The New Normal

Somewhere in the past two months rubble of writing I have a piece about all the things we don’t write on Facebook (in response to the awesomely funny top 7 ways to be insufferable on Facebook) and why it’s not because people are necessarily insufferable. They might just want to see the positive while not inappropriately over sharing their personal negatives.

Acceptable for Facebook is proudly posting links to honor roll lists or posts about how great your kids have done at something (I’ve got three kids, of course I do it). Posts about personal, child, or family medical struggles are also acceptable, and valued, as it is brave and wonderful for people to share. It is also helpful to know what people that you care about are dealing with. 

Quieter and seen in the days of no posts or perhaps links to humorous videos are those of us navigating the world of mental health struggles because our society really doesn’t accept that this is also a medical struggle.

Just as a parent is proud of a child who is recovering from a knee injury for slowly working their way back into sports, I am proud of my oldest daughter as she goes to her classes, talks to her teachers after she has fallen behind, and studies for mid-terms in the midst of one of her darkest depressions. But that’s not a post I would make on Facebook.

No one doubts that a child is in pain when they can pull up an MRI and show a ligament tear. But there is some notion that mental anguish is chosen, despite multiple doctor diagnoses. (It’s in moments like this that I am glad that Tom Cruise is not one of my Facebook friends. Although, I recently had the same thought when I watched Jack Reacher.)

My daughter has had a long hard road to even getting the correct diagnosis. She has likened it to sitting in an Emergency waiting room with a broken arm for three years while everyone tries to figure out what is wrong. The challenges of an adolescent with mental issues are multiple. There are only a few psychiatrists in our state that take adolescents and insurance (and most of them have a waiting list a mile long, many are completely closed to new patients). Most mental disorders are “emerging” when they are in teens. Many of the symptoms also are like exaggerated mimes of normal teen behavior. It’s like trying to diagnose a moving shape shifting target. After over three years, my daughter finally has what seems to be a good doctor and the correct current diagnosis.

But like all medicine, it is not an exact science. The right dosage of the right medicine one week may not be the same the next. We can’t prick our mentally ill children’s finger to get a number to see if they are coming close to a crash. We can only watch for signs of acceleration and deviation and sometimes we only know when we see the debris.

One of the hardest and most necessary things for parents to do for any child is to change your dreams for them based on reality. By the age of one, I could fill journal pages with the words my daughter could say. By thirteen, she was co-valedictorian and had worn a path in her school “auditorium” walking up to receive awards.

This year, she said to me that she feels like I am waiting, waiting for that good girl at the top of the honor roll to return. Maybe I was. Or maybe I just hadn’t yet untangled the version of my dreams and her life.

When my daughter was crashing last (Freshman) year in high school, misdiagnosed and on medication that was unknowingly triggering that emerging shadow into a frightening new reality, she couldn’t get up; she couldn’t make herself go to school. I was leaving work, paying for tutors, paying out of pocket for new doctors, watching as a shadow was stepping into her and making her the shape shifter. I was afraid, every day, that the shadow would win before I got the new help we needed to name it, to help her. This was not only on her shoulders, but mine. I had to advocate, to fight, to research, to search, to query, to add our names to waiting lists--again and again (with my husband’s help).

Meanwhile, seeing everyone’s FB posts of honor rolls and pictures of their jubilant seemingly perfect unmarred shining teens who appeared to succeed at every endeavor was a bit painful. Although these are the same kind of posts I had made and kept on making. Still, at the time, I felt it was necessary to block some of these, just as I am sure my daughter distanced herself from some of these same seemingly gleaming friends.

Recently, when I saw my daughter during these (Sophomore) end of quarter and mid-term weeks struggling with what was, by that point, weeks of anguish, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know because she asked for nothing. Because she poured herself over her books and said there was nothing to be done. And I was home alone with all three kids that week and had little time to really explore the veracity of her answers. I could only believe her. We had seen her doctor the week before for the increase that had yet to take effect, we had her follow up scheduled for the week after. Yet, she kept on, she went to school, she made appointments with teachers, she came home and sat a desk with pencils and books and computers. She sat hunched over them and I could feel the pain and suffering radiating off of her, it was palpable and heart-breaking. I felt a shift in seriousness that frightened me.

The difference is that before I was shouldering some of the brunt for her. She sloughed some off onto me and allowed me to champion her. Now she is shouldering it alone, as much as she can. As she will have to for the rest of her life. I think this is the shift. But to see your child in this kind of pain, be it mental or physical, that you cannot alleviate...it’s like someone reaching into you and squeezing off bits of your heart.

