Well I suppose this
post is long overdue. I'm not much for justifying myself to anyone else. Lately
I feel compelled to explain. People will hate me less if they understand.
Or something.
They will hear what I
have to say, even if they don't agree, if they know where I came from. I assume
everyone knows this about me because everyone I ever met up to a certain point
in my world and in my life knew. I can't remember much before 4 years old. But
I know I remember four. It is the year the Salon opened.
It is also the year
my Geep died. I remember him, therefore I know I remember four. After Hurricane
Sandy I helped sort through the soggy things at my grandmother's house. It was
chilly in November thankfully. The air was awful. But you weren't breathing the
air in the house; you were breathing your stale coffee breath through your
sweat dripping off your upper lip reflected back at you by your medical mask.
You go outside to
pile things for trash pickup or toss some garbage that was once family treasures.
You've never realized before quite how much you love fresh air. The island
itself smells stale and salty. Living near the bay and the ocean your whole
life you know that every local chooses to swim in the ocean.
Now the bay has mixed
with the ocean on the land with everyone's sewer and septic and household
cleaning, maintenance, and cosmetic products. All washed up along the fence in
the yard. But in the office of my grandmother's house I found my Geep. A man I
hadn't thought much about outside of the same old anecdotes that we laugh at
every time. There I was in boots, men's corduroy pants and rubber gloves with a
medical face mask on rediscovering my history. Faced starkly with the family
from which I came.
Finding out my
grandfather who I loved dearly was a secret writer. He wrote to the papers. He had
been a police officer in a Newark in a time when officers could type and kept
detailed records of their own. After he retired I suppose he couldn't let go of
his influence and ability to affect things so he became a Republican, the
stronger political party locally and wrote to the paper as a hobby. I only have
a few of the things he wrote.
At the time it seemed
the house was full of Too Much. It was too much to take, only one car load a
day, so much went in the trash. 50 years of family. Everything neatly put away.
Everything lower than 2 feet was automatically garbage. I learned my lesson,
keep your prized possessions in a high shelf in the closet and they will
weather the wind and the water. Granted your house wasn't one of the ones that
rolled away.
I've always known I
was a writer. I kept forgetting, or letting life take me away and do things I
thought I was supposed to do. I chose to stop doing what I was supposed to do,
to just be, a while back. It was a very unpopular decision. That was in August,
2 months before the storm.
So now we know that I remember 4. I remember
Geep. I remember his essence. His laugh. His smile. His funny mustache. I don't
remember a hardened police officer. I didn't know him. I knew the man who wrote
my grandmother love letters. Probably guilty about all the years he'd be cross.
By the time he died at 55 he'd had 4 heart attacks. Attacks on your body by
your heart. They signed a DNR and took him off life support. And he lived for months.
I knew and can barely remember a man who had literally seen the light. He had
been asked to go once and chose to stay. I now he only stayed after all the
pain and suffering he had seen for me, Alexis, Sara, and the rest of the
cousin's on the way. He saw the hope before he went away. That's all a life can
long to accomplish.
My grandma Jackie saw
the hope in her Great Grandson's Zack and Andrew before she had to go. But
there is nothing you can do sometimes to undo the damage done to your body and
soul before you get there. It isn't the things we do in our old age that kill
us. It is how much of our energy we have wasted in our youth. How many traumas suffered?
I've almost decided
my first book will be about my panic disorder. I was obsessed with biographies
and autobiographies as a kid; I read every one in the Silver Bay Elementary
School Library. I always wonder why I can't remember specifically all the
things that I've read. It is only vague recollections of shit. But I'll just
know it and not know why or what book I read it in, or who wrote it. Or what it
was called. Frustrating.
My entire life I said
I wouldn't do hair. I was not going to be a hair dresser like my mom and my
Grandma Jackie. I saw what toll it took on their physical and emotional state
and I wouldn't do that to myself. Besides, I was a writer.
That's probably why I
never finished college. I was told that an English major was a waste of money
and a degree, and that it wouldn't get me a job. Right on both counts. Except I
should have realized I could study on my own for free and still love it. Stupid
me, being brainwashed into thinking education and money are inextricably linked
instead of realizing they are linked by our profit hungry consumer economy.
