For the purposes of this blog, I will forego the rampant racism and acceptable discrimination of the era; I will also forego the acceptability of smoking anywhere and everywhere, including hospitals, and the use of ether as an anesthesia. Instead, for the purposes of this blog, I will focus on what’s truly important:

Cars and by extension roads and road trips.

First, my kids, who were born in 1982 and 1986, both have a fondness for the Muscle Cars of the 1970s. When I think Muscle Cars, I think of the Charger, the Challenger, the GTO not the Chevy Chevelle and certainly not the Chevy Nova. Growing up – and I would have been in my late teens at that point – the Nova was only one step up from the Vega, which was Chevy’s answer to Ford’s Pinto, except, unlike the Pinto, it didn’t blow up on impact.

Forgive me, I’ve digressed for a minute. I was discussing the cars from the late 50s and early 60s; more precisely, the use of those cars for road trips.

I am not sure when the Interstate system that connects Michigan to Illinois was completed. For all I know, there were modern highways crisscrossing both states in 1958; however, we never used them. If we traveled anywhere with my Great Aunt Moni, who would have been born in the 1890s, we couldn’t go any faster than 35mph, or she’d scream that we were all going to die and if God had meant for anyone to travel so fast, He’d have given us wings. And if we had my Grandpa Foley in the car, and should it be summer – and we only took summer road trips because otherwise the roads would be icy, we’d spin off the road, land in a ditch, where we’d stay undiscovered until Spring, at which time we’d all be dead – but if Grandpa Foley would be in the car and not sound asleep because of all the whiskey and beer he liked to drink, then he would start screaming that the wind was making his hair move (he had very little hair and required a constant, unmoving comb-over to give him even the illusion of hair), and we would all have to roll up the windows, so his hair wouldn’t move.

Growing up, death was a constant companion. There were the shards of glass that could enter your bloodstream, travel through your capillaries to your veins to your heart and kill you dead. There were the fish bones that you might swallow that would pierce, what my family called your voice box, travel through to the other side where the bloodstream was, enter the capillaries, and bingo, before you knew it, that fish bone would pierce your heart, and you’d be dead as a doornail. And as dangerous as glass and fishbones could be, cars were even worse.

Cars were little more than death traps. As I’ve already mentioned, they went much too fast, meaning they would somehow fly off the road, flip in the air, land on the roof, and we’d all die. And the radiators were always about to go bad, causing steam to rise from the hood, which meant the cars were about to explode, and we’d all die. Same with the tires. Back in the 50s and early 60s, there were no steel-belted radials, at least not that my family had. We had tube tires, which meant to my family, that blowouts were inevitable, which meant to my family, that whoever was driving would instantly lose control of the car – especially if it was traveling anywhere over 35mph – and it would run off the road, which would cause it to flip again and again and again, land on its roof, and if that didn’t kill us all dead, then the car exploding, which cars in the 50s were wont to do, at least according to my family, would do us in.

Because, in my family, cars and traveling posed such danger and because we may or may not have had the Interstate system connecting Michigan and Illinois, traveling between those two states was always quite the event. Starting the night before.

In 1963 the year my sister Peggy was born - when travel was still fraught with danger - my mother sent my sister Anne and I, by train, from the Chicago area to Bay City for the summer and sent my stepsisters Irene and Mary Jean and my stepbrother Bob to Pennsylvania, so she and my stepfather could bond with Peggy. My cousin Barb, who was a year older than I was and a year younger than Anne and who was the daughter of my Uncle Roy and Aunt Mary, came to Bay City, as well.

Not an exact match. My uncle and aunt's car was turquoise.

And the plan was for my Uncle Roy and Aunt Mary to pick all of us up at the end of the summer – in a 1958 Ford station wagon, complete with fake wood and a “way back,” where all of us wanted to sit – and drive us back to Illinois.

In 1963, in my family, only the men drove because only the men could be expected to deal the dangers of driving – those tires that were going to blow and the shoddy radiators about to erupt. It took a man to keep the car on the road, to keep it from flying through the air should we go too fast, to keep it from flipping end over end, then exploding, killing us all.

