When You're the Only One Punished

When I was a kid, I don't recall having a specific bedtime but I know that at some point, I was supposed to be in bed / asleep.  Being the youngest, I was obviously supposed to go to bed before everyone else, and oftentimes, bedtime was before or while good television was still on!

Just to set up the geography in the house, all the rooms branched off a main hallway.  The room I shared with my sisters was on one end of the hallway, so if I was standing at the end of my hallway, my room was to my left.  A little bit forward to the right was an entryway to the living room, and through that, to the front door.  A little past the living room entrance on the right, my brother's room was to the left.  A little past his room also on the left was the bathroom.  On the right directly across from the bathroom was the kitchen and dining room.  And my parents' bedroom was just after those, at the other end of the hallway from my room.

I remember one night, I think I was maybe 6 or 7, I was still out in the living room with my siblings watching TV.  My parents had gone to bed, and I had either said I was going to bed or had come back out after they'd gone to bed.  My siblings were watching a comedy and laughing.  Not softly laughing, regular laughing.  That was also a reason why having an earlier bedtime was difficult.  I already had trouble sleeping as a kid, and having people laugh at a regular volume nearby was not going to help me to fall asleep or stay asleep.

At some point, I heard my parents' bedroom door open.  I figured the laughing had woken them up or kept them awake.  I knew I'd probably be in trouble, so I got up to go to the bathroom and then head to my room.  My father came out, and he was angry.  As I walked past him, he hit me, hard enough to knock me into the wall.  I don't remember where he hit me.  I remember that it hurt, physically.  I don't remember that it was what I expected.  I figured he'd yell at me or something, which is why I was sort of trying to duck past him.  Yeah, that didn't work.  I did continue on to the bathroom, crying.

I stayed in there for a few minutes, and then I heard my mother saying something to my father about "are you trying to kill her?", and I guess she persuaded him to go back into their room and shut the door.  I heard a clang of some sort but didn't know what it was.  My sister was knocking on the door, telling me it was ok and to let her in.  Shortly afterward, I did.  She came in to check that I wasn't hurt, and she did seem upset about what had happened.  I went to bed after that.

The next day, I think after my father had left for work, I had to go into the bathroom that was attached to my parents' bedroom to get something.  And I saw what had made the clang I'd heard the night before.  It was kind of like a wooden brick, a think slab of wood that I think we used as a door stop for the sliding glass door in the dining room.  I think I figured out that after I went into the bathroom, my father had gone to get that and was waiting for me to come out of the bathroom.  That's when my mother saw him and made the comment she did.  She must have taken it from him and tossed it in the bathroom.  If I had come out of the bathroom sooner, I'm guessing he would have hit me with it.

And with regard to my mother's comment to him of "are you trying to kill her?"  I don't recall her sounding mad or outraged.  It was very matter of fact, a little exasperated, like "don't be ridiculous".  She never came to check on me.  I'm not even sure if she knew that he'd hit me.  I don't remember how much noise I was making while crying, so I don't know if she knew about that either.  I never saw her come out of their room.

As I said, I don't think it had crossed my mind that he'd hit me, just that I'd get yelled at.  Or maybe a slap on the butt or something?  I don't know.  I was definitely not expecting to be hit hard enough for the blow to push me against the wall.  It wasn't a very broad hallway, enough for two people to walk past each other.  I don't know if his hitting me hurt more or if hitting the wall with my shoulder (?) or head (?) hurt more.  I know that I've witnessed violence between my parents on several occasions when I was a kid, but I don't remember if it was before or after this.

I know that I wasn't laughing that loudly.  It wasn't me that they heard.  It was my siblings laughing at normal volume that woke them up / prevented them from going to sleep.  While I wasn't supposed to be out there, my presence in the living room was not what was interfering with their sleep.  And yet, as far as I know, I was the only one punished.  I don't think my father ever went into the living room.  I was walking past him in the hallway when he hit me.  I was crying but I don't recall hearing him say anything to my siblings as I headed towards the bathroom.  I don't remember what happened after I went to bed, whether my siblings stayed in the living room watching TV or whether they stopped.  I think my oldest sister put me to bed, but other than that, there was no comfort or reassurance after what happened.

