Seven Weeks: A Journey Toward Letting Go Part Three

Feb. 28: Coping

Today marks the end of my third week of treatment. Three weeks is generally considered the amount of time someone needs to develop a new habit. However, new ways of dealing with my anxiety, changing my thinking process, and generally just moving forward are proceeding much slower. I simply remind myself change takes real time and not to expect huge leaps and bounds. I know for any lasting changes to happen, it will require me to stay vigilant long after my TMS therapy finishes.

Also, there is no real cure to the crap on my plate. However, how I choose to go about managing it is up to me. If I do not lean on my resources then I am choosing to slide back to my old ways knowing I am giving up the idea of feeling better about myself and life in general. Essentially, I would be choosing to just take up space others could better use.

Writing about all of this is easy. The real challenge will be hitting the send button and forwarding this to my editor to publish. I hate the idea of any attention, pity, or other comments I might receive. My only desire is to help others in a similar battle as I am in or to provide a wakeup call to those worried about someone’s mental health.

Medical science knows so much about the human body from the neck down and so little about what’s above it. If we were to value the concept of as the mind goes, so goes the body, we would be much further along with the treatment of mental illness. No one tells someone with a broken leg not to worry, it will pass. They seek help and treatment is provided. However, when someone is suffering with their mind, all too often we either dismiss the person or simply hope it will go away. The data is pretty clear. The numbers of people suffering from some sort of mental illness are skyrocketing and all too often all we offer are pills that make the individual numb to the real world. No one wants to admit it, but maybe it is time we change the real world and begin relying on a more humane approach to life.

Here I am, 66 years old, and my days are filled with trying to correct decades of issues I either failed to address soon enough or doctors have been unable to successfully treat. On top of this, I have about 90 minutes of daily physical therapy exercises I hope will get me back to enjoying some sort of aerobic activity. Bug requires two walks a day to not go stir crazy. Besides the weeds in my brain, I have a yard gradually filling with them as well as other projects that need tending to. I am lucky because I have one thing most others lack when dealing with a chronic illness; time to devote to it.

When I was teaching and coaching full time, I worked from seven to five, five days a week. I was up early to squeeze in some exercise and evenings meant trying to do my part as a father with home life. I am the first to admit, too often I came up short to either the kids or my wife and I only have myself to blame for it because I failed to break the model my old man relied on when I was a kid.

One of the wonderful things our culture offers people are choices. Sadly, we are easily led to choosing the path of least resistance and too often come up short when tackling real issues. Instead, we fall for the concept of constantly distracting ourselves with too much work, over-scheduling our kids, wanting too many useless things, and thinking money is the path to a happier life.

By the time we figure out we have been pawns used in someone’s quest for great wealth and power, we are a mess physically, mentally, or as a family. Rather than falling for the idea of setting out to see how much we can attain and accomplish, we would thrive more if we chose to see how little we really need.

Buddhism teaches that family is not just blood, but rather about who is willing to hold your hand when needed. Unfortunately, our culture spends too much time looking to see what color the hand is and how much money it is holding before making a decision about what to do. What would have happened had I been waving a handful of money instead of a juniper branch when that driver chose to leave me behind? When money talks more than kindness or love, the sick can expect to suffer far more than they should have to.

Lately I have been thinking about trauma more since I last met with my therapist. If my bike accident in 2007 was the only traumatic event of my life, I would not be writing this. I remember some events when I was a kid. One involved two young teens who took my money when I was about six and all I could think of was my dad’s last words to me before I left the house, “Don’t do something stupid and lose your money.” Thankfully, my two oldest brothers righted the matter and blackened a couple of punks’ eyes.

Ask any of my siblings and they will tell you how we grew up in two different homes; one where mom was the only parent home and the other when dad arrived home from work. Like I said before, you did not want to poke the bear.