So, of course, it was my Uncle Roy, who would drive, and it was my Aunt Mary, who would prepare us all for the dangers of driving. Starting the night before. Because we had such a big day ahead of us and because we were living no later than 7am, Anne, Barb, and I were required to go to bed when it was still light out – we were 13, 12, and 11, at the time. The next morning, when it was still dark, Uncle Roy woke us up, told us breakfast was waiting.

We went downstairs to my Grandma’s kitchen, found toast and cereal left out for us. But no Aunt Mary. She was still sleeping. My grandma, on the other hand, stood off towards the sink, wringing her hands, watching the three of us eat. No doubt there was some danger with the toast. Perhaps she worried that we might swallow the wrong, inhale a crumb into our lungs, where it would somehow enter that magical bloodstream, and pierce our heart. Killing us dead.

In the meantime, Uncle Roy came into the kitchen, announcing the car was packed, then barked at us to finish our breakfast – we didn’t have all day – use the bathroom, and get in the car.

Still no Aunt Mary.

Yet, my Uncle Roy – to me – was kind of scary, so I did exactly what he said. Got dressed in record time, used the bathroom, then got into the car, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The sun came up.

Anne and Barb got in the car. No Aunt Mary. No Uncle Roy.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“You should have gone before,” my sister said.

“I did.”

“You better not go again. Uncle Roy’ll leave without you.”

“Where is he?”

“Getting my mom up,” my cousin said.

“Well, I have to go to the bathroom and if Aunt Mary’s not even up.”

My sister gave me a huge, dramatic sigh. “Then you better run.”

So I got out of the car, ran into the house, up the stairs, and used the bathroom. Then I ran out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, and back into the car.

Still no Aunt Mary.

Finally, out came my Uncle Roy, who opened the door, let us know that Aunt Mary was packing our lunches, and did any of need to use the bathroom again.

This time, Anne, Barb, and I all used the bathroom again, all got back into the car together, fighting who got the window seat. Being the littlest, I always lost.

And then we waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, my Grandma Foley came out of the house, still wringing her hands, and this time crying. She told us all to get out of the car, one last time, so she could hug us. She hugged each of crying about how big we are all getting, told us Mary was just about ready.

“Do any of you need to use the bathroom one last time?” she asked.

All three of us said, “No.”

It was a ‘no,’ that would haunt every last one of us.

My grandma left; Anne, Barb, and I sat in the car, talking about the summer, and finally – a little before 10:00 – out came my Aunt Mary carrying a paper bag filled with sandwiches, potato chips, and a thermos of water. My Uncle Roy, scowling and mumbling at her, was right behind. And bringing up the rear were my Grandma and Grandpa Foley. My grandma was still crying, still wringing her hands, and my grandpa was giving Uncle Roy advice on the best route, the fastest way to get out of Michigan and into Illinois.

My Uncle Roy ignored him and got in the car. My Aunt Mary, now also crying, got in the car, promising “Mother” and “Daddy” that she’d be safe, that she’d see them at Christmas.

And finally, three hours late, we were on the road: my Uncle Roy furious that he’d had to wait, my Aunt Mary weepy that he was so furious.

An hour later, I announced I needed to pee; Anne announced she was hungry, and my cousin Barb announced she had a bloody nose.

To me, my Uncle Roy said I should have thought about that before we left; to Anne, he said she’d have to wait until we stopped, and to Barb, he said, “Tilt your head back and pinch your nose.”

Well, Barb kept bleeding; Anne stayed hungry, and I still needed to pee.

Around noon, my Aunt Mary told us all to look for a picnic stop, where we could eat. I found one – complete with outhouse. My Uncle Roy said it was in the sun. Then Anne found one, my uncle said there were too many Mexicans. Barb said nothing, she was still trying to get her nose to stop bleeding.

“I really have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Roy,” my aunt said, “why don’t we stop at a gas station?”

“We don’t need gas.”

“Then a picnic spot?”

“Find one,” he snapped.

My aunt, artificially cheery, told us all to keep looking. By now, it was close to 1. Even Barb with her bloody nose was hungry.

