There is beauty in the wobble.

Saul was one of the first patients in San Diego to scream at me.  I remember the first time seeing him.  I went into the field with my nurse to see patients in their homes.  We came to his independent living facility (ILF), which was house in a poorer neighborhood in San Diego.  I followed my nurse, Annie, into the house, into the kitchen, down the hallway.  She was calling out the patient’s name.  He appeared from one of the bedrooms.  There were other residents of the house watching us, not bothered by what is a very routine intrusion.  

My patient, I’ll call him Saul, was angry about not having Artane, one of his medications.  He spoke quickly, his eyes pried wide open; he was visibly dirty, his hair short but pushed up in strange directions.  He was wearing an oversized camo jacket, a t-shirt and cargo pants.  The conversation about medication changed course erratically.  I tried to introduce myself but he looked at me with disdain and rambled on.  Soon he was mumbling out threats about bombs, becoming more animated and difficult to understand.  I followed Annie’s lead as we walked out of the house and Saul followed us.  We got back into her car and Saul stood by Annie’s window gesturing wildly, now screaming about Artane and bombs.  She offered him a bottle of water through her cracked window but he refused.  She pulled forward carefully and we left Saul there standing in the street shouting.  This was one version of Saul.

There was another version that appeared months later.  I drove to a different ILF to see Saul.  By this time I had begun seeing patients on my own in their homes.  Saul emerged from a quiet house where I was not invited in.  We sat in some lawn chairs on the driveway.  He was silent, eerily so.  I asked him all of my usual questions about sleep and mood and appetite and medication.  His gesticulated quiet, one-word responses. He was losing weight. He complained of being hungry frequently.  Since he appeared to have stopped using meth, I wondered if he was on too much antipsychotic medication and being dulled by that.  I offered to reduce his medication and he agreed to this.  I suggested supplementing with food from food banks but he quietly and hopelessly said the others in the house would eat it.  

There was another version of Saul that was in my office only a few weeks ago.  His hair was dyed jet black.  He was wearing an ill-fitting sport jacket and a button down shirt.  He was happy and relatively at ease.  We went through the regular questions.  His thoughts were linear and easy to follow.  He wasn’t what anyone would describe as “normal” but he was good.  Saul looked good and he felt well.  A few days later he was dead from methamphetamine overdose.

I have other stories about my psychiatric patients that sound more like successes.  I like telling those stories better.  But what I’m really learning to appreciate is the wobble.  The wobble is the the fluctuation between the ups and the downs, the victories and defeats, the moments when I feel my capability and the ones when I feel my weakness.  I used to spend so much time focusing on those high points that I forgot about the beauty of the lower half of the curve.  And there is beauty there.  

Maybe we miss it because the cycle happens too quickly.  A couple of days ago I got an upsetting text from my ex-husband.  I responded reasonably, initially, but then I devolved.  I felt justified.  I probably was.  That night was a bit of a tailspin.  I chose to numb out the fear and pain rather than let it pass through me.  I went to sleep early.  

The next morning I woke to my alarm at 7am.  There were broken rain clouds visible through my bedroom window. I could see the wind was blowing so there was a thought that I should stay in bed—a compelling, logical thought.  I had another thought too: “You have R this weekend so this is the last morning for the next four days when you have the luxury of being able to walk to a coffee shop and sit and write.”  This was enough to get me out from beneath the covers and on my way.  

The morning air was crisp and the big clouds were more majestic than threatening.  The little neighborhood coffee shop was buzzing with caffeine and good mornings.  I sat down with my laptop to write and I pulled out what I had been reading the night before: 

“Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience long survival—a continuous “recurrence of birth” (palengenesia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death.  For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue.  Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence is a snare.  When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified—and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.”

A Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

I realized that I had been reborn in the morning.  I shook off the night before and rose again.  Maybe that is all we are asked to to. Rise again.  Rise again.  Rise again.  The happy ending we dream of, we wait for, we anticipate with bated breath, maybe it’s just the transcendence of the rise.  It’s the moment when I pop my head above the cloud cover and feel the warm sun on my face.  Even as I know I will sink down under the gray layer again.  It’s inevitable!

So the other night I was dismembered and the next morning I am reborn.  The acceptance of this cycle/process feels free.  It means that I don’t have to mire myself in shame, I can simply wake in the morning, wonder at my dismemberment for a moment, then shake it off and be born new.  As I walked home from the coffee shop, I thought about the ways nature teaches this: the daily sunrise and sunset, the seasons, the lifecycles of plants, insects, animals.  It’s like God was thinking, “I’ll just repeat this symbol absolutely everywhere I can so maybe they can get it.”  There is beauty in the wobble.  I see it, even in the life of my patient, Saul, who never freed himself from the numbing agents.  I see it because I witnessed some of the occasions when he poked his head above the clouds and felt the sunshine on his face.  And surly a God that teaches us to rise again in every iteration of nature, legend, scripture, folklore and fairytale, has made a way for us to rise again.   

