Peg Kerr's Journal

Fiona saw Next to Normal at the Mixed Blood Theater and called me on her cell phone as soon as she walked out of the theater to demand that YOU MUST GO SEE THIS IMMEDIATELY OMG. I went to see it the next day. I have since bought the soundtrack and am listening to it now. Mixed Blood did a fabulous job with it.

For those of you not familiar with this musical (I wasn't), Next to Normal is an account of a family struggling with mental illness. The mother is bipolar, and the father, who really loves her, is at his wit's end. The play also includes the son, the daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend, and carefully shows how the turmoil caused by mental illness reverberates throughout the entire family system, into the next generation.

The music was also stunning. Here is a performance between the mother (Alice Ripley), the father (J. Robert Spencer), and the son (Aaron Tveit) of the Broadway cast, who also recorded the soundtrack. (The performance begins at the 1:10 minute mark).

( You Don't Know/I Am the One )

Another song performed by Alice Ripley gets at the issue of medication noncompliance, how some people go off their medications because they miss the highs of the manic phase.

( I Miss the Mountains )

Anyway, if you are interested in the topic of severe mental illness and its effect on family dynamics, I really recommend the soundtrack.

extraordinarily happy today.

No particular reason. But it feels very nice.

I just love living without depression.

As I've mentioned before, I've really detected a lifting of my years-long chronic depression. I talked with my psychiatrist at my last med check about this, last October. Could I decrease my medication? He suggested that since I'm prone to seasonal affective disorder, I wait until the light starts increasing.

This seemed reasonable to me. Despite a lot of stress that Elinor Dashwood is not talking about publicly, my mood continued to be, well, not exactly burbly/cheerful. But neutral. Even good.

Wow. Is this what most people feel like all the time?

Now I've started to decrease the antidepressant. Interestingly, once Rob noticed I wasn't putting as many pills in my daily pill box, I started getting tremendous pushback. He did not approve. At all. "Why do you want to lower your medication? You tried to lower it once before and it didn't go well. You were told you'd probably be on it for the rest of your life. This is a big mistake." etc, etc.

Never mind that I consulted my doctor and I'm following his advice. Never mind that I'm not experiencing any ill effects so far from the lower dose.

After one too many carping comments about it, I finally hit back.

"I am following my doctor's advice. I have made my decision and I want you to respect that. But more than that, I have the right to imagine my life as good and to live it without depression."

That shut him up. We'll see if that will end the subject.

I certainly hope so.

Check out Emotional Bag Check. Here's an article about it in Wired magazine:

Life sucks, right? But music makes it better. That’s the worldview behind Emotional Bag Check — a site that lets you suggest songs to cheer people up.

It’s simple. Go to Emotional Bag Check, and choose whether you want to offload a problem or help out with someone else’s.

If you want to get something off your chest, all you need to do is type what the problem is, provide an e-mail address, and someone will read it and return a song they think is relevant along with (optionally) a message of support.

If everything’s going pretty well for you, and you just want to help other people out, then you’ll be confronted with someone’s problem and asked to pick a song that’ll make them feel better. Here, a sense of duty suddenly kicks in — you’ve got a direct line to someone’s heart, and you don’t want to waste it. You’ll find yourself taking a substantial amount of time to choose a song that’s just right for the situation, as if this person were a close friend.

The developer, Robyn, answers FAQ questions here. Also on Twitter at @emobagcheck.

(Link credit here).

One of the commenters to this on the original link remarked:

"I hope you don't think that surviving depression disqualifies a person from being a hero."

The OP replied:

"Um. No. I've battled depression and anxiety. But I don't think Bella qualifies as a hero."

Good caveat and true reply.

I have been thinking about this.

My family has some problems that have just seemed absolutely intractable. Some of these problems I talk about in public. Some of them Elinor Dashwood is talking about in smaller locked groups on this blog on Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Some I talk about only in person, to just a handful of people.

We are trained to want the happy ending. Let's face it, happy people and winners are culturally preferred. Everyone appreciates a winner.

People in pain? People who can't get it together? People who continue to hurt, even when the people around them, the people who love them, keep trying to help them find their way out of the morass that surrounds them? Not so appealing.

