It’s a girl.

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Gabriel...

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Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at the house-doors
Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together,
Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted;
For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together,
All things were held in common, and what one had was another’s.
Yet under Benedict’s roof hospitality seemed more abundant:
For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father;
Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness
Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it.
‘Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie’ (1847) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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We’re having a girl, and her name will be Evangeline. She will be born during the fist week of August, which makes sense because August is an awesome month.

I didn’t want to know, but my girlfriend wanted to tell me so badly she looked like she was about to burst. Just based on how she was bouncing around after getting back from the ultrasound I kind of had a pretty good idea it was a girl.

We started discussing having a second child almost immediately after our son was born, in 2009. And my girlfriend always had a semi-secret smile when she talked about the possibility of having a girl.

She wasn’t the only one, her oldest son has been talking about having a little sister for a year now. And my mother has wanted a protege for a long, long time.

I’ve been telling my girlfriend I was totally cool either way for our first, and for this one. But, honestly, the idea of raising a girl is freaking me out.

It’s probably not rational, but raising a girl just seems insanely complicated. And scary as hell. Not the clinical stuff, not the health stuff, but teaching her how to be safe. Or how to be a princess.

To be honest I find most “girl” things are, mostly, ridiculous. Ponies? Gymnastics? I have to go to gymnastics meets now? Unicorns, I’ll have to learn about unicorns. And sparkles.

Teaching my son how to defend himself will be easy. People who meet him are all certain he’s going to be a large person, so teaching him to defend himself is basically going to be me showing him how to throw a punch from the shoulder. He’s already beating up his older brother.

But I’m already starting to have nightmares about my daughter asking me how to defend herself against the insane self-esteem attack games girls make on other girls. Jesus, what if she’s the first one in her class to “develop”? What if she’s last?

What if she asks me for advice on dealing with the ‘mean girls’ in her class and I screw it up?

Obviously I’ll try my best to get her interested in sports, like real sports. There are soccer and rugby leagues in this region for girls, and also a mixed hockey league.

But what do I say when she asks me for advice on boys? How do I keep her safe from the ‘pornification’ of high school dating?

How long do I wait before explaining to her that people like Rush Limbaugh exist?

Thankfully there are a lot of women, alive and not so much, on my side of the family who will serve as excellent role models for my daughter. My paternal grandmother, for example, was a mathematician who worked with Alan Turing. My three sisters are all brilliant, strong women, who have lived interesting lives.

My mother had a book of her poetry published when she was barely twenty. She went on to work as a book and magazine editor, and won several awards for her reporting. Her aunt became a Catholic nun when she was a teenager, and taught high school for forty years. She was also a brilliant painter and could kill a person with a stare at thirty paces.

So maybe, with living examples and stories about her ancestors, Evangeline might have a chance to survive despite my neophyte parenting skills…

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The first two videos are from the standup of Louis CK, the funniest person on the planet five years in a row. He talks about his daughters a lot, and I think I’ll be using his act as a tutorial for at least the first seven years of my daughters life. The third video is the trailer for a movie called ‘Thirteen’, one of the most powerful movies ever made about girls ‘coming of age’, and a movie that scares the shit out of me.



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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, CSG, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Pregnancy | Tagged , | 13 Comments

I can hear the world again and it’s singing ‘happy birthday’

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Gabriel...

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For the first time in more than three weeks I can hear the bathroom fan. Since January 25th I’ve been mostly deaf. The kind of deaf where, just to hear the TV, I had to turn the volume past 60. I’ve been trapped with only the sounds of my heart pounding in my ears, and an electrical current running through my head.

But no more. My left ear is still a little blocked, and I still hear a bit of a buzz, but most of my hearing is back. At the moment it’s like my left ear is popping open and closed depending on whether I’m yawning or swallowing. Most importantly, however, I’ve managed to sleep soundly during the past two nights without having a panic attack from feeling claustrophobic.

Which means, because I feel comfortable that I’ll be able to hear him if anything goes wrong, I can start having my son stay over night again. He’s been here a few nights, but only when his mom has been here as well. I didn’t feel comfortable having her here either, because I was worried I might flail out and hit her if I was to have a panic attack in my sleep.

Also, because I’ve only been sleeping in twenty minute increments, I’ve been too exhausted during the day to be chasing him around.

The past month hasn’t been easy on my girlfriend. She’s almost four months pregnant, and had a surgical procedure done almost two weeks ago, which left her with a surgical stitch in her cervix. It’s called a “cerclage”, and it’s highly recommended for women with an “incompetent cervix”.

So she’s been in pain, and had to deal with her six-year old and our two-year old mostly on her own. Which isn’t fair.