We passed picnic spots with outhouses, picnic spots in the shade, picnic spots devoid of any people, let alone Mexicans. Uncle Roy just kept driving.

“Roy,” my aunt said. “I’m sure the girls are hungry.”

“I want to at least get out of Michigan, Mary.”

Bay City is on the east side of Michigan at the south end of Lake Huron. We’d been driving three hours and maybe – maybe – managed to go 100 miles.  There was no way any of us would make it to Illinois without stopping first.

Barb started to cry – blood now pouring out her nose, down her shirt. Anne, who rarely argued with adults, said nothing, and I, who had a tendency to get car sick, announced I was going to throw up.

My uncle told me to roll down the window, but I, being the youngest, had lost ‘dibbies on the window seat’ and couldn’t roll down a window. Barb’s nose was bleeding so badly, she refused to move, and Anne, probably with displaced anger at my uncle, told me I wasn’t carsick, that I hadn’t gotten carsick since I was 4, and I was nothing but a liar.

My Aunt Mary told Anne not to call me names, and then, just to prove that I was so carsick, I threw up, and although I tried throwing up on the floor, it splashed on Barb and the back of Uncle Roy’s seat.

Now Barb was screaming that she had throw-up on her; Uncle Roy was yelling for us to roll down the windows, that the smell was nauseating, and my aunt was screaming that she’d told Roy to stop and what was wrong with him anyway.

To which he screamed that if she were ever ready on time, none of this would have happened.

I threw up again.

“For God’s sake, Roy,” my aunt screamed.

He pulled the car onto the shoulder. In the sun. No outhouse. No table. But no Mexicans.

I scrambled out of the car, still throwing up and still needing to pee. My aunt told Anne to go with me and find some bushes and told Barb to get her out of the car, so she could clean the blood and vomit off her clothes.

Behind some scraggly, little bush, I peed, all the while Anne telling me how I made the car stink.

“You aren’t supposed to say ‘stink,’” I reminded her. (My mother had an entire list of words we weren’t supposed to say, including stink and poo and fart or blew one or anything that referred to farting at all.

Anne rolled her eyes at me, “Okay. You made the car smell really bad.”

Barb, in the same blood-stained shirt but which was now wet, came looking for us to let us know that there was a picnic table just up the road, and we were stopping for lunch.

It was now somewhere close to 3.

We ate our lunch – baloney sandwiches with ketchup on white bread – in record time, my uncle yelling at us not to drink the water, he didn’t want to have to stop again.

Well, the universe has a way of not always giving people what they want.

We did have to stop. On the western edge of Michigan because it was now past 10. Barb and Anne were snoring; I was still sick, but thankfully not throwing up, and my Aunt Mary, who had started in on my uncle at 8, wouldn’t let up on him that it wasn’t safe to drive at night, that we’d hit a deer, and didn’t he know how the Connelly’s hit a deer last year and how their daughter, that sweet sweet girl, died?

“She died of pneumonia, Mary.”

“I’m still saying, Roy. They hit a deer. Is that what you want? To hit a deer with Pat’s girls in the car? How are you going to explain that?”

And, so finally after two hours of that kind of logic, my uncle found a motel. We spent the night, and the whole thing started over in the morning with two exceptions: 1) Barb got a clean, blood-free shirt, and 2) I got a window seat.

Total time to go approximately 450 miles? 24 hours.

But – and this probably only because there was a man driving – the Ford’s tires didn’t blow; the radiator held, and the car didn’t once flip, and none of us died.

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the photo.

I want all of us as joyful as Sasha is here. Living in the moment, wagging our tails so fast, you can't even see them.

Since I first learned to read, I have wanted to live my life as if in a book – at first, a picture book. I wanted a brother Dick, a sister Jane, and I’d be Sally. I’d have a dog named Spot and a cat named Puff, and because I went to Catholic school, my Dick, Jane, and Sally, likewise, were Catholic,  which then meant I wanted a crucifix in every room, along with a wall-mounted, Holy Water dispenser, in which I could dip my index finger and make the Sign of the Cross every time I entered a room.