Language Issues

My parents weren't very good at English, so while the kids would speak to each other in English, we would speak to them in Chinese for the most part. My knowledge of spoken Chinese is limited in that I was born in Hong Kong, and our family moved to the States just after I turned 3, so my Chinese was learned only from what my family spoke to me. I remember that as we grew up, my parents were often irritated when we the kids spoke English to each other, especially when it was something that didn't involve my parents so it wasn't like they needed to understand what we were saying.  They would have wanted us to speak Chinese at home all the time, which would have severely limited what conversations I could have.  I probably had the vocabulary of an elementary school kid when it came to Chinese?  The example I often used is that I wouldn't know words like "auditorium" in Chinese, but I could say "the big building where people gather to do things", which would generally get my point across. I was living in the States, going to an English-speaking school, so it would seem to me to make sense that I was learning a lot more English, and it wasn't like there was a concerted effort to necessarily teach me Chinese other than what I learned listening to everyone talk around the house.  Occasionally, my parents would use a word I didn't know, and I would ask them what it meant. Sometimes I'd remember and sometimes I wouldn't, depending on how often they used the word.

I remember at one point, my father used a word, and I didn't know what it meant, so I asked him. And he got angry because I didn't know this word for a very common thing. It showed how much I didn't know enough Chinese, he said. Well, my parents spoke a different dialect than my siblings and I did. My parents usually spoke our dialect, so that's what I'd learned.  Sometimes, they'd  speak their own dialect, and I learned some of those words as well. But in this case, my father had used the word for "ice", but he'd said it in his dialect instead of the dialect I knew. The word in his dialect and in my dialect sound completely different (for example, the word in his dialect was more like "bat" but the word in my dialect was more like "shoe"), so it's not like you could guess what it was because it sounded similar, and he'd said it in some way where the context didn't give you any idea what the word meant. I'd literally never heard him use that word before, which I told him, but that didn't matter, he was still mad at me.

Both of my parents, but moreso my mother, often lamented the fact that I couldn't read or write Chinese. All of my siblings could to some degree (the next oldest from me, a brother, was 9 when we moved to the States, so he would have already had some schooling in Chinese). I'd had none. My mother would often mention that there were Chinese classes in Chinatown and then voice her disappointment that I never took any, especially if the child of one of her friends (or rivals) at work did take a class.

Of course, there was never any mention of exactly how I was supposed to get to a class. From where we lived, it would take maybe half an hour by car to get to Chinatown. I was clearly not old enough to drive. My father worked weekends, so he couldn't take me. My mother didn't know how to drive. There was no way that my siblings were going to drive me. Was I supposed to get on a bus that would take however long to get there and back? I think my mother started harping on me about the classes starting from when I was in Junior High School, which I guess is called Middle School now. She'd come home from work and tell me how this person or that person was talking about their son or daughter going to Chinese school and I wasn't. And if I asked, it always turned out that they lived in Chinatown and could walk to class on a Saturday.

And it's not like my mother got the information about classes and then tried to work out with me how it could happen. I only knew that there were classes being held somewhere in Chinatown. I didn't know when or how much they cost. And it wasn't like there was the internet readily available in those days to look that kind of information up.

Mind you, none of my siblings took any additional Chinese classes once we got to the States. I don't recall her ever telling my next oldest sibling, the brother who is 6 years older than me, that he should go to Chinese school. So I got chastised for not going to classes that I didn't really have a way to get to, that would have cost money that I'm not sure they would have been ok with paying (we didn't have a lot of extra money for non-necessities), and that no other kid in the family had been expected to go to. Whenever the subject came up, even as I got older, if I mentioned that I had no real way of getting there, that was dismissed as just an excuse.

I am Not My Brother's Keeper

With my oldest siblings out of the house, it was just my brother and me left in the house with my parents. I keep trying to work out how old I was based on the memories I have. I think I was 17 or so, and my brother is 6 years older than me. It had to be on Saturdays because my mother worked on Saturdays, but my brother did not. My mother would come into my room on Saturday mornings before she went to work, and she'd wake me up and tell me whatever she wanted to tell me. And usually, she was irritated because I was still in bed, on a Saturday morning when I didn't have school, I guess. I'm half asleep, trying to understand and remember whatever it was she was telling me. Oftentimes, she would tell me things that she wanted my brother to do, and I was the one who was supposed to tell him.

I cannot for the life of me remember why she didn't just tell him. Maybe he wasn't home for some reason? Maybe he'd been out the night before so he was still asleep and apparently, it was ok for him to be asleep and not woken up, but somehow, I was the one who needed to be woken up to be told what HE was supposed to do that day.

It could be a particular chore she wanted him to do, or something different she wanted taken care of. Whatever it was, it wasn't something I could do, or at least it would require both of us to do it. So I'd have to remember whatever she told me, as I went back to sleep for a bit after she left, and then later, after my brother woke up, I would tell him what our mother had said for him to do. These were probably things he wasn't keen on doing anyway because they were chores of some kind. But can you imagine how happy he was to be told by his six-years-younger sister what chores he had to do on a Saturday instead of whatever else he might have wanted to do, because it wasn't like there had been any warning or notice ahead of time that our mother had wanted him to do these things.

