and loved drowned in the ocean, long ago, it's likely not going to seem beautiful to you. The aurora borealis is beautiful - but if you were living long ago, and you saw those lights for the first time, they would be portents of something bad, or good, or at the very least deeply mysterious. You wouldn't necessarily want to see them.  Is beauty something we want to see, or is it something we avoid?

My closest friend said that ugly people find each other and somehow want to have sex and babies and then breed more fugly humans. This stuck with me like a phantom limb. I can't even put my finger on why, exactly. She and I have very different views of the world, but that's not surprising. I don't think people are, typically, ugly. It never occurs to me to judge them on appearance level. I'll certainly wear my judgey-pants about other things. Everyone has those judgey-pants and different things set us off.  For me, I deeply judge anyone who's an asshole in traffic, who is against programs that help people who are disadvantaged, and anyone who would bully other people to get what they want. What I judge most harshly is any behavior that doesn't lead to a peaceful, harmonious group.  (And yes, I know I'm a bit of a Pollyanna but I'm okay with that.)

I think part of the problem for me is that physical beauty is in everything I see. The sky never looks the same way twice - and if I don't take time to notice the nuanced beauty of the sky in the morning on my drive to work, then I know I'm completely too self-absorbed and/or feeling down. This morning I didn't even see the sky until I was already at work. I stopped before I went in and took some time to notice the world, feel the beautiful 55 degree temperature, the completely unblemished sky, the tips of leaves just barely beginning to curl inward and contemplate leaving their greenery to give to fall. But this morning I had to remind myself to do it - usually this is an automatic thing.  Everything is beautiful to me. People are beautiful and they all have amazing stories inside of them that just want to be told. They are beautiful because they are human. And they lose that beauty when they give up part of their humanity.

She believes that's like giving out participation trophies for having a face. That really has been just eating at me. Why would beauty be a thing to give a trophy for anyway?  So what if everyone would get trophies?  Why would that be bad?

If you're talking sexually attractive, appealing - again, that's incredibly subjective. To me what's sexy is a combination of someone who uses words well, someone who is highly intelligent, someone who is yielding, someone who is calm and patient and bides their time, and someone who doesn't rush though everything. Taking the time to savor things, not necessarily food, but just experiences. I find people the most attractive who I know are going to be a good fit for me - I really think, once we grow out of our adolescent purely hormone-driven phase, that everyone is really going to find the people who are going to be a good fit for them the most attractive.  Either that or the people who fulfill a certain need. Like, if you're one of those women or men who just really needs validation, you're going to find people who don't give validation easily the most attractive, because then it's going to "mean something" if they stop to give it to you. Or if you really see yourself as at heart a member of a certain group, you're going to make sure that your partner also fits that certain group - and the closer the fit, the better.

So why is it eating at me? I'm not angry about it - but I can't stop thinking about it, either.

I guess maybe it's because I have two daughters, and I really want them to come to learn the same lessons I've learned about beauty. It's subjective, it's everywhere - and you can see it if you choose to, in every living thing.  I fucking hate snakes, and I still think they're gorgeous. There are acts and actions and inaction that are ugly, small, petty, cruel, even on a grand scale purely disgusting and yes, even evil. But those are acts, and actions. Everything has the potential for great beauty. There are plenty of people I don't find beautiful anymore, because I know their characters and when I have worn my judgey-pants and seen that the character of a fellow human is meager and small, and they are given to acts of vengeance and cruelty instead of kindness and love, then I'm going to see them as ugly.

I don't think self-esteem should be tied to feeling beautiful, but the fact of the matter is that it is, especially in young women just learning who they are in a world so obsessed with the physical. It took me 30 years to believe I was beautiful. I really hope it doesn't take them that long. Sure, before then, I definitely had flashes of "hey I look nice today," and "yeah! this haircut makes my face look awesome."  But to really understand the fact that I'm beautiful - that took a really sadly long time.

If I'd understood beauty when I was a teenager as a thing that is part of us that we just have and we get to preserve by being true to the best in ourselves, and that beauty was not a thing that needed to be a target and an achievement, I wouldn't have worried about it. It really doesn't need to be worried about.

Choose Life - New Year thoughts

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed"

6 AM. Get up.  Bathroom.  Brush teeth. Make breakfast.  Get to work, to school. Be productive!  Accomplish something and for god's sake, do not fail. Read a book.  Make meals.  Eat.  Pay the rent.  Pay bills. Argue over who gets to choose the TV program.  Watch a movie.  Make love. Diet. Make things, with your hands. The business of living life. And all the worries that go with it... Where will the next meal come from?  Are they talking about me, over there? Where will the kids college fund come from?  Is my hair flat? Who will be the next president? How's mother feeling? Did I leave the oven on?

What is it to choose life?