I wanted, needed to be Sally; I wanted, needed to wear nothing but ruffled dresses and spend my days “Seeing Dick run. Seeing Jane run.” And, later as the book got more difficult, I wanted, needed to dip my white, white dog into bluing and have a comical, blue dog running through my life.

Unfortunately, we had a weimaraner and two beagles, none of which was white and none of which would have been willing to be dipped into “bluing” even had I known what “bluing” was. Even more unfortunate, my mother steadfastly refused to keep me in dresses, especially ruffled dresses, because I’d rip them. And, most unfortunate of all, she also refused to put crucifixes and Holy Water dispensers in every room, no matter how I begged, no matter how I explained that as Catholics we needed them.

She was sending us to Hell. I knew it.

Then came Nancy Drew, and I desperately wanted and needed “chums” named Bess and George and drive a shiny, blue roadster and solve crimes – put the world back in order. I never did have a “chum.” Somehow, growing up in late 50s and early 60s, there weren’t a lot of “chums” running around, and there were even fewer “shiny blue roadsters.”

I still wanted them.

Yet, later – I must have been somewhere around 11 – and my mother would send my sisters and me to spend Saturdays at the YMCA, where we got to swim and then watch an afternoon movie, I wanted – and thought I needed – to live my life as a movie.

I wanted grand adventures, like in King Solomon’s Mines although I never really understood why all the women in those grand adventure movies had such a propensity for falling. They’d run a few steps and one of their ankles would give out, and our hero would have to carry them to safety. I knew if I had a grand adventure, I wouldn’t be wasting my time falling.

Along with the grand adventures, I wanted a White Christmas, A Miracle on 34th Street, and I wanted it to be A Wonderful Life.

In short, I wanted the holiday season to heal all rifts, make the world right, bring peace into my life, and restore good will.

I still want that. And still, at some level, expect that other people, other families have that. In my head, I see the people down the street, across town, sitting down with family and loved ones to a turkey dinner, with all the works, heads bent, holding hands, as they give thanks for one another and all the other blessings in their lives.

That desire for a Norman Rockwell/Currier and Ives/Frank Capra-directed Christmas has way too strong hold on me. And, really at my age, I ought to know better. I ought to be able to give it up and accept life for what it is:

Families squabbling, not talking, refusing to listen, holding onto hurts and grudges, and clinging to the past.

You’d think that at my age, none of that would bother me anymore.

You’d be wrong.

I am not always capable of empathizing, and until I got sick at the beginning of November with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, I’m not sure that I was truly empathizing with Jonathan having schizoaffective disorder. I was definitely sympathizing, and I empathized to the degree I could, but I was limited: I’d never been psychotic, generally had some level of emotional equilibrium, and was rarely irrational or paranoid. I hadn’t been given to unpredictable emotional outbursts in years.

I felt, given my background, that psychologically I was fairly healthy, thanks, in part, to nearly 40 years of therapy on and off, and, in part, to a mind that was capable of discussing and modifying my own conflicted emotions. In short, I was capable of “working through” most of my own emotional baggage.

But then…

On October 18, I had to go and find out that my TSH level indicated I was hypothyroid, and I was then prescribed, and gladly took, Levothyroxine.

The drug made me crazy. And I mean that exactly how it sounds. What had begun as relatively minor symptoms of hypothyroidism — a weight gain of 10 pounds over a year and difficulty staying asleep — turned me into a woman, who couldn’t remember why she had gone into the pantry, the laundry room, or the bedroom. Worse, it turned me into a woman, who remembered things that hadn’t happened, remembered bringing books with me into the bathroom, putting out the dogs, and most dangerously, putting Jonathan’s meds away, which I hadn’t done. As a result, twice I misplaced Jonathan’s meds. Not safe.

When the brain's not working, nothing's working.

I had to turn over the control of Jonathan’s meds to one of the caregivers, who hadn’t lost her mind.

Worst of all, at least from my perspective, the drug made me paranoid, which I’ve never been, and it made me consider suicide for the first time in my life.