And the day would wear on, and I'd tell him again about the things our mother wanted him to do. How keen do you think he was about that? There was no way that I was going to be able to make my six-years-older-than-me brother do something he didn't want to do, even if it was something our mother wanted.

And then he might go out on a Saturday night before our mother got home from work. And he might have done one of the things she wanted but not everything or maybe even none of it. And I would be the one to get in trouble. I'd get scolded because things hadn't been done. I'd tell her that I told him, but that never mattered. I mean, I never got punished for it, but it was clear that she was unhappy, and she voiced it, and I was the one who had to deal with it.

It wasn't like she never told him directly when she wanted him to do something. But on the many occasions when she would tell me to tell him, and he didn't do it, I don't recall a single time when she was angry or irritated with him that it wasn't done. She was either ok with it, or she'd be mad at me. I had zero control over whether or not the thing was done, but somehow, it was my fault for not being able to get him to do it.

It's My Fault For Not Being Able to Move

No one likes being blamed for something they didn't do. That's not a revelation, right?  Who would be ok with taking the blame (and possible recrimination and punishment) for something that someone else did?  But I was noticing that I was reacting much more strongly to those situations than seemed normal.  And it wasn't until it had happened a few more times after that revelation, and I started to think about it more, that I realized the reason.  I've been blamed for things consistently in my life that I don't believe were my fault.  Now, I suppose it's possible that I'm just refusing to take responsibility. There are some situations where I do think I deserve some blame, but I don't think I deserved the amount of blame (and consequences) that was handed out to me.

I think maybe I was 11 or 12.  One of my sisters was giving me a haircut in the dining room.  I was sitting in a barstool chair with a sheet draped over me, hanging in the back so that the hair that was cut off wouldn't stick to me and would just drop to the floor.  We were kind of in the middle of the room, and the small TV was on, sitting on the counter.  I was turned so that when I faced straight ahead, I was looking at the TV, but when my sister had to turn my head to cut different parts of my hair, of course, I couldn't necessarily see the TV.

So I'm sitting there, watching TV, getting my hair cut. My father comes in the room, and he stops to see what's on the TV. Mind you, the TV wasn't just on, I was actually watching whatever show was on.  The main TV is in the living room, and I don't know if it was on, and if it was, who was watching it or what they were watching. He stopped right in between me and the TV, completely blocking my view.  I asked him to move.  He didn't.  I asked him again.  I tried to get his attention, calling him, telling him I couldn't see, and asking him to move.  And he didn't.  After a few more times, he got angry, went over to the TV and abruptly turned it off, saying that I was being loud and belligerent and that I didn't deserve to watch TV and walked out of the room. It was one of those TVs that had a knob that you pulled up to turn it on and pushed down to turn it off.  I remember that he pushed it down hard because the sound of the knob going down was pretty loud, kind of like slamming a door closed.

I just sat there and tears started. I was stuck in my position. It wasn't like I could move since I was getting my hair cut.  That would seem pretty obvious.  I wasn't yelling at him. At first, it was a regular level of speaking when I asked him to move. Eventually, yeah, I probably got a little louder, as sometimes, my father couldn't always hear very well, but we were in pretty close proximity, so it seemed unlikely that he couldn't hear me. It's not like it was a show he had been watching. He couldn't even understand the show, as he didn't know English very well. He would just be watching out of idle curiosity to see what it was. But of all the places he could have stopped to watch, anywhere since he had no restrictions on where he needed to be, he stopped literally in the only spot that blocked my line of sight completely. And when I asked him to move and kept telling him that I couldn't see, he didn't budge, until he got angry and blamed me for being loud and apparently bothering him, and my punishment was that I couldn't watching the show I had been watching before he came into the room.

Shortly after he left the room, as I sat there silently crying, my sister made a disgusted noise, walked over to the TV and turned it back on.  I don't remember if she said anything else. I don't think I paid any attention to the rest of the show. She finished giving me a haircut in silence.

What's For Dinner?

A lot of people have had to make a lot of changes to their lives because of the current pandemic, and most people are spending a lot more time at home. I'm fortunate in that I've been able to work from home, so that's one adjustment that's been relatively easy to manage. One of the major changes that have come out of being home pretty much all of the time is that I'm doing much more cooking than I used to. Because of the hours I was keeping at work, as well as the commute time that was terrible, as is common in the Los Angeles area, I wouldn't get home until much later in the evening, so for the most part, the husband and I handled our meals on our own, except for weekends. And even then, cooking has never been my thing. It's no secret that I'm fond of food and am interested in food-related subjects, but I don't generally find the pleasure in cooking that a lot of other people do. Well, I like watching it, but I'm not as interested in doing it. Other people are much better at it, so why not take advantage of that.

