An Exercise in Empathy

I don't usually participate in the inanity that is Twitter hashtag trends, but I couldn't help but get absorbed in the collective story unfolding before me last night with #YesAllWomen. I contributed my own, but before I get into that, a little caveat:

The shooting spree in California that left 7 dead prompted an outpouring of stories on the hashtag and caused it to trend, after a Youtube video released by the killer revealed that his motives may have been rooted in his difficulties with women. I would just first like to note that this is only a fraction of the story, and his full manifesto reveals a whole myriad of alarming beliefs and thought processes, not just about women, but also about his racially superiority, disdain for the underclasses, and his entitlement to praise. I don't usually armchair diagnose, but I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to say that he clearly had narcissistic personality disorder, or something near to it. Of all the psychological disorders you can have, personality disorders like this one are the hardest ones to tackle and effectively treat, and this one in particular because it is very hard to convince someone who has grandiose delusions that they need help. As with most shooting sprees, calling the killer a madman, crazy, or sicko is in no way a satisfying explanation for why this happened, and only serves to stigmatize mental illness on the whole. He was, plain and simple, mentally ill. This is not time to debate about guns (indeed, he had no qualms about stabbing his victims either), it is not even a time to call for better mental health coverage in our national healthcare system (indeed, he came from such wealth he certainly had access). It is a time to call for more psychological and neurological research, to better understand these disorders so that we can better detect problems and take steps to intervene before tragedies like this happen.

That said, the killer justifying his actions by blaming women for choosing lesser men than him and leaving him a virgin was something that seemed to resonate well with certain individuals on the internet, namely men's rights activists and certain other men who felt victimized by being friendzoned.

They will be dismissed as "a few bad eggs" or "just internet trolls," but it is not that simple. These are all feelings we're familiar with, complaints we've heard from men online and in our lives. This is not new. This is not some kind of revelation. Elliot Rodger's actions are these beliefs made manifest. And if you read his manifesto, it's like reading all the worst internet trolls spilling out of one disturbed mind. Which makes you wonder: who's trolling?

This so-called "nice guy" was likely rejected by women precisely because he lacked empathy - a distinguishing trait of his personality disorder, as well as many other antisocial personality disorders. It is the human capacity to experience the emotions of another person, as well as to respond appropriately to those feelings. We have been making great progress in the field of neuroscience in identifying the brain regions associated with empathy, but we have a long way to go in developing any kind of immediate, 100% effective treatment for psychopaths. The good news is, empathy is something we can train. The article I linked suggests meditation, exercise, and volunteering as ways we can strengthen our capacity for empathy, which is of no surprise. We've known for a long time that these activities are good for our overall mental health, and this may very well be the reason. Some have even suggested we can use augmented reality to better understand other people and become more empathetic. But I would like to suggest another method: listening to and telling stories.

In an effort to prevent killing sprees like what was seen at Columbine, one Pennsylvania school is trying to teach its students empathy simply by having them tell each other deep, personal stories about themselves. Though it's too early to say for sure if this will stop senseless acts of violence, it seems to be making a difference for the students and the school's culture on the whole.

#YesAllWomen is an important opportunity for some much-needed empathy training. For too long we have told our young men that they were weak for shedding tears, that their feelings didn't matter, even that they need to turn in their "man" card if they do feel too much. This misguided socialization is at the heart of what creates men's violence. We train our boys to have as little empathy as possible, so that when the government sends them off to war, they can kill other humans without batting an eye (and when they do bat an eye, they go home with PTSD, and encounter barriers to treatment and even diagnosis). Their reward when they return: women and sex. With this system reinforced by the media and art, it's no wonder men learn to objectify women so. It is absolutely despicable what we are doing to young men. And it's killing women and men, and leaving women to lead lives in perpetual fear of men.

So go and read #YesAllWomen as an empathy exercise. It's okay to cry (we've certainly shed our share of tears). The more hostile you are to the idea of even checking it out, the more likely it is that you are the problem.

And yes, I did contribute to the stories being told. Here was my tweet:

"I did not mean for this to rhyme.... DAMN IT!"

The idea that, only a certain kind of woman gets sexualized and victimized, is ludicrous. Yes, ALL women experience these kind of things. Those who have nothing to report have likely grown so accustomed to the abuse and harassment, it just fades into the background. Indeed, last night I saw a few tweets by women who thought they had nothing to contribute, but upon reading the hashtag, found they had more to say than they thought.

One of my favorite tweets from the evening

These stories are important. In contributing to this continued empathy education, in my next post, I would like to tell the tl;dr version of my tweet. I hope this will provide some insight into what we, as women, experience every day, and perhaps help give strength to other women who are even now still afraid to tell their stories, even within the bounds of 140 characters.

Hold onto your butts.

Chores and Peeves

I have been feeling pretty good about my progress for the last few days. Though I haven't been going to bed as early as I would like (more accurately, as early as Jesse would like), I have been more able to get to sleep when I do go to bed, and it is less of a struggle. Waking up is getting easier too, though again, I'm not waking as early as I should be.

I have been making some progress in other regards, especially yesterday. Between writing and reading, I managed to finish the dishes my mom had started, empty my trash, and even empty the overflowing diaper pail in the nursery. Like with sleep, the process of getting it done didn't just involve gritting my teeth, buckling down and doing it as a force of will. My writing for the day was done, I'd read quite a bit and felt free to do those chores throughout the day. I felt like there was energy there to do it, and I felt like I had untangled some of the complicated thoughts and feelings that came along with those tasks (or at least, if I had not, I was confident that I would and could.)

The dishes were, psychologically, the easiest. They had already been sorted and part of them were already clean. I even managed to get Jesse to put away the dishes my mom had cleaned so that I would have space to lay more out to dry. It wasn't just that they had helped me chip away at how overwhelming I found the whole task and getting it started, but that I didn't feel alone when doing it. It had become a team effort. I was doing it because I wanted to help my mom and make her life easier, but I felt like since everyone else chipped in to help get it started, that somehow they cared more about me. It wasn't just about doing the dishes, it seemed to run much deeper than that.