When your mother calls, and you say you'll call back, and you really mean to!  But then you've got homework and these deadlines, and you had to run to the store, and then it's 10 PM and you haven't called... that's living life.  That happens.

When you call her the next day and apologize, that is to choose life.

On the railing, a spider crafts her web. Each morning she rises and begins, each day a new web that she will eat overnight.  Her life a pattern, like the endless web she creates. These webs are not the same, each intersects lines in new places, the perimeter measured differently, sometimes by millimeters.  Sometimes larger. Sometimes a dog wanders by and part of the web gets caught in his fluffy tail. No matter.   She mends her web, recreates that which falls.

To notice her toils is to choose life.

When you answer the phone at work, and you hear the quaver in your co-workers voice, you know she's on the edge of a nervous breakdown.  Overworked, no free time, the end of the year, and you know she's in a weak state, but your own inbox... so many things.  How will they ever get done?  You just don't have time for this.

Spend an hour with her, have tea and help her re-focus, choosing life.

Each day we cause small cracks in the skin of the world. We're well-intentioned but the cracks come anyway.  We choose harsh words.  We are impatient with a child who wants to share her artwork or ask for the zillionth time, why?  When we glance down and walk past someone we might recognize, because the last time we saw them it was just so awkward.  We rush through a project at work because we're just too swamped to take each project minute at a time. When we do not heed the coworker who needs reassurance and encouragement.  When we criticize and never compliment.  When we waste things that could've been used to better ends.  Small white lies.  Choosing the easy path and not the correct path.  Scowling and not smiling as we pass people on the street.  Cutting someone off in traffic.  Prioritizing our needs over any others.

These cracks trace the surface of the skin, like aged cracks on a china saucer.  They do not render the surface unusable, but worn.

This period, the days of awe, heaven and earth are called to witness.  Therefore, choose life!

To choose life is to make a conscious break from routine.
To choose life is to take time to listen to others, see where their needs are, their opinions vary, and to understand.  Not judge.
To choose life is to leave your comfort zone to help those who need help.
To choose life is to look at your own past, and love yourself no matter what mistakes you have made.
To choose life is to stop and notice what beauty fills the world around you.
To choose life is to apologize when you have hurt someone.
To choose life is to feed the hungry.
To choose life is to help the fallen stand again.
To choose life is to focus on your friendships and let others know they are loved, they are important.
To choose life is to help a homeless animal find a home.
To choose life is to know the smell of apples fallen to the grass.
To choose life is to walk the earth, work the earth, and make yourself a part of it before you are dust of the earth.
To choose life is to breathe gratitude.
To choose life is to embrace the unknown.
To choose life is to let go of worry, of fear.

As the old year falls away and this new year is upon us, may we let go of the business of life and just choose life.  Then we may live, and live, and our children thrive and love and grow.

Shanah tovah.

So You've Just Been Diagnosed - Welcome

Dear newly-diagnosed friend,

Welcome.  You've begun a journey into the unknown, and there are friends here already. We welcome you. I welcome you.

Some doctor has just told you that you have a mental illness. I've been where you are. It's a scary place, isn't it? You see depictions in the media of us all the time, us - you never thought you'd be one of "us," did you? Us - that group of psychos you see on television and in the movies, in the newspapers.

Let me guess at what you might be seeing. You see the wild-eyed girl pacing up and down the halls mumbling to herself, having sex with everything in sight, spending too much money on things she doesn't need or even want. You see the woman who at 50 has a house full of things, full - full to where the seams may split and the contents of her cluttered life fall out like so many secrets. You see the unshaven, dirty, smelly man.  You see the woman who has lost all joy in life and sits day after day after week after week in her room, looking at her bed, wondering if these hands are actually hers. You see the man who believes he can fly, saying it's not right man, it's not right, it's not right. You see the white straitjackets with their silver buckles and the orderlies in scrubs who control the keys. You see a padded room with four white walls.

That's not who we are though, and the media does us a huge disservice by painting mentally ill people with such an emotionally-charged brush.

Mental illness does not look like what it does in the movies - not all the time. I'm not going to pretend to you that there won't be times that it looks frightening. There will be times where you say hey, I need to sit back and relax - I'm wound up too tight. There will be times where you slip and you need a safety net to catch you. There might even be times that your brain plays tricks on you that you are not prepared for and you might wind up in a hospital for a few days, remembering who you really are.

Mostly what mental illness looks like is someone you know. It could be a coworker, or a student at school, or a family member - but it's all around you, and it's people living their lives. They work. They have joy. They have families. They have sadness. They're big stars, sometimes - they're the elderly lady who you see at the post-office other times. They're your cousins, or your children, or your parents. They're often exceptionally creative - maybe you are creative too. They're often very expressive - and maybe you're worried about not being expressive anymore.

