Slice Of Life: A Daily Story

Day Six

Wednesday, June 27th
based on a snippet of a conversation with Aunt Linda.

Incapable

“I’m on disability” she said to me. “Why? Oh, because of your back?” She shakes her head slowly. I lift an eyebrow in curiosity. She takes her right hand, points to her head, and slowly makes a circle with her index finger. I get it, mental health issues. “I’m not seeing my therapist any longer” I say with a bit of pride. She smiles, “Really?” I smile back at her, “Yah, guess I’m ‘fixed’”, I reply with a slight chuckle. “I saw my therapist just before we left but I won’t see him again until the ninth. I get back in town and he goes to Arkansas.” Arkansas, I think, what’s in Arkansas? I don’t ask. “I’ve had two nervous breakdowns” she continues. I say nothing. After a bit of silence she says, “My back is still giving me problems, I have another slipped disc. And my foot is still bothering me.” I lift my eyebrow again and she continues. “It still slips out after I broke it. And right after I had the cast off, I was at Mike and Missy’s house and fell and broke it again. It was in a cast again for weeks.” “So, it’s very weak”, I say. She nods. “Yah so my doctor said that I’m not allowed to work.” Not ‘allowed’, I ponder but just when I’m about to ask her why she’s ‘not allowed’ her grandson comes up to her. I bite my lip. We never have the opportunity to continue the conversation as Missy shouts “Time to go my children, come dry off. We have to leave in the morning.” Linda turns from me and heads to the pool steps.

I have a couple of friends and family members that are on disability. I think of them as being weak, but I’m sure that I judge them far too harshly. Some people just don’t have the coping skills. Still. There have been many times that I have longed to be that selfish and fall into my label within the mental health community and be declared disabled. I haven’t…ever. I’m not that weak. I have my husband and children who keep me grounded if not sane. And while I do at times long for the escape of a hospital ward or a nervous breakdown, I just can’t allow myself that dependence. I have never been that dependent on anything or anyone, not even my husband – much to his dismay. I watch Linda as she dries the pool water from her leg. Linda … whacky, fluffy, tubby Linda; she has always been the kooky one in her family. We are similar, she and I. She bears the brunt of the jokes in her family and I in mine. While not as gullible as I, she can nevertheless be made to believe a lie quite easily, if you can keep a straight face when telling the tall tale. Linda used to work, at one time. She worked in the community hospital, laboratory I believe, though I’m not really sure. I never truly knew what she and her husband’s jobs entailed, I only knew that they worked at the same hospital.

“Jim’s retiring soon” Linda had whispered to me while we sat at the kitchen table. I had arrived late in the evening to see them, knowing that they would only be in town for three more days. She and Missy were making beaded bracelets. I hadn’t connected the dots at that time. “Really”, I had said. “That’s cool, what’s he going to do?” “He’s still going to be at the hospital, part time. They really wanted him to come back.” “Yah,” I begin to smile but notice the apprehension in her eyes. I didn’t understand then. Now I do. Disability isn’t a lot of money and with Jim retiring and working part time – well, finances could be tough. While I’ve always refused medication in outpatient care, I do know how expensive they are. I have no idea how many different medicines Linda is taking, but I understand the worry. And to top it off, she may require another back surgery. Could she be feeling incapable? I had the distinct feeling that she was worried about not seeing her therapist until the ninth. Is she so deteriorated?

Our mental health was another shared bond that we had. I drove with her to an appointment once, many years ago now. She talked gaily about her diagnosis. I spoke apprehensively about mine, which I never really agreed with from the moment I was labeled. I hate labels. I hate being defined by a label. I am who I am. Linda had seemed almost proud of her many and varied diagnosis labels. I have an acquaintance friend who is the same, Michele. Michele wears her mental illness on her sleeve, literally, and on her chest and back; a t-shirt that lists every mental illness to be found in the DSM-IV. She will proudly point to her shoulder and proclaim ‘this is one of mine’, or her left breast and tell anyone who will listen ‘this is my favorite diagnosis ever’. She is wackier than Linda. Michele is also far more disabled. I heard that she and Mark, her husband of over thirty years, have divorced. Jim and Linda have remained together for over forty years. I don’t see them divorcing any time soon, but I don’t see them often enough to know the dynamics. Not any longer. We used to see them twice a year, sometimes three times a year. Now it is down to once a year. She seems unchanged, really, in all the years that I have known her, for nearly thirty years now. Does mental illness do that to people? Linda, Michele, Renee … oh, you don’t know Renee?

Renee is an extreme case, lost in her depression, her PTSD, her anxiety, her suicidal ideation, her other selves. When I first stumbled upon Renee, twenty years ago now, I believed her to be so strong. She spoke eloquently, she wrote masterfully. She lived alone, took no bull from anybody, and adored her therapist and her cat. Then she met Eric and, after a quick engagement, was married and pregnant. Jordan was born with many a disability herself, autism and retardation. Renee was crushed. She seemed to go into rapid decay and as the years past and Jordan aged, Renee became more and more incapable. There is a revolving door on the state mental hospital, on several hospitals actually. Anytime Renee feels ‘unsafe’ she checks herself in. At one point her depression became so severe that she willingly, almost wantonly, endured seventy plus electroshock therapies. Crazy? I’d say certainly. I guess Renee actually has changed over the years, from competent to incompetence, capable to incapable.

I am no longer connected to these, my comrades of mental health. While I am not sane, I’m not ‘insane’. I have learned coping skills and have found an internal strength that Linda, Michele, and Renee do not seem to have. While Linda is the most capable of the three, there is just something about the term ‘disability’ that implies a lack of. Linda is incapable after all. And while I espouse my own capabilities, my own competence, my own sanity, am I? Really? Are any of us truly competent, capable, sane?