As much as I felt helpless that I could not take some of the pain for her, I also felt great pride in her. I don’t think I’m waiting for that “good” girl to come back. This girl is amazing. During pain and depression that would have left most people (including the girl she used to be) curled into a hopeless fetal position, she got up and moved and studied for some of the most challenging honors courses and...tried! This is what makes me proud of her. My husband sent me her grades the week after midterms, I didn’t open them. Because I would have been proud even if they weren’t honors courses, even if she hadn’t passed. But I heard it through the grapevine that she did. This didn’t make me any prouder, but it did make me happier for her.

In all of our parental futures is a time when we won’t have any more honor rolls, grades, colleges, and sports awards to mark our pride. We’ll have to find real world pride in our children, just as the luckiest of us have parents that feel that pride for us in our "old" age. What will make us proud is that our children are living or working toward a life that fulfills them.

I’m proud of my daughter for trying, I’m proud of her for surviving. I’m proud of her for growing up to be someone who cares. I’m proud when she makes it to some swim meets, despite the challenges for her; I don’t look at the times anymore. I’m proud that she is learning to play guitar and that she is starting to sing in front of people with her amazingly cool voice. I’m proud when she can admit she is intimidated but excited to read The Odyssey. I’m proud when I get a small glimpse of the unbelievably prolific and powerful writer/photographer/artist that she is. I’m proud that she’s just growing up. But I’m proud, most of all, to be able to honestly say she is someone that I really like.

I don’t have any more blocks on Facebok. Please keep on posting those links and pictures and braggings of your amazing kids. I don’t think you are insufferable at all. I think you are proud. And I want to be proud with you. And I hope that you’re proud with me.


Writer’s Note:
This isn’t about me any more. it’s not really even mine to write about, but with my daughter’s permission/blessing, I am...I’m place holding until someday when maybe she can write about it and help someone else.
 
Photo Credits:
Yanmei

Who Cares?

The Saturday after Christmas, I swam 100 100s or 10,000 yards during a loosely organized swimming event at the Y. I know what most people are secretly thinking but are too kind to ask, “Umm, is that good?” I know what most people would secretly thinking but would never ask,“Who cares?”

The first question is pretty easy to answer, yes, that’s good, especially for me. It’s considered the equivalent of running a marathon. It’s a bit less than swimming 6 miles.

The second question of “who cares” I had pondered for 4,000 yards, repeatedly, as I toyed with whether to finish the full 10,000 or not. I knew the answer...after careful censoring, nary a soul.

Most of the time, my family and a few friends do care (or pretend to) when I accomplish a new “athletic” goal. Primarily, because they’ve had to listen to me blather on about it for months or not be home to cook supper to train for it.

I had no intention of swimming all 100, so I hadn’t really talked about it. And trained for it? Well, let’s say that the entire day before I was busy accomplishing another first of gambling all day with my sister-in-law's holiday bonus at a casino as I was fed drink after drink with no food. I had been hoping to swim 50, secretly hoping to swim 60 (which would best my farthest distance of 3 miles). After my casino “day” turned into a casino “day and night,” I was hoping mostly to not cramp up from dehydration.

By 3,800 yards, everyone in my lane had left. I hadn’t outlasted them with my fierce determination, they just left because they had better things to do during the holiday season than swim back and forth in a pool all day. This was something I hadn’t really pictured...swimming alone? This was an unexpected challenge, physically because I had no one to draft off of, mentally because I had to count and time myself and had no camaraderie.

I was not alone in the pool, no...the faster lanes to my right were full of people swimming on an interval 15 seconds faster than me. I was already swimming intervals 15 seconds faster than what I had planned to swim, so I knew there was no chance I’d be moving up. They seemed to be having a great time, music, food, camaraderie, draft turn takers. It was like being next door to a party you weren’t invited to because you weren’t good enough...literally. Actually that’s exactly what it was, if you replace “good” with “fast.” It was like a John Hughes movie where the cute popular boy was the only one who says “hi” to you and asks you how you are doing (he did). But then if he swam away with his cute, fast, dramatically more impressive wife and you had to watch an aged Molly Ringwald swimming alone for 3 hours. Like that.

At the fasties’s 50, they took a quick party potty break, cranked up the music and whooped, sharing snacks. Not long after, at my 50, I got out to take a bathroom break and said proudly to the lifeguard, “I just finished my 50.” He looked through me like I was invisible and said, “We're taking bets which one of them quits first,” his head nodding toward the fast lanes. I wondered briefly if I was so slow that I was now a ghost.

At my goal of 60, I felt good. I thought, dang, I could do this. I mean, I might actually be able to swim 100 100s, 10,000 yards! Something I thought I would have to train the entire next year to be able to do. Like that woman who intended to do the half marathon option and got a little lost and ended up deciding to do the whole marathon and won. Like that, only if she came in dead last. It was just like that.