Ugh!
Anyway I had my son
young. Worked at a bank for 2 years but that's another story. It came time when
my son was 4 to go to hair school finally. Despite not wanting to do hair I
should have done vocational school in my teens to have the license to manage a
salon seeing as how I’ve had experience in one since I was 4 years old and
without the paper that was meaningless. I didn't. So I had to sacrifice a year
of time with my son, at a very important age developmentally. I don't know if I
will ever fully forgive myself for the 50 to 60 hour school/work weeks. Except
the 4 weeks of winter I had night school for lates and absences for my wedding
and honeymoon then it was more like 70 to 80 hours a week. I had weekends off
but I was a zombie and I sent my son to my mom's and mother-in-law’s so I
didn't have to feel guilty about being too tired to play with him.
So I finished school.
I threw myself a party and got very smashed. I've noticed that is a sign things
aren't right. When I want to get hammered I need to change something in my
life. Now I just recognize the urge to get hammered and confront my life prior
to acting out on the poor impulse control. My husband wasn't proud of me. My lifelong
friends were proud of my accomplishment but not that I had settled into a life
I swore I'd never have. Everyone I knew was like, “We knew you could do this,
sucks you had to waste time to get a piece of paper to prove it."
I can do hair. I
understand the chemistry of it. Always have. My mom was chemist, pre-hair
dresser. Go figure. Organic chemistry is awesome, and so is making people
feel good. So hair dressing isn't all bad by any means.
I started the outline
for my book, some 25 chapters so far of panic attacks. I remembered the first
one finally. The first one I think is a real memory. I think I was three. I'll
save the long version for the book but it isn't my skills stopping me from
doing hair. It is my anxiety. I have to stop and pick at my thumb for a moment
just at the thought of it.
People aren't really
anything to be afraid of. Service culture for women says that when we are
accepting tips we must take whatever criticisms people hurl at our emotional
walls with a smile on our face or else they will reduce their monetary equation
of how much we are worth. Yes. That is exactly what the service industry feels
like. I've been doing it for a long time. I've never been as good at it as my
mom. She's like a steal pillar, a rock. She was raised in a different time and
with way more inexperienced parents than I was and her skin is tougher.
I was raised by lots
of women. My mom never told me it was wrong to be upset. I was allowed a lot of
emotional freedom as a young child and then expected as an adolescent to learn
from example to just start to compartmentalize that aspect of myself until it
no longer existed. I didn't. I spent 3 of my teenage years not crying. I also
spent them cutting myself and focusing on rage filed music. But after that I
had never learned to stop feeling. The feels just started back up again when I
stopped harming myself. I only cried as a teen during panic attacks but I
didn't know that's what they were.
My mom's partner in
business for 22 years at the salon was Gabe. He passed away in September the
year I got married and was in school. Everything was about how things appeared
to be instead of how they were. I spent two more years at the salon after
leaving school. Every day I became increasingly more aware that I didn't have
the personality and perhaps had more than one psychiatric disorder preventing
me from being successful at hair. My friends are limited and have limited money
because they are like me. I have intense anxiety about new people and I really
don't want to touch them, let alone do their hair while they criticize my
personal appearance, or talk to me about dieting or reality television. My two
least favorite socially acceptable things to talk about.
I was having panic
attacks while driving to work every day. Knowing I had to pay my bills, that my
mother needed me to help her pay her bills. Crying, desperately. Not knowing
what to do because my husband was laid off and also worked part time for my
family. Finally a fight erupted at work, again.
Another day my mother
is flying off the hinges probably thinking about money.
I don't care about
money but I can't just abandon my little cousin and my best friend and my mother who
I work for.
I cry.
I can't breathe.
I beg to be left
alone.
I feel all of
everything is my fault.
I have no idea that
these events are panic attacks at the time. I feel like something is very wrong
with me. I have totally fucked up and ruined everyone's life I know. I try to
go to work the next day and I sit on the back bench heaving and gasping and
continuing the panic attack which has been rolling to a climax for over a month,
could it have been months? How long was I actually like that before I said
enough?
I huff and I puff and
I wipe my face clean and I go into the salon.
I greet clients.
My cousin.