What exacerbated the whole situation was my primary doc’s nurse kept telling me that levothyroxine was an easily tolerated drug, and that it took 6 to 8 weeks for it to actually get into my system, and to stay on it. The urgent care doc told me the same thing. The drug was easily tolerated, and I needed to give my body a chance to adjust to it.

The way I looked at it, if I killed myself, there’d be no way for my body to adjust to anything, on November 7, I went off the levothyroxine. Against medical advice. Technically, by now – the middle of December – the drug should be completely out of my body. Perhaps, it is. I don’t know.

I have, however, read that if a person with hypothyroidism is given too low a dose of levothyroixine, or another thyroid drug, it can make the hypothyroidism worse; it can exacerbate symptoms because it can cause the thyroid to stop producing the same amount of hormone it had been producing, and, as a result, the person has even less of the necessary thyroid hormone, and s/he is made worse, at least temporarily.

The problem is I was made so much worse by the drug (or perhaps the dose) that I couldn’t stay on it for 6 to 8 weeks. My mind couldn’t walk me through my emotions; it couldn’t tell me how fluid emotions are, and how they’d change and how I’d feel better. Eventually. My mind couldn’t even tell me to call my therapist or a suicide hot line.

Luckily, somehow there was enough of my mind left to tell me that I might be having a reaction to the drug, so I went off it.

And although I now feel better than I did, I still don’t feel good, and I still don’t feel as well as I had before taking the levothyroxine. I still have mood fluctuations that I can’t seem to control, and my thinking is pretty unreliable.

An example: I keep Jonathan’s meds in a locked safe, and every night before I go to bed, I put out the meds he needs for the next day.

Last Monday, about 9:00 in the evening, I was settling down for the night, so I went to the safe, tapped in the PIN on the keypad, and the safe wouldn’t open.

I tried again. Still it wouldn’t open. Then I wondered if I could have forgotten the PIN. I knew I hadn’t, so I tried once more, kept getting an error message.

So – my thinking intact – I called a locksmith, explained the problem, explained that Jonathan couldn’t be without his meds and that I needed someone to come out and get into this safe. The guy on the phone said, sure no problem; it would cost $38, but the safe would be broken and unfixable. “Fine,” I told him.

A few minutes later, someone from an 800 number calls – too late to be a creditor, so I pick up. It’s the locksmith; he apologizes profusely, but he no longer has anybody in the Albuquerque area. Unknown to me, I’d called a dispatch center somewhere outside New Mexico.

So, okay. By nature, I am resilient, a problem solver. I call another locksmith. First thing I ask if this is a local company and do they service the Albuquerque. They do. I explain the problem; the guy on the other end apologizes profusely, tells me his company doesn’t work on safes and very few companies do and that I should call yet another locksmith.

Before I can call yet another locksmith, Jonathan texts me about some of the friends he’s been contacting on Facebook. I text back that I’m having a breakdown – meaning I’m about to lose it, meaning I’m about to have the Screaming Mimi’s. Jonathan thinks I mean I’m about to have the kind of breakdown I’d told him about regarding the levothyroxine. Understandably, he’s concerned; he texts me to get in touch my therapist. Remember, he texts me, you told me to make sure to remind you.

It’s not that kind of breakdown, I text back, I can’t get into the safe where the meds are. And he lets me to know to screw it, that he’s already manic, and in the middle of rapid cycling, and who cares about the meds.

I don’t know that at the time, he no longer is anywhere near the phone.

So I now call yet another locksmith, who tells me that yes, the company works on safes, but that if he sends someone out, it will cost me $200, and the safe will be destroyed.

I am silent. I don’t have $200.

He asks me what kind of safe it is and what kind of error message I’d received, so I tell him. He tells me that probably the keypad simply needs new batteries, and all I need to do is remove the keypad and replace the batteries.

Okay. I am cheered. I thank him and thank him. I am damn near gushing. I know how to change batteries.  That I know how to do, for sure.

What I don’t know how to do is remove the keypad.