I’ve been hurt by women, and despite two divorces, the woman that still messes with my head the most was the one in college who one day was asking me to go home and meet her parents and the next day completely ghosting me. There is my first child’s premature birth and being told after her surgery at 12 hours old to expect her to live no more than two weeks. There was a student of mine having a total breakdown in my room after school, telling me he hated my guts while trying to conceal the gun in the back of his waistband. Then there was telling myself I had to be strong for my yearbook students after the sudden and tragic death of their classmate while inside falling apart.

In every case, my method of dealing with things was to retreat internally, avoid telling others how I felt out of fear of being a burden, and hoping my turmoil would pass and stay buried forever.

I have traveled through life outwardly faking I am alive while on the inside just wanting to curl up and die. If someone made a mistake and pissed me off while I was struggling, my response was usually swift and without thought and the fallout was just a price I paid. It might involve my fists, my words, or off the top humor. Either way, it was often memorable to others while never serving me or my victims much good.

The stunts I pulled in high school were legendary. They were also a huge rush to my brain that were often followed by a massive low. If an opportunity came along to entertain others, I rarely passed it up. What my peers remembered of me was the guy who kept thumbing his nose at silly school rules, traditions or requirements that kept them laughing and me sitting on the bench outside Vice Principal Dobbins’ office. I was the guy who was described in one final senior class publication as the one student not present at a future class reunion while I was locked up in an asylum singing Still Crazy After All These Years. I was the guy who loved making others laugh, but as soon as I was by myself, internally, I crashed and burned.

Many school day mornings were spent talking myself up for another day of zaniness. If I was not up for the task, I’d skip my morning classes and go buy beer at a local liquor store where they did not card me and go get drunk. The truly crazy thing was I had convinced myself I was one of the lucky ones because I could escape my inner shit. Most of my classmates, so I thought, were stuck in class dealing with their crap.

When I graduated from high school, it felt like a huge load had been lifted off me. For the first time in my life, I would no longer be stuck with whatever label my peers tagged me with. I might still be living at home while I attended my local community college, something the bear was not pleased with, but I was free to find the person I wondered who I might be if no one expected me to be their personal entertainer. I could challenge myself academically and set the highest grades as my goals rather than doing just enough to remain eligible for athletics. When not in school, I was working a variety of jobs and for the first time in my life, I was dating someone I was not actually waiting to dump me because that was my previous experiences with girlfriends. All that was left was for me to move the hell away from my hometown, a place to which I had no real attachment.

When I came home for winter break after my first semester at Chico State, my father handed me several announcements for an upcoming high school reunion and said, “Would you take care of these. I’m tired of them showing up in our mail.” I took one and checked off that I was deceased and that was it, high school was officially dead to me. For that matter, so was Lafayette and my old man was close to it as well. I finally thought I was done with a past life and happy for the first time. However, I would learn happiness, true happiness, does not arrive to one who buries their past. It only comes when you make your peace with it. I had a long way to go.

Shunryu Suzuki said, “Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.” The key to floating and not drowning when your boat sinks is to not carry a heavy load. The earlier we learn to let go of our past and to stop worrying about what may never happen, the easier it is to remain present and focus on today. We are all going to get wet from time to time. However, it does not mean we have to sink to the bottom like a rock. By letting go of the people and events that plague others, we are able to go with the flow and enjoy the journey.

Prior to this round of TMS, the idea of investing five days a week for seven weeks to my mental health seemed enormous. Then again, when you are depressed, fatigued, and carrying the weight of anxiety and PTSD, everything seems enormous. However, seeing improvement in how I feel, I realize it is much easier than those who try to carry out a new diet. Most fail within a week or two and choose to settle on carrying some extra weight.

Each of us carry extra baggage. Unfortunately, it is by choice when we know we carry it and we settle by doing so. I can be as lazy as the next person. I know I am guilty of paying extra money in the name of convenience for a person on a fixed income. However, I realize the time I invest in TMS is both cost and time saving in the long run. After all, what good is recognizing a problem if you refuse to do the work to solve it?

