Thoughts on Coming Out

The New Year is a big time for people to come out to friends and family. And this year is even more momentous because of the repeal of the ban on gays in the US military. While the logistics may take a bit of time, there are millions of people who no longer have to lie about who they are. Who are free to love who they love. And how can it possibly be a bad thing to have a little more honesty and love in the world?

I have had a few friends in my life “come out” to me. I use quotation marks there because they may have thought they were revealing some big secret, but I had long had my suspicions. I just never brought it up because I figured they hadn’t come to terms with it yet and they would eventually. Frankly, I never really cared that they were bisexual, homosexual, asexual, pansexual, or what have you. I liked them because they were interesting people. One was interested in theater, politics, and world travel. Even in high school he was active in politics and during our junior year, he participated in an exchange program in Germany. It was after experiencing the freedom of being a stranger there that he told me that he was bisexual. He went on to be a teacher in Mozambique. How frickin’ cool is that? And since he’s come back to the States, he’s married his long-time partner, taking advantage of the few places in this country where he can freely do so. Another was a girl I’ve known since about the first grade. She played cello, liked classical music, science fiction, and we were in Brownies, Girl Scouts, and Color Guard together. She loved musical scores. And although we have since lost touch, she was always a fascinating person to be around.

And while I may be an Army wife, I never married a soldier. I married a skinny punk rocker and when the economy tanked, the Army began to look awfully promising. First and foremost, we’re both liberals. We both grew up in the same diverse city with a wide variety of friends of every color, creed, and sexual orientation. And by and large, the Army has been something of a haven on that front. We’ve run into bigotry. I can’t deny that. And at times it has been shockingly strong (my husband has developed a certain wariness of soldiers from Arkansas based on the bile that has spewed from the mouths of those he’s met).

But we’ve also met with a sort of shoulder-shrugging acceptance of all differences that I think is unique to the military. Most people seem to figure that if you do the job and do it well, they couldn’t give a shit what you look like, what deity you believe in, or who you want to sleep with in your free time. And that gives me a lot of hope. 

~Lizzie

A Clean Start

Well, our vacuum cleaner is well and truly deceased. Finally. Alan and I flipped a coin for chores and I lost so I had to do the vacuuming and he got to clean the bathroom. Yes, I really would rather clean the bathroom than vacuum. That's primarily because this is a fairly large apartment and more importantly, it's a looooong apartment. And most of it is carpeted. It is secondarily because our vacuum cleaner is terrible and it seems like it requires the removal and fiddling with of all brushes, belts, and filters every time I use the damn thing. I've even had to unbend wire hangers to extract cat hair bezoars from its accordion tube guts. Thirdly, it's an incredibly disappointing task because the carpet never seems to be any cleaner when I'm done.

So, resigned to my vacuuming fate, I started in the bedroom. I must have gone over the same bit of pink fluff 10 times and it wasn't even pretending to pick it up. I stuck my hand over the intermittently spinning brush bar. Not enough stirring air to move a feather. I pulled off the hose. Perfectly fine. No need to retrieve the hanger. So I dragged it out to the living room and pulled the plate off the bottom. Okay, so there was a little hair wrapped around the brush bar. But certainly not enough to explain its complete uselessness. Still, I figured I might as well pull off what I could, so I snapped out the bar. Ah. Perhaps the problem is the glob of brittle, once-molten rubber underneath the cleanly snapped belt. I can only surmise that at some point, the brush bar stopped spinning, but the belt didn't. The friction of the belt as it tried in vain to turn the bar must have melted its inner surface to the bar. Unwilling to waste anymore time or energy on repairing a vacuum that never worked all that well in the first place, I have it a halfhearted kick in the canister and went to Sears.

So Alan and I are now the proud parents of a Dyson Ball DC25. It was ludicrously expensive at $536 (with tax), but on the other hand, it picked up every last pine needle, bit of tinsel, and fleck of candy wrapper that's been infecting our living room carpet since Christmas. Hell, this stupid thing might actually make me want to vacuum.

Okay, probably not.

But at the very least, it's not the fruitless task it once was.

So resquiescat in pace dear Dirt Devil. I suppose we're lucky that you never managed to burn the house down, so thanks for that. Maybe some kind and benevolent junk man will take you home and give you a second life. Or maybe not.

~Lizzie

Meltdown

Saturday was what we in the childcare and education fields call a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." It started out well enough, I suppose. And really, nothing really awful happened. And yet by 3 o'clock, I was in tears and struggling with the desire to throw myself repeatedly against the wall.

It was just a thousand little things. Mild irritants. And suddenly I'm hurling my keys down the hall.

Ah... the joys of the holiday season.

I don't know if it was the sun glittering evilly through the snow-induced fog, creating an eye-watering effect akin to trying to stare at a frosted light bulb for several hours or perhaps the fact that it was my second trip all the way across town in two days. Or maybe it's the fact that while Colorado Springs drivers are perfectly comfortable on snowy roads, they're so unfamiliar with wet roads that they start behaving like complete lunatics once the snow starts melting.

So when I finally got the last few presents and the groceries upstairs and the car parked, I was hanging by a thread. And apparently, the effort of trying to explain my irritation to my sympathetic husband was enough to snap that thread.

I screamed. I cried. I hit the wall. Literally. I actually pounded the wall with my fists. I pulled and tore at my hair. I kicked and lashed out.

It was really fucking ugly.

And I can't even explain why. I just lost it somehow. And all the "good days" since I've been off the medication just dissolved in a torrent of tears.

The weirdest part of the whole thing is that I'm otherwise completely fine. I haven't had any trouble sleeping. My appetite is normal (aside from craving cheese for some reason). I'm not manic. I'm not depressed. I'm not hallucinating. I feel 100% myself.

Except that I cry every damn time I see that Folger's ad where the brother comes home from Africa and his sister tells him that he's her present this year. Gets me every single time I see it.

~Lizzie

Unmedicated

I am currently unmedicated for the first time in more than five years. It's a scary thought, especially considering how well managed my symptoms have been on medication and how very scary life was before the meds.

In hindsight, I probably started experiencing symptoms of bipolar disorder when I was a senior in high school, but it wasn't so severe that I thought it was a problem or even considered getting any kind of treatment. I had a fleeting therapeutic relationship with one of the counselors in college, but she was convinced that I was only depressed because of the sudden upheaval of starting college. It's not uncommon for bipolar to be misdiagnosed, although it seems to be the 'fashionable' diagnosis these days.

The worst symptoms, the ones that eventually did drive me to seek help, started late in 2004. At the time my parents were dividing their time between our home in Connecticut and my father's work in Vermont. I stayed in Connecticut because of school. I probably should have noticed something was wrong when I read over my essays. Really, anyone who read them should have seen something more than a little off. Maybe they did and just didn't say anything. The thing about mania is that you just feel too good to imagine that anything could ever be wrong again.

Then the fear set in. The constant feeling of being watched. The sensation that someone or something was behind me. My neck was sore from continually looking over my shoulder. It got so bad that I could hardly drive. I was terrified that someone was in my back seat and I obsessed over the rearview mirror, always worried that it might show something other than my own darting eyes. Fog on the road could bring me to tears as it shifted and rolled in my headlights. I would run from my car to the house, locking the door behind me and checking it repeatedly. I loathed the dark.

Trying to sleep was a nightmare (ha ha). I heard whispers and noises that I knew weren't really there. I was too frightened of what lurked in the dark to even be able to turn off the light. Instead I read until my eyes shut of their own volition. I would wake up briefly in the middle of the night, sufficiently out of it to be able to finally turn off the light and go back to sleep.

The daytime wasn't much better. I felt restless and jumpy and irritable. Sometimes it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming. I would burst into angry tears at the drop of a hat and I felt like I was going to fly into pieces. On more than one occasion I found myself crumpled on the ground, crying and shaking and it seemed like my boyfriend's arms were the only thing keeping me from exploding.

After a few months, I crashed. One night I heard my cat yowling. My mother and I found her dragging herself down the hall, her back legs useless. We took her to the emergency vet, where we were told she had thrown a blood clot that had lodged in the vein leading to her rear legs, paralyzing her. The vet could remove the clot, but tests showed that she had more in her heart. She was 17 years old and we made the very painful decision to have her put down. Our family vet came the next morning to our house. I couldn't stop crying. Her death plunged me into the worst depression I'd ever experienced. It seemed endless. And that's when I knew. I went to my school's counseling services and got a referral to a psychiatrist. Within the week I had started on Wellbutrin. I've been medicated ever since.

Until now. About a week ago I finished the last of my lamotrigine (generic for Lamictal). And I feel good. My life isn't exactly stressful at the moment, since I'm not working, but still, I feel really good. I stopped the meds so that my husband and I could start a family, so maybe I'm running on excitement at the moment. It probably helps that the prenatal supplements I'm taking include high doses of B vitamins and fish oil, two supplements that are often recommended for mood enhancement. Still, it was a bit of a shock when I had a headache last week and I realized that I could take any kind of medication I wanted without having to worry about any drug interactions.

So here I am, for better or for worse, off the medications and very relieved.

~Lizzie