I call the guy back. He tells me about the little tiny screw at the base of the keypad. I go find a little tiny screwdriver for the little tiny screw. I remove that little tiny screw, put it somewhere safe, which means I have now lost that screw because I can’t remember where that safe place was, but at any rate, I have managed to remove the screw.

Now, I try to remove the keypad. I tug, pull, turn it one way, then the other: It won’t come off.

I call the guy back; he tells me that he doesn’t work very frequently on the type of safe I have, but he’s pretty sure I either need to turn it to the left or to the right or pull it straight off.

I go back to the safe. I am exhausted by now and close to tears. By now, it’s 9:30, and all I really want to do is crash out in front of the TV, but Jonathan’s meds are in the safe, and Jonathan needs them.

So, I turn the keypad to the left, to the right, and then just pull it straight off. I am elated. Now all I need are four AA batteries.

I can’t find them. I text Anne, one of Jonathan’s caregivers; she tells me that there are AA batteries in the casita – where Jonathan is. I text him that Anne said there were AA batteries next to the sink, and could he please bring them to me.

He doesn’t answer.

I text him that I need four AA batteries.

He still doesn’t answer.

I text him that I need his help. Could he please help me?

Still no answer.

I text Anne that Jonathan won’t bring me the batteries. She responds by suggesting that Jonathan is asleep. I text back that he’s not asleep. He’d just texted me 15 minutes ago. He doesn’t care, I text her. He doesn’t care that I need help.

I text his psychiatrist, tell her about the problem with the safe and how Jonathan won’t help me. She texts me that maybe he fell asleep.

Now, I’m pissed.

Anne texts me that she can bring batteries to me tomorrow. That’s not the point. I text her, “No. If Jonathan doesn’t care enough to bring me the batteries, so I can get into the safe, then I’m not giving him his meds.”

His psychiatrist texts me not to worry about the safe, that she can reorder all his drugs in the morning. I text her what I’ve just texted Anne.

Even as I’m texting both the psychiatrist and Anne, I’m thinking that I can’t not give meds to someone with schizoaffective disorder. At some level of my brain, I know this, but at some other level of my brain, I’m going straight to Jonathan isn’t willing to help me, Jonathan doesn’t love me, Jonathan hates me.

I decide at 9:45 – and I’m already in my pajamas – that I’m going to check into a motel and get my head straight, and that it’s good that I’m already in my pajamas because I won’t need a suitcase. Then I think it’s bad that I’m in my pajamas because then people will look at me funny. Like I’m crazy or something. In my pajamas with no suitcase.

In addition, it’s 15 degrees out, and the roads are icy. I text my friend Pat, tell her I’m going to check into a motel for the night.

In the meantime, another one of Jonathan’s caregivers Jenna calls me. I start sobbing, and in between crying, I keep apologizing for crying and telling her I just want to feel normal again. She tells me it’s okay and suggests that Jonathan may be asleep.

Why does everyone keep telling me that?

I text Jonathan, let him know I’m going to leave for a while. I text my friend Pat again, tell her I’ll just for a drive. In my pajamas when it’s 15 degrees out, and the roads are icy.

She texts back ALL IN CAPS, to please, please be careful. It’s icy.

I start crying again, decide I’ll go over to the casita myself and find the goddamn batteries. I can’t find my shoes, so I slip on a pair of Jonathan’s. (I wear a woman’s size 5 1/2; Jonathan wears a men’s 11.) The shoes flop off my feet as I stomp and slide all the way over to the casita. I pull the door open with a bang, hoping that I wake him up, if he is indeed asleep.

I stomp into the kitchen.

“Hey, baby,” he yells from the TV room.

When I don’t answer, he asks what’s wrong. I don’t answer, just keep rummaging through the drawers. Then he starts getting mad: “What’d I do?” he asks. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Finally, I find the batteries.

“I needed 4 fucking batteries, Jonathan,” I finally say. “That’s all. Just four fucking batteries, and you couldn’t bring them to me?”

And I leave the casita, banging the door behind me, go back to the safe, change out the batteries. The safe still doesn’t work.

I call the locksmith back. If he comes out in the morning, he’ll charge only $88, but the safe will still be destroyed.