March 1st: The Bear’s Shadow

I’m tired. By the time I arrived at my TMS appointment yesterday, I was nauseous from the pain radiating from my mid spine and pounding through the back of my skull. Every fiber in both arms felt as if it was being ripped away from my body. Despite not wearing my hearing aids, I was sensitive to the sound of the white noise machine in the waiting area and the fluorescent lights were enough to force me to sit with my eyes closed.

 

When I finished, I was pleased to read a text telling me my masseuse had to cancel my massage. When I feel the way I did, the last thing I want is for someone to dig into sore muscles. I drove to my friend’s house where Bug was enjoying a play date with his pal Henry and then headed home. It was just 2:30 but I swallowed my evening meds and then chased them with more pain medicine than I am supposed to take and topped it off with a muscle relaxer.

I had to remind myself my pain is temporary. However, I also know that temporary can last weeks or months. By 3:30, I was finished with dinner and two hours later, I was still miserable. This is when the craving for alcohol kicks in big time. I was faced with a decision. Do I walk to the mini mart and grab some sort of liquid relief or I could try and distract my mind from my discomfort by doing something else?

After scrolling through Facebook and writing down a couple of pages of Buddhist quotes, my body still ached from head to toe. I checked the weather and sure enough, the barometric pressure had dropped below thirty. I have no idea why, but when this happens, I hurt all over. A storm must be heading my way.

Generalized pain is common with people afflicted with depression. I have vivid memories of a childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area when from fall through spring, my evenings were spent hurting, especially once it was time for me to come inside and call it a day.

My siblings used to give me a hard time because I eventually learned there was relief to be found in the form of heating pads and ice packs. I can remember watching TV with a heating pad on my back and ice packs on my knees or thighs. There was a definite connection between the damp east bay air and my aches. However, there was also one between the anxiety I felt whenever around my father.

Through observing my older siblings, I learned my dad was not someone you could ever be close to but you could quickly fall out of favor and face his wrath if you screwed up. I chose silence and watched my siblings vie for his attention or live with the consequences he handed down. The times I did face consequences from him, I never complained because I knew there was always a price to pay and more often than not, I learned in advance what it was going to be thanks to my siblings’ screwups.

Anything that involved being around my father just caused my stomach to twist in knots. Even a family game of Monopoly was hell for me. The teasing would be encouraged by my father, one of my younger sisters might not handle it and cry, and the entire experience would be one I just wanted out of. I learned quickly the best way to get out of it was to deliberately lose. I mastered the art of losing any board game we sat down to play. Once I did, I was back in the peace of my room and enjoying my Hot Wheels or dreaming up new plays to run against my brother when we next played electric football.

I do not think it was done deliberately, but my father practiced conditional love and inflicted what today would be considered emotional abuse basically because that was what he learned from his father. My sisters all have bad memories of how he teased our mom. If you did five tasks right and one wrong, you only heard about the mistake you made. It was his way or the highway and he was never going to give an inch in the name of love.

When I was ten, I had outgrown my pee wee size baseball glove and mentioned it to my father. I remember telling him there was a Wilson Frank Robinson model down at Gemco. I still remember the price that was marked on it in pen, $11.76. There were two choices; earn half the money at 25 cents an hour or use my too small glove for the coming season. There was only so much work a ten year old could do, but I somehow managed to earn my half and weeks later, I was the proud owner of a new baseball glove. As for my father, who thought he was teaching me a lesson about the value of working for what you buy, all he said when I came home with the glove was, “Whatever you do, don’t lose it or it’s the last time I help buy anything.” I think that was the last time I asked him for help with anything, financial or otherwise.

When I was 20, I was asked by my mom to drive her to the shop where her car was getting a tune up. We drove together in my 1961 VW Bug that I paid for myself. It was pouring rain and on the way there, my mom noticed the seal around the windshield leaked enough that I held a towel to soak up the rain coming in. I simply did not have the money to take care of the problem and figured there was no point asking for help thanks to my baseball glove experience.

