Ode to Crystal

Ode to Crystal - Boobs, Injuries, & Dr. Pepper

You've given me a chance to be as brave as you are. Thank you. I need to do this.

I'm a very proud person. It's hard to be like me when you've got the perfect family all around you, praying for you, and they have all their ducks in a row on their way to Bible school and you look around and find...

You have no ducks. You don't know where to find them. How the hell do perfect people even find the damn pond?

I hope some of you will never have to understand. I know it started because I wasn't the perfect Christian child (I was told) in the perfect Christian home (I was told), daughter of a deacon and elder who needed to keep the reins tight on his family in order to be worthy of his post in the church. I know it worsened when I was 16 and my father accused me of being possessed by demons because I had chronic headaches that caused me to miss church events. I missed a lot of other events, too, but Satan attacked me most on Sundays, apparently. Three years later, when we discovered that I manufactured no thyroid hormone, got put on thyroid medication, and had no severe headaches ever again...I never got an apology. That remark started the building of resentment of my father against me and vice versa. You see, he thought Satan plagued me by the headaches so that I didn't have to go to church on Sunday. By the time the cure came, you bet damn well I never felt like going to church...and haven't much. This has put a permanent rift between my family and me. Only two know about that accusation. It hurt. I was a good kid. I was miss straight As, graduated 26th in a class of 500 DESPITE those god-awful headaches. I had a full-ride scholarship, yada, yada, yada.

I've been easily "upset" ever since then. I know this is a wimpy anonymous way to announce this, cloaking myself in anonymity behind a nom-de-plume, but I ended up on Zyprexa. I didn't like it. I didn't even know if I needed it, but I was afraid to go off of it. I put on 40+ pounds because of it, and stayed with it, because I was scared out of my mind. I didn't want a big hole to keep growing, sucking the rest of my sanity along with it. I don't mean I was on a wimpy 2.5 mg, the dose that puts nursing home patients out for the count. I was on 15 mg. FIFTEEN. Fifteen, just to sleep through the night...kinda. I often woke up in the middle of the night in the middle of a half-eaten box of cereal and half a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and the honey. I ate while sleeping. It was awful.

Why? Why didn't I want to go further down? At 29, I lost my FIRST grandparent. The first. Between 2001 and now, Stud and I have lost a combined total 7 grandparents, 3 parents, cousins, and more. Our fathers got sick, and we had to watch them rot away. His father, of whom I was very fond, couldn't take it anymore and removed his oxygen mask one night. My father was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Diagnosed. He fought for 2½ years, while I watched my grandfather rot away from Alzheimer's.

After three years, I changed shrinks, and he changed my medicines. Just a few simple adjustments...and waiting for the worst of it...my dad to die after we made all the amends possible...and I came off that god-awful medication, lost the weight from the Z-word, but not much more.

Do you know what I'm doing? I'm justifying to you people the need for such drastic measures. I'm embarrassed. I hate it. I refuse to list it on prior medication lists when I go to a new doctor. Why? Because there is such a stigma. Zyprexa's primary use is an antipsychotic. I wasn't psychotic, just unable to sleep, furthering my descent into a place that felt comfortably numb.
Admitting things like this is gutsy. I'm wondering if I'm even going to post this. What used to be uncontrolled major depression is now just simple, controlled, situational depression, subject to change now that my final sacred grandparent has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and, unless he drops dead of a heart attack, I'll be privileged to watch him rot away too, watching a man who always lived life on his terms succumb to the ravages of time. He's too healthy to hope for a more appropriate end.

I can't watch someone else lose their dignity. I just can't. But I have to. My family clings to Jesus; I cling to someone even more judgmental--me.

So, don't be surprised if I announce I'm taking stronger medications. Shit, I've lost so much. My rearing as the eldest of five children in an ultra-dogmatic Christian home, where I was forced to write bible versus pertaining to the sins I committed (??? can't even remember, they were so minor--I probably yelled at my sister or something), and knowing that I didn't exist other than a future jewel on my dad's heavenly crown or an appliance for the younger kids, messed with my coping skills for all time.

My father and I made amends. Everything is forgiven. I write this only to illustrate how past, present, and future all come together to form a maelstrom for those who are ill-equipped to handle it, either by emotional abuse, psychological abuse, or hormone imbalances. And judgmental folks? Please, you just made a person with a problem feel worse. Good for you. Way to help. Thank you. Because of people like you, I will once again battle my pride over good sense, because I don't want to be in line with anyone else in the store when I buy the medication I need to cope.

Crystal, you rock. Thanks for making me laugh...and cry. You are humanity, imperfect and flawed, but hanging on to life, clawing to make it all work.