Depakote 200 mg
Mood – 6 out of 10 (where 10 is equivalent to the Big Bang)
Tomorrow is 9/11. I remember what happened just before and after that date 8 years ago.
The urologist. “You have kidney cancer it must come out.”
The psychiatrist, “You have Major Depression, Bipolar Disorder, er…mental illness…er mood disorder.”
The employer, “You should go on long term disability.”
The insurer, “On your behalf, you must let us file for Social Security Disability Insurance.”
I still do not understand those times. They opened cracks in what I used to call a soul.
“What can I do with bipolar disorder?” Follow the doctor’s orders. But mental illness is an area that has little certainty. We can set a broken leg. We can put stints in arteries. We cannot cut or sew up the wounds of the mind that we label mental illness.
“What does long term disability mean?” I have a contract to receive payment, but don’t insurance companies decide to cancel benefits all the time? My trust of companies is pretty low based on my experiences with them. The phrase, “it’s just business” sends a chill to my core. I become fearful of losing the benefit.
“What does Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) mean?” It means that the insurer lowers their payments by the amount I am paid by SSDI. I become fearful of trying to get better and learn how to do job. If I do try to get better, if I do try to work again and go off of SSDI will the insurer become angry and find a way to cancel my long-term disability? If I don’t work again will I sink further into my illness like so many seem to do?
These are not unique questions. I am not alone. There are many of us. The broken ones, the ones that much of society does not want to look at too closely. I know. I was part of “successful” society once. I wore the suits. I flew first class. I made the deals. I looked with what I thought was great compassion on those less fortunate. Today, I wonder if my compassion was little more than condescending pity.
In my suit of the best Dormeuil money could buy I would think; “How sad are those poor souls. How sad they lack my talent, skill and enterprise. I suppose we must make allowances and give them something to live on, but we must be careful not to give them too much or we will destroy their motivation to improve themselves. We must make them want to improve their lot in life. We must motivate them to mend themselves.”
Now that I am bipolar and disabled my view is a bit different. I live in the world of broken ones, or at least those that are labeled as broken. We are the ones out of the mainstream. The ones that cannot (and yes sometimes will not) fit into the categories the world has given us. We sometimes spend countless hours hating ourselves and wondering if we should simply disappear and cease being a bother and source of pain. Each of us began life as a mother’s dream of having the perfect child, a bit of china so pure and rare that all the world would come to admire it and in their admiration stand in awe of the parents who created it. But it was not to be. For us, our mother’s dream of china turned into potshards, the broken bits left in the potter’s yard after the workers have gone home.
Yet even among the broken pottery there is beauty. Yesterday I spoke with Scott P., my oldest friend. I worried that I had upset him with my recent whining and rambling. But like every time when I call him, we soon were laughing as though no time had passed since we shared our radical days of the 70’s. His laugh and my response put a few shards back together that I had forgotten. I remembered that my cracks are of long standing. I have been a little bit “weird” from early on. As a result, I have a long history dealing with being cracked. I do well with it so long as I don’t forget to be loving and kind. And then the most important shard fell into place - with a friend weirdness is all right.
I pity the successful one I once was; the executive who often was afraid to take time for friends, especially those who could not directly further his business goals. Today he seems the broken one to me. He is the one whose life was segmented into pieces – work, play, family, friends, etc. He is the one that could do the most horrid things because each piece stood on its own and after all, “it’s only business”.
Since becoming broken, my life is much richer than before. This morning I met with Tom and watched as he ate waffles with the real maple syrup I brought to him from the Kalona coop. He told me about Dorothy and how it was going to be difficult to lose her. I spoke with Janet about her poetry and shared how I have learned to use writing to overcome darkness and despair; despair like that she feels when she hears the timer go off on the machine they have given her to dispense her medication. I listened to another friend speak of her longstanding loneliness and fears about the challenges of credit card debt. The dogs licked Tom’s plate clean of the few pieces of waffle he carefully leaves for them each morning. Behind the counter Tim served coffee. Through it all there was some pain, how could their not be? Yet, mostly there was simply a deep harmony as our laughter and warmth held the pieces together. This crazy glue, made of true compassion not pity for each other, allows we broken ones to make new pots from the broken china of our mother’s dreams. Many of our creations are odd and some are outright bizarre. This is okay with us. Broken or not we can be at peace and live life fully. In fact we have an advantage, we can relax and be ourselves, we no longer have to pretend that we are “normal”. In this state we are able to take whatever piece comes our way and piece it together higgledy-piggledy into our art.
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