All the hairs on my
body stand on end. Things are so tense I'm holding my breath. I can't remember
words, just people talking. I am struggling to hold back tears. My mother is in
work mode focusing on the clients’ image woes. She doesn't notice I'm at the
desk with one tear at a time sneaking past my lids with me quickly swiping them
away so no one will see. Eventually I can't take it and I'm running towards the
back door with my cell phone in my hand calling my husband desperately. We
share a car that he uses for the business errands and I'm begging him to turn
around and come get me.
He did.
I left. And I didn't
go back.
I took a week of
vacation and after that I was thinking I'd just go back to normal. But as soon
as I got home I knew I wouldn't be working there for a long time. Something was
very not right with me. I had known for a long time, I had known while taping
my fingers in hair school. The only way I could heal my hands to pass the test.
It took two years for
me to realize I probably needed treatment. I don’t have insurance so $30-$100 a
week talk therapy isn’t happening. Besides I really do have more people than
most who I can really get raw with and spill my beans. And it wasn’t quite the
end of the world because I don't believe in psychiatric medications for most
disorders. I certainly wouldn't take an SSRI or an anti psychotic for OCD.
Xanax is the modern worlds answer for anxiety disorders, it just makes me very
very tired and I sleep. I sleep so long I freak out when I am awake because I
have shit to do.
I would really like
it if cannabis were legal. I find sativa helps more than the high THC Indica.
Contrary to modern jokes about paranoia and stoner culture I find smoking makes
me okay with leaving my bedroom and enjoying the world. I spent many hours of my
youth locked away in my room hiding or hanging out in the basement of the salon
to get away from other people. I spent so much time reading because my anxiety
doesn't exist in those worlds. Because I don't exist in those worlds.
Writing about all
this anxiety is giving me a wretched stomach ache even. My mind is screaming “Mayday!
Mayday! You're giving away all the secrets! People are going to know we're
afraid.” But I'm not afraid. My body chemistry is wrong but I have nothing to
be afraid of.
My tiredness and lack
of temperature regulation seem to be a problem in my hypothalamus. The
hypothalamus regulates quite a few glands and hormones that make up a lot of
who we are. I realized this week that I probably have an adrenal problem.
Cortisol is prominent and present during anxiety, it is hypothesized that it may be the cause of anxiety. But
all I can feel is adrenaline. I turn red sometimes. Quite often actually. My heart pounds. Every word
that I say sounds like I am screaming at someone, “FIRE!”
After the panic
starts there is a literal tangible fight or flight response. I find the lack of
body temperature regulation is because my heart is pounding and my blood pressure
high like I am actively running from predator or about to lift a car off
of my baby. I am sitting still but the world feels ultimately intense.
Other people see my
furrowed brow and maybe think I'm bitchy. Maybe they think I want to stay in my
room, maybe they think I'm antisocial. I do not Want to stay in my room, I am
compelled to. I don't want to constantly have cortisol and adrenaline telling
me to be afraid and to Run.
But I do.
I spent a lot of my
youth running. Not literally, I am clumsy because I'm afraid of falling. The
thing is when you are afraid of something and you stop doing it, you never
improve those skills. But I'm like a fish in water, I danced, was in choirs,
and belonged to a youth group. For about 6 years I did all of these activities
almost all year round on top of school. Without eating proper nutrition, no
wonder teenager girls are crazy.
I wasn't lazy. I was
tired. I wasn't ungrateful, I was suffering from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder,
and I still am.
When I chose to leave the salon everyone I love supported me. Even my mom, as frustrated, upset, and confused as she probably was at first. My cousins, my best friends, my husband, all noticed I appeared relieved. Last week I talked to someone I only knew well at 18 and he knew for sure I never wanted to do hair and that I should be doing something else.
I felt great
mountainous pressure as a mother, especially a young mother, to conform. To be
what I was supposed to be for my son. I suffered what is now called a major
depressive episode, more popularly known as a nervous breakdown brought on by
the guilt I felt and still feel about my panic disorder. It broke me down.
Thankfully I am lucky and it didn't destroy my marriage or my friendships or
family in the process.