After Mom paid her bill, she told me to get in her car. I asked why and she said, “I’m not having you drive a car with a leaking windshield. The shop is going to replace it and I am paying for it.”

Her love was unconditional while dad’s came with one condition after another.

I am not sure how old I was, but somewhere in my early teens I knew I was never going to be close to someone who only makes you regret trying. I had witnessed enough of the wars he waged with older siblings and the length he would go to break someone just so he could be right that I stopped engaging with him as much as possible. He always had a standing offer to pay for any of the kids’ college, as long as he approved of their lifestyle and major, that I made damn sure I had enough money saved up to pay for my schooling at Chico State. I even went so far as to not ask him for the money because just doing that was all he needed to feel entitled to question, grill, or judge me. Instead, I waited him out and made him come to me and ask, “Don’t you need some money for college?”

When I’d tell him I already sent the money he’d ask why I hadn’t come to him and then insist on paying for it. Despite tuition and rent increasing every year, I always told him my education cost the same amount as the year before. I kept a steady job and always made certain I had enough money in case the day came when he decided to disown me, just as I witnessed him do with some of my older siblings.

My father died when I was 50 years old and felt nothing. No grief. No sadness. No loss. Only my children know whether they have a better relationship with me than I had with my father. What I do know is that it has not always been easy for me to break the model he set for me. I am just fortunate that I had a mother who lived and breathed unconditional love for all her children. I try to follow her example.

Mark Twain wrote, “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” When my pain is terrible, I try reminding myself it is not an excuse to be an asshole. If I can hold a door open for someone, allow a mother with a tired kid to move ahead of me in the checkout line, or just smile and be nice to someone clearly having a bad day, I figure it helps me as much as it does them. Then there are days the best thing I can do for others is to recognize I am just not feeling it and stay home.

This morning, I am not feeling it. It feels as if I fell out of the back of a truck and landed in the middle of oncoming traffic. My morning routine has already been disrupted. Instead of the evening medication I thought I took early yesterday, I realized I took this morning’s medications instead. Feeling the way I do right now, I am sure my doctors would tell me to take my pain meds but at 5:30 in the morning, it is too early even for me to call it a day. I will choose patience and see how I feel in a couple of hours after some coffee and walking Bug.

It’s mornings like this that remind me how shitty I felt every day for the seven years I kept working after my accident. I had a year’s worth of sick leave in the bank but I knew if I began to tap into them I would be worthless as a teacher to any school. It was my goal to get back to my old self and that meant sucking up the pain and not telling others about it. All that happened was all my energy went into masking that I was fine and there was nothing left of me to put forth toward real healing.

By the time I was medically retired, I went from being a valued teacher to a guy waging a war against a system he was sick of and whose personal pain fueled my anger inside. That anger was a complex matter, or so I thought then. I resented how fast my life changed from a single event. However, I now realize that the accident triggered far more inside me than just the effects of a singular accident. All the anxiety and trauma I carried inside me from childhood up to that accident was unleashed. Having dodged death thanks to a barking dog, I had no tolerance for anyone or anything that I viewed as wasting my time on this planet.

As I began to speak out more about my school district’s policies, I received equal or more pushback. I no longer had a problem calling them out on their mismanaging of money and worse, their lack of concern their policies had on our children. I pointed out their hypocrisy regarding academic test scores while ignoring their disregard for fitness scores. When I presented the board with actual quotes from referrals teachers wrote on students who cussed them out in front of others and the lack of consequences handed down, instead of changes or heads rolling, I began to be written up for anything and everything imaginable. My file at the district office soon looked like the damn Los Angeles phone book.

My final years in teaching were spent being moved from one school to another or having my teaching assignment changed every year. Once, I was informed it was being changed twenty minutes before the start of a new school week. Another time, I arrived in my room early to see a new teacher sitting at my desk. Someone thought I needed to have my classroom changed without telling me and when I picked up my new room key, it was completely empty.