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So… other things have happened since either the virus or bacteria decided I had done something to their kind worth taking revenge for. Like, I started taking medication for hypertension.

This had been planned since just after the New Year, but I didn’t see my family doctor until last week. My blood pressure has been rising steadily since the summer, mostly because of a Lithium overdose caused by the introduction of insulin into my life.

During my time living with the ear infections my blood pressure actually got up to 174/110, which is considered normal for meth addicts. So now I take a 4mg tablet of Coversyl every morning.

Also, thanks to the six week overdose that started last August, my kidney functions are down to 37%, so I’ve been taken off the Glyburide and Metformin and put on a second insulin, something called Humalog, which I take with my meals. I also take Lantus, a time release insulin, every night.

Before the ear infections the two insulin types got my blood sugar numbers into the normal range for a prolonged period for longer than ever before. But the infections, plus the stress and lack of sleep, screwed all that up.

Because of the overdose, which was bizarrely caused by an interaction between the Lithium and the insulin, my Lithium intake has been almost halved. My psychiatrist wants to change to another mood stabilizer, something like Lamotrigine, but my family doctor doesn’t believe the Lithium is causing any damage, as long as it stays within the therapeutic levels.

I’d prefer not changing… if I stopped the Lithium I’d have to change the name of this blog, and I like it the way it is.

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Something else that happened while my ears were under attack was I turned forty-two. Growing up I didn’t realize the human body actually disintegrated so literally upon reaching the forties, but in the past two years I’ve had more things diagnosed wrong with me than in the previous ten.

Then again, most of the problems I’m having today could have been diagnosed and treated ten years ago.

Anyway, because my birthday happened during the first, and worst, week of the infections, there was no party.

Some friends had planed a dinner, so we’re going to try again for this weekend. If I don’t completely disintegrate before then.

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Other things I couldn’t hear while my ears were blocked: I couldn’t hear my cat, at all. Normally, when I’m getting into bed and she’s under the blankets, she makes a little “brrrr?” sound to let me know she’s there. I nearly crushed her a few times.

I couldn’t hear the car that almost crushed me over the weekend. I walked right out into the street. I heard it when he leaned on the horn though.

I couldn’t hear my stereo unless it was loud enough for people outside to also hear it… my girlfriend came over one night and told me she could hear my ‘Guitar Rock’ playlist from two blocks away.

I couldn’t hear people knocking at the door so, when my girlfriend came over with our son, the first I’d realize they were here was when my son would grab my leg. Which, if I was sleeping, would freak me out and start a panic attack.

I couldn’t hear the water falling from the roof as the snow melted.

But now I can. It can definitely get better, and clearer, but I can hear the important stuff now… like ‘Spirit In The Sky’ by Norman Greenbaum.

And like my son talking, which I couldn’t do unless he was yelling, so I recorded him talking last week so I could play it back louder on my computer… enjoy:

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Posted in Bipolar, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Diabetes, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Pregnancy | Tagged | 3 Comments

My ears are worse, I might be losing my mind, so here’s a video

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Gabriel...

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“For the past ten days I’ve been suffering through an ear infection. Both ears. Until just a few days ago they were both completely closed. For the most part, I’ve been deaf.
“The only things I’ve heard for the past ten days have been the sound of my pounding heart, and the kind of high-pitched brain feedback you might get after spending an evening standing beside the speakers at a particularly loud punk concert.
“At night, I’ve been waking up every thirty minutes in a panic, I’d have to run outside and take deep breaths of the cold air to calm down. My blood pressure has been extremely high, 154/100 last Thursday and 152/98 this past Monday. During the day I’d lose my balance when I was walking, when I sat at the computer or watched TV I’d get nauseous.”
‘Spending two weeks listening to my heart beating left me nearly insane’, Me, Feb. 08, 2012.

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I’ve had an ear infection for almost three weeks now. I’ve been mostly deaf in both ears, except for a loud, high pitched feedback-like sound, and the pounding beat of my heart. Last Wednesday I thought I was getting better. It’s possible I was. But on Saturday night everything went to shit.

I was at a seminar hosted by a local art gallery on the experiences of an elderly woman’s life with depression, and eventual diagnosis of ‘Bipolar Two’. Her talk was interesting mostly because the crowd of fifty-five people were women all over the age of 65, and most had lived their lives with untreated and undiagnosed depression.

When the speaker started her presentation I could hear her fairly clearly with my left ear. Two hours later, when her talk was over, I was sitting on the edge of my chair, and leaning so far forward I was almost kissing the neck of the woman in front of me. Any healing that had occurred in my ears over the previous days was gone.

