Digging Deep

 A few weeks ago, I had one of those incidents that triggered something deep and dark within that sent me into an emotional tailspin.  After fifty odd years of sorting through my issues and tediously digging into my mental health, must I still have these sorts of things happen?!  Well yes, apparently I must.

It started with an eye exam.  

As per usual, I had to fill out forms and of course, health history.  I ticked the boxes next to diabetes and high blood pressure, listed my meds and felt a little bit smug that I was on my one little pill daily for each and managing them just fine, thank you. Maybe pride was setting me up that day.  I certainly sound as though it was!  

And then I met the doctor.  

The doctor was insistent that the only reason I was having any issue with my eyes at all was because my blood sugar was out of control.  He had not checked my eyes.  He'd simply glanced at my current list of meds and read my medical history.  "No one has blurry vision unless their blood sugar is going up and down!  You aren't taking care of the diabetes, and this is why you are having eye problems!"  I had not checked my blood sugar that morning and he wanted that number.  When I told him I'd not checked it, I was lectured further.  I had my kit with me and was about to tell him I would check it right away, but he began the eye exam.

Each time I failed to clearly read a line, I was told again, "It's the diabetes!  You are not going to see because you are out of control."   

On and on he lectured with each step of the exam. I was not monitoring my health and wasn't doing a thing to promote being healthy.  I was eating the wrong things.  My A1c number failed to impress him.  I wasn't taking medication.  I wasn't doing this or that.   

I found myself getting very frustrated and very defensive.  I went in with a great attitude, feeling healthy and well and strong.   I went out feeling I'd been telling myself and everyone else lies and had just been publicly outed, defensive as heck and ready to weep.  I had to remind myself that my personal physician is more than happy with my numbers and results.   

The conclusion of my eye exam was that I had had a 'significant' vision change from when I was last examined.  There is no sign of glaucoma, no macular degeneration.  The small cataract I was diagnosed with three or four years ago at the time of the last exam, is still a very small cataract.  The doctor had no concern over that at all.  I'd looked up what to do to improve eye health with diet and supplements and have taken those religiously over the past three/four years.  

No kudos from doc.  None.  In his mind, every single thing came right back to diabetes and mismanagement on my part.  Period.  Finished.  Done.    

I had a horrible feeling inside.  I was left with a feeling of shame. 

I felt that appointment with the eye doctor on an emotional level.  I did.  What I wanted to do more than anything was to march right back to that aisle with the beautiful display of thick frosted sugar cookies I'd walked past earlier and buy two boxes, then eat myself sick, just like I used to do when I was depressed and mentally unable to cope.   

What did I do that day?  I insisted we finish our other shopping and stayed well away from areas with trigger foods, drank a full container of water when we got back to the car and refused to stop for food on the way home.  I knew I had good foods at home.  Nor did I fall back on the equally as old habit of shopping to feel better in order to soothe my feelings.  I stuck hard to my list. Small victories are small victories but they're big ones when you've fought addictions and don't succumb in a time of upset.  Why didn't I feel like I was winning?

We got in the car and on the way home, John spoke of a post made on a social media platform that I went to read.  It was a candid post about a near and dear soul's battle with mental health: the victories won and the very hard facts of dealing with mental illness daily.  

I told John how very proud I was of the poster, not only because it was well written but because it was totally honest.  I felt the author was brave in a way I'd never dared to be.  John's reaction was different.  John's been nothing less than encouraging to this person.  He takes it as a personal rejection that despite his best efforts this person is not convinced of their value and worth.  

I tried to explain to John what a huge thing that post was, much as he might dislike reading the things it said.   I tried to explain to him how a mind tethered by both depression and a chemical imbalance works.  I struggled with my words. I dumbed it down a lot because there are portions of this particular mental illness that I don't fully understand.  I finally told him this:  It has to do with what we hear inside our own heads and that voice is louder, clearer, and drowns out every truth anyone else might speak to us.

I've shared before that I've dealt with my share of mental health issues in the past.  I wasn't very open about my mental health history at the time I was in the hard and fast places of depression because that was the day and age when you had to keep quiet about those sorts of things.  It was a time when society was only on the cusp of people beginning to speak of emotional and mental issues.   There was no societal understanding about mental health at all. You didn't tell an employer or friends and likely few of your family. 

