Passing For Normal
In a routine that is as unbreakable as the rushing force of a rising speeding tsunami I cannot sleep until I have watched some old familiar episodes of "Friends" or "Frasier" or some other soothing DVD old news. Before I quit smoking it was books. I had to read before bed. Even if it was just for two minutes of slurring blurred sentences bringing on a comfortable dark. Routine is everything to me.
We are suddenly too broke to even rent DVD's from the video store so the indulgence of watching CSI episodes is over for the moment. So for the two hundredth time I am going through my collection of "Friends", watching favorite episodes that bring on that deep soothing white noise in my brain that I have come to depend on to recover the stresses of a day necessarily spent amongst people, animals, babies, noise, complications, stress, obligations, shortcomings, brain twitches, and the all important effort not to stand out too much for the wrong reasons.
Brain white noise is essential to my peace of mind. In fact, white noise in my head is essential to my survival. It's how I wake up the next morning refreshed and able to function in a world that largely doesn't understand how much work it is to be people like me.
As I mentioned before, I recently checked some books out of the library hoping to break into my DVD evening routine and work my way back into my very old tried and true deep love for reading. I got myself a couple of Mary Stewart books for familiar comfort and I also brought three books home from the psychology section. That book on cutting turned out to be a very dangerous jolt in the gut for a person like me with no health insurance (and therefore no access to mental health support). I had no idea a book could shake me up so much, make me feel so exposed, raw, broken; like a specimen dragged up from the deep sea- rarely seen and fascinating in a science fiction style extravaganza of unbelievably large breasted assistants getting caught up in the tentacles of raving toothy half squid/half human beasts.
There were two other books I brought home. For one whole week I have eyed my stack of books with rightfully deep suspicion. I can't afford to go into a tailspin. My family is depending on me. I can't be peeling my layers of precious denial and protection away just so I am not tied to some iron-clad routine that I am partly ashamed of.
While one of my favorite episodes of "Friends" played (the one with Ross's sandwich) I skimmed the other two nonfiction books. Books that I checked out in the hopes that they might have strength to impart. One of them, called "Passing For Normal" by Amy S. Wilensky, grabbed me like a hand by the wrist and dragged me through 32 pages before I realized that my episode of "Friends" had ended and I was reading in silence. Just like I used to almost every day and night of my life since I could read.
It is almost two in the morning and I have read almost half the book. It's about Amy (the author) who has Tourette's Syndrome and OCD and how much of her life has been consumed by her efforts to "pass for normal". It's also about how people like her never do really pass for normal because people always know. Even if it's just out of the corners of their eyes, they know.
Reading this book feels like being with my own tribe. I don't have Tourette's. But I know all about OCD. The great thing about mental illness is that you don't have to have the exact same mental illness as someone else to understand them. There are universalities. Ties that bind. That make us into a kind of family. So many of us have clusters of issues and between us we often share one, if not more, challenges in common.
Every time I think that thought, the things we have in common, I think of Danette. I saw her every week for a couple of years. She was the brightest light at the local grocery store. She easily outshone every other employee there in light, in grace, love, acceptance. She was like an incredible embrace. I loved her. I never realized that we were the same. Like mirror images in spirit. I didn't realize, until talking to her, how I must seem to others. One day we got confessional and it was like unveiling a great secret. We mutually admitted to suffering depression and that to counter the devastating effect of depression on our lives we spent every possible ounce of energy seeking light. Reflecting it off of our skin, soaking it in where our body would accept it, and giving freely every bit of ourselves we could.
Which made our darkest struggles invisible to the naked eye.
Danette killed herself a few years ago. It's something that happens to my tribe from time to time.
Reading this book makes me feel like the nebulous world of mental illness is surfacing from the bottom of the pond in medicine to the part where sunshine skims and slips through. It gives me hope that more stories are to come. Less from the professionals and more from the trenches.
Tell me how you live.
Tell me how you breathe.
The more our stories reach oxygen the more research will go into answering all the murky questions. The more you know how our brains don't work the more you will understand how we compensate. The more everyone understands the more stigma fades. When stigma fades a place is made for coexistence.
What's wonderful about my tribe are the colorful stories we have to tell. We are a shiny group. We can see things that others can't see, know things you wouldn't believe, and we can distill the essentials of the everyday into an irresistible elixir of entertainment.
I believe that there is a point at which all of our minds can meet. No matter where on the spectrum of "normal" you fall, there is some point where all of our minds meet. Where we are all just humans learning to navigate life, where we are all on the verge of something magnificent, where we can realize some incredible human potential. It's a gorgeous point from which we all diverge. If we work at it we can find that spot, that common ground, and discover that we understand each other.
