Breaking

Often when we think of taking a break it means that we cease some strenuous activity in favor of leisure time. Perhaps the thing we imagine, if we're old enough/young enough, is the Ross and Rachel "We Were On A Break" discussion. The word "break" necessitates a deviation from an otherwise contiguous course. I, too, have been on a break.

In early May I was admitted to a mental health facility where I spent a month as a resident and patient. I tried returning to work after that time, but found that I had extreme difficulty staying focused, remembering tasks and parts of tasks, and had to excuse myself almost on a daily basis to cry in a seldom-used restroom. I went from being an in-patient to having once a week, hour-long counseling sessions and I found that I needed more help. I was referred to a partial hospitalization program. It's group therapy and aside from enjoying the use of the facility, the company of a (fairly reserved) therapist, and some very New Age yogic meditation- the work is all patients helping each other out.

There. I've said it. The spell is broken. I've revealed that not only am I not firing on all cylinders, but I have even been to the Rubber Band Factory. I want to take a break from pop-culture musings and maybe share some of my experiences, some of my challenges with therapy, and take the conversation out into the "streets" so to speak. I'm not going to relate this to the experience of homosexuals (or any of the LGBTIQ set) because 1) that is not my experience and 2) I have a mental illness. I'm not "coming out of the closet" to be judged for my lifestyle- I'm not throwing up some controversial issue-of-the-moment. I am a real life crazy person.

My first clue that something was wrong, not "off", not "kooky", wrong with me was when I had been back from deployment for maybe a week or two? My wife needed to run something to the local FedEx. I drove her there, my son who was two was in the backseat (appropriately strapped in and attired). She was just going to be a minute so I sat there, engine turned off, just waiting. When she came out, my son saw her and started crying. I don't know if it was because I was afraid she would think I had been ignoring him all that time and that I was a bad father, or if I was having a kind of "trigger" experience (I can't be around crying babies) but I just kinda blacked out. When I came back to myself I was punching my steering wheel and swearing. My knuckles were bleeding. My wife was standing outside my door looking horror-stricken.

I talked to the docs and they said I should get tested for TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), which was the injury-of-the-moment. I didn't have it. I told the docs I had trouble sleeping at night, that it took me a long time to get to sleep and that I had trouble staying asleep. They didn't write anything down. They told me it would go away in a few months and not to worry about it. That became my attitude toward anything weird that came up: ignore it. Sometimes I would feel like the Earth was shaking. I taught myself to look at glasses of water, pictures on walls, the reactions of other people to see if it was something that was really happening or not. Sometimes I would hear things at night. I would lift my head up to see where it was coming from, the sound would usually go away.

The problem with memory is that our memories are like a web. We connect things that are happening to us now with things that happened to us before. What started as this small thing that people kept telling me to ignore became the new norm. Things I used to enjoy doing became stressors. I found it hard to be out in public. Shopping became something I had to plan for.

I've gone on for a bit, but I'd like to hear from some of you- are any of you in a similar boat? What has worked for you?