Mention depression and most likely you'd hear some very pat phrases, none of which were helpful in the least. "Just think how much better off you are than most people."  "Just look at how bad someone else has it."  "Just look on the bright side."   There is no bright side, no comparison that can possibly be made when the things inside you are deep and dark and suffocating.  Whether it is a chemical imbalance or whether there were past traumas, there is no bright side.  

 I told John this.  John asked, "Well what did you do about it?"  "The same as she has.  I went to therapy.  I took medications.  I self-examined and self-abused, and I kept on trying to be better until I didn't self-abuse anymore."  

I went to therapy.  

At 18, I went to my first therapist at my mother's insistence. We had sessions together.  I felt I had nothing to say...Or nothing I was willing to pay for later for saying.  Eventually the therapist felt it would be best if she spoke to us in separate therapy sessions.  Needless to say, I was grilled hard after each session.  That too did not make me feel I could speak my mind.  

The therapist determined I was sexually repressed and sat me down for one session with a coffee table sized photography book in which couples of all sorts were making love.  I wasn't shocked or horrified but I was embarrassed.  I wasn't quite sure what the therapist thought I might gain from being exposed to such things.  Soon after our sessions ended.  Was it Mama's choice?  The therapist's decision?  I couldn't possibly tell you.  I was so unaccustomed to having any say in anything that I am certain only that it wasn't myself who ended it.

Later in my mid-20s I suffered a number of mental breakdowns.  I functioned long enough to get my children fed and out the door to nursery and school each day. Then I went home and lay in bed all day long, shaking like a leaf and crying.  I seldom left my house except to drop off and pick up the children.  In the afternoon and evening, I kept it together until the children were fed and bathed and put to bed, then fell into the bed shaking and crying all over again.  It was at this time I sought therapy once more.

I was a model patient.  I said the right things and revealed the right things, and the therapist was happy.  But one day, I didn't want to make the therapist happy.  I wanted the therapist to HEAR me, and I said how I felt. I told her the things I struggled with, how unhappy I was in my life, in my marriage.  And do you know what she said in return?  "You only feel that way because you are fat."  

What?!  My whole life boils down to this?  I'm fat?  

This was the memory that popped up as I was trying to explain to John how a person with mental health issues and depression feels.

"I never said to this therapist, 'I've been abused.'  I never told of the deeper inner hurts and the lack of understanding about a very difficult and overbearing relationship in my life.  I never told this therapist a single thing except that I was depressed until that day and that was her reply."  

I dealt with that hurt and misunderstanding the same way I dealt with most of my hurts:  I shoved it all back into that deep dark hole where it had been wreaking havoc for years and kept saying the right things until the therapist felt I was ready to be dismissed.  And this day, 30 something years later, this is the memory that resurfaced.  

I started sobbing for the girl I had been, the one who had tried to be brave only to be slapped back down, the one who didn't believe her feelings were valid, that she had anything of value to offer anyone because she was overweight.  I felt only shame.

I have always said my children 'saved' me.  I didn't lean on them emotionally and make them my co-dependents.  I'd been through that.  I saw their vulnerability and their need of safety, their need of care, their need of love. Because of them I got up each day and took care of their needs.  It was they whom I thought of daily when the thought of suicide was strongest each day. I couldn't bear to think of them raised by their father and that's the truth.  So, I fought the battle every day, though the enemy offered me every weapon right at hand over and over again with which I might end my own life.  I didn't see the victory in that.  I do now.  

 I didn't feel particularly strong that day a week ago following the visit to the eye doctor and the memory that surfaced.  I always feel I've backslidden when I feel the urge to overeat in a compulsive way.  I was very emotional that day and a goodly part of the next.  I talked to the two people I trust to understand, and both were supportive as I shared my story.   

My emotions ranged from anger at myself for accepting sub-par behavior from medical professionals and anger at them for being sub-par in their patient care.  There was grief at all the years I might have been happier had I not just accepted the statement of a very stupid therapist.  I was sad at the time wasted and wondered what I might have been had I been brave and told people "This is how it is for me."   I was angry at myself for allowing someone else to make me feel powerless.  I should have gotten up and walked out on that therapist and found another. I should have walked out on that doctor the other day.  But I didn't.

And yet, I also feel thankful to that doctor.  Because of him, I pulled out the very deep root of something hidden that was preventing me from healing fully.    That is no small gift, for all that it might have caused me pain.