Because I have more time now, I generally do some sort of cooking maybe twice a week. On other days, we might do take-out or leftovers or simpler things from the pantry or refrigerator. My form of cooking is currently very simple and mostly consists of Chinese cuisine. I'll admit that I never really learned to cook, which is why I can only do fairly simple things. I was never taught to cook as a child. Being the youngest of five kids, I was tasked with the simple jobs, which usually consisted of washing things. As I got older, I would sometimes be allowed to prep or cut certain vegetables but really only if it was easy. When it came to actual cooking, I was rarely given the chance. Occasionally, I would get to stir something, but otherwise, my parents were too impatient to actually teach me or let me do stuff because it would take too long to explain it. Even when I'd ask, they might let me do it for a little while, but in explaining what kind of seasoning to add or how long to cook something at any particular stage in the process, they would usually get tired of explaining and waiting and just take over. End of lesson. The stuff I taught myself to cook when I lived on my own were pretty simple, and there's not much incentive to learn to cook more when you're just cooking for one. And, as I mentioned, cooking really isn't my thing, so there wasn't much of a drive to teach myself more.

My mother would often lament my lack of ability to cook. How was I going to catch a husband if I couldn't cook for him? Because that's apparently all I'm good for. Because a grown man isn't expected to be able to feed himself, but it's my responsibility to make sure he's fed? And, if it really was so vital for me to be able to cook in order to snag a husband, wouldn't you think it would be fairly important for my parents to teach me that essential skill? Yeah, there was never an answer when I would bring that up. It was my fault that I didn't know how to cook because no one taught me.

So when I cook now, some of it is experimenting with regard to what things go well together, how long to cook things, seasonings, and the like. The husband happens to like Chinese cooking, but some of the things I've made for him are things he's not really familiar with, so my advantage is that he doesn't know how the dish is *supposed* to turn out. He doesn't know if I made it "wrong" - he can only go by what the finished product looks and tastes like. He's not particularly forthcoming with his feedback, so I have to ask specific questions to find out what he likes and what he doesn't. If there's something he isn't fond of, I either don't use that ingredient the next time or I use less of it. I know there are certain things and tastes that he does like, so I can take that into account. Occasionally, I'll make something because I want it, even if it's not something he's keen on. Those nights, he figures out dinner on his own, and he's fine with that.

I'm looking at recipes and things to try to branch out into non-Chinese cuisine, partly because it gets repetitive cooking and eating the same things when you're having every meal at home. For those things, the husband will obviously have more familiarity with how they're supposed to be made, but he seems pretty flexible.

Ordinary Conversation is No Longer Ordinary

This time of year, as people start to get ready for the holidays and take some time off work, normal filler conversation leans toward "so, what are you doing for the holidays?"  And I'm finding it hard to come up with an adequate response.  Normally, I can make small talk, giving innocuous information about minor plans, the kind of answers that most people expect when they ask that question.  But, things have changed.  I don't have any real plans.  This is the first year when both of my parents are gone, and they've been the connector for some of my siblings and I to get together.  Without them, it's different.  And trying to find a new "normal" has been strange.  So, I make vague comments about "hanging out" and "taking it easy", which makes me sound evasive and secretive.  I'm normally not one to give out too much personal information anyway, except to actual friends, but holiday plans very universally involve family, so I think the lack of mentioning that throws people off.

I also recognize inappropriate things to share with people that make it awkward for everyone.  Christmas is Monday.  I'll be working on Friday, and it's likely I'll be excused from work early.  Nice, right, extra time to get a jump on Christmas, take care of last-minute shopping, get the house ready for guests, bake some nice goodies?  Nope, none of those.  I'm glad that I'll likely be dismissed early so that I'll be able to make it to a visitation without rushing or being late.

Yep, the hits keep on coming.  I promise you that I'm not making this up.  I know that at this point, it sure sounds like it.  How could so many traumatic things happen to one person in a relatively short period of time?  I've got to be lying, embellishing.  Not even counting recent events with my place of employment that have also majorly added to my stress level, one of my best friends lost her mother a couple of weeks ago.  The visitation is on Friday and the funeral is on Saturday.  That's how I'm starting my Christmas weekend, to be comforting and available to her and her family.  So, when I'm asked, "what are you doing for the holidays?", I don't respond with "going to a funeral" and instead make up an obviously vague answer.

I see Christmas all around me, and I feel almost nothing.  Things are pretty, and that might register for a second, but joy is fleeting.

The awkwardness is there with people I haven't seen / spoken to in a while as well.  People want to catch up, hey, what's been going on with you.  And I'm tired of being the downer person, bad news heaped on bad news heaped on bad news.  But when I deflect, I feel bad too, because I'm pretending that everything is ok when it's not.  Made worse when I don't feel like I'm dealing with it well, and have trouble pushing past the lethargy and feeling of just wanting to stay under the covers.