I don't know quite what to do when I can't report the happy ending, both to myself, to my family and friends, and to readers of this journal.

I'm ashamed in a way. I am rather scrupulous at self-examination, and this is what I have been mulling over lately.

One of my soul collage cards is a Committee card (i.e., an aspect of myself) called The Bearer of Burdens:

The Bearer of Burdens - Committee Suit I am the One who is dependable, who bears the unbearable weight. I keep moving forward steadily through the desert that no one else can cross. I carry all that I need with me using my own inner strength. I can carry the burdens of others as well as my own.

I have been thinking lately that when I started walking across this desert, I had no idea that the journey would be so long. You keep going and going and going, reasoning, okay, this can't go on forever; sooner or later you have to get to an oasis, and you'll be able to lay this burden down. But I haven't been able to do so. And after awhile, you start to feel like a fool and a sucker for continuing to trudge forward, but what is your alternative when all around you all you see is a sandblast of desolation? Who else would pick up the burden? And if you stopped now and try to go back, who's to say whether or not you wouldn't end up just walking farther than if you just keep going in the direction you're going? There is no one to tell me. No one.

I lost one of the most important relationships in my life, I think, because the other individual, for reasons that elude me even now, said, "I'm not going to stick around any longer with you on this journey because I'm just tired of waiting for you to get to the oasis." Look, I'm tired of it, too. But I can't find any other way out of this desert than to keep walking.

I would never have believed, three years ago, that Rob would STILL not have a permanent job. I never would have believed some of the other things are still going on that I am struggling with. I can't believe I'm still walking through this desert, and the fear keeps stealing up that it looks as though I'm on the brink of dying of thirst. But what the fuck else am I supposed to do? There are no maps. No vehicles swooping down to pick me up.

I am sorry. I have no idea how long it will take or whether I will ever find the cool waters and restful shade I long for, or whether I'm even destined to get out of the desert at all. I might die of thirst out here all alone, but I have no idea which ending will happen. If only I knew. If I knew that it wasn't going to work out, I suppose at least I could put the burden down and just rest as I waited for the ending.

But I don't. If there's any chance I'll ever see the end of this desert, there isn't anyway I'm going to get out of it except under my own power.

So no, I cannot report the period of unemployment has ended, the marital and mental health problems have been solved, the house has been cleaned and the financial picture is more stable. I'm sorry, and it's getting downright embarrassing, but I just can't. The future may involve foreclosure, bankruptcy, homelessness, hospitalization, divorce. It may involve none of these things.

I don't know how this will end. But I can't see any alternative but to keep going.

(Edited to add: The ironic thing is, I am also actually on both sides of this divide, within my own immediate family.)

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

Here's a fanfic in the Lord of the Rings universe, which is one of the best fictional depictions of depression and what it's like that I've ever seen. Another Way of Leaving. About this story, the author, Jodancingtree, writes:

What if Frodo had not been given the option of going with the Elves? His wounds are not healing, and the desire for the Ring torments him. Is death his only escape? Caution: suicidal depression.

I was so impressed by it that I wrote to her a number of years ago, and she replied, mentioning, if I remember correctly, that she had a relative who committed suicide. She gets it. A wonderful character in the story is Radagast the Brown, a minor character in Tolkien's work, the wizard with dominion over animals and birds. The story isn't long, only a little over 10,000 words or so.

She went on to write a much longer work which recounts the tale of how Frodo goes with Radagast back to Mordor and in doing so, was healed from his despair: Following the other wizard: Journey into Healing. Moving and insightful. (Also notable in that Frodo actually makes friends with orcs, which is something I've not seen before. It's not played for laughs, and she absolutely makes it work. She wrote two more sequels after this, following the story of one of those orcs: The Queen's Orc and The Grey at the End of the World.)

Anyway, I highly recommend the first two stories for anyone who has ever had to deal with mental illness (or loved someone with it), especially depression. If you read them, drop me a comment to respond; I'd really like to hear from you.

I went on a walk on the Stone Arch Bridge for the first time in a long time, possibly about a month.