That night, with my girlfriend and our two-year old son staying with me in my apartment, I woke up just after 2am feeling like I was hyperventilating and claustrophobic. I rushed outside onto the deck of my second storey apartment, and stood there for five minutes, in my boxers, breathing in the cold air and trying to calm down.

Roughly an hour later I woke up convinced I was having a heart attack. There was a heavy pressure on my chest, I could barely breathe, my left arm was numb and there was a sharp tingling in my shoulder area.

I frantically woke my girlfriend who, panicking, followed me into the living room asking what was wrong. She held me for a few minutes as I tried to catch my breath. Just holding me, rubbing my neck and face, seemed to make things better.

I managed, over the rest of the night, to catch sleep in twenty-minute intervals.

My mother agreed to take me to the ER on Sunday morning. The first thing the triage nurse does is take your blood pressure. Mine was 176/110, which is up from 156/100 last week, both of which are miles above the mostly normal I was at just before Christmas.

The ER doctor, my fourth in 2.5 weeks, told me the infection was now as bad in my left ear as it had been, and still was, in my right.

On January 28th, I was prescribed 500mgs of Teva-Amoxicillin, three times a day. But apparently, as an antibiotic, that shit’s about as effective as milk.

On February 1st, and again on the 9th, I was prescribed Ratio-Amoxicillin & Clavulanic Acid at 500mgs and 125mgs, three times a day, and Rhinocort Aqua spray at 64mcg once a day in each nostril. This is the stuff I got a little better on, then a lot worse on.

This past Sunday, February 12th, the ER doctor told me to increase the spray to twice a day, and put me on 500mg of Ratio-Cefuroxime, twice a day — the pharmacy was out of his first choice, which I can’t remember the name of.

The pharmacist told me things should start to clear up in two days. She was really cute, and overly optimistic. I’ve taken four doses of the new antibiotic and, as far as I can tell, nothing has changed from Sunday morning.

I did manage to get two hours of continuous sleep last night (Sunday), but I think that was entirely based on the pharmacists optimism. Or that she really seemed to be flirting with me. I spent most of today (Monday) in bed or sitting on the couch watching TV with the sound turned up to 100.

My girlfriend came over during “Young & The Restless”. She pounded on my door for a good five minutes before walking in, I heard nothing… but that could have been the TV’s fault.

I can hear people when they’re practically yelling at me. It’s like being in a crowded bar. Which I thought was the perfect analogy.

But then, late tonight, I saw an image of a man falling into a pool and a POV shot of him looking back up through the water at the people on the platform, and I realized what I’ve been feeling, especially at night, is a lot like drowning.

I see my family doctor, finally, on Wednesday morning. Something good better happen soon because, fuck, I can only drown for so long.

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The videos are the first and second episodes of the first season of “The Maxx”, my favourite animated series ever, and based on the comic book “The Maxx”, published by Image Comics from 1993 until 1998. If you live in the United States, you can watch full episodes at MTV.com. If you live elsewhere, MTV hates you and wishes you would just fucking die already.


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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Mental Health | 9 Comments

Spending two weeks listening to my heart beating left me nearly insane

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Gabriel...

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For the past ten days I’ve been suffering through an ear infection. Both ears. Until just a few days ago they were both completely closed. For the most part, I’ve been deaf.

The only things I’ve heard for the past ten days have been the sound of my pounding heart, and the kind of high-pitched brain feedback you might get after spending an evening standing beside the speakers at a particularly loud punk concert.

At night, I’ve been waking up every thirty minutes in a panic, I’d have to run outside and take deep breaths of the cold air to calm down. My blood pressure has been extremely high, 154/100 last Thursday and 152/98 this past Monday. During the day I’d lose my balance when I was walking, when I sat at the computer or watched TV I’d get nauseous.

But now, thanks to three trips to the ER, one clinic visit, non-stop antibiotics and a nasal cortisone spray, I have roughly 75% of my hearing back in my left ear, and 25% in my right ear.

It has easily been the worst week of my life. But I think I made it worse by insisting on being alone.

On January 25, I came down with a cough from an irritated throat. My girlfriend has a six-year old son in grade one, which is basically a Level Four bio-hazard facility, so when he got sick, and then my girlfriend got sick, it wasn’t unexpected that I’d get it next.

But, a few days later, the infection went from my throat and into my ears. On the weekend I felt a little groggy, and my ears were definitely closing, but on Sunday the sound started. At first it was just a little feedback. Annoying, but nothing too obnoxious.

