I tried to watch as much of the Maya Angelou service as I could today, though mothering duties often impeded my attempts. She sounded like such a profoundly wonderful woman to know and I envied the people who spoke of having her in their lives directly. Perhaps it's because I'm still young (relatively), but I don't feel like I have any people in my life who are really that powerfully influential and inspiring. I would love to have someone to personally look up to like that. I think I might have a couple of people who think I am that person in their life, and I confess it makes me question their sanity. Which is really, really unfair, I realize. I just can't imagine truly larger-than-life personalities like Dr. Angelou thought as little of themselves as I do of me. But I wouldn't know. I don't know any larger-than-life people personally. Maybe they did/do. Maybe they're just as crazy as I am, just more successful at it.
My relationship with Maya Angelou is probably not much deeper than most people's. I had to read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for school as a kid, and my life and social media experience has been sprinkled with various wonderful quotes. I will not pretend Caged Bird was a life-changing book for me - not in the immediate way Atlas Shrugged was - but it was influential, albeit in more subtle ways. When I first read it, I didn't really get it. I did my assignments for it as per my class requirements, but I didn't GET what was so important about it reading it at thirteen or fourteen. Reading about her rape made me feel uncomfortable, her childhood was so surreal, her sexual exploits so emotionally detached. In fact, I recall a distinct lack of emotionality through the whole story, that made the biography seem almost journalistic. I have not reread the book since then, so I don't know how well my initial impressions from a decade ago hold up. I wasn't really sure what to make of it all at the time.
Despite my early disinterest, the story stuck with me. Perhaps that's part of what makes a great book: it leaves you thinking for years afterward, coming back for constant reflection on the ideas and themes and events, such that it's impossible for it to not have an impact in some way. I think I came to really appreciate the somewhat detached voice of the story. It allowed me to experience the story with her, apply my own feelings to the situations. Since she left out so much of her emotional experience, it forced me to ponder: "What must that have felt like to go through that?" She gave enough details that I could imagine myself in her shoes and gauge my own hypothetical emotional responses. And only now am I realizing, her form and style truly allows for exercises in empathy. How conscious of a decision was that? Did she write that way out of a need to just get the story out and shared, did she just not want to delve on her own emotional inner world because it was too painful? Or was it a deliberate artistic decision, was I doing exactly what she wanted me to do with the book? Of course at this point, I'm probably thinking about it too hard.
At the time I read her book, I was very fixated on the titles of stories and why the authors chose it. Unlike To Kill A Mockingbird, another book I was required to read around that time, at no point did she mention birds in cages, either as metaphors or actual things in the world she encountered or reflected upon. I had to put the metaphor together myself. Because of racial tensions and discrimination, her youth, her poverty, her trauma, she was like a caged bird: small, helpless, and trapped. But caged birds still sing, out of, we assume, joy. How can something that feels so trapped still feel such joy in their confinement? At the end of the book, when she discovers motherhood, she finally finds out why.
I got the idea, I understood the underlying inspirational message. I just never really agreed with it. Reflecting on it now, maybe I should have taken the lesson more to heart, maybe I should have looked for more joy in my life when Angelou told me to. Then again, I never really was good at doing what I was told.
From an early age, my mother tells me, I was a crier and a screamer. I was a radically, notoriously discontent baby, and all efforts to soothe me failed. I was not unhealthy or otherwise maladjusted. I was just not the baby she was hoping for. "Your sister was such a wonderful baby, I wanted another one" my mom has told me, more than once. Her hopeful tone drops when she says: "And then I had you." It seems perhaps counter-intuitive in this case that she also tells me I was her "cuddler." Still, I was just not happy. I couldn't tell you what made me that way; I remember my early childhood fondly. I was very active, proud, and tough. My hair grew slowly, and I was mistaken for a boy frequently (and no amount of pink attire would cure this). After moving to Florida at a young age, I dug my heels in to be dissatisfied by principle. I was not happy about the move, and mentally blocked the idea of ever being happy again until I moved back home. At twenty-six, I am still in Florida. Thus, my insanity.
During puberty, I became so passionate about things I felt like I was losing my mind. Sometimes I just wanted my brain to shut off. I still get that feeling sometimes, but as I got older I learned how to temper the intensity. Mostly. I still get pretty worked up sometimes. But whether I'm angry, depressed, or perhaps manic, the problem is always a matter of my intensity.
The past few days, I've felt like I've been slipping into a depressive episode. But for most of today, I've been pretty irritable and snappy. I must confess I think I yelled at Jesse once or twice, over various seemingly minor annoyances. Despite my irritability, I've been able to get a lot done.
I think the irritability started yesterday when Jesse asked me to look at his chest because it was really itchy, and we figured out he had ringworm. This forced me into motion, getting the medical stuff together to treat it and decontaminating where necessary. At first he didn't think it was a big deal enough to treat, but I insisted it was extremely contagious, and I didn't want it, and I didn't want the baby to get it, and we're treating it whether you like it or not, goddamnit. I called my mom, made him take a shower and shave his chest, applied the medicine and dressing, and started washing laundry to decontaminate. I was kind of annoyed with him, both for his lax attitude about it, and for his poor hygiene that probably caused the infection in the first place. But that irritability help me to do what was needed and push back against Jesse's resistance. I was probably unpleasant to him, but I felt I needed to be. It was bad enough it took pretty much all day to get the infection properly treated, with waiting on my mom to bring home medical tape and him dragging his feet to take a shower. The wave of agitation carried over into different tasks, too, like cleaning up the baby's nursery thoroughly, because he had pooped and peed in places that now needed scrubbing (potty training is hell). I collected trash bags and scrubbed carpets. When I sat down at my computer for the evening, there seemed to be a lot more interesting articles online, and my browser was full of tabs in no time (still is).