After doing the dishes, I had completed one major task and felt accomplished. I knew other chores needed to be done, but I told myself, One step at a time, and would have been okay with myself had I not finished the trash. When these tasks crept up on me, when I saw them from the corner of my eye, I reassured myself, You don't have to do them if you don't want to. You've done a good job today. I guess now that I didn't feel the psychological pressure to deal with the trash, it was somehow a lot easier to do. That is most of the stress involved in the task, my thought processes attached to it. When I get anxious or depressed, the problem seems to be that there is so much stress, I withdraw from it. What stress there was attached to the tasks when I did them yesterday wasn't psychological pressure that squeezed in on me, but pressure that projected outward.

The first thing I did was take out the trash that had been sitting just outside my door for days. It was trash from the can by my computer, and I had taken it out days ago, but left it outside my door. I had had to clean it up once already because raccoons had gotten into it, but I had still left it out there. The raccoons had gotten into it again, so I needed to clean it up again and actually take it out to the curb. But I was avoiding it. I finally felt compelled to get it done when my mom asked me to help her clean up a garbage bag by the other door that raccoons had also gotten into. Usually my grandfather takes the trash out, but since he wasn't there, one of the bags got left out and forgotten, until the animals made a mess of it. I helped her put the torn up bag in a new one and picked up some of the trash that had been strewn about. While she was standing there talking to a neighbor, I felt a compulsion to go over to my door and clean up my own raccoon-induced mess. I completed the task with ease, and didn't run into any mental roadblocks. The only thing I can figure is that cleaning up a different mess with my mom gave me momentum to clean up my own garbage. Or, because we had accomplished the task, maybe I now had a subconscious confidence to tackle my own mess. Or, maybe still, it was more like the dishes where, since someone else was participating, it felt more like a team effort and I was more comfortable with taking care of my own end. Either way, I felt compelled to clean up the mess and even take the trash to the curb, and suddenly it was easier to do.

The next thing that demanded my attention was the diaper pail overflowing in the nursery. It was pretty bad; I probably could have filled the pail twice with what was there. I wasn't sure if I was ready to tackle it, so I asked Jesse to take it out for me. It took a while for him to get around to it, but when he did, he complained that the trash can I told him to put it all in was already overflowing too. I told him to just take it out there, I'd deal with the rest. The next time I went into the nursery at bedtime, it was all still there. When I confronted Jesse about it, he said he told me the garbage can was full so he couldn't take it out. I told him that he should have put it in a garbage bag or something, whatever had to be done to get it out. I was irritated that he hadn't even touched the task, and frustrated that I couldn't get the help with it that I had wanted. But instead of getting mad at him, I started to think that, perhaps, though he hadn't said anything, he found the task overwhelming, too. Maybe he had tried to take it out, but couldn't find the box of garbage bags, since it was in my desk drawer and not under the sink. Maybe the smell and other sensory information was too much for his brain to deal with, so he had to withdraw from the task. With a more forgiving mind about it, I felt like at least he had tried to help. I was still a little annoyed, but I did start taking out the diapers, with relative ease. I was delighted when the baby started helping me put all the overflow into a garbage bag (he can actually be pretty helpful, from time to time).

While I was on a role, I took the garbage out from the can by my desk, even though it was only half full. Jesse had been using my computer earlier in the week, and dumped a half-eaten chili dog in it. Since that can doesn't fill up very fast, it sat there in the garbage for a very long time, attracting bugs. It was starting to get on my nerves, because there was a swarm of gnats flitting about in front of my computer screen every time I sat down to work. There was no use in blaming him for this, since he probably hadn't thought the consequences of his actions out all the way through. And, as evidenced by his work space, he is completely oblivious to filth to begin with. So I just sent him a message on Facebook about it:

Also: DO NOT put half eaten food in my garbage can by my computer. It doesn't fill very fast so I don't take it out very often, so I have all sorts of gnats and roaches crawling and flying everywhere

I was still a little irritated about his lack of consideration when using my work space, so just making this comment to him set off a little cascade of peeves I had related to him making messes in my area.

Also, if you don't want me sweeping through your computer table and that whole fucking nasty disgusting room and scrubbing everything down, stop letting your filthy habits overflow into MY workspace

That sink is not meant for you to pile your dishes in

and I don't appreciate you leaving fast food cups for weeks on end on countertops

It's bad enough trying to manage my own clutter, without having the mess exaccerbated by your filth.

Probably not my gentlest reprimand, but I figured it was better to say it than leave it unsaid. Not that I expected him to listen to me. These complaints aren't new. I've tried telling him these things multiple times, but I get ignored, for whatever reason. I know I am probably even less pleasant to deal with when I'm irritated and making a complaint like this verbally, in person. Hopefully he's more receptive to this information in the written format, though through this whole thing he made no reply whatsoever. My irritation isn't unreasonable, to a normal person. But he just doesn't seem to get it. He doesn't seem to understand or respect that having that kind of mess pile up really bothers me, and distracts me in a huge way. And when I have a hard time even cleaning up my own messes, it's really frustrating to have even more messes piled on top of that due to someone else's inconsiderate behavior.

His messy work area gets so bad sometimes, it drives me to clean it top to bottom. He leaves dirty dishes everywhere, food containers just lying about, attracting pests, and so much clutter that stuff easily gets lost. And if I just had to collect his dirty dishes and throw away his trash every once in a while, I might be okay with that. However, when I do clean his area, I get an earful myself. He complains that I misplace things, or that I touched or moved something I don't even remember running across. One time I did clean his entire work space, getting all the dishes to the sink and garbage to the trash and putting away everything on his desk so that I could wipe the desk down and vacuum underneath, and when he got home and saw what I'd done, all he said was, "God damn it, Heidi." I was unphased by this comment, as it was the sort of response I expected, but at the time, a friend of ours was visiting. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he told Jesse. Jesse began his rebuttal, but our friend cut him off. "No, no. If my mom had done something like that and cleaned up my whole desk, I would be all like, 'Wow, thanks mom!' I would be so grateful."

Jesse made no further reply. At least it was clear to someone besides me that he was being unreasonable, and our friend was clearly disgusted with his attitude.

He seems to think that, if he corrects the behavior, he is just rewarding my negative behavior of being emotional about the issue, expressing myself with irritation and anger. But I've tried asking nicely too. It doesn't seem to make a difference. And if I tell him I tried asking nicely, he doesn't remember it, or tells me to cite when I did. Of course I don't remember any specific dates. I just know that I have tried. And the lack of response to me asking nicely is an irritation in and of itself.

I respect that it is his work space. But he needs to respect that his work space affects other people in the house. Leaving dirty dishes laying about makes those dishes inaccessible to other people, so that when my mom needs a spoon or a certain number of bowls or cups, and doesn't find them, it creates added frustration. And the trash and food containers attract bugs that not only now live everywhere in our bedroom (so that every time I have to go to sleep, I have to mentally block out his filth), but also travel throughout the house, such as when perhaps a bag or a pair of shoes bugs may be hiding in move from one part of the house to the other. Even without that, it's not a long trek for them to crawl around to the nursery or my workshop or the bathroom. It makes everyone else less comfortable, it makes me feel like I'm living in a complete shithole, no matter how hard I might try to keep things tidy. And these feelings erode at my self-worth. That may even sound silly, when I put it like that, but the irritation with bugs crawling everywhere goes deeper than just sanitation. We feel worse about where we're living when things are this messy. We don't feel proud of where we live, don't feel comfortable enough to invite in guests, or even have them in our houses for the shortest amount of time. And even when we do have guests, when they see a lot of bugs and a big mess... I know it's not important to him, what other people think of the environment he lives in, but it matters to me. I know it matters to my mom too. I don't want people to think of me as a poor slob. Because I know that's not who I am. And I also want to feel comfortable inviting people into my home. Because I'm a social creature... even if he isn't.

He deters me from cleaning his desk area by telling me I must respect his space. The problem is, his space doesn't exist in a vacuum. My work space certainly gets cluttered, yes, but it gets cluttered with piles of mail and half-completed commissions, paint spills and toys. Garbage and dirty dishes don't sit around for very long, because of said reasons.

What's worse, is that he loses things all the time. Whenever he loses stuff, I suggest that he cleans up. I always find a bunch of things when I clean up (indeed, last time I cleaned up his desk, I found easily a half dozen things he or I had lost that we had basically given up on looking for). But he dismisses me entirely. He loses his car keys all the time. His solution, instead of cleaning or finding them somehow, is to instead "borrow" my keys. But, inevitably, because he has not confronted the likely cause of the problem, he usually loses my keys, too. Which, in turn, forces him to look for them, or his own keys. And if he finds his keys, he does not continue to search for mine. For probably the third or fourth time, my keys are missing as a result of this ridiculous cycle.

As proudly analytical as he insists on being, you would think he would have a very good answer as to why he does these things. But I have never gotten a clear response. And I can't think of one for him. I think my rationale is completely sound. Even now, looking it over in writing, I am baffled by his behavior, from a rational standpoint. Of course, I could perhaps think of some deeper psychological reasons for his behavior, but he has never taken well to my psychoanalysis, so such an effort would not have much utility, other than perhaps to cause me to resign to his ludicrous and unacceptably inconsiderate behavior. If I act out in anger or irritation, it is only because I am at a complete loss as to how to even deal with him anymore.

Paying Attention

It was, on the whole, a pretty laid-back day. Writing, frankly, took up most of my time. Then, reading. Everything.

I probably seem like a very negligent mother. I am really inattentive in this department. I can't count the number of times he's gotten into the change table drawer and pulled out all sorts of things that, frankly, Poison Control would probably call Child Services if they knew what has been inside his mouth. I can't tell you how many baby wipes I have lost to him just throwing them around the nursery like they're confetti. I don't mind drawing a bath for him and cleaning behind his ears, but once that's done, it is a special kind of torture to have to sit there and watch him play. It's endearing, sure, but it's also mind-numbingly boring. I'm not doing a very good job with potty training either; how can I possibly expect him to sit still long enough for a bowel movement, when I can't manage to sit still with him? And he arguably has more energy than me.

For instance, at this exact moment, I am absorbed in writing. What is he doing right now? Playing with a comb and a tube of baby toothpaste... BRB...

And I wouldn't have even noticed that if I wasn't trying to make a point. I'm really not that good at paying attention to my kid. There are lots of mommy internet memes out there that assure me that this is normal. Toddlers are supposed to unravel the entire roll of toilet paper all over the room and eat rash creme. At least, it's a normal thing for them to do that they're totally not supposed to do.

But my doubt really seeps in when I just don't understand what's going on with him. Is he hungry? Tired? In pain? Is he demanding a specific thing? Just wants attention? This was always my biggest fear, even before I gave birth. How do I even decipher his needs and wants, when he doesn't even have any language (or, as is the case now, barely has any)? For instance, yesterday Fiver woke up from his nap screaming, startling me, and I went straight to him and took him out of the crib. He was quiet, almost as if he was still half asleep, and when I tried to put him down in the nursery, he clung to me, so I just continued to hold him. I was a little annoyed by this, because I just wanted to get back to writing, but I figured if I held him for a bit longer, he would finish waking up and leap from my arms, ready to continue playing. But he didn't. He screamed if i tried to put him down, and when I got tired of standing there with him, I sat down with him laying on my chest, just waiting for him to get that usual little burst of energy he gets to run off and play. But he didn't, he just laid against me, like he was sick or something, and I started to worry. It was especially strange when he would just start kicking his legs in violent spurts, then immediately return to the calm, lethargic state he was in. I couldn't figure it out. I called Jesse into the room and asked him to hold the baby, just to see if it made any difference. He seemed fine, equally lethargic, and sat for a while before reaching down to me again.

At a complete loss, I just started asking him, "Are you still tired little guy, wanna go back to bed? Wanna go play? Go get a pony, you wanna play with your ponies? Are you okay little guy?" All the while he's just staring off into the distance, completely slack in my arms. "You want a snack?" And immediately, he lights up. He sits up in my lap, turns to me, looks me in the eyes, and starts babbling.

I felt so stupid. It should have been obvious to me. He'd barely had anything for breakfast, and it should have been my first guess well before assuming he was sick. So I brought him out to the kitchen and started preparing things for him with Jesse. But first, I made a Hot Pocket, because I was hungry too (my appetite has been pretty stable for the last few days, a good sign). While Jesse was making something for the baby, Fiver was demanding everything we were eating. He climbed into my lap while I was trying to eat and said, "A bite? A bite?" I was not inclined to share my food, but how can you say no to that? I have to reward him for using words, after all. This whole incident from earlier would have gone a lot more smoothly if he had just said "Hungry. Hungry."