By Sunday afternoon it was like lightning was being shot around in my head. The sound was intense and loud. I thought I was going crazy. This was what brought on the first trip to the ER. The sound mostly turned itself down, or at least went from a live wire through my brain to the sound you hear while walking past a transformer. Only inescapable and constant.

So, for the rest of the week, because I was worried I might be contagious, I tried to stay as far away from people as possible, especially from my 26-month old son.

Which may have been the worst thing I could have done because, from what I’ve learned over the past few days, the only thing worse than being trapped in your own head is being trapped in your own head while trapped in your own apartment with no stimulation or human contact.

I think that’s why my blood pressure got so insanely high, because I was having nearly constant panic attacks and there was no one to touch, or to touch me to bring me back to reality.

When I was alone, which was most of the week, I’d start to think the situation might be permanent, which is when I’d lose my breath and start feeling claustrophobic.

I visited my girlfriend on Thursday, after my second trip to the ER, after our son had gone to bed. I was sitting on her couch, trying to explain what was going on. I started getting a little panicked, but she started rubbing my shoulder and things just seemed to get better.

Over the weekend the antibiotics and cortisone spray kicked in and enough of the hearing in my left ear came back that it gave me some hope. But having a mixed level — some hearing in one ear, not so much in the other — actually seemed to make things a little worse. It’s like sound was reaching one eardrum a split second before the other, and it was making me feel ill.

The ER doctor, on Thursday, told me to get checked again on Monday, so after waiting in the ER for four hours on Monday afternoon, I ended up at a local clinic the family doctors in this region have every evening. I don’t know why, but I always forget about the clinic. If you have a family doctor in the area, you can use the clinic. The wait is generally less than an hour, and it’s first come, first served.

Both the ER and the clinic were filled with babies and kids with deep coughs and runny noses. I hate watching kids cry.

The clinic doctor told me my ears appeared to be getting better, but was worried about how long the infection has been holding on. It turns out, because of the diabetes, the longer this goes on, the better the chances for permanent damage to my ears.

I already have an appointment scheduled with my family doctor for next week, so he can look at my diabetes and kidney functions (down to 37%). I feel like the level of hearing I have now is the bare minimum to prevent any further panic attacks. But if the infection is still in there he’ll have to refer me to a specialist.

Thank Ankotarinja, the worst seems to be over.

I thought the way last year started — with me breaking a bone in my foot, but spending a month hobbling around before having it treated — was the most ridiculous start to any year of my life. Turns out it can always get dumber.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Diabetes, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health | Tagged | 6 Comments

New drugs a new baby and my girlfriend flips out and throws stuff

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Gabriel...

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My girlfriend flipped out tonight, she was completely out of control, she threw our baby’s highchair across the kitchen, she was swearing and yelling at her six-year old son, but mostly at me, and accusing me of keeping our two-year old away from her.

I had just arrived at her home, to pick up Victor so he could stay at my place because my girlfriend has been sick and also because Monday and Wednesday nights Victor normally stays with me to give her a break.

As my girlfriend and I were getting Victor dressed, he screamed. He had seen his older brother touching one of his books, and Victor gets very possessive sometimes. So he screamed for less than a second. My girlfriend told Victor’s brother to back away from the book. I told her everything was fine, lets just get Victor dressed.

Victor screamed again, my girlfriend reacted by getting angry at her older son. Without looking back she told him, sternly, to get away from the book. I looked over, and he had already backed away. I told her again everything was fine, that Victor was just acting out, and that I could put Victor’s mittens on by myself.

Then she flipped out.

She immediately insisted her oldest go straight to his room, and straight to bed. Again, I tried to tell her everything was fine, that her oldest hadn’t done anything. And that’s when the swearing and yelling started. In less than ten seconds she must have said “fuck” twenty times. She was mostly yelling at me, but not about me. It was about how I didn’t understand what she was going through, about how people criticized her over how she was raising her oldest son.

About how people were blaming her over his behavioural problems. I tried to tell her her oldest had done nothing wrong, and that she was using profanity, and screaming right in front of him, and then it became about me. But about things I’ve never done. Like try to keep her away from our son.

I told her I was going to leave with Victor, and maybe he should stay with me for Tuesday (which had been an option before the freak out), and she escalated to the point where she was daring me to take both boys home with me.

After her oldest had run into his room, she locked herself in the bathroom for a few moments. Then she came roaring out, brushed by the highchair, turned, picked it up and tossed it across the kitchen where it slammed into the wall.

Which freaked me out, so I threw a mostly empty plastic Pepsi bottle I had in my hand across the hall and started yelling back. I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Why was she verbally attacking me? Why was she verbally attacking her son? Who was telling her I wanted to keep her away from Victor? What the fuck was going on?