The agitation carried through into the next day. I wanted to get things done and finish cleaning the carpet and take care of laundry. I also wanted to read more, and was getting more writing ideas. Unfortunately, with the baby interfering with much of the things I wanted to do, I needed some help, and I just wasn't getting it. The baby woke me up before my mom was even up, and when she did wake up and make the breakfast she'd been wanting to make, she left for the afternoon to visit Papa and do a little shopping with a friend. By the time she was gone, Jesse was feeling ill again, and tired, and I couldn't even get him to sit with the baby in the living room to watch him. My agitation turned quickly to irritation as I waited for my mom to get back and help me out. I was (unfairly, even unrationally) mad at Jesse for being sick, for not toughing out his discomfort, for not trying hard enough to help me do the things I needed to do for our family. Of course, these were things I'd been wanting to do for days and hadn't been able to set myself into motion to do. But now, in a more agitated state, it was a little easier to move. I say a little easier: I still struggled somewhat, dreading the task ahead, even resenting the fact I had to do it myself. I yelled a little bit, huffing about shampooing the carpet or having to move load of laundry back and forth. But still, I got things done.
Something that made it easier to start those tasks was that my mom decided to do the dishes, since I still had not done them, and they hadn't yet piled up as badly as before. I had been struggling between prioritizing laundry and the dishes, so when she took on that task, I experienced a relief of some anxiety, and a sense of reciprocity. If she's helping out with the dishes, for all the things she already does, I need to be doing something, too. If I just sit here doing nothing while she works, I'll feel guilty.
I know my annoyance with Jesse was there, but I was aware of it in the moment, I know how unfair those attitudes are, and I hope it was sufficiently muted. I did try to counter the negative thoughts when I had them, but I was still very obviously agitated, and may have taken some of that out on him. I do think I snapped at him about the deplorable state of our bedroom once or twice, as it interfered with me completing some tasks. I said something to him about it, when I noticed he had missed some laundry when he separated it for me the day before, because it was hidden in the mess. I explained it was really frustrating, that I was trying to make sure all the laundry got cleaned so that anything that might be contaminated would be in the laundry, and how his messiness impaired that. I'm not sure how cross I seemed, but regardless, I doubt he listened to me. Because he never does. I could report the problem like a robot and he still wouldn't listen.
I think that's what my anger only ever is: a manifestation of manic agitation. When that agitation does not result in something productive, or I'm unable to do whatever thing I want to do with that agitation, it becomes anger, directed at whatever's in my way. Oftentimes, that gets interpreted as Jesse, whether he is unable, or just plain unwilling, to help out.
But when my agitation is unimpeded, when I "get my way" so to speak, to use a phrase my parents liked to throw around when we were kids, I get a lot done and I feel good. I can be very productive, do a lot of chores and tackle daunting projects. Perhaps that was the root of my irritability from infancy: a powerful desire to do when I simply wasn't able to do hardly anything at all. I just imagine, if I were as helpless as a baby right now, I WOULD be screaming and crying! It would be so irritating and boring and I would not be able to develop all those baby skills fast enough to do the things I wanted to do.
Depression really isn't my default state. I lean into opposition. I don't live under a lot of labels, but I've always sort of identified myself as a fighter. I do not sit back and enjoy. I am not tranquil, I am not peaceful. I am rarely joyful. I am a mover. I push, I pull, I thrash against the bars of my cage and screech in my captor's ears until they bleed. I'm not interested in singing while there's a cage in my way. I want to tear the cage down and raise a rebellion against my imprisonment. I do not find peace and contentment with injustices. I try to burn them down, or burn myself down in the effort.
Today my mom told me everything would be a lot easier if I were on medication like she is for anxiety. "All those things don't matter so much anymore." It sounds horrible. Sure, the dishes and the laundry and the dirty rooms wouldn't get on my nerves so much, but what would that do to the bigger things I care about? Those big, complex ideas and bursting passions and finished projects? Because yes, I rarely feel joy, but I do feel ecstasy. I may not sing often, but when I do, it is the most beautiful song.
The pill doesn't just make the chores matter less. It would make ALL the things I love to think about matter less too. And if the intensity of thought was dulled, how long would it be before I was like her? Unable to cope with the world without pills. Being entertained by shallow-minded memes and video clips of funny animals. Unable to follow a chain of complex thoughts and ideas. Worse! Not even interested in them!
That's the really scary idea of taking medications: having no idea how it would affect all my other cognitive processes. Psychiatry doesn't know what it's even doing yet. It's a science in its infancy. Diagnoses are based on best guesses and a cluster of symptoms, nothing objectively testable (yet). I would have a lot more confidence in psychiatry if we really knew what we were doing with it, but the truth is we really don't know. We're working with best guesses, and right now everyone's just a guinea pig in a poorly recorded trial run. These pills are just Band-Aids at this point, because we are only barely scratching the surface of how the brain and cognition works. When something actually does work, we're not even sure how or why!
I'm not satisfied enough with what we have for psychiatry right now to be comfortable with being medicated. My brain is really important to me, and I'd rather not mess with it if it can be avoided.
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