When I was diagnosed I was very worried about several things. Here were my top questions.

• Will I be a good mother? (I have two children, and was diagnosed when they were 3 and 5)
• Will my friends still love me?
• Will I still be able to write if I take medicine?
• Will the medicine make me crazier?
• Am I going to live a long life?
• Can I really be happy?
• Will everyone know I'm crazy?
• Will I be able to hold a job?
• Will I wind up in a mental hospital forever?

Some of the questions you have will only be answered with time.  It's not a bad idea to write down some of the questions you have and to discuss them with a therapist. You're going to need a toolbox and a therapist is going to need to go in your toolbox.

(For me, the answers were yes, I'm a good mother. My friends love me, and not only that, having the window of bipolar to explain some behaviors I'd had at times in the past was illuminating. They were able to see that, before I got myself under control, some of the erratic-ness was illness and not me. It made my real friendships stronger.  I am still able to write, in fact I'm more focused and clearer, a better writer. Some medicines did make me crazier, and I worked with my doctor to adjust them and get on the right medications when I needed them most. I'm not sure if I'm going to live a long life, but if I don't - it's not going to be because mental illness went untreated and got the best of me. And I'm happy - I'm happy every day. I'm not happy all day every day, I'm sure, like anyone else I have ups and downs and like myself I sometimes have very high ups and very low downs. But the balance of my life is bliss. I have jobs. I have been hospitalized, but short term - ten days.)

What mental illness looks like isn't what the media says it is. It's really just about management. You can absolutely do this. You can absolutely get your illness under control. Like diabetes, you're going to need to treat it in some way for the rest of your life, but that's not something that should deter you from doing it. All you need is some planning and a tool box.  What should go in your tool box?

• Social support system - you need a safety net of friends and family you trust. Even if it's just two people, you need someone to reality check you. You may need to have someone you've enlisted to take your credit card away, like I do, if you should start having instability. You might need to have someone you can call if you feel like hurting yourself. You might need to have someone who you can talk to in the middle of the night if you have nightmares. Social support systems are critical.
• A therapist - you need a therapist. I don't care if you think therapy is crap, it's really important to have that person who listens objectively and will give it to you straight. For me, it has to be a CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapist) because I don't do the touchy-feely-therapy crap. I just want to talk straight, and find solutions. You might want the touchy-feely though - you're going to have to try out different therapists and find one who works with you well.
• A psychiatrist - your psychiatrist is your medication manager. You will need to meet with her frequently until you get your medicines straight. After you're on a regimen of medicine that helps you feel stable, you will likely meet with her less often.
• Medication - it's not the bane of your existence. It's your helper. It's your re-balancer. You have a mental illness. That means there are chemicals that are not properly balanced in your brain. Your chemical composition needs a little help, and even if you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't need medicine for the rest of your life, you need to know it's there. You need to know that if you are in crisis, that medication is there and it will work with you to restore you to your former glory. The medicine you need will be largely dependent on your symptoms and on your doctor - make sure to speak up and work with your doctor. Talk about all side effects, talk about how you are truly feeling.
• Truth - you cannot lie. It's important to tell people really, truly, honestly what's up. If you're used to lying and saying, "I'm fine," all the time when someone asks how you're doing, you should get out of that habit right away. Just tell the truth, if the doctor says how are you, you can say, "You know, I feel very anxious at night." You can say, "This medicine gives me a baboon's butt red rash all over my legs."  You can say, "I'm feeling happy.... maybe too happy, is that a thing?"
• Time - give yourself the gift of time. Nobody conquers a disease right away. Things take time. You'll be frustrated, you'll get upset, you'll rail against the machine. But you're going to make it - you just have to be patient and you have to give yourself time to adapt, time to learn yourself, time to heal.
• Coping mechanisms - these will vary, and are a huge topic on their own, but think about things you love that make you happy and use them to help yourself heal. Art, poetry, writing, dance, music, knitting, running - you think about what you love. Then do it.

It's all very overwhelming and daunting, I know, but you're at the beginning of a journey. When you are starting, it's okay if you feel like you don't know what the end is going to look like. I don't either - but I know what it's not going to look like. It's not going to look like darkness forever. It's not going to look like the end of you - it's going to look like you as you've never seen yourself before. If you've just been diagnosed, chances are you've been wearing the veil of illness for a long time, a specter on your forehead. When you see yourself without your illness in the way, you may not recognize yourself. 

But you're beautiful! And you're possibly even more beautiful than you've ever given yourself credit for.

So welcome to the club. Feel free to ask questions, get to know others, and you're quickly going to realize that the media's wrong. Mental illness isn't "that crazy person" - it's just part of us. You, me. We're all right.

You're going to be all right.

- Jen