I see Jonah in bits and pieces. He is behind me on a car ride, he is requesting The Jungle Book, I’m starting the movie, I’m pouring him cranberry juice. Sometimes I’m trying to get a photo. In most of the photos he’s in the backseat of the car or sitting at the table or on the floor, eating something. He almost always wants to nap but only wants mama about half the time.
Today when I asked if he wanted me to lie down with him for a nap, his answer was unambiguously no. And when his answer is no, my visit is short. Every other week my mom is with me. I used to have people join me on my mom’s Sundays off, but not so often anymore. Andy always manages to visit with Jonah several times a week, no matter how tired he is or how much he has worked that day.
The beginning of November was sunny and warmish, but lately the days are short, cold. Dreary. Seemingly always raining, dark, drizzly…we even had snow already, which I prefer, if it’s going to be cold anyway – and most days I am tired, often depressed. It’s hard to write about Jonah when there isn’t much going on where he’s concerned. I guess Jonah’s ambivalence or indifference toward me is better than an attack – a thousand times better. I should be grateful for it. How quickly I forget how bad it can be.
Props to his teachers and caregivers. Sophia, his head classroom teacher, sent me a great photo of she and Jonah in the classroom during their “Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” celebration. Just like in the TV special, they feasted on toast, pretzels, jelly beans, and popcorn (which I’m sure the kids loved) and I guess Jonah had a blast. Could we ask for a better, more energetic, patient, creative, and loving teacher? Not in a million years.
I love seeing Boo happy. I wish I could stand behind a two-way mirror and watch him in class, or at the rec center, or hanging out at his residence. Videos and photos are the next best thing. One of his caregivers at the residence even texted me two little videos one day, of Jonah jumping around on a giant beanbag and laughing his head off. I don’t know how to move the video from my phone to the computer, though. Maybe I’ll ask the youngster at work.
I’m tired. Maybe I’m not getting enough iron, or potassium, or protein.
Sometimes the days seem lengthy and meaningless, and there are days I go to sleep old-lady-early. I forgot to take my meds a few different days recently, and paid for it dearly.
Thanksgiving was as successful as Thanksgiving gets, though, and believe me I’m grateful for it. Jonah and Andy made it up to my mom’s house safely and without incident, and when we took our car ride, we saw a long train within minutes. My mom made delicious dinner and packed it up for all of us just like she’s been doing for 5 years or so now. Next year I want to try making Poppy’s dressing. (My grandfather, who died in 1999). His dressing was legendary and time-consuming to make…my mom doesn’t attempt it anymore and I miss it. Funny, the things you remember, the details of life you long for once they’re gone.
Then, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my awesome sister Barbara was taken to the ER and abruptly moved to ICU with bleeding ulcers, breathing problems, and ridiculous leg pain and bruising. While they were figuring her situation out, my sweet Uncle Donny had a heart attack. He had a stint put in and was somehow “fixed” and home two days before Barbara. I spent as much time as I could with my sister, trying to advocate for her when it seemed they weren’t managing her care very well. There was one day when I felt like screaming Shirley MacLaine-in-Terms-of-Endearment style:
My mental illness has been showing.
I’m having full-blown panic attacks out of nowhere. It’s always a déjà vu feeling, usually triggered by something – a certain word or phrase sets everything into motion. Sometimes it’s a snippet of a song or a line in a movie. Then I’m caught on a memory-train tunnel; a piece of my brain unlocks and floods with terrifying thoughts – things I don’t want to see or hear, the confusion of not understanding what’s thundering through my head while at the same time remembering, recognizing, the recognition terrifying, and I am forgetting or unable to breathe, a burst of fire in my center, my heart thumping odd strong rhythms, and then I’m falling from my chair to the floor, falling away from my consciousness, saved at the last minute by breaking out in sweat, knowing how to breathe again. Moments later I always try, almost unwittingly, to recall what I was thinking, what was so overwhelmingly scary – and even as I seek it I am frightened to find it. I never do find what it was that started the tornado, nor what was swirling through my head. It leaves me feeling insane, or at least like I am facing going insane. I call it a panic attack because I don’t know what else to call it. What does it matter what you call it? I’d do anything not to have another. They are the most horrifying moments of my life.
Two workdays last week I cried on and off all day, for no reason and for every reason.
Still I worked my jobs and ate food and went to sleep and kept moving forward. I have friends and a cousin in various degrees of distress and depression, and I want to help them. More often than not, though, I’m right there with them and can only empathize with their dismal forecasts and downtrodden spirits. Some of my extended family are feuding, and people are hurting. It seems we’re all slogging through the holidays; I’ll be glad when the year turns and there is the promise, at least, of the renewal of spring.
I am not like this every day. I’m not. I sing and I smile and I do my best to combat the hate in the world by trying to be a good person. It’s just a struggle right now. I chose to write this in the midst of it, but I am not trapped under it. I promise. I’m a Weeble.
And, as all Gen Xers know…Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.
The Never Normal 