Then I wondered, heck, why would I do something amazing I had no intention of doing if no one (including myself) really gave a crap? The age old question of if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, is there any point in swimming 10,000 yards when no one cares? No one is watching? No one is wishing you well even from afar? Pretty much anyone I knew who would really get that this was a big achievement worthy of tackling was already doing it...in the lanes beside me...but faster. In fact, by accomplishing this goal unintentionally, I would forever take away any awesomeness in the act. Next year, if I said to my kids, can you come cheer me on at end, they’d say, “Why? You did it last year.”

I suddenly had a vision, so lovely I think in retrospect I might have been hallucinating. What if my kids could come, what if they took turns swimming with me so I wouldn’t be alone, and I’d feel encouraged to finish, to set a good example, and make them proud? I’d finish then! I knew I would! I jumped out of the pool and texted my husband if he brought the kids, I could finish it. Then I jumped back in and dreamed he’d do it. He’d at least bring my middle child, she can be guilted into doing most anything. My brother was even up. If I had told him I was swimming 100 100s, and needed to be cheered on, he would have come to the Y. He’d experienced the lonely let down of crossing a finish line with no one there for you. My sister would come to support me when I clip my toenails if I asked her. I could have a whole family fan club to get me through that last 1,000! He took about an hour to text me back. He wrote, “Impressive. Hope you finish.”

Because even if you marry your cute crush, he’d still rather do just about anything than suffocate in a pool watching you slowly swim back and forth, despite his having grown up in the “Pong” generation, which really is great training for watching such an event.

On and on I swam, at the ready to quit at first sign of potential injury. I kept track of my laps by moving ten Hershey kisses on the side of the pool. One time, I bit into one of their brethren so hard that I almost chipped a tooth. An exciting near injury moment.

Then I heard cheering, I think I might have even heard a chorus of "Fahoo Fores Dahoo Dores" and directions being shouted to gather for a picture. All the fasties had finished. I kept swimming like a little confused Grinchy fish in an empty bowl. As I finished my 85th 100, they called me over for a party picture. Yay! “Jake Ryan” asked how many I had left. I said, “15,” and he said some encouraging words. I knew I couldn’t quit then. Those few words of encouragement meant a lot. They would have meant a lot even if he wasn’t cute. So be sure to encourage people who aren’t as good as you in life, but especially if you are cute.


All but two of the fasties (who had a couple 100s to finish) left for the sauna. By my 90th, they were done, as was any of my upper body strength. I began to wonder if there was such a thing as chlorine poisoning. As fate would have it, one of the stragglers offered to swim with me to help me finish. Then our coach emerged from the sauna and said he would swim with me. They took turns swimming about the last 8 with me. To me, they looked like cowboys from a movie much better than a John Hughes film. Getting back in the pool after swimming 10,000 yards to help a friend...It’s not something many could/would do. If it were me, I definitely would have been in a cloud of my own exhaustion unable to see past the promise of real food and a chair. I would have finished those last 100s alone, but worse than being painful, they would have been dreary. “I get by with a little help from my friends” started playing in my head, replacing “Don’t you forget about me.”

I’d like to say, in the end, I did it for me, or for all the newbieish swimmers like me, or to set a good example for my kids. But really, in the end, I just did it. I’d also like to say that I had enough modesty to keep my accomplishment to myself. But I posted it on Facebook and found ways to tell anyone I could, in texts, emails, dropping it casually (awkwardly) into most conversations. And now I am writing this. Although many have responded with thoughtful compliments, I truly don’t mind if my initial assessment that no one really cares remains accurate. Which kind of makes it the coolest thing I’ve done.

I actually wrote this on the eve of swimming the 100s. I’ve been wondering how to finish. What’s the point? The conclusion? My body this week has delivered the message.

I’m new to athletics. I never entered any sort of race or competition until I was over 40. I started running about four years ago. It has been less than three for swimming.  After I did a half marathon (which I had trained over two months for), I felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to my body for about a week. After my second half marathon, my body felt like it was in shock for three days. I am not planning on a third. I know running is high impact, but I also know that my running mate suffered none of these acute after effects. On the first night after I swam the 100s, my arms were very sore. It was hard to reach back for popcorn during The Hobbit movie, a real sacrifice. After that, I felt very little negative effects. My ankles were a little sore, but otherwise I felt nothing in my legs. Five days later, I swam the second longest yardage workout that I had ever done. A week later, there were no truly noticeable effects.

I knew I had always felt different about swimming than running or biking. When I was first learning breaststroke, and recently butterfly, I thought about swimming like I used to think about boys--all dreamy with a soundtrack. After a good swim, I think about when I can swim again. After a good run, I secretly hope someone will steal my sneakers so I never have to run again.  Now, my body seems to be telling me that swimming might feel the same way about me. It’s a love story, and love stories don’t need an audience, so it’s okay if no one cares, but I went ahead and wrote this love song anyway.