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Life after school

I don’t know what I was thinking, but apparently I had this great idea that life after grad school would be much slower.  With no homework or classes to attend, I could get up, go to work, and come home. End of story.  Perhaps I chose the wrong job to “ease” myself into the grown-up world, but as I’m nearing the end of my first week of real work, I’m realizing a couple of very interesting things.

On the top of the list of things I’m noticing is that I have LESS time than I ever did when I was at school.  Between driving kiddo to camp/daycare (15 min), driving to work (45 min), work (5.5hrs), and driving home (45 min), I feel completely drained and ready to go to bed.  Piles of laundry loom in various places around the house.  (I’ve long since discovered that if you make MULTIPLE piles spread around the house, it feels like you’re less behind than you really are.) Even my husband offered to “help out” with the laundry.  I thought that perhaps working part-time for a few weeks would help me get re-oriented to a full time job down the road.  Either I was wrong, or I picked the wrong “starter” job.

 

Welcome back, my friend

After a long hiatus, I have realized that I need to come back to writing.  Not for the sake of those who might stumble upon what I have written, but for myself. I have yet to decide if I will write here, or the old fashioned way–you know, with actual paper and pencil.

It has been over a year since my husband was detained and released 27 days later.  Despite my training in trauma and its effects on the psyche, I still find myself surprised when the sight of a dark blue van with tinted windows causes my heart to race.  This was the type of van my beloved was forced to sit for hours, chained but not seat-belted, as he was transferred from one county jail to another, sometimes upwards of 8 hours away.  I shouldn’t be surprised that my mind jumps to an imaginary car accident, where my beloved is condemned simply because of protocol.  The imagery comes suddenly and my heart begins to pound.

Nor should I be surprised when my beloved gets quiet, irritable, or withdraws emotionally at random stages.  I shouldn’t be surprised when his nightmares wake me in the middle of the night, or he simply needs to get out of a crowd and go home.  Watching my beloved suffer is at times more and less difficult than my own experiences.  I desperately wish I could take it away.  I want him to let me into his world, to share with me his memories and help him to process the 27 days of fear, uncertainty, loneliness and depression.  I struggle to help him understand his reactions as normal ways to process an abnormal event, while, at the same time, remain his wife, not his therapist.

For over a year, I have struggled to put my thoughts, feelings, and memories on paper, or screen.  I sit down to write,  an attempt to process my pain, organize my memories, and share with the world the reality millions of immigrants face at the hands of a largely unknown agency acting on extremely complicated laws and policies. I can’t count the number of times I have sat down, paper or keyboard in front of me, and found all of the memories that were so vivid a few minutes ago, vanish.  Or, to relive the experience so deeply, so fully, that I simply cannot put it into words. Perhaps, if I make writing habitual, the story will come piecemeal, in much the same way my beloved and I have experienced the aftermath of our ordeal…one frantic, terrifying memory at a time.

Just don’t have time…

I can feel it again.  All week, perhaps longer, I’ve found myself fighting off the dark night of melancholy that threatens to seep into my mind and heart.  I fight because I cannot do anything else.  I have to fight it.  I cannot afford the hours, days, weeks it would take me to find my way out of the fog.  There is too much to do, too much on the line.  I have too much going on right now.  I have papers to finish, a wedding to plan, work to finish, and a kid to help raise… I don’t have time to be depressed.

I don’t have time to be depressed.

That’s what it comes down to. It’s not that I don’t want it.  Part of me misses it, longs for it.  I long for depth of emotion, for the time spent searching my soul, calling out to God.  I long for the solitude and the clarity of soul I used to have.  I long to breathe in the dark night and emerge refreshed.

The problem is that if I let down my guard – if I stop fighting – I lose control.  I lose control of my ability to think.  I lose control of my ability to be around people.  I lose control of my concentration and motivation.  You can’t just turn depression off.  I wish it worked like that.  I really do.  To say, “I need to retreat.”  And to be able to retreat into my dark night for a few hours, returning to reality when it’s time to write a paper or fix dinner.

But I can’t do that.  At least I haven’t learned that skill yet.  To let the night in is to surrender for an indiscriminate period of time.  It won’t last forever, but I have no way of predicting or controlling how long it will last.  I have no way of controlling the depth to which I’ll go, or the length of my stay.  And while I long for the night, the lack of control frightens me.

Instead, I keep myself medicated–just enough to allow me to think clearly but still be able to feel.  To be able to push off the need for solitude and reflection.  To feel the darkness creeping in, but to will it away with a flurry of activity.

Each time I push it away, my heart breaks a little.  I so desperately desire it.  I need it.  But I can’t.  I can’t do that to the ones I love.  I can’t do that to my future–for to allow the darkness to take control is to risk failing out of school.  To allow the darkness in is to risk causing pain to the ones I love.  They are not worth the risk.

Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.

Real or imagined?

There seem to be two great dangers in simoultaneously studying and struggling with mental illness:

1)  Becoming a Hypochondriac.  The more one learns about a particular illness–mental or otherwise– the more one experiences the symptoms.  Particularly when one has already been diagnosed, (or, perhaps more dangerous yet, have diagnosed oneself) with a particular disorder, one can seem to develop symptoms that she might not have had before this diagnosis.

Of course, because one is studying all mental illnesses, she is inevitably aware of the tendency toward hypochondria and if this person is at all introspective, she applies this awareness toward herself.  This can be both good and bad.  Good, because it helps her to carefully examine the root cause of her thoughts, feelings, and relative emotional stability, but bad because it can often lead to the second evil:

2) Ignoring various signs and symptoms of the worsening of her disorder.  After all, this new instability has closely followed a discussion about whether or not her medication has been proven effective, reading a chapter in her text about her disorder, or discussing in class the normal course of the disorder.  Logically, she assures herself that a decrease in her stability is her mind’s way of processing this new information.  After all, despite her best intentions, she often finds solace in her identity as “one who struggles with ________.”  It has become as much a part of her identity as being a student (a temporary identity, but a salient one nonetheless).  Understanding this, she does not wish to fuel the fire of her disordered identity by succumbing to symptoms suggestion.  So she ignores it.

She ignores it while not ignoring it.  And wonders, “Am I making this up?  Surely, I’m making this up.  Stop thinking about it and it will go away.”  But it doesn’t.  Of course, she can’t stop thinking about it because it’s part of her studies and essential to her grade, graduation, and future career.

The problem is, real or imagined symptoms cause problems.  In this particular case, they encase their victim in a fog that won’t lift.  They dull her senses and ability to concentrate, and erase every thought in her brain when she opens her mouth to speak.

Imagined symptoms can cause real consequences.