I worry about my inattentiveness because I'm pretty sure it's the reason he yells and screams and throws things as much as he does. Since I'm in my head so much and always so absorbed in whatever I'm doing, he pretty much HAS to do those things to get my attention sometimes. Even if I find it annoying, it does work to get my attention. And I can't just ignore him when he does it, because he's usually trying to get my attention for a legitimate reason. He's not just "being needy"; he actually needs things. Even if he's just bored and wants attention, that's still a legitimate need. But if he learns that that is the way to get people's attention when you need something, he's going to be in a lot of trouble when he goes to school. He'll be running around, throwing things, screeching, hitting people in the face and knocking their glasses off... I pity the teacher. Chances are they'll think he's just ADHD and want to put him on medications, like they did for my brother. And the hell if I'm going to let that happen to my child, whose brain has barely had time to develop even a fraction of the way toward maturity.

The problem with training him out of those bad habits is that it will take a ton of attention on my part. Frankly, I just don't think I'm cut out for it. To be fair, most parents aren't. Which is why so many kids end up sedated on psychiatric medications. If one of us needs to be on medication to treat an attention deficit, it'd be better if it was me than him. But me? On medications? That's an entirely different can of worms.

Hopefully it'll just get easier as he learns words. For now, all I can do to discourage the negative behavior is grab his arm when he hits me in the face and firmly tell him, "No. You do not hit people." When he screams, tell him firmly (trying very hard not to yell myself), "Fiver, do not scream." And when he throws things, firmly tell him, "Stop throwing things." After correcting him, I still need to help him fulfill his needs - that's my job, after all - but I can only hope these corrections are more than just platitudes.

Click Moments

It was so strange yesterday to be awake so long before the baby. Even after I finished my last blog, I had a few hours to myself before I had to attend to him. I just checked my mail and read some news articles and such, like I do with much of my free time, except this time it wasn't late at night so there wasn't a pressing demand for me to go to bed, and no distraction from a rowdy baby. A lot of times I will just open articles I find interesting and leave the tabs open forever, feeling like I don't have the time to read them. Even when I do technically have the time, and I'm just idling away in front of my computer, something keeps me from reading them. I can't sustain focus on the stories, or I feel guilty for still being awake, or I feel like I should probably be doing something else more pressing. But it was early in the morning, with no other immediate obligations, and an important task for the day already out of the way; all of those usual feelings were absent.

Once the baby was up, I went ahead with our usual rituals, and we sat together in the living room watching cartoons as I fed him oatmeal. I ran into trouble, though, because I hadn't realized the variety pack I bought came with "original" flavored oatmeal, and he kept spitting it out. I went into the kitchen to look for some cinnamon, and found myself getting extremely irritated when I couldn't find it. I was shuffling things around in the cabinet as I searched, getting increasingly agitated. It had been such a good morning, and I couldn't understand why I was feeling so cranky. I gave up on my search and just threw the bowl of oatmeal in the sink, not bothering to scrape it into the trash, and sat back down in a huff. Obviously I was irritated because without the cinnamon, I couldn't get the baby to eat his food. If he didn't eat it, it would go to waste, which is irritating in itself since food is not always plentiful in the house. I also felt guilty, because without resolving that problem, the baby would hardly have eaten anything for breakfast. I also felt guilty because I didn't scrape out the bowl and was adding to the mess in the kitchen that I knew was bothering my mother, if not everyone else in the household. It seemed like my guilt and concern for the baby would outweigh everything else and compel me to find a better solution than just throwing the oatmeal out, but I didn't feel like I could handle making something else, since the dirty dishes in the sink made any work in the kitchen feel like an insurmountable task. I did still have to make sure he ate something, so I opened a package of crackers and started feeding them to him. It wasn't a very hearty breakfast, but it was better than nothing. And as I fed him the crackers, the real root of my irritability revealed itself. I started dozing off in the chair. I forgot, I had only slept for a couple of hours, and since I was up so early I had already been up about six hours. I was just tired!

It was so obvious. And yet, it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on with me. It's almost like I have a reversed fundamental attribution error. When examining our own behavior, most normal people attribute negative behavior to something besides themselves, such as something in the environment or various circumstances. But when we examine other's negative behavior, we attribute it to something intrinsic about the person: we call them evil, stupid, bad at their job, arrogant, selfish, etc. We don't consider that they may just be having a bad day, or be under a lot of stress, or maybe they recently experienced a major loss. I seem to function in the reverse; when someone else acts out in a negative way, my default is to ask myself "Why are they behaving this way?" and dismiss any of the intellectually two-dimensional solutions such as "They're just a bad person." This is why I feel I can readily see into other people's thoughts and feelings. This is why I often feel such intense empathy with others. But when looking at my own behavior, such as not waking up in the morning and immediately attending to my baby, my default is to attribute this behavior to something intrinsic about myself, such as "I am a bad mother." Those are the kind of thoughts in my head that I am constantly trying to stomp down, because just like if I were thinking such things about another person, I know that they are fundamentally flawed, intellectually shallow, and profoundly maladaptive. But for some reason, I find it much harder to keep these thoughts at bay and offer a better solution to why I behave the way I do. Even though the solution is so obvious, as it was in this case.

It's like when I was in college and started to feel like I was getting dumber. I didn't grasp ideas and concepts as readily as I did when I was in high school, I was losing my intellectual curiosity, I just wasn't making connections the same. I didn't contribute to conversations like I once did. My friends would talk about their ideas, and I rarely had anything to contribute. When I did, it felt so forced, and nothing seemed as clever as what they were saying. Even they were taking notice and thought it strange it seemed I was becoming stupid. Even I was starting to believe it. I was ashamed and disappointed in myself. At times I felt like it wasn't worth living if I couldn't think the way I once did, if my mind was just going to continue to deteriorate year after year.

