Day Nineteen: Dearest Gray

18 October 2014

Saturday

Dearest Gray,

As you know, today hasn't been the easiest of days for me and that what I'm feeling as I type this and try not to cry (not that I don't feel that I can, I just don't want to have to stop now that I've finally started to get a tissue from the bathroom and wipe my nose) is the weight of all of this that I've been writing about of late. These memories that I've been sharing with the world have been even more sharply in my dreams the last several days which, as you also know, has caused you to waken me from nightmares. I told you today that I don't want to continue this writing of this. It hurts so much and I've cried so many tears over it. I told you too that I was starting to feel something akin to hope, only to have it smashed to bits this afternoon and evening. That is the way of this disease though and why I have learned that it is an exercise in frustration and pain to tell myself that I might be getting better or that things might be changing in some way because there is something about saying it aloud (or writing it) that seems to signal an ill wind to come and knock me back down into the darkness again. Two steps forward, two steps back again. Maybe not a whole two steps back, but enough that whatever infinitesimal amount of progress I am making is so miniscule as to be completely unrecognizable to my senses. All that said, my darling, you have encouraged me and lent me your strength and I am trying. As I said, today, I am writing this for you.

I am at a loss for what to say. I could tell you, as I have so many times before, that those five days I spent at Pine View were the worst five days of my life and that my experience there, is, I think, what Purgatory might be like for me. I would say it was my own version of Hell, but there is no getting out of Hell. What is that quote from The Inferno by Dante? "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here?" Admittedly, that is what happened to me. I had hope, albeit a tiny amount, before I was forced to go into that place. Those five days stole what hope I had and destroyed the part of me that has always embraced hope. That place took so much from me. It changed me in ways that I cannot even begin to express in words. I am a different person now than the woman who walked into Green Tree's partial hospitalisation program that Wednesday morning feeling cautiously optimistic and even a little hopeful about the possibility of recovery. Do you recall that I told you after I was discharged that I felt different? I did. I remember coming home and feeling out of place and out of time and out of myself. I think I told you that it felt like someone at Pine View had come into my room while I was sleeping and excised some vital part of who I am from me and had replaced it with something completely different. It is as if the very fabric of who I am has been rewoven.

Being in that place not only stole my hope, but it absolutely shook my faith and my relationship with God. I know cognitively that scripture says that He won't abandon me, but that is how it feels. I have spent my entire life until this point in a crazy mad love affair with my Creator. I fell hard for Jesus. I felt an intimacy with the Holy Spirit that I have no real words for either. I was able to feel the very presence of God even in the mundanity of life. I would be washing clothes, changing baby diapers, cooking, playing with the kids, reading a book, taking a shower, or driving somewhere in the car and could feel Him with me. It wasn't like He was constantly talking to me or me to Him, but I just had this deep sense of His presence. I never understood the psalms where the psalmist is wondering where God has gone or bemoaning that He has turned His face away or abandoned him. Those five days at Pine View changed that. It actually started, as most of this part of my story has, with the day that Samantha told me they wanted me to go to Pine View. That was when He vanished from sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Taste and see that the Lord is good? Ha! That's a laugh. He's so good that He has allowed me to suffer for a good year and a half and has said almost nothing to me. I haven't even felt His presence. 

Yes, I have had a moment or two where the Holy Spirit has nudged me, but only to insist that I do something. I didn't want to do this blog, but because I am apparently both a glutton for punishment and because the Holy Spirit kept pestering me, I obeyed and started it. Other than that nudge and the one time in Pendragon's office when the Holy Spirit nudged me to ask Pendragon something very specific, He has been completely silent. And the silence is deafening. I have continued to be obedient and at least go through the motions of my faith throughout this, but you know how agonizing that it has been for me. I used to love Sundays. It was something I looked forward to every week. I now hate Sundays. I hate going to Mass. I hate being around my parish friends. I hate anything that reminds me of Him. And yet, I keep doing it. I keep doing it for our girls. If it were not for them, I think I would have ceased to pursue anything of faith a long time ago. I don't think I would have turned away from God completely, but I think I would have stopped caring about pursuing Him in any way. The girls are my reason for remaining faithful, even if only in a tiny thing. The longer this goes on though, I wonder how long I will be able to continue to do that? You know too well what a torturous thing it is for me to be in Mass most Sundays and how I have spent many a Mass crying the entire time (or most of the time), how my voice has trembled as I have struggled to proclaim the psalms in front of the congregation, and how the prayers of the faithful have, at times, been something that has sent me out of the church and into the ladies room where I had a cry and where I wanted to stay for the rest of Mass.