I stopped walking the bridge when I got so dreadfully sick. The aftermath of that illness was that I would go into paroxyms of coughing when I stepped from inside to outside, the coughs apparently triggered by the change of temperature. So the little slice of time that I made for myself each morning fell by the wayside and I barely noticed. I was too exhausted from my illness and busy trying to breathe. Then, weeks later, when I returned to work and the cough cleared up, thanks to the big guns inhaler, the temperature was so cold that the walk didn't seem tempting, and frankly, I was out of the habit.

I have been reflecting upon habits, and about mindfulness. It's the time of year to take stock of myself. What to I need to be diligent about keeping in my life? My paper journal had been all but abandoned this year. I am trying resume the daily entry, and ordered the journal for next year. I am trying to do daily slow kicks, so I don't die in the black belt screenings, which resume next month. After the first of the year, I will resume sparring class--the concussion was my excuse to stop, and, just as with walking the bridge, I fell out of the habit of going to sparring class. (The only difference: I like walking the bridge, whereas I really don't like sparring). But they are starting a women-only sparring class, which will remove one of my chief dislikes about sparring (teenage brown belt boys with too much testerone and no control who hit too hard). I have been doing a lot of reading about overcoming depression and about happiness, and the one proven practice that helps people keep depression at bay is, again, a mindful habit, to list one's gratitudes every day. The Decrease Worldsuck posts have dropped off, and I need to get more mindful about that, too.

How about you? What good habits have you let slip lately that you are trying to reinstate in your life?

I love the HP Alliance. Have I mentioned that I love the HP Alliance?

You may remember the post I did last month about their Deathly Hallows Campaign. The Horcrux last month was the Starvation Horcrux, and the campaign was a push to get Warner Brothers to use Fair Trade chocolate in all of their products.

Now they have announced the next Horcrux, and this campaign is near and dear to my heart:

All of us know the "dementor horcrux" first hand: that awful voice within that tells us that we suck. Mean and predictable, this "dementor horcrux" will always try to convince us that we’re horrible for the way we look, think, feel, act, etc. Like Harry, who was sensitive to dementor attacks, many of us may feel debilitated by the dementor-like experiences of anxiety, depression, low body image, and lots of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that knock us off balance.

Though the Dementor tries to make us feel alone so that we’ll stay within its grip, the reality is that we are surrounded by people going through similar challenges to us as well as those who have gone through dark and difficult times, feelings, and experiences. Together we can go beyond the Muggle Mindset and tap into the magic of our power and creativity. And so the HPA is working together as a community to cast Patronuses. Each of us was with Harry and members of Dumbledore’s Army when they cast a glowing corporeal Patronus of such light, such beauty, and such fierce power that it sent the dementors running, and each of us has the same breathtaking power within.

How to Participate
In partnership with Reachout.com, we’re asking you to create individual Patronuses in the form of writing, photos, drawings, paintings, videos, songs- basically any piece of art that expresses an element of your Patronus. You can submit you Patronus through the submissions page on our tumblr or by emailing it to us at deathlyhallows@thehpalliance.org Check out Tumblr every day for more updates.

We want as many Patronuses created as possible. Once they are all made, we’ll be taking many of them to create a collective Patronus that we will send as a message of our community’s hope and inner-power to a group who needs that message (the specific group is to be determined).

Please make sure to follow our ground rules and also PLEASE keep in mind that:

- No one here is a substitute for a professional mental health counselor.
- Internal emotional/mental change normally happens slowly. A month long campaign is here to lay positive seeds but is by no means a solution for everything.
- The Internet is a public space and please respect yourself and remember that.
- This is a sensitive issue for most of us and we ask that people are positive and supportive as we focus less on the Dementors that bother us and more on the Patronuses.
- Please read more here

Thank you all and Expecto Patronum!

I have submitted my own patronus, which I created a couple years ago as part of my soul collage deck. I will also send them an email about my Decrease Worldsuck project.

Expecto Patronum - Council Suit

Expecto Patronum - Council Suit am the One created from the magic that springs from the happiest memory, who shines in the darkness and protects against that which would destroy the soul. I am a shining silver shield of hope against encroaching darkness, despair and evil, and I can communicate with the souls of others. My form is beautiful, a reflection of the true self within. I am the embodiment of Light in dark places.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )