This almost an essay showed up as a memory on Facebook (now there’s a clue as to why Facebook does well in my 60 plus demographic), I’ve trimmed and updated as a post, and updated it on my back pages.
Suicidal Ideation and the importance of getting dressed in the morning
(from first draft 2018)
THEN: I’m dressed. You’ll have to take my word for it. Dressing is an important transition from bed and bath, fraught with small choices; socks that match, that stay up, that don’t make my ankles swell and my feet turn red, now usually diabetic socks, though thank God I don’t have diabetes. This morning I am letting my Stage Four Flat Foots roam free.
NOW: Three years later same dilemma but halved, only have one Stage Four Flat Foot left. On Monday I will be measured up for another brace on my remaining right foot, looking for support that does not cause sores. I will be picking up another fake foot to go with my new prosthetic left leg at the same time. The fake foot that came with my new leg is too short for me and my size 14 shoes.
THEN: Underpants that don’t ride up into the crack of my ass, and don’t let my innocuous junk fall out, harder now my favourite brand has been discontinued[1].
In winter a t-shirt seems necessary and I have a bevy to choose from, including self-designed Correct in this Culture[2], Luck Man and Jimmy Bang Blues Project and lots of comfy plain cotton XXL ts which may be all I need if I’m working at home
NOW: I’m now wearing a vest as the British call sleeveless undershirts, not wife-beaters. I now wear suspenders, and realize the importance of sleeveless undershirts if you wear braces, as the Britiush call suspenders. The t-shirt straps keep the suspenders off your skin. And my under and T shirts are all XXXL.
THEN: Pants I try to keep very simple never having more than 2 or 3 pair in rotation currently in brown, tan and green, and then one of my two or three favourite shirts if I’m going into 213 Notre Dame to work in my office number – 622 – which I found out in a recent fire drill. Because I’m in a wheelchair at work, I get to stay in my office, the door closed a wet dish towel under the door. So far I haven’t had to rely on the strength of Winnipeg fireman to carry me down the six flights of stairs.
NOW: My waist size can vary widly. From the thin of a 40 waist to the thick of a 50 waist. I need suspenders for anything past 44 because pants tend to fall down, as I once experienced at the Co-op in Gimli. I have a number of pinched nerves, and have sciatica as my parents called theirs. Anything tight around my waist hurts while I wear it and causes havoc a long time after. So big waisted pants, suspenders.
THEN: I love my pyjamas, and my two robes, but I’ve had to wear them often enough in hospital post-surgery and in depression at home[3], they often send incorrect signals to my hypothalamus, messing with my circadian rhythms with signals of illness and physical decrepitude, rather than Hey! You get to work at home today! You’re a Lucky Man!
I do change back into pyjamas to rest in bed, during the day, and it’s much harder to get dressed again the second time and so on.
I am of course avoiding the rather sensational first two words in the header, trying to lighten the mood with a rather tenuous relationship between getting dressed and staying alive. I have not done much research, but figure most people get dressed before they commit suicide, though I know of one notable case where a man got dressed complete with a parka to walk down to a frozen river. He completely undressed, folding his clothes neatly beside him, lay down on the river ice and snow, one very cold blustery winter day and froze to death.
NOW: I have a new huge Marks & Spencer bathrobe, courtesy of my wife Michelle, here to greet me when I moved in. Blue and navy (like my soap and face-cloths) of course.
I think of getting dressed sometimes to be the writer I see in myself[4]. So I top my baggy pants and suspenders with 3XL collared shirts, always 100% cotton,
and most-often white and goddamn the “non-wrinkle cottons.” They must be treated with crap that makes them as uncomfortable as any polyester I’ve worn, now banished from my closet.
THEN: The link of “to be or not be” to getting dressed may be specious. My argument hinges on the concept of choice, in an effort to ameliorate fears that thinking and talking about suicide is a sure sign you are a danger to yourself and should be committed or restrained in some way for your best interest. I admit that depressives may think about suicide more often than the rest of the population, but as long as we are talking about it, we are less likely to make an attempt. It is sometimes enough just to reassure yourself if finally there is absolutely no way to end the physic pain, as a human being, you can choose not to be.
NOW: I am dressed. I am writing. My desire to make something gives me peace (no matter how angry or difficult the words/poem/story) the minute I apply the seat of my pants to the chair in front of my typer.
[1] Product placement available in exchange for cotton XXL underpants.
[3] I’ve never been hospitalized for depression, and usually the relief surgery provides for whatever pain my bones dish out, and the total absolution from responsibility you have in a hospital bed, did once bring me a great deal of comfort and peace.
[4] It’s more “fake it ’til you make it,’ than the Duke of Delusion, pictured. Image by Murray Toews
MENTAL HEALTH UPDATE
My decision to have a below the left knee amputation and why I’m going ahead are in my blog blog and in the About Physical Health Tab. My friends, on-line or otherwise, are responding with a great deal of support, which took a bit of prodding which is quite normal.
I am fascinated by taboo, read the Freud (and others) on the subject, and have an unfinished manuscript with the energy of sexual repression driving an often profane, and sometimes sacred text called involuntary tongue. I missed the early signs of the general ickiness of my situation, by now most everybody that cares about me is “you’re ok, I’m ok.” My hip surgeon (the two hip replacements are doing great!) said that major surgery always involves violence against the body. So there is that. I have decided not to post too many gross pictures of an amputated limb because I don’t care to look at them much myself. My imagination gives me enough grizzly visuals like imagining my amputated limb on a rotisserie at an outdoor barbecue.
Rather than my mind getting worse, it’s getting verse, and jokes. Most as lame as that one. Since coming here to my writing studio and life in Gimli I have written some jokes, and have successfully tested them, but only with people I know. I thought of doing a one night “sit” doing stand-up poetry and sit-down comedy. My surgery is so close to Easter I haven’t found a venue or taken the time to rehearse anything. So not happening. Laughter remains my favourite release and distraction. I also have a major project underway called pain room. You can find more about that under the pain room tab. This is a take on a question that has become a medical standard, “on a scale of 1 to ten, where one is the least pain you can imagine and ten is the most amount of pain you can imagine, how much does it hurt.”
Chronic pain does effect my mood, as do the medications for it. So mood swings are common including crying jags from one end to hyperactivity, anger clenching my muscles, bellicose writing and graphomania. Don’t like my mood, wait five minutes. or the sign “I’m out of my mind, back in ten minutes,” more lame jokes but not original. Decision making can be very slow or instant, if it’s instant I’m usually spending money, if I’m slow it’s likely getting up in the morning waiting for the meds to kick in and getting dressed. Clothes have become anathema to me, because the sciatic nerve runs through my waist and hates being bound. The real problem however is my shame and embarrassment at the size of my belly and my man-boobs. So, this is really the extent of my mental woes, much less actually than in past years even as I wait for my left foot amputation. I have changed my meds only slightly since 2000, and I still see a psychiatrist at least once a month. I’m one of the lucky ones, who found the care I needed. I’ve published four books of poetry since 20005, and I’m vigorously working on three projects at once. Should I receive a grant, I will focus entirely on the pain room.
He was the kind of guy who asked for an art photographer to be allowed in the operating theater at the amputation surgery. He was the kind of guy who recorded his cries of pain following his amputation and posting them to sound cloud. He was the kind of guy who could go on and on and on and immediately bring the Stephen Bishop song into his mind. My last mental health post goes all the way to 2012. I was still married, and just beginning to be one of the regulars at the orthopedic desk at HSC. He was the kind of guy who, divorced three times, would only say he was between engagements.
On being, being mentally ill and being ashamed
December 2, 2012
There are times when I feel the black dogs parachuting into my mind, behind my eyes, shutting me down. Illustration by Murray Toews, 2017.
The first time I said “I am mentally ill,” I had a good cry in my psychiatrist’s office. I desperately did not want to cope with the stigma of having my brain make me sick. I had a good understanding of physical illness, fractures, etc., and the stuff of the body was acceptable because it was visible and because it wasn’t my fault. It was my body’s fault, an unreliable instrument at the best of times. But mental illness was my fault because my I-ness, my being, was head quartered. Whether it was my genes, biology, or environment, it was all me. I was making myself sick, I was weak, I was ”fighting my demons,” and, lacking any kind of manly resiliency, losing.
I was first diagnosed when I was 19, in 1974. But I refused treatment because it wasn’t cool, while self-medicating was. So I was eccentric, depressed, had a mood disorder (a term that always smells of adolescence to me), or was disordering my senses because that’s what writers did. I read my Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Genet, Bataille, Hart Crane, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Randall Jarrell, and especially John Berryman who pitched himself off a Minneapolis bridge in the winter of 1972. I called my mental illness absolutely anything and everything else, especially if it sounded romantic. Hell, treatment might dampen my creative spirit.
I did finally seek treatment in 1984 after my first son was born, picking Dr. Harinath, psychiatrist, out of the Yellow Pages and referring myself. I got an appointment, and after 15 minutes a prescription which made me psychotic by the weekend. Fortunately with the help of family and friends I got to see Dr. Cebrian-Perez at the Regina Mental Health Centre. He was amazing, and one way or another I have been in treatment ever since.
I missed very little work until I lost my job at the Manitoba Arts Council in 1997. I had cried at a staff meeting before going on sick leave. I was ashamed of my weakness, and the staff and Board were embarrassed. I accepted the stigma, without feeling anything like Jesus. I accepted being fired because I rationalized to myself that I would probably do the same in their shoes, though I probably wouldn’t have lied.
I went to ground at home in Wolseley, in treatment with Dr. William Fleischer at the St. Boniface Hospital, another amazing shrink who saw me through my worst depressive episode, my fourth, and realizing this was now a chronic condition (see the 2009 fall issue of Transition at the CMHA-SK site for all the gory details). In session I talked about childhood neglect, molestation, being bullied and other trauma in talk therapy while looking for the right combination of pharmaceuticals to do some of the heavy lifting.