My experience over those five days was one filled with lies, fear, heartbreaking anguish, alienation, violation, betrayal, and an almost total devaluation of my personhood. I don't know how to parse it into a coherent statement, so forgive the lack of fluidity of thought. The following are beliefs about myself, the place, and the people that became part of me in that place:

I am not a person. I am a number on a wristband.

I am not allowed to have modesty or privacy.

My needs are not important.

My wants are even less important than my needs.

Unhealthy food is okay for promoting good mental health.

As I do not smoke, I am forgotten when it comes to being allowed outdoors and must request the privilege that is supposed to be a guaranteed opportunity for me twice a day.

All of us are no better than a herd of cattle.

There are only a couple of patients who are so far gone mentally that they need this level of care and yet, this ward is almost completely full.

Threats to send patients to a more restricted floor are an effective way to not have to actually treat patients' symptoms and help them deal with their emotions.

I am easily overwhelmed by the near constant loud noise of the dayroom and hallways and there is no where other than my room to get away from the noise, but I must not retreat there too often or I will appear as though I am isolating and not getting better. I must endure the overstimulation despite its adverse affects on me.

Being overstimulated by the noise produces a mild anxiety attack that I must hide from the staff.

I am always being watched. Even when I am sleeping, a staff member checks on me every 15 minutes.

Men and women are not to be trusted to stand in a line together so that they may be herded to meals, but it is fine for them to mix in the line when being herded back to the ward from meals. Sitting in mixed company during meals is also okay as is entering the room of the opposite gender on the ward.

Sitting in the floor in the hall (on the ward) while waiting for other patients to join the lines going to the cafeteria is not okay. You must stand up even if you are tired and/or your legs hurt. The fact that you are not in anyone's way matters little.

Sometimes you can sort of prop your door closed (without shutting it totally) by placing a towel over the top of the door. Sometimes, this is not allowed.

You are not allowed to bring a book to meal times.

Priests are afforded special treatment, especially when they come wearing the full cassock and collar and are allowed onto the locked ward to visit with, hear confessions of, anoint, and give the Holy Eucharist to their parishioners who are patients. They are allowed to do this at whatever hour pleases their schedule instead of waiting until normal visiting hours.

Rules are arbitrary. They are totally dependent on the person who is enforcing them.

Rules are changeable and constantly change.

No one cares for me here.

No one listens to me.

No one hears me.

I am alone in this fight against depression.

People who claim to be mental health care professionals are untrustworthy, except for Pendragon, but even he may eventually betray my trust if I cross the wrong line. 

I cannot cry too much.

It is better not to cry at all.

Showing any strong emotion is a bad thing.

I must be compliant in everything and question nothing.

I have no voice.

This is not a hospital. It is a prison.

In order to leave this place, I must play the game.

To play the game, I must:

• Take medications that have no chance of affecting me over a five day period.
• I must eat unhealthy food.
• Ask for my toiletries and a clean towel so that I may take a shower.
• Take a shower.
• Attend groups regularly.
• Pretend, at least a little, to be interested in the groups.
• Go to sleep at night, despite the bright hallway lights outside my wide open door.
• Endure the indignity of being woken far too early by my psychiatrist so he can talk at me about my medication when I am only barely roused from sleep, not fully alert, still in my bed, and completely unable to see him clearly because my glasses are so far away that I must get out of the bed to get them, thus exposing my body which is clad only in a nightgown and my panties.
• Pretend that I am getting better when in actuality, I am in a much worse place than before I came.
• Agree to go back to Green Tree's partial hospitalisation program even though I am still so angry with all of them that I would dearly love to just raze the entire damn building and all of them with it.
• Obey all the rules without question, even when they change from one day to the next. 

I must, at all costs, win the game.

Even if I win the game and get to go home, I will eventually lose the tournament by my own hand.

Death is a better option than ever returning to a place like this.

I will never willingly come back to a place like this. I will kill myself first.

I think, my sweetheart, that if I continue this blogged journey, that I will pick up my story in a different place. This place which stole so much from me and traumatized me so deeply is something that I think I need to move on from. It is causing me much more distress than it is helping me. To be honest, as much as I wanted to think the writing of this might be helping, well, you know the rest of that. It all ended in tears today, didn't it? 

Ti voglio molto bene, caro mio.

Tua moglie,

Me

xoxoxoxoxo