Thanksgiving 2017

In the overall scheme of things, I know that I'm blessed and very fortunate.  I have a job, I have a place to live, I have reliable transportation, I don't want for food or beverage or clothes, and I have friends.  But, sometimes, even knowing that there are millions of people who don't have the basic necessities of life, it's hard for my rational mind to let all of that sink in.  That may also be because my rational mind isn't always the one in control nowadays.

I struggle every day to get out of bed.  I struggle every day to get out of the house, to go to work.  I struggle to do what I need to do at work and otherwise.  Outwardly, I think I appear fine.  Every day, I maintain the facade that everything is ok, that I'm ok, while inside, I have to make a conscious effort to appear that way, to maintain the illusion when I'm around people, when at times, I feel like I'm just standing at the edge of an abyss.  I think the rollercoaster aspect is what throws me off.  There will be short moments, maybe a few minutes at a time, when I am fine, really fine, and there are other times when I'm at least managing ok.  But then, there are also the moments when darkness creeps back in, and I can feel myself sinking again, and it's all I can do to hold on and stay afloat.  That those dark times still return periodically throws me off guard every time I think I've made it out.

Last Thanksgiving, my dad was already gone.  My mother had gone into the hospital several days prior to Thanksgiving, and we thought she'd be released by Thanksgiving.  But it didn't happen.  So, she spent Thanksgiving in the hospital.  Since we had already planned to have Thanksgiving at our parents' house, we still did that, bringing the food we were all going to bring anyway.  We ate Thanksgiving dinner at their house, and then we packed up a little plate and went to visit our mother in the hospital.  She wasn't really able to eat any of the stuff we brought.  She was eventually released a few days later to return home.

This Thanksgiving, the husband and I are doing our own thing, and everyone else in the family is doing their own thing as well.  This is part of the process of the water finding its own level, on the way to figuring out what the new normal is now.

And the new normal includes it being more quiet in the house than it's been for the past 15 years.  I miss the mornings with Orkid, when the husband is still asleep, and Orkid comes to find me to cuddle for a while.  I'll be sitting at my computer, and I can hear her little feet tapping on the floor as she walks over to the room.  I'll look at her, and she'll meow at me, and then she'll jump up onto my chair, and then climb on me and settle down.

I'll get to spend some time with friends during the long weekend, so that will be nice.  So many things in my mind that I'd like to get done, none of which I've been able to do for months now, and I'm not sure what the chances are that I'll actually manage to do any of them this weekend.

I hope that this Thanksgiving brings you some joy, some happiness, some laughter, and if nothing else, some peace.

By a Thread



After a friend found out that I'd had to say goodbye to my cat this weekend, part of her comment was that I've had a lot to carry lately.  My response to her was that they say God doesn't give you more than you can handle, but without trying to be blasphemous, I feel like with all of the stuff God has to watch over in the world nowadays, He might have me confused with someone else as far as how much I can deal with.

When my father died last October, I don't think I really had much time to process what happened.  I spent a lot of time helping my siblings take care of our mother, and then because she was in the hospital a few times or needed other assistance, there always seemed to be some kind of crisis to deal with, so almost everything else was put on hold or could be subject to change at a moment's notice.

For those who haven't read my blog much and don't know, I'm a huge movie fan.  Oscar night is a big deal for me because I'm really interested, even in years when for whatever reason, I haven't seen many of the nominated movies.  Don't call me, don't visit, don't talk to me that night unless it's about the Oscars - I'm busy.  I do real-time commentary on Twitter during the broadcast about the awards, some of the fashion, whatever happens on the show.  This year, about 3/4 into the show, I got a text that something had happened with my mom, and I was the nearest person to her who could get to her the fastest.  There wasn't a choice.  I stopped watching and left the house, and Best Actor and Best Picture hadn't even been presented yet.  (So, yeah, I didn't actually get to watch the whole Best Picture "Midnight" / "La La Land" snafu that happened and instead read about it on Twitter later.)

It wasn't really until May / June that nothing major had happened in a while, and I think that's when stuff about my dad started to surface.  Feelings/memories/thoughts/reactions and such had come up a little previously, but for the most part, they had to be suppressed because there wasn't time or energy to think about them.  But 9 months later, they were making their presence known.  I was actually having a difficult enough time that I considered taking a leave of absence from work.  But the person who usually fills in for me when I'm on vacation was swamped herself, and after thinking about it for a while, I decided that I couldn't add to her load with having to cover for me while I was on a leave.  I determined to stick it out.