But then I heard a story on NPR about a recent study that examined why it seems like poor people make bad decisions. They found that "the condition of poverty imposed a mental burden akin to losing 13 IQ points" (or comparable to the cognitive difference that’s been observed between chronic alcoholics and normal adults, which I found really interesting... but that's another tangent entirely). All of a sudden, it made complete sense to me. I wasn't going crazy, my brain wasn't inherently broken. Since beginning college, and especially after graduating, my socioeconomic condition had changed drastically. Now I was responsible for so many things, like my housing and food and classes and work, things I hardly had to worry about when I was living in an upper-middle class household. Even when I moved out at seventeen, there were still adults making sure I was taken care of, so that I could focus on school. But in college, sometimes the financial burden was so bad, I would not have enough money for food. There were times I went without eating. Sometimes that lack of nourishment or general stress prompted depression that kept me homebound for days. I would miss classes. One time during the summer, I had been eating so little for so long (whether it was from depression, or empty cabinets, or a combination of both, I don't remember now), when I did leave the house with a friend to go see a play, I fainted. I fainted perhaps two more times as I tried to make my way to a vending machine and scrape together what little pocket change I had on me to get some crackers - something, anything - in my stomach. All the while, my poor friend was shocked and horrified and at a complete loss for what to do. (Again, upon recalling the incident, I feel more for his plight than I do for my own, an impulse which speaks to how much more deeply I empathize with others than feel for myself.)

Even my gaming binges made sense in this context. I spent so much time and energy stressing out and obsessing over how I was going to manage to pay the rent and bills, that it was so refreshing to turn my brain on to World of Warcraft and obsess over something else for twenty hours at a time. One might criticize me for not spending that time searching for a better job or doing something more constructive (indeed, my father said such things; part of the reason I don't talk to him anymore). But given my mental state at the time, solving all my problems simply was not possible. It was the gaming, connecting with other people there, and the blatant escapism, that my brain needed. It was better than wishing myself dead. And isn't that precisely at the heart of suicidality: escapism?

Once I had this out, once I knew that I felt dumber because poverty was gobbling up my mental bandwidth (what a savory concept, mental bandwidth), the menacing voice that whispered to me You're stupid, what's the point of living if you can't think right anymore? completely dissolved. It was the same with this incident; once I knew that my irritability was a result of just being tired, rather than some moral failure on my part, all the anxiety and shame associated with my failure to control my mood completely vanished. The new problem at hand was simply to get some sleep, which, granted, was it's own struggle, but once the baby was down for his nap I managed to get the rest I needed.

When I woke up, it was five o'clock, and Jesse was telling me to get up, sounding irritable with me, his volume escalating. Again, I felt resentful, and wanted to continue sleeping. The baby was awake, sure, but he was cooing calmly in his crib, entertaining himself within the confines of a safe area. The only real pressure on me to get up with any urgency was Jesse. At the time, I was just annoyed with his attitude, and it didn't make much sense to me why he was being so urgent given that there was nothing to get pushy about. I did eventually get up and let the baby out of the crib, but not without engaging in a short shouting match. Even when I was awake enough to get up, I didn't want to move. Perhaps out of spite. Perhaps from the anxiety imposed by his shouting. Either way, in retrospect, I understand that he's responding to a pattern of my behaviors, and not taking the time and energy to analyze the individual situation. My patterns of sleep have been an ongoing problem, and he is still annoyed with me when he sees me sleeping at times he deems inappropriate. There have been times that I have slept through entire mornings, and well into the afternoon, not even beginning to rouse at my baby's cries from his crib. Those are the times I have felt most like a failure as a mother, such that the shame I feel over the incidents is tangible. I am almost too ashamed to even confess it here, but I know I must. His anger, given this established pattern, makes sense, though in this particular moment, when the baby and I are waking from our naps at the same time, he is being unreasonable. Now he is just getting angry at me out of habit, and is too cognitively lazy to fully assess the individual situation.

While I'm feeding the baby in the evening, I notice that my mother has finished doing half the dishes. I am relieved, though again I feel guilty. I had been wanting to tackle the dishes for the last two days for her, but couldn't bring myself to do it, for the same reason I couldn't bring myself to search my room for a dirty pair of shorts. Just the process I have to go through to do the dishes brings up so many emotionally draining thoughts and stresses that I can't even begin to deal with it. I don't normally have to worry about the dishes, and neither does she, because her father usually does them. But Papa broke his hip this weekend and is in the hospital, and we don't expect he'll be back anytime soon. Even when he does recover, my mom plans on putting him in an assisted living facility, since she can't be home to care for him. He's been pretty independent up until recently, with periodic seizures and dementia that makes it difficult for him to remember to take his medicine or even remember what he's taking it for. Not to mention he's cranky all the time. I would pitch in in caring for him more, but I can barely take care of myself as it is, let alone my son, let alone an elderly person with memory loss and a sour disposition.

I really hate doing the dishes. But so does everyone else in the household. And my mom is working all day, and absolutely deserves a free pass on dealing with that extra chore. Jesse is usually in school, but even when he isn't, his sensory disorder makes it difficult for him to do the dishes and deal with water (coincidentally, same reason I usually end up the one who has to give the baby his bath). So the responsibility now falls on me.

Though now that she has done half of it, and sorted the unfinished dishes in neat piles the same way I would have done if I had been able to bring myself to do it at all, I feel like the rest of the chore is realistically doable for me. (Granted, the dishes are still only half finished... but at least now I feel the chore is possible. I just have to commit the time and attention to completing the task, which is a whole different can of worms.) When I noticed, I thanked her for doing it, and told her I meant to do it myself, but couldn't bring myself to do it, explaining that when I looked at the pile of dishes, I became overwhelmed. She replied that it was really simple to deal with, that you just take them all out and sort them in piles (as she had), but I had to interrupt her. I knew the process I had to go through. But I simply couldn't even get started on it. I just couldn't. There was not much explanation needed. My mom knows the feeling; she has been diagnosed with anxiety herself. The difference is, she's medicated for it.

While the baby ate, my mom was on her laptop, browsing Facebook and watching videos. "Look at this rehab center, it's like a spa!" This sent me off into a spiel about the function of luxury and comfortable settings when treating people for drug addiction, which she nodded her head in understanding, entirely missing the disconnect in communication that just happened. "I think Papa will really like this place," she said.

I was so far inside my head when she directed my attention to the video, that the tangent I flew off on was completely disconnected from the context of the situation. She was researching to find a rehab center she could put Papa in, and it should have been obvious to me that this was the kind of rehab she was talking about, not drug rehab. I was embarrassed for a moment, but less so since I was the only one who seemed to notice what happened, and also a little alarmed when I realized what had occurred. On the whole, I feel a lot better. I can already tell I'm thinking more normally. My cognitive capacity is where I think it should be. It's like when I was depressed, all of my neural connections were shut off, but now that I'm writing again, I've flipped a huge lever that has turned the whole system back online, and there are so many connections, it's insanely easy to get lost in them.