Eventually I was referred to Dr. Murray Enns (no relation) who, following intensive surveys and a couple of sessions, came up with a list of four med cocktails we went through in order. The third on the list worked and in 1999 I started Rhubarb magazine with my brother, and in 2000 was back at work in what I sensitively thought was a largely sceptical arts community, many of my peers still of the generation when what happened to me was known as a nervous breakdown, and anyone taking anti-depressants was not fit to lead. Being mad was often considered the normal condition for individual artists and often mythtakenly seen as an aid to creativity, but definitely a distinct handicap for arts managers.
Finally, bolstered by the courage of the Provincial Auditor to talk about his own mental illness, I decided not to hide my invisible handicap any longer. I had stigmatized my own illness and my being long enough. I had the support of Ted Dyck, a mentor and fellow writer and editor (of Transition among other things) in Saskatchewan with whom I reconnected on his return to Saskatchewan.
My third wife was not completely convinced, aware of the danger I could put myself in at work, and concerned other people misunderstand me, because there is still so much education to be done. However, since 2000 I have again been productive and successful, working full-time, getting remarried, and having two books of poetry published. I’m tempted to put up my “long resume” to help people understand that it is possible for someone with mental illness, such as depression, for example, to do a lot of good work, and I have been working hard since I was 17.
I self identified to the HR department at work, and to my boss, and last spring to my colleagues at a staff meeting during Mental Health Week. I cried again, but was no longer ashamed. I still have my job, and the support of my colleagues. I have just filed $300 drug claim for the last month, and glad to have a benefit plan that will get most of that back to me. In addition to the medications (see M in Vicipedia) I take for chronic depression, I’m taking medication for pain caused by osteoarthritis. While my mental and emotional health is getting stronger, my body has reminded me it has a mind of its own. I am having foot reconstruction surgery in January and a hip replacement in May or June. But that’s another story.
Going public on my website isn’t a big step beyond what I’ve already got up here. It’s been prompted by a visit to the new CMHA – Winnipeg Regional office on Portage Avenue in the old CJOB building. I visited this week to understand the differences between the provincial and regional branches and see what potential there might be for volunteering.
I was hoping to get involved in a support group or offering peer counseling to men in white collar jobs (I know diddley about any other kind, though my GWL counsellor, before the company cut my disability payments, suggested I consider long-distance trucking or landscape gardening as alternatives). You see the stigma is really pretty heavily stacked against knowledge workers, because, well, knowledge is in your head and if your head is sick, well wouldn’t you rather plant a garden? With all due respect to Pat Lane, Brian Brett, my father, and my wife — no. I understand the mental health benefits of exercise and physical activity, but until I can actually move again that will have to wait. Pardon the digression, this is already too long, and I’m not finished.
The response of the CMHA was a little guarded, and fair enough. I did volunteer to work on their creative arts magazine Kaleidoscope and look forward to that. The gap I’ve identified and hope to play a part in as a volunteer, not surprisingly, is to provide collegial support to people like me. I have signed up for the “Telling My Story” workshop so I can speak at appropriate occasions on request. I can speak to young people, and others as well, though I think I’ll stay away from churches (see my piece in Transition if you want to know why).
I don’t want to be counselor, work in an Employee Assistance Program capacity, become a psychologist or any other mental health professional. I would just like to serve as a resource to support male knowledge workers in their workplace and share my experiences in relationships with supervisors, peers, insurance companies, while stressing the importance of trying to stay on the job as long as absolutely possible unless the job itself is making you sick, and when that fails what to do if you need to sue for your disability benefits or how to go about getting back to work as part of your recovery.
I am also very interested in the therapeutic benefits of writing and other art practices, without any collar colour concerns, and there are a number of options out in our community and examples in other provinces, but there does not seem to be much of a support system for men living with mental illness working at office jobs in the downtown for example, where I work. Most are still wearing masks or drinking too much at lunchtime and hiding out in their offices hoping nobody notices they have been crying. Ah yes, but while we may be the hollow men, we are the entitled, the privileged, possibly well-paid, possibly with access to Employee Assistance programs, and comfortable with personal advocacy for benefits of the health system, and we have our masks, our office appropriate clothing we hope will protect us; why do we deserve care and attention when there are so many so much worse off than we are?
I understand triage, and the massive costs of health care, but I am not looking for a staffed program, money of any kind, sympathy or pity. What I want to do is meet other men with personal lived experience of mental illness, and those terrified perhaps after a first diagnosis, those trying hard to keep their jobs without embarrassment or shame, and offer mutual support. I would be happy to hear from men working downtown who just want to talk, or have questions about coping strategies in the office while I look for a way to add this into the mental health support mix in Winnipeg. I can be reached by email only [email protected]. There is room at the end of the post for comments, which, after my approval, can be posted anonymously for anybody wanting to start a conversation.
NOTE: My posts are often much longer than any current wisdom would suggest appropriate for a blog or website. There is new research suggesting that wonderful tag “more” is actually read as “stop” by most web readers. I do not leave a long post up for more than a couple of days before going that route, but when it’s first up, I like to see the whole thing, and hope I can carry you through to the end, and if not that you come back on another day.
V