I tell him I’ll call in the morning.

Then Jonathan starts texting me: “Sure, Maureen, go ahead and leave. I’ll see you in court.”

He thinks my leaving means I’m divorcing him.

I go to bed, crying. My head isn’t working; my emotions are out of whack, and this – all of this, whatever ‘this’ is – is just too hard.

When I see the endocrinologist the next day – the doctor I thought would be able to help me get a handle on the Hashimoto’s – I start crying when she asks me how I am. She excuses herself, tells me she needs to check on another client, and will be right back.

When she returns, she tells me that my thyroid levels would not be causing the emotional and cognitive problems I’m having, and, although she is willing to prescribe a minute amount of Armour, a natural thyroid medication that can work at getting my Free T3s up, which may, indeed, make me feel better, she doesn’t want me taking it until I start working with an holistic psychiatrist, who doesn’t take insurance, so I wouldn’t be able to afford her anyway, and besides I don’t think I need her.

In my opinion, I have a physical problem that is causing the emotional and cognitive problems and not the other way around.

I leave her office and sob all the way home.

The upside of all this?

It has given a much greater appreciation for what Jonathan – and anyone with a severe mental illness – must experience:

First, I cannot “snap out of this.” What worked in the past – deep breathing, meditation, exercise – no longer works. The thyroid problem leaves me short of breath and although my yoga instructor has shown me how to get my breath more deeply into my belly, it is very difficult to do. Almost impossible. What I call ‘catching my breath’ rarely happens. I seem incapable of doing that any longer.

How does that correlate to what Jonathan and others who have a serious mental illness? I can’t count the times Jonathan has been told, either directly or indirectly, that he needed to “snap out of it,” or “man up,” or how much better he’d be if he’d just get up and get moving.

Yes, exercise helps. Absolutely. But when you’re sick and your mind isn’t working like others,’ it is nearly impossible to get up and get moving. It requires incredible effort.

And Jonathan, and others with a severe mental illness, will never be capable of “snapping out of it,” anymore than a person with cancer can “snap out of it.” Mental illness is just that – an illness. It affects the brain – the cognition, the emotion, even the ability to regulate one’s body temperature.

I’m not suggesting that I – or people who are actually mentally ill – should be allowed to behave inappropriately, as I was doing with the safe and as I did on Saturday when I knocked all my papers to the floor because the insurance company got my policy information wrong, but I am saying – and perhaps requesting – that people who are not mentally ill deal with those who are with compassion and with the understanding that those who suffer from severe mental illness – schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bipolar disorder – may actually be facing greater challenges than anyone realizes.

In addition, those with a severe mental illness are frequently dismissed by the medical profession, just as I was dismissed by my endocrinologist. It takes more than a medical degree for a person to be able to empathize with emotional distress. It’s been my experience that most people are uncomfortable with emotional pain – theirs and others. They want that pain to go away. Quickly. They want it controlled.

And sometimes the person in emotional pain, as I was when I saw my doctor, can’t make it go away, can’t get it under control.

I understand from what I’ve most recently been reading that the amygdala, in the brain helps us control our emotions, and the hippocampus helps us remember. Based on how I’m responding to the Hashimoto’s, I’m guessing – and I’m not an M.D. so this is strictly a guess – that the hormonal levels in a person’s body help keep the brain, including the amygdala and hippocampus healthy. When the hormones get out of whack – and my lab reports show they are out of whack – the brain doesn’t work right, and the person has what appears to be irrational fluctuations in emotion and can’t remember much of anything.

So, to put a positive spin on where I’ve been physically and emotionally since about mid-October, I have learned, through experience, greater empathy for Jonathan and for any others suffering from a severe mental illness.

If what they suffer is even half of what I have endured – and I’m pretty sure what they’ve suffered is at least double that of what I’ve endured – then I can assure you, first hand, that mental illness pretty much sucks.

So here’s to all of you who may be suffering a mental illness (or any untreated illness that is messing with your emotions and cognition):

I get it. I really truly get it.

Thank you to DiscoverySchool for the clipart.