If they wanted to fuck with me, I would fuck with them as well. The guilty administrator who didn’t bother to tell me about the room change came up to me the next day to tell me he would try to get me some help to get chairs and desks in the room. I played dumb and asked him what he was talking about. He indicated he knew my room needed furniture. I told him he was mistaken and that my room was furnished when I walked in the first time. He had no idea that I skipped out on the mandatory school wide assembly the day before and moved the desks from another unused classroom. He probably spent the rest of his work day trying to figure out who furnished my room.

Something good came from all of this pushback. I decided since the district was more interested in busting my balls than anything else, (they had long stopped observing my teaching) I would teach the lowest level freshmen who were assigned to me whatever I thought they needed to learn in order to have any chance of graduating. Failure was no longer an option for them; it would be their choice.

I collected multiple copies of all the textbooks they were assigned from their other teachers, posted all their assignments they had in their other classes, and began teaching them how to think through a weekly discussion and writing assignment. The only marks I placed on their essays were in blue, not red, and were for the things they did right and not wrong. I was assigned the worst kids in the school and rare was the day I sent a student to the office for discipline. Once their weekly assignment from me was completed, they had the rest of their time to focus on their other classes. If their other teachers wrote them a note, I sent them out to receive additional instruction. My students might get kicked out of their other classes, but they knew I was the only teacher they had who had not written them off.

When the first semester of the 2013/14 school year ended and I wished my students a happy holiday, I remember thinking to myself, “If the second semester ends as well as this one has, I can retire with a smile.” I had no idea that two weeks later I would be notifying my bosses I was being medically retired. My teaching career ended on a high note and now retirement loomed ahead.

I may have retired with a bitter taste in my mouth toward the district I gave 26 years to, but I felt good I chose kindness and compassion for the students who most of their other teachers had already written off. It was now time to begin being kinder to myself. My wife and I were separated and would divorce in 2016. I began meeting with a therapist and with a series of medical procedures saw real pain relief for the first time. While I was separated, I began to delve into both my past and the past of others in my life and reached a level of understanding and forgiveness.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of fooling myself into thinking I was cured. There are no cures for what ails me, just methods of management. The concept of cures allows individuals to blame their doctors or others for failing to see improvements. Management requires the individual to make choices about what is in their best interest. Surgeries do not cure people unless they attend physical therapy. Therapy doesn’t cure anything unless the patient chooses to do the work, both in session and at home. The issue does not simply vanish. Life is no different.

In my case, as long as I continue piling crap on top of crap, my challenges will keep resurfacing. Thinking I am cured of one thing and not following up with ongoing preventative measures is just an invitation for a bigger set back down the road. I have no excuse this time. If two failed marriages, constant pain, fatigue, depression, and God knows what else does not wake me up, nothing will.

The best principal I ever worked under was a man named Jim Murphy. I remember a staff meeting he held. We were tasked with teaching the roughest kids in the district who all too often came with the worst parents. Our district leaders did not want to pour any resources into our problems, so we were on our own. Jim admitted we had more problems that could be successfully tackled at one time and knew enough not to propose a reinvention of the wheel. Instead, he suggested we knock out one problem at a time.

 

The next week, we were to send any and every kid who swore to the office for swift and meaningful consequences. By the time the week was over, word was out among students; whatever you do don’t swear. He then added dress code violations the following week. Within a month, the school problems were a small fraction as before. There was no war, just individual battles and we were winning each one. As the weeks passed and when we met as a staff, if teachers were noticing a growing problem, we all attacked it the following week.

Life is no different. Our problems do not go away, if anything they grow and produce more problems down the road. The key is not to focus on being overwhelmed by them, but instead knocking out one after the other. Like the weeds that grow in my backyard, my issues can seem overwhelming. However, if I focus on one area at a time, and then maintain them, I can live a relatively weed free life. The same should work for the weeds between my ears.

Sun Tzu said, “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.” I am not a math expert, but even I realize knocking out one problem at a time is much smaller, and easier, than an entire list.