Her answer: when I had told her “everything is fine”, after she told her oldest to leave the book alone, I was questioning her authority as a parent, and criticizing her parenting skills.

She told me I had been avoiding her, not being close enough to her. But she, her oldest and Victor, had been with me overnight just this past Friday night, Saturday morning, overnight Saturday night and Sunday morning. Victor was with her and his brother all day Sunday, while I worked in my apartment, then Victor was with me Sunday night, Monday during the day, then with her for two hours Monday night, and now he’s here with me tonight.

When I tried to tell her I had no intention of ever keeping her away from Victor, she told me no one understands what she’s going through.

I had to leave. I tried to leave, but she kept accusing me of things. Mostly the same things. I kept trying to defend myself, and finally I just took Victor and walked away.

I’m still shaken up by what went on. I don’t react well when people suddenly start yelling at me. I was yelling back, but not making any threats or throwing insults (I do regret throwing the bottle, but in my defence it was not at her, or near her), again, I was just trying to figure out what was going on.

It’s irrational, outrageous, but not completely unexpected. In total the episode lasted a very long five minutes.

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My girlfriend is three months into our second high risk pregnancy, and she’s had a couple of scares over the past ten days — some bleeding, an ER visit and some watery discharge.

And I have been a little distant over the past two weeks, because I’ve been dealing with my own health scare which may or may not be real.

I think some of it had to do with my being only able to stay long enough to pick up Victor and go. I think she had expected me to stay with her for the evening. But I couldn’t. I had eaten dinner with my mother, and forgot to take my new insulin prescription with me. So I felt like I had to rush home to take it.

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As of last week I’m now on a second type of insulin. In addition to the slow release “Lantus” I’ve been taking at night, for the past few months, I’ve recently been prescribed “Humalog”, which I must take three times a day, ten minutes before I eat.

I’m taking the Humalog because a blood test I took in after my Lithium / insulin overdose last September showed my kidney functions are down to 37% of where they’re supposed to be. I just got the results two weeks ago. Which has freaked me out. But, according to my diabetes nurse, this was expected.

Nobody told me this, but a blood test last year showed my kidneys had slowed over several years to 42% efficiency. Allowing type-2 diabetes to go untreated for fifteen years will do that.

So the drop wasn’t unexpected, it was even in my file that if there was a drop I was to be taken off the Glyburide and put on the second insulin right away. But no one told me that either. So, until I could see my diabetes nurse, I panicked. I also became a little more self-absorbed than usual, a little more distant from my girlfriend than usual. Maybe a little more impatient.

But again, in my defence, I spent two weeks looking at my son and thinking “not only am I not going to see you graduate, I’m not going to see you potty trained”.

But apparently the second insulin, along with some blood pressure pills, will keep me going for a while longer. My blood sugar numbers have been entirely normal since I started taking the second needles — which is leaving me tired and a little irritable, so there’s that as well.

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The pregnancy was mostly expected. It’s something my girlfriend and I had been discussing almost since we found out she was pregnant with Victor. We both wanted another, she wanted to try again sooner than I did. I would have preferred to wait another few years, to let her body heal and to find out how I could be as a father.

But she made the point of wanting to have her third child while she was still young. She’s thirty-four now. When ‘New One’ is ready for school my girlfriend will be thirty-eight (ish), and still young enough for school and / or a career.

So the due date is the first week of August.

And it is another “high risk pregnancy”, with all the unexpected hospital visits and surgical procedures and pain that goes along with it.

I am not exaggerating when I say her pregnancy with Victor pushed me, and her, very close to our physical and mental limits.

I made sure, during the summer, to repeat that over and over again. To make sure this was what she wanted, that she had to remember what had happened, to understand what was going to happen, and to be willing to go through it all again.

To be honest, when she did tell me in November that she was pregnant, I thought we were still kind of in the planning stage. She told me back in September-ish she had stopped using protection, but I was just coming down from a six week Lithium overdose where it made sense to me to stab myself 30+ times with a needle and give myself a third degree burn on my arm.

I wasn’t in a healthy state of mind.

I have, however, already come up with the coolest middle name ever.

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Now I have to figure out where we stand after tonight.

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…I called my girlfriend as I was finishing this, and we talked for a few minutes. The call ended with us telling the other that we love them. So that’s good.

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Posted in Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, CSG, Diabetes, Health, Intervention, Little Victor, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Mental Health, Pregnancy | 9 Comments

Tis the season for the reason

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Gabriel...

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“Despite a commonly held myth that the Christmas season has the highest suicide rate of all the seasons, studies have proven that across North