And then August rolled around, and my mother died.  And now, more feelings, more thoughts, more reactions.  Interspersed with not feeling anything when my brain shut everything down when it got too bad.  I was feeling awful.  My entire body hurt, and without getting too tmi, my insides were not processing well.  I knew that stress was a factor and decided to wait it out a bit before seeing my doctor, figuring the stress would subside some and then my doctor could tell me if I was feeling like crap because something was really wrong with me or if it was just stress-induced.

So, in late September, I had an appointment with my doctor.  When she walked in the room, she asked how I was, and I said that I'd been better.  She asked me what was going on.  I told her that the last time I'd seen her was in January (I'm supposed to see her every six months for a regular check-up and tests.), and at that point, I'd told her that my father had died several months prior.  She said yes, she remembered that.  So then I told her that my mother had died about 6 weeks ago.  She talked to me for a little while, and I told her about everything that hurt and felt wrong about my body.  And she did order the normal tests and a few more just to make sure, but she pretty much said that all of it was due to the stress of everything.  (Who knew that stress could turn your insides into knots.  Well, I didn't.  I mean, I know that stress definitely has an effect on your physical body, but I wasn't aware that it could have as many adverse reactions on you physically as I am now aware given that it's happened / happening to me.)  She also said that I was effectively experiencing depression, and she wanted me to see a therapist.  I had actually thought she might say something like that, and I agreed to go.

An appointment was set up for later that week, and the therapist I met with is a female.  She asked a whole boatload of questions about my entire life.  I kept having to remind myself that if I didn't tell her the absolute truth, there was no hope of her helping me.  I do have to admit that it was uncomfortable saying out loud to her things that I almost never discuss with anyone.  (And, admitting further that I still find it uncomfortable at times talking about certain medical things with doctors and other medical personnel that I don't know, and I have to remind myself that they've seen and heard everything, and this is their job, and there's no need to be embarrassed.  Well, this was 10 times worse because it was talking about feelings.)  By the end of the session, she did confirm that I did show signs of depression, and she did want to see me a few times but she didn't think I needed prolonged sessions, and she wanted me to go to group therapy for grief.  That last part kind of threw me for a loop.  Talk about my feelings to total strangers, especially feelings that I don't think are what most people expect to hear in this situation.  Hesitant and a little scared but willing to try, so I said ok.  As it turns out, the group therapy is on a cycle of sessions, so I have to wait for the next cycle to start.

And then the week after this, I had the meltdown I detailed in a prior post.  The therapist and I had talked about the option of medication to treat my depression.  I'm not against the idea but after talking through some of my questions, I decided to hold off for now, with the possibility of re-visiting in the future.  After the meltdown, I seriously thought about the medication again, but I also realized that it can be a long process in trying to figure out which meds might work for me and in what dosage, and I'm not sure I can handle the uncertainty and testing right now.

Since the meltdown, things haven't been as bad.  I don't feel awful all the time, I was actually getting some sleep, but I still didn't feel like doing much.

And then, Orkid got sick.  As I mentioned in my last post, she'd been dealing with the kidney issue for some time and it had been ok, but her downward spiral only really started about a week or so ago, and then really crashed on Thursday and Friday last week.

It just seems like in the past year, every time I think I've dug myself a bit out of a hole, more dirt gets thrown back on me.  I've sat at work today at my desk periodically crying, partly because I do miss Orkid (it was very quiet in the house last night, with no tap-tap-tap to clue me in that she was walking over to visit with me) and just being overwhelmed again with everything, so many things I haven't worked out and figured out.  I could really use some time off, but the person who normally covers for me is currently unavailable so I really can't take any time.  If I'm not here, there's literally no one to do my job right now, so it's better to have me crying at my desk in between working, struggling through, than to have no one here at all.

And on top of that, when I was told that group therapy wouldn't start for a little while, they said if I hadn't heard from them in a few weeks, I should call.  I should be calling now.  But I haven't, because that would also require me to leave the office in the mid-afternoon once a week to get to the meeting, and again, with my co-worker not being available, I'm struggling with essentially abandoning my job to go.  One of my friends is encouraging me to call about the meeting, and she likened it to putting on my own oxygen mask first before trying to help others.  I understand the sentiment, but right now, I'm feeling more like I'm the pilot of a plane, and the co-pilot is unconscious, so if I step away, there will be no one able to fly the plane.

It sounds crazy to think that with everything that's been going on for the past 13 months, losing my cat is what has the potential to send me over the edge.  I'm fighting it, but it's really difficult.  I feel like my reserves are all depleted, and the fumes are even dissipating, so I can't even rely on coasting with those.  I think the tears are the only release I have right now to continue on to the next minute, the next hour, the next day.