May the peace and joy of the season be with all of you. (No exceptions.)

No, I don’t want a new car or jewelry or a fur coat (me? an animal lover? wear fur?) or a bottle of Dom Perignon for Christmas. And I don’t want world peace – well, maybe, in a way, I do – and I don’t even want my health restored although that would indeed be super.

No, what I want for Christmas is for all the people in my life to kiss and make up and start making nice.

I am tired of the family drama.

And I know that Jonathan and I both did a great deal of damage to each side of the family when the divorce was pending. I get that.

I really do.

Divorce – even pending – is extraordinarily painful for the two involved. Add money and mental illness into the mix… Well, it’s as I always wrote: Jonathan’s and my pending divorce was much better suited to Madonna or Cher or Christina Aguilerra than to some Catholic kid, who grew up wanting to be Annie Oakley or Dinah Shore.

The whole family – both sides – got involved in what should have stayed a very private, painful episode in Jonathan’s and my relationship.

Getting both sides involved as they were has left some, as yet, unhealed wounds.

I want them healed. Now. For Christmas. And I can’t do it. I can’t heal another person; I’m having a hard enough time holding myself together. And how friggin’ arrogant would it be for me to think I have some sort of magic panacea that will make everything go away, make everyone start talking with everyone again.

Emotions – and tempers – were extraordinarily high during that pending divorce. (An aside: Jonathan still refers to it as the time we were divorced as opposed to to the time we only had a divorce action pending.)

I have had enough therapy – 40 years on and off – to know that I cannot make anyone change. I could not make my two fathers, my first husband stop drinking. I cannot make Jonathan default to being positive, to look always for what is good in people and situations. And I cannot put these two families together.

I can’t even put my own family together.

In my case, it seems genetic. On my mother’s side. There were five girls and one boy in that family, and it was primarily the girls who fought, who fought so viciously that they wouldn’t talk with one another for years.

When they were adults. When they should have known better.

And it was always for some “good” reason, like one aunt showing up on the doorstep of another because she was having a hard time, and the other aunt, in her opinion, was having a harder time. So they wouldn’t talk, and they’d try to drag the rest of the aunts into the mix, so sides could be taken. (In today’s parlance, that would be referred to as ‘triangulation.’)

I’d thought that had all passed.

I haven’t been in contact with either my father or my mother’s family in years. I’d thought – naively, as it turns out – that my mom’s side of the family, who are all now either in their 80s or sliding pretty damn quickly into their 80s, was no longer engaging in that kind of behavior – hanging onto hurts and insults to such an extent that they wouldn’t talk with one another.

Turns out that’s not the case.

They’re still at it. And that’s really too bad. A tragedy. Thanks to Facebook, which is a wonderful vehicle for getting back in touch with people, I’ve been able to reconnect with cousins, who’ve told me how it’s been with my mom’s side, and as I wrote one of them the other day:

So to everyone:

May you all be blessed with the peace and joy of this holiday season, every last one of you – no exceptions,

Maureen 

If you learn something new every day, maybe you won’t get old.

Or at least you won’t lose your faculties. I read that a long time ago. No, on second thought, I remember that I saw it on TV.

What I saw was a program that told the story of a group of nuns who kept active through their 90s and had very low rates of Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

These low rates led to the theory that people who stay physically and mentally active – these nuns gardened and learned new skills, including playing the piano  well into their 90s – can stave off mental decline.

The Internet being what it is, I just googled the study and found a link to it from NPR at the University of Minnesota, so you can take a look for yourself, but there seems to be a link between constantly learning and staving off Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

So…

This morning, before I got to work, I spent a bit of time surfing and discovered the Moby Awards for book trailers. I then discovered Dennis Cass, who won for Best Performance by an Author, and who wants me to be ‘more awesome.’

How can I fault anyone for wanting me to be more awesome?

A great way to start the day – by laughing. Check out his performance on YouTube.

And, yes, I realize that I’m like the 68,000th person to check out his video, but what the heck? Better the 68,000th than never having discovered it at all.

So back to work…

Back to staving off mental decline.