Recovery Is Slow

One week ago today, my arms and legs were buzzing like a power station while all of my limbs were twitching in different directions. All of my hope was placed in the pain doc appointment the next day and I hoped that I would feel better that same day. After all, I found what amounted to a dose of my anti-anxiety pills that you might find in couch cushions. It wasn't even a full dose but it was just a little bit of relief anyway. This made me believe that I would get better the same night that I took a full dose of my medicine last Monday.

The high voltage tingle in my arms and legs did stop or slow down enough for me to be semi-functional. I'm pretty dysfunctional on my best day so this didn't scream clue at me. When I wrote my previous entry, I was surprised at how difficult serious writing was. My focus was off and I was suffering from a case of that lovely condition where I'm too sleepy to do anything but too physically wired to sleep. I could only catch sleep in tiny amounts and that sleep was so full of nightmares that it hardly counted. I dreamed that my father was asking me why I would think anyone would ever be interested in my writing. This actually happened, of course, starting in the fourth grade and it never truly stopped until we stopped speaking to each other.

I dreamed that a teacher confronted me about not having a required book. The book was out of stock when I had arrived at the book sale so I could not purchase it that day. This was back during the time when I was forbidden to have my own income but I knew that my integrity would be questioned if I asked for more money or I'd have to hear unpleasantness about my school. Eventually, I learned to dread those classes with incomplete book lists. In German class, we were required to buy our own dictionaries outside of school. I can't remember if this was just after the main supply ran out or if it was just never ordered by the school. I'm not blaming my dear high school or my college. I am among the proudest of proud alumni for both St. Marks High School and the University of Delaware.

The one person I might have seemed to blame would be my German teacher. I had two of them in high school but the first only lasted a year to the delight of certain class hooligans. (You know it's true. Considering how terrified I was at the time, I have surprisingly fond memories of the hooligans who were a graduating class ahead of me.) The second is still around as far as I know. Sorry, Frau Lehrerin, it must have been terribly annoying to have a student who seemed to refuse to get a lousy dictionary. I just wanted you to know the truth even decades later. In those pre-Internet days, my only recourse was to make up words when I didn't know the real answer. By the way, Frau Lehrerin, isn't her name but her title. You use constructs in the form of "Mister Doctor" or "Herr Doktor." Frau Lehrerin translates literally to "Mrs. Teacher" but is used as a title. I hope that's right anyway. The brain surgery could have caused me to swap teacher and one of the words for student in my head.

Anyway, I logged on to write an entry yesterday with the usual content. This is what I'm going through, this is what I'm doing to treat it and I'm going to soldier on so you can too. There's almost always a subtext reminding people that it's okay to complain. If you go through anything like what I go through, complain away when you need to. It might help you feel a little better. Of course, I got sidetracked and went into a political rant. I stand by every word though some additional words of explanation would have been helpful. When I finished, I realized that the Chiari related content was lower than usual so I was careful where I posted it. I kept it to two places: my timeline and the Chiari "lack of" support group called "Chiari Uncensored."

Someone came along to kick me out of the group, wrote a rude comment and I got angry. My words failed me. Instead of telling people that they could go ahead and kick me out of the other groups, the closest I could come was something about helping me leave them. I thought that this was conciliatory and stepped away only to return in the sixth grade. My sixth grade year was the year I discovered what it was like to feel suicidal because of some very accurate bullying. I had not decided to act on it until well after a school administrator tried to help. I mistook this for an attack because that's what I was getting everywhere else and launched into a couple decades of misunderstanding. Thanks to my dearest Mommy, I was unable to confront the situation directly. My mother worked at the same school and was always convinced that she was a few days away from being fired. Maybe it was her poor teaching. I don't know. She might have been the best teacher they had but I do know she was always terrified that my behavior would result in her getting fired.

In truth, I was never able to confront the situation directly but I was able to piece together what happened through other sources later. The administrator did not repeat my panicked lie to anyone. I had filled out a questionnaire in my usual state of repressed rage writing something along the lines of wanting to find an easy way to die. I wrote that because it was true on bad days like that but also because I wanted to hurt some people who would waste time thinking about some random kid. I was furious when the anonymity of the survey was defeated by my own carelessness. I'd left a reference to spina bifida in there and I happened to be the only kid in the whole school with that particular birth defect. When confronted with this, I gave a panicked lie and blamed another kid with a (completely undeserved) reputation for getting others into trouble in creative ways.

So, there I was in the sixth grade just pondering the idea of suicide with no concept of how to act on it. My parents became concerned about my mental health a short time later leading me to put two and two together only to get 17. It's awful what you can believe when your information sources are so limited.

A month has passed and thinking about my sixth and seventh grade years is still enough to send me into a bout of nameless dread. Some school assignment has been left undone. I just double checked my records and paid the one bill that still needed to be paid. That wasn't the source of the dread. The dread is nameless, faceless and attached to no reality. It saps the energy from me most days and robs me of my rest. There was once a name for this dread or two names to be exact. I called them Mom and Dad. I should be at least trying to sleep right now but there is some small part of me that believes they can get at me through my fortress walls.

They would not hit me or hurt me in any way that would show on the outside. Instead, one of them might make a perfectly reasonable assertion about how my life could be improved. I would accept that my life would be better if I did what they said. I would simply feel the need to involve reality in the conversation. Your suggestion would improve my life but I am physically incapable of carrying it out. They say that I must change as if the emphasis would change the reality of my limitations. Human beings don't live like I do. They inform me that I don't qualify as human in their eyes. Without breaking a single law, they would wound me mortally.

After every confrontation, I spend days trying to stop sinking below the water that would drown me. I'm told, "don't let them get to you." "Consider the source" is another good one. The source made me chocolate chip cookies and chocolate truffle brownies and took me to baseball games for more than a decade. The source put me on this earth, raised me up to be who I am and now I repay them with rejection. I wish there were a better option but there isn't.

I titled this entry "Recovery is Slow" not "Recovery is Hopeless" or "Recovery Won't Happen." For years, people have seen what has happened to me and they were shocked. They were shocked because of what I've had to survive already. I was shocked because they believed me. I was shocked because I learned about people who had kids who failed to live up to their full potential but loved them anyway. It's difficult but I improve bit by bit. It's harder to think this some days than it is on others: my parents are more messed up than I am. I don't blame them because I know a little more about their pasts but that doesn't make it my fault. It is messed up to torment your own children.

I recover in other ways as well. After a few weeks of taking all my medications, I can do some things again. I can read and I can walk around the house a little without being crippled by the constant twitching. My symptoms have meaning again so that I can pull on those many levers and get the expected results. Writing is still more difficult than I expect it to be. I haven't been able to get anything done on the disability book in weeks but that's probably something to be expected. I'm writing about things that can hurt me on the best of days.

Even better, I might be able to make a big gain in the near future. A friend from gaming listened to me describe how a few small changes could make my life so much better. My inability to walk trash to the dumpster is the thing that bothers me most. Therefore, my friend who started off as "just" a gaming friend is trying to organize getting me some time with a pickup truck sort of vehicle and someone to drive it. This is a big deal because I can catch up and live like a human being for a while. Even just the thought of it has given me one of life's great tonics: hope.