It's Been a Hell of a Year

Sometimes, I don't know what day it is.  Heck, sometimes, I don't know what year it is.  So much has happened in the past year, well, really, 13 months, that it's hard to keep things straight sometimes.

It started in September of 2016.  In mid-September, we were given notice our dad had likely at most 2 months to live.  It ended up being about 6 weeks, mostly involving in-home hospice care, and he died in October.  The one-year anniversary is coming up this Wednesday.

After having been in the hospital a few times for various reasons since November 2016, our mother died in August of this year.  Even though doctors were still talking about tests and possible treatment, given what was happening, I had figured out about a week beforehand that there was really only going to be one outcome.

About a month ago, a friend of a friend died from a rare and aggressive form of cancer.  I'd only met him twice in the past year but had enjoyed my time with him when he'd visited with our mutual friend.  I'd hoped to see him a third time and was sad when it turned out that wasn't going to happen.

Last week, a friend's father died very suddenly and unexpectedly.  I'd never met him, but my friend had talked about him a lot, so I knew some things about him.

Of course, the last two things aren't directly related to me, but because of the situations, their deaths did have an effect on me.

And then yesterday morning, we had to put our cat down.  She had a kidney condition that we'd been managing for some time, but eventually, it was more than she could deal with.  She was to the point where she wouldn't eat or even drink water and could barely move, all of this happening in a period of a day or two, so we made the decision to let her go.

And being a student of pop psychology, one of the things I've noticed that's come out of all this is that there have been several times over the past 13 months when a switch has been flipped, when I've just tuned out to the point where I don't feel anything.  It's a really interesting sensation when it's something you've read about, and then you realize that it's happening to you right then and there.  There have been a few times when the pain, the hurt, the situations have just been so overwhelming that as a defense mechanism, my mind and my feelings just turn off because it can't handle it.  Sometimes it lasts for a few hours, sometimes it lasts for a few days.

There's so much there to process in each situation, much less having all of them happen in a relatively short period of time.  And this doesn't even take into account the normal stresses and anxiety and such associated with work and life's other happenings.

The weird thing is that I'm not entirely sure I understand what exactly death means.  I can't define it for myself.  It happened more than a year ago, in fact, it happened about 3 years ago, but one of my best friends died in August 2014, and to this day, it's like my mind thinks that he's on a business trip, and he's just too busy to talk to me right now.  That's happened before, when we wouldn't get a chance to talk for a while.  Granted, it never lasted 3 years, but it seems to be how my brain makes it ok that I don't see or hear from him.  And I think I've taken that approach to my dad and my mom as well, that they're on vacation, so that's why I haven't seen or talked to them.  Again, that's happened before, though not for this long a period of time, but at least it's a situation that makes sense to me.  I guess the mind does whatever it needs to when you need it.

There are charts that give stress points for various events that happen in your life.  I think it's pretty safe to say that my stress points are probably off the charts at the moment, so it's probably not a surprise that I'm not handling it entirely well.  More on that later.

It's Not About the Ketchup

Do you ever have that moment when you're having french fries at home, and you go to get the ketchup, and when you realize you're all out, you just burst into tears and have a complete meltdown?

Yeah, it's not about the ketchup.

It's just the last straw, THE thing that pushes you over the edge.

You might have big things to deal with.  You might have little things to deal with.  One or two of them at a time, you can handle.  Even 5 or 10 little things, you can handle.  But at some point, you can't take any more, and the littlest thing is what sets you off, to the point where anyone in the vicinity looks at you like you're a crazy person because you've just completely over-reacted to something that doesn't warrant that level of distress.

I had one of those moments today.

Tuesday started off not great with a doctor's appointment (details will be in a future blog post), but then I spent several hours in the afternoon chatting with a friend I haven't seen in a very long time, and then I spent the evening having dinner with the husband and some friends, including one friend who I haven't seen in a while.  All in all, it was a good day for spending time with friends, and it really did a lot to boost my spirits.  Driving home late in the evening, I knew I felt better than I had in a while.

Wednesday, some of the glow had worn off, but not all of it.  I'd even started to think about maybe hanging out with friends for part of the weekend.  By Thursday morning, though, the dark cloud was back.  The voice in my head that said, you don't really want to go to work today, do you?  Don't you just want to stay home?  You haven't been getting much work done anyway, so what's the point in going?  Besides, they won't miss you at work if you're not there.  So I had to fight past that voice to actually leave the house and go to work, and then fight not wanting to actually do anything once I got to work.