I went on unemployment. I made 2/3 of what I had made which was only part time work to begin with. I stayed on it a year. I probably should have been on disability but it was easier to get processed as laid off than as disabled. I also didn't want a disability label in my file. I like working, I never stop working. I learned in a year out of work that given enough time off I start to function on my own and plan my own projects.
The anxiety leaves me
feeling that all the studying and writing and cleaning I do is never enough. I
am lucky to have a mom that knew I was suffering and let me go. It was true
that she could not afford to pay me. That is what a lay off is. I wasn't able
to make money for the salon or do my job. If I wasn't her daughter she would
have let me go without me having to tell her it wasn't working out.
When
you cry So hard from a panic attack, your eyes swell. Your face swells. Most
people don't notice if they don't know you well. But you know. It makes it
impossible to look people in the eye. In high school and in hair school I wore
makeup as a mask. I've always called it war paint. It was how I hid the
horrible truth of who I really was. But I didn't want to wear makeup anymore. I
am tired of the chemicals. I feel they have contributed greatly to whatever
hormonal imbalances I and all my female companions suffer from. Bitches be
crazy? Most red lipstick contains lead people! Wake up.
I
had to leave the salon to help myself. I had to heal because I have a lot of
people in this world I want to help. I can't help anyone curled up under the covers
of my bed biting at my cuticles wondering if people I don't even like or
respect are mad at me. So I refuse.
Last
winter I developed coping mechanisms. I found out what really does work.
Being
with my husband or son pretty much always lightens my mood as long as we don't
have to go anywhere or do anything. But we found places to go where we are
comfortable.
I
go to Charmed and Company once a month to buy handmade incense made from herbs
that don't bother my allergies and have amazing aromatherapy benefits.
I
light candles because focusing on a flame can be a good tool for clearing your
mind and meditation. It is also a reminder of the intelligence that got humans
to where we are on a very basic level. No technology would exist without the
discovery of harnessing fire from the sky. I find burning candles very peaceful
and beautiful.
I
don't do yoga but I stretch and lift weights to make me feel stronger both
literally and mentally. I also have a device from my mother in law to hang me
upside down. There is nothing like a little change of perspective. It is also good
for sit ups and stretching out back pain.
I also started a collection of crystals. I'm still not sure I fully believe in their healing powers. But I do love being surrounded by beautiful things that were grown by the earth. A rock grows very very slowly over time; does that mean it is not alive? The compounds in the rock are organic. We are made up of the same elements as plant and rock. What does that mean?
I
love doing hair because I love to take care of people and I love art.
2 months after I left
the salon Hurricane Sandy happened. I was so happy not to be working already. I
didn't need an excuse to leave because I already left. I didn't have to explain
why I was more upset than anyone else in town because I wasn't. I was already
in a major depressive episode. I was already trying to recover and figure out
what to do to make a living when the storm came.
2 months later
Grandma Jackie died. I went through rolling periods for over a year of thinking
I was fully healed just to be knocked down again. They never buried her in the
spring, knocked down again, uncle died, knocked down again, bury her on my
birthday without inviting me, knocked down again. But I always get the fuck
back up. I get on that horse and ride. I'm glad I knew mental illness was so
prevalent in my family by the time I was 12. I don't let it own my life. I'm no
slave to my disease.
As a women with mental illness who has been denied maternity care by an insurance paid into for 20 years I know that the help isn't out there for everyone. I have a huge support system. A mom who is my biggest cheerleader, no wait fuck that, she is a majorette. I have no siblings but an amazing husband and too many cousins and best friends to quantify.
I know these are
privileges. These aren't things the world affords to everyone.
Poverty keeps people
from treatment.
People who aren't
refusing medication like me to find a new alternative, but who desperately need
medication to get through their days.
People who can't
leave their minimum wage job because unemployment or disability isn't enough to
live on.
People who have real
traumas to recover from mentally and physically and instead are worried about
their medical and credit card debt.
Debt is imaginary.
It causes us so much
stress and it is just a numerical representation of what we've needed to live.
If someone asked you
what your life was worth... Would you say 30 thousand dollars?
A hundred thousand
dollars?
A million?
Even a million
dollars seems cheap to buy your life doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you pay anything to
stay alive? In another language they wouldn't even be called dollars and they
wouldn't be worth the same number.
What in your life is
of value? What in your life is worth fighting for?