We are suddenly too broke to even rent DVD's from the video store so the indulgence of watching CSI episodes is over for the moment. So for the two hundredth time I am going through my collection of "Friends", watching favorite episodes that bring on that deep soothing white noise in my brain that I have come to depend on to recover the stresses of a day necessarily spent amongst people, animals, babies, noise, complications, stress, obligations, shortcomings, brain twitches, and the all important effort not to stand out too much for the wrong reasons.
Brain white noise is essential to my peace of mind. In fact, white noise in my head is essential to my survival. It's how I wake up the next morning refreshed and able to function in a world that largely doesn't understand how much work it is to be people like me.
As I mentioned before, I recently checked some books out of the library hoping to break into my DVD evening routine and work my way back into my very old tried and true deep love for reading. I got myself a couple of Mary Stewart books for familiar comfort and I also brought three books home from the psychology section. That book on cutting turned out to be a very dangerous jolt in the gut for a person like me with no health insurance (and therefore no access to mental health support). I had no idea a book could shake me up so much, make me feel so exposed, raw, broken; like a specimen dragged up from the deep sea- rarely seen and fascinating in a science fiction style extravaganza of unbelievably large breasted assistants getting caught up in the tentacles of raving toothy half squid/half human beasts.
There were two other books I brought home. For one whole week I have eyed my stack of books with rightfully deep suspicion. I can't afford to go into a tailspin. My family is depending on me. I can't be peeling my layers of precious denial and protection away just so I am not tied to some iron-clad routine that I am partly ashamed of.
While one of my favorite episodes of "Friends" played (the one with Ross's sandwich) I skimmed the other two nonfiction books. Books that I checked out in the hopes that they might have strength to impart. One of them, called "Passing For Normal" by Amy S. Wilensky, grabbed me like a hand by the wrist and dragged me through 32 pages before I realized that my episode of "Friends" had ended and I was reading in silence. Just like I used to almost every day and night of my life since I could read.
It is almost two in the morning and I have read almost half the book. It's about Amy (the author) who has Tourette's Syndrome and OCD and how much of her life has been consumed by her efforts to "pass for normal". It's also about how people like her never do really pass for normal because people always know. Even if it's just out of the corners of their eyes, they know.
Reading this book feels like being with my own tribe. I don't have Tourette's. But I know all about OCD. The great thing about mental illness is that you don't have to have the exact same mental illness as someone else to understand them. There are universalities. Ties that bind. That make us into a kind of family. So many of us have clusters of issues and between us we often share one, if not more, challenges in common.
Every time I think that thought, the things we have in common, I think of Danette. I saw her every week for a couple of years. She was the brightest light at the local grocery store. She easily outshone every other employee there in light, in grace, love, acceptance. She was like an incredible embrace. I loved her. I never realized that we were the same. Like mirror images in spirit. I didn't realize, until talking to her, how I must seem to others. One day we got confessional and it was like unveiling a great secret. We mutually admitted to suffering depression and that to counter the devastating effect of depression on our lives we spent every possible ounce of energy seeking light. Reflecting it off of our skin, soaking it in where our body would accept it, and giving freely every bit of ourselves we could.
Which made our darkest struggles invisible to the naked eye.
Danette killed herself a few years ago. It's something that happens to my tribe from time to time.
Reading this book makes me feel like the nebulous world of mental illness is surfacing from the bottom of the pond in medicine to the part where sunshine skims and slips through. It gives me hope that more stories are to come. Less from the professionals and more from the trenches.
Tell me how you live.
Tell me how you breathe.
The more our stories reach oxygen the more research will go into answering all the murky questions. The more you know how our brains don't work the more you will understand how we compensate. The more everyone understands the more stigma fades. When stigma fades a place is made for coexistence.
What's wonderful about my tribe are the colorful stories we have to tell. We are a shiny group. We can see things that others can't see, know things you wouldn't believe, and we can distill the essentials of the everyday into an irresistible elixir of entertainment.
I believe that there is a point at which all of our minds can meet. No matter where on the spectrum of "normal" you fall, there is some point where all of our minds meet. Where we are all just humans learning to navigate life, where we are all on the verge of something magnificent, where we can realize some incredible human potential. It's a gorgeous point from which we all diverge. If we work at it we can find that spot, that common ground, and discover that we understand each other.
Labels: books, chaotic life, mental health