Accelerated carousel of mommy guilt

I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to write about all day today.  And now, as I am finally summoning the courage to write what I’ve been avoiding, I’ll probably get this posted about the time you are all headed to bed.  But no matter, it will be waiting for you bright and early Monday morning.

We had a non-conventional Thanksgiving.  Because it was just my mom, R and me, and because I didn’t feel like cooking, we decided to go out.  We actually had a really nice day.  We went for a walk in the morning, then to Cabrillo National Monument for some tide pool exploration.  Then we went out for dinner at a restaurant that served a nice Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a good day, even though I felt a little off all day. 

On Friday, I decided that getting a Christmas tree and decorating it would help things feel more holiday-ish so we loaded up and went to Lowe’s to pick out a tree.  We found a decent one.  The cashier gave me $20 off because the universe loves me (look for evidence—it loves you too!).  We brought it home and Mom helped me get it set up in the tree stand.  I did this all by myself last year and I’m not even sure how I did it! 

R was soooo excited.  He was down on the ground with me, tightening the supporting screws around the tree.  He was testing the branches by hitting them with a ruler.  He was chattering about Santa Claus and snow and presents.  When we opened the box of ornaments, it was all my mom and I could do to keep him from destroying the breakable ones.  He wanted to inspect them all.  We had Christmas music playing and I was frantically trying to get the lights on the tree so we could unleash R with the ornaments.  I think it was our personal record for fastest tree decorating.  R jingled all of the bells and cuddled all of the angels. 

As I’m describing it, it sounds really fun—the wonder and magic of Christmas for a 3-year-old playing out in front of me.  But the truth is, I felt held back.  Damn foreboding joy.   

I got R to sit down and eat a little lunch by putting on an Amazon Prime movie about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Then it was time to load him up to go to his dad’s house.  When I put him in the car he cried.  He looked at me with those big, brown eyes and clearly said, “I want us to be together,” meaning his dad, R and me.  “Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

Words fail to describe the heaviness, the crushing weight, of that phrase falling from his precious, innocent lips.

I paused, with him in the carseat and me standing by the open car door.  I told him that I understand his wanting that.  I told him that his dad and I love him very much.  I told him that we had a long car ride and that I would be with him in the car.  This last pieced seemed to satisfy him.  After a few minutes on the road, he asked me, “Is it okay if I take a little sleep?” He slept the rest of the drive to his dad’s house. 

Sometimes we don’t get what we want.  Even if it’s a beautiful desire.  Sometimes it’s a no.  And it’s heartbreaking.  How would I explain to a three-year-old the twelve and a half years his dad and I tried to make it work?  How could I convey the sense of self that I sacrificed to that relationship? Of course, it’s impossible.  But it’s also not his to know at three.  It’s something that he will come to know over all of the years he walks this earth.  He will add to it his own experiences.  And this might be one of them—his first Christmas with the consciousness that he doesn’t get to have it with his mom and dad together in the same house. 

There are not many perks to having a divided family, but I count this as one—perfect is not an option.  Any idea that we are carrying on a perfect life over here is immediately laughable.  We are all just people, doing the best we can.  And sometimes our best is pretty terrible.  But it is our best. 

In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown wrote a chapter called “Wholehearted parenting: Daring to be the adults we want our children to be.”  I came across this chapter at a time when I really needed it.  It’s easy to question how well I’m doing in the parenting department.  This time in my life is an intense struggle for myself, let alone the little human, with whom I’m entrusted.  I don’t always show up how I want to.  On days when I have R, I often feel overwhelmed and tired.  On the days I don’t, sometimes I miss him like a piece of my soul is gone.  It’s like being on an accelerated carousel of mommy guilt where the highs and lows are too dramatic to be fun. 

Brené encourages us to focus on becoming the adults we want our children to be, rather than parenting in the right way. 

“As Joseph Chilton Pearce, ‘What we are teaches the child more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.’  Even though the vulnerability of parenting is terrifying at times, we can’t afford to armor ourselves against it or push it away—it is our richest, most fertile ground for teaching and cultivating connection, meaning and love.”

So who do I want R to be?  I want him to be resilient and hardworking.  I want him to see the world as an abundant place where he can do and become anything he wants to.  I want him to be kind, both to himself and to others, even when they fall short.  I want him to feel connected to friends and family.  I want him to be spiritual, to see the divinity within himself.  I want him to understand respect.  I want him to feel love and to feel loved.  I want him to know that love does not require the sacrifice of self, but that it celebrates and champions the self to become as big and complicated and beautiful as this diverse, messy and wonderful earth God has set us within. 

And so this is my work—to become.  God, help me.