This absentmindedness is manifesting in other small ways too. Like when I was preparing food for the baby, I was getting steps mixed up, almost forgot to set the timer on the oven, forgot what it was I was planning on doing when I walked into the kitchen initially, etc. They are the briefest lapses in memory, and I recover from them quickly enough, but they are unnerving. I fear they foreshadow a more crippling disability in old age. Not an unrealistic fear, given my family history.

While and after we put the baby to bed, Jesse and I were talking and I noticed I had things to say. A lot of times, he has a lot of ideas to bounce off of me, and that's all they do: bounce. I have trouble reflecting anything of substance or merit back at him. But now, I really seemed to be engaging in the conversation and bringing something of my own to the table. At one point while we were talking later, just before he was ready to go to bed, he had an "Aha!" moment after I explained how my brain was working and why I have some of the problems I'm having. It suddenly clicked with him the similarities between that and his sensory processing disorder. I got glassy-eyed and asked him, "Can you write that down?" I wanted him to explain it and write it down the way I have been writing here. It wasn't that I didn't understand what had clicked, it was that I wanted to lay out his idea and examine it more thoroughly. But since his thoughts aren't in my head, they're in his, I can't just examine the ideas in my head. I don't know what clicked as well as I want to. As we continued talking, it happened again, this time talking about an interaction he had with someone at school, and how his decisions in dealing with others impacted them. Again, I wanted it in writing. I could see so many other ideas I wanted to explore with the story he was telling me, but I felt like writing it down or being able to read it would make it so much easier to make those connections.

I slept late again. After playing Minecraft and working on a project with friends, I went to bed at about four in the morning. Again, sleep came naturally, and there was no anxiety about going to bed like there normally is. The trouble with sleep isn't always just racing thoughts. I have anxiety directly related to sleeping and all that entails. A lot of times I just feel like if I sleep, I'm going to miss out on things, or that its wasted time. Time, time, time. There are so many things I want to do in life, so many things I want to accomplish and read and learn and make, sleeping just feels like time wasted. It's like a curse, robbing me of so much potential. I'm dreaming away all my opportunities. And so often I get hung up on this. Why sleep? When I could be doing this or that or the other thing. I feel pulled in so many directions, sleep gets lost in the tussle. Now that I'm writing, this particular brand of anxiety has evaporated. It's as if, for all the things I want to do, as long as I'm writing, I feel satiated.

This morning, I woke with a start at the first sound of the baby crying, and sprung out of bed to begin the day. Achievement unlocked.

Paradigm Shift

The first thing I noticed was that I laughed. I was in the living room with the baby watching cartoons. We were watching a rerun episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, and it was the episode "The Authority" which I had already seen 3 or 4 times. I did not laugh out of surprise; I had watched these scenes before. I did not laugh because I had suddenly gotten a joke I had missed before; I understood it all the same. I laughed out of empathy for the characters, and out of the pleasure I felt for experiencing that empathy. The feeling the character expressed was rage, but it went so much deeper than that. I looked into her little animated soul and felt a kinship and spontaneously laughed. I think it surprised Jesse almost as much as it did me. He looked at me from the kitchen and said, "What's up?" At the time, the best I could express myself was, "Ah, the cartoon..." But in my mind, I was already writing a full episode analysis, like I might have done for some kind of cartoon literary theory class in school. Even when I changed the channel, I found that I could more fully appreciate even shows that I did not normally watch or enjoy. It was like everything I watched was in sharper focus. Everything seemed to have merit and purpose. I felt as though I was peering into the brains of the people who created those shows.

After the baby was in bed, I played Minecraft, a favorite pasttime of mine. It used to just be a form of escapism, but since joining a server and playing with other people, it has become a treatment for my chronic isolation. The isolation isn't so much a consequence of my mental instability, as it is a stressor that exacerbates it. It is simply a result of inconvenient circumstances, such as living in a rural area and being homebound by childcare duties. I do not have to drag through awkward conversations in a strained effort to bond with my playmates; we simply play together, and the bonding is a natural consequence of that play. And the friendships that develop there between players are just as real and significant as any other social bond. Even when not playing the game, lots of players use MineChat to talk to and socialize within their cliques.

But even when playing, something felt different. After perhaps a week or two of feeling lethargic in my gameplay and not very motivated to work on any projects, I suddenly felt a drive to work on something. I reached out to my team members to collaborate on a project and worked for several hours. And when I was done, I did not find myself hunting for new things to do or finding more things to distract me on the internet. There were certainly more things I could work on in regard to the project, but I felt as though I had finished the chapter and was comfortable placing the bookmark and setting it on the nightstand. I had not worked on the project so late that I was falling asleep in front of my computer, and I didn't feel particularly exhausted. But I felt like I was ready to sleep. When I laid down in bed, again, I was able to fall asleep readily.

I was awoken in short time by intimate demands. The differences I noticed were not so much in myself and my mood and my pleasure, but in him. He was more present in our interaction, not to mention more sustainably aroused. But it was the presence that really surprised me. For us, there is often a mental disconnect in our sexual interactions, where we have intimacy and experience a carnal pleasure, but our minds are not really there. For him, the absent-mindedness of his sexual acts is sometimes so profound, that I am sure he is engaging with me in his sleep. After climax, sometimes there is nothing I can do to capture his attention, short of violently shaking him awake. And even if I do that, it is pointless, since he is completely unaware that any intimacy occurred. Which, in turn, neutralizes any actual intimacy I may have perceived in the act, reducing it to a simple biological imperative, which may as well have been mechanical in nature.

But the intimacy we shared this morning was truly intimate. The pleasure I experienced was emotional, physical, and mental. When the act was through, I clung to him and whined when he told me he had to go and drop my mom off at work. I did not want him to leave, and I did not want the moment of intimacy to come to an end. It seems as though the changes I'm experiencing mentally are not just part of my subjective experience. I'm not just imagining the difference this new medication is making. It seems as though he has picked up on something as well, and it has drastically altered our interactions. It's possible that he has been reading these blog postings, though I had not overtly invited him to do so, and the changes are a result of clearer communication. But as far as I know, he hasn't read anything (or at least if he has, he has not told me), which leaves me guessing as to the precise cause of this drastic shift.

The improvement of symptoms has not stopped there. After he left, I felt awake and rested, though I had not slept for very long. I also felt hungry, with a motivating appetite: extremely unusual for me, even on good mornings. I was already working on this blog posting in my mind, and usually when I get to thinking like that, I am too much in my head to pay any attention to these primary needs. The obsessive project of the moment becomes my sole motivation, and all else falls by the wayside. But in this case, I was hungry and really wanted to eat something. I was a little distracted by the writing I was doing in my head, though. I prepared my pastries and headed back to my computer with the plate, but realized I had forgotten my drink. Then I went back to the kitchen to pour a cup of milk, and headed back to my computer, realizing halfway there I had forgotten my plate, and had to head back again to retrieve it before heading to my computer for a third time. Only then did I sit down and begin writing.

There is one other major difference I have noticed, and that is in my pattern of thinking. I first noticed it during the fight Jesse and I had yesterday. It was as if I split into two, one of me experiencing the moment, the other watching and recording. I was more acutely aware of my thoughts and feelings, as well as Jesse's, and sometimes overshadowing the more ominous voice in my head was another that read back to me what was happening, and was trying to find the right words or phrases to describe each detail. This voice is not normally present when I get into fights like that and am under a lot of stress. It was as though committing to writing as treatment has actually flipped a switch in my brain and I'm functioning cognitively on an entirely different frequency than usual. Moreover, the knowledge that I was going to write about the incident functioned as light at the end of the tunnel, it was the cheese at the end of the maze. Part of me wanted to get up that morning in order to write. Not only is this medication a treatment, it's a reward.

Plugging Black Holes

Before writing my blog post last night, it was 3 in the morning and already way past my bedtime. I was on my third day of watching myself slip back into a vicious cycle of sleep irregularity, and after tiring myself out with painting I felt I might finally be able to get to sleep. I laid down in bed by Jesse and tried to fall asleep. Though I was tired, I was confronted with racing thoughts and ideas, and the aforementioned revelation about my cognitive processes. I knew I could easily lay in bed like this for hours, until well after sunrise, up until the baby called for me from his crib. It's happened many times already. When I realized I needed to write, it was in conflict with my need to sleep. I tried to tell myself, "These are great ideas and all, but you can write about it in the morning. You need to sleep now." This did nothing to soothe my restlessness. Sleep would not come.

So I caved. I got out of bed and started writing. This is something I have done many times, too. It does work to help me sleep, the problem being it may take just as long for me to write what needs to be written as it would to just lay there and get myself to sleep. And sure enough, once the blog was written (and I had read over it again three or four times), I was able to lay in bed and fall asleep quickly enough that I do not remember needing to try. Fortunately, the writing process was brief enough that it was still dark outside. I could have written more, god knows I have about three dozen other blog ideas bouncing around in my head, but I wrote only what needed to be written, and nothing more. And that was sufficient.

I did not wake naturally; I of course woke to the cries of a well-rested baby ready to start his day. Problem was, I wasn't quite ready to start mine, though it was probably already at least 11 AM. I wanted to just rest for a bit longer. "Five more minutes, sweetie," my brain said. At the same time, muttering in the background, it also said, "You're a terrible mother." I could have stifled that thought, I know that it is irrational and maladaptive, but it was given fuel by Jesse who, already awake and absorbed with his own tasks, echoed the baby's cries: "Get up." The tone was mercilessly irritable. And I knew what he was thinking: I know you're tired, but that's your own fault. You stayed up late again, despite all the effort I have put into trying to get you to sleep right. I do not feel bad for you feeling tired, because you are to blame. You have responsibilities and I will not let you shirk them. Get up. Once this impulse was filtered through my mind, the information my brain gave back was this: "He thinks you're a failure as a mother. And he's right."

The little monster mumbling in the back of my mind was turning into a black hole of despair, sucking up any piece of information it could find to justify making itself bigger. I was watching depression happening. I wanted to get up, to stop this process in its tracks. But not only was I tired, I was beginning to become paralyzed with anxiety.

I had to get up and take the baby out of his crib. But in order to do that, I had to put clothes on, since I sleep in the nude. I knew I had underwear in my dresser, I could handle that. I knew my bra was somewhere on the floor. Okay. Do I even have any clean pants? Doesn't matter. I want to wear shorts. Do I even have any clean shorts? Probably not. Can I wear dirty shorts? Probably. It was a compromise, but I could handle dirty shorts. Can I even find a pair of dirty shorts? The room is a complete mess, and hardly any of the dirty clothes manage to find their way into the laundry basket. It would probably take me several minutes to find a pair of dirty shorts, if I was able to find any at all. I knew that if I had to spend more than a minute or two hunting down those shorts, I would become gripped with frustration over the state of the room itself. I would notice a dirty dish somewhere, or see a cockroach crawling across the floor, or find some bauble I once treasured broken or strewn carelessly across the floor. I know what the room looks like, and I don't like looking at it. It brings up a whole tsunami of other thoughts and troubles that fill up my mind like an over-inflated play ball, so that as soon as someone starts to play with it, it bursts.

All while this thought negotiation is going on, Jesse is repeating, each time becoming more irritable: "Get up." The black hole grows with each pinprick star of fuel he gives it. He thinks the black hole has already consumed me, now he thinks that I am too depressed to get up. But that is not the case. It hasn't gotten me. Yet.

I try to push the thoughts back, and move forward with my process. So I can't even begin to look for a pair of dirty shorts. Could I wear something else? Maybe I could settle for some pants. I think all my jeans are dirty. Are there any sweatpants in the dresser? Maybe. I'm not sure. They may all be in that pile of clean laundry that ended up on the floor. There has to be something in the drawer, I'm pretty sure. I can find something. I know I have shirts in the drawer. I can get a shirt. So I can get dressed. But when I get up, I'm going to smell myself. I can't stand that smell.

It has been several minutes, and Jesse's frustration with me is mounting. He is yelling now. "GET UP." He is cursing now. "GOD DAMN IT HEIDI, GET THE FUCK UP." The baby is wailing in the other room. You are a failure as a mother.

I need a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes, I know I can do this. I am so close now. I just need a little help. I ask Jesse if he can just take care of the baby. This only enrages him more. He tells me he is busy with a very important task. He does not tell me what that task is. You are not important enough to be helped. You're not worth it.

I try to tell him I need him to do this thing. He tells me I need to get up and do it myself. He thinks I have been lost to the black hole already, and I am trying to shirk my duties onto him. He thinks I am going to be trapped like this all day. It is not an unreasonable assumption; it has happened many times. I tell him, "I just need you to take the baby out of his crib and put him in the playroom. That is all. Please." Finally, he lays on me what the task is that he has to do. He is writing some urgent emails because there is a bureaucratic crisis with his enrollment at the university. When the gravity of the situation then sinks in for me, I am awash with empathy for him. Were it me, I would be a mess of snot and tears, would want to curl up in a ball and die. No longer would my little monster be muttering the kinds of inconsequential insults it is now, it would be screaming over me: YOU HAVE NO PURPOSE IN LIFE. YOU ARE TRAPPED. YOU SHOULD JUST DIE. He is a bit more functional than I am though; he is actually dealing with the situation. But I know how he must feel, and I care deeply for him. Just as I know he does for me. Therefore, I do not want him to feel that way, or anywhere near how I would feel if put in his situation. I don't want to be doing things to make him feel worse. The intensity of my empathy reignites my motivation to get up. Now I just want to help him.

But because of the way he has been reacting, I feel resentful. He is telling me that he has to deal with this, and he can't handle me feeling a little sad. He is belittling me for my impairment, telling me to get over it. Just get over it. Just stop being sad. What's wrong with you? Just move one leg, then the other, and get the hell out of bed. Why is this so hard? I find myself screaming now: "IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING SIMPLE." The whole dispute becomes a haze. It has only been a few hours since it happened, but I can hardly remember many of the details or exact words that were said. All I can remember are the impressions.

But part of the breakdown in communication is very clear to me. He thinks I am depressed, when that is not the problem. At one point I am able to articulate, "I'm not depressed, that's not the problem. Anxiety is the problem." I don't know if he hears me, or if he's even really listening, but at some point, while he's still berating me for not getting up, he does go and put the baby in the nursery. I still need to change him and feed him, but I am able to move the task to the back of my mind. Since the baby is not actively crying, the immediacy of the task is neutralized.

So the smell. It's starting to make me feel more miserable. I have gone way too long without a shower. Can I put on deoderant before putting on my shirt? Sure, but that doesn't entirely fix the problem. Even if I don't smell myself, I know that I'm disgusting. And the thought that I'm disgusting is more black hole fuel I can't afford to give it. Well, can I just put deoderant on for now? I can take a shower once the baby is fed. Yeah, I can do that. So I can get dressed, and once I take care of the baby, I can take a shower. That I can do.

And little by little, I start to get up. I prop myself up on my arms, looking around the room to see if I can find the clothes I need. I am able to get up. There are no mental roadblocks, and that monstrous little black hole fades back into the background as I slowly work through each step. When I get to the nursery, the baby is smiling up at me, babbling incoherently.

As I'm changing the baby, Jesse comes up and hugs me from behind. "I love you," he says.

"I love you too," I return.

There is no need for a lengthy apology. I have already forgiven him. I know it is really hard to understand how or why I think and behave the way I do. Even for someone as brilliant as him, any kind of mental illness is impossible to understand fully unless you're the one suffering from it. And even then, I do not entirely understand what is going on inside my skull. The truth is, no one does. Not even the most talented neuroscientists and psychologists. Everyone is just practicing with their best guesses. And though I don't have any concrete diagnosis, we both know something is awry. He may try to armchair diagnose and has called it many things: bipolar, depression, OCD. I would suggest ADHD and generalized anxiety as well. But even if I had a diagnosis, that still would not be a real answer as to how or why I feel and think the way I do. Just like God Did It or Because I Said So, I find bland diagnoses to be an intellectually insufficient response to the essential question: Why?

On Taking My Medicine

I have not been keeping up with my mood journal as prescribed. I've fallen off the wagon, so to speak. I started this journal on the suggestion of my S.O., in an effort to help regulate my moods and various other symptoms I have been experiencing from my undiagnosed psychological condition. However, I've been finding it to be causing more anxiety and dissonance than it is curing. I write about my mood and my day in such shallow terms, it's impossible to really resolve anything at all, or even derive any substantial satisfaction from the process of writing. After missing a number of "doses" in a row, I start to feel guilty just thinking about picking my mood journal back up again, because doing so entails a requisite confession of my failure to take my medicine.

So I'm changing the dosage.

The idea follows from this short conversation:

First, my longing to write is a powerful urge that flows over my being periodically, in waves of nostalgia, angst, and grief. I have known from a very early age that my love for writing will be with me until the day I die. Writing was my "tell" for giftedness, the spark my teachers saw that made them think, "Aha, this girl is something else." It is something that's in my blood, something that is part of my identity even when I have not written for a very long time. To say that I'm a writer is not to say that I write things professionally or as a hobby. It is to say that it is something I need, as much as a plant needs to bask in sunlight.

Second, the realization that it's so difficult for me to dictate my writing came as a revelation. I know that my S.O. could readily dictate his writing, because he speaks like he writes, in wholly formed thoughts, laid out beautifully each time with carefully-selected words that have an unimaginable amount of thought behind each one. When he does write something, the idea of revision is scandalous to him. The revision has already been done, he just didn't need to show his work, so to speak. But he is an intellectual savant, his brain an extremely efficient idea machine. If we were both successful mathematicians, he'd be the one who never needed to show his work, with nary a thought about the problem before the correct solution presented itself to his mind. I, however, need to do the long division.

It is not that I'm less capable of understanding these thoughts and ideas, simply that it takes more work for me to get to them. And for me, it's work I don't mind doing, even enjoy. I take satisfaction not simply from knowing the solution to the puzzle, but from the process of solving the puzzle. He cannot even begin to tackle a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, whereas I become completely absorbed in the process. I feel comfortable selling off finished crafts, because it is the crafting process I crave, not the finished product itself. I am a maker, a builder, a doer. A thinker, yes, but for me thinking is impossible with idle hands. My S.O. may devour thoughts whole like a ravenous snake, but I nibble the edges and play with my food.

And writing IS my process. It is the bed for my restless mind, the sedative to my anxiety, the happy pill for my depression. It is my cure, and I need to start taking my medicine.