And then I got a call in the late afternoon from my doctor's office, and the nurse wanted to go through my test results.  Usually, they just send me the results.  I don't recall them calling me before.  And, as I suspected, both my cholesterol numbers and my A1C (to test for diabetes) were high, though my A1C wasn't actually as high as I had expected.  I've been indulging in a whole lot of comfort eating in the past couple months with everything that's been going on, and I haven't exercised in about 3 months, so yeah, I figured my results wouldn't be great.  The nurse kept giving me a hard time about the cholesterol, and asking me repeatedly if I'd been taking the medication I've already been on for a while.  Yes, I've been taking my meds.  No, I didn't take a break from my meds.  Yes, my numbers are that high even though I'm already on meds.  After then proceeding to the sugars results and then telling me what I should be eating instead, I finally told her that I knew exactly why both results were as bad as they were, and I had expected it.  I told her what had happened to my parents in the last year, and that it wasn't an excuse, but yeah, I've been eating bad things because I'm just trying to get through everything, and I haven't been focused on what I've been eating.  She apologized and said she understood, and we talked about a couple more things before we concluded the call.

And I spent about 20 minutes feeling worse and worse, to the point where I started to cry.  Luckily, I have an office at work, so I got up and shut the door so I could cry in private.  The results were what I thought they'd be.  Having the nurse get on me wasn't that bad, and she backed off once I explained what had been going on.  But I guess that was the tipping point, because I cried in my office for a while.  And I went through a round of "What the hell does it matter what I'm eating?  Why can't I just eat what I want?  Why does any of this matter?  All the stuff that would make me feel better are things that are going to make my numbers worse, so I guess I'm just supposed to deal with everything on my own?  Fine, I'll just sit at home by myself and I won't talk to anyone and I won't do nothing.  And I won't eat anything, that'll help my numbers, right?"

Yeah, meltdown.  At least it wasn't with an audience.  After a while, my sanity returned, and I stopped crying, so I opened my door again.  And then realized a few minutes later that I apparently wasn't quite done, so I had to close the door again for another round of crying since I didn't want to risk having someone walk in on me.  Finally, I'd stopped crying for a little while, and I felt like it was done, so I opened the door again, and I even managed to get some work done after that.  Not a lot, but some.

Not having ketchup for your fries really sucks.

Sleep Doesn't Come Easy

Last week, I had a dream about my mother.

We were at the old house, the old house being the house my family lived in from the time that I was about 4 or 5 until I was about 17.  It's the most common recurring location of my dreams, probably because it's where I grew up.

The house has an attached garage, connected by an adjoining door right after you enter the front door.  We never parked the cars in the garage, but rather, it was a spare bedroom, storage space, utility area.  For some reason, I'd gone in there to look for my mother but was surprised when I didn't find her.

After a little while, I noticed that she was laying in bed, facing away from me.  That seemed odd because I never knew my mother to nap much, unless she wasn't feeling well.  I remember wondering if she was sick and was about to ask if she was ok, and for her to tell me if anything was wrong so we could take her to be examined.  And then I realized, I didn't need to tell her that anymore.

I heard my mother's voice in my head (in Cantonese), "I've been gone for a lifetime, and she still doesn't know it."



Well, it hasn't been a lifetime.  My mother died just over a month ago.  And my father died in October 2016.  So, the last 12 months have left me with quite a bit to deal with.

There are moments when things feel ok, when I feel normal.  The moments come and go, and they don't generally last very long unless I've got something to focus on and I'm actually able to focus.  During the day, I have things to do, things to pay attention to, work, distractions.

The nights are difficult.  There's less going on.  Distractions fade away.  Things are quiet.  People are sleeping, resting.  Except me.  There's just me and a whirlwind of conflicted thoughts.

I've never really been very good at sleeping, even as a child.  It never occurred to me that I could ever actually have MORE trouble sleeping.  That's how it's been for the past month.  I'm awake well into the early hours of the morning, pretty much until my body is exhausted and can be awake no more.  I sleep for a little while, but then it's time to get up and go to work.  And then I spend the day very tired.  So you'd think I'd be able to sleep that next night, right?  Nope.  I'm tired and sleepy all day, but when I get home from work, even if I think I'm tired enough to go to bed early, as soon as I think about going to bed, the brain starts firing again and won't let me sleep.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  On weekends, if I don't have to be up at a certain time, I still can't sleep in.  As soon as my body is no longer exhausted, my brain wakes me up, even though I'm still tired and sleepy.

The irony of having even more difficulty sleeping now than I usually do is that when my mother would hear about my insomnia, she would tell me that I was thinking about too many things, and that was why I couldn't sleep.  She'd tell me to stop thinking about so much.

I haven't yet figured out how to quiet my brain enough to let my body rest.  I figured I'd try writing again, to see if that would help.



If you've been reading this entry, you probably got here from a link I posted.  That will be the only time I link to these sorts of posts.  I figure if you want to read more about this subject, if I manage to write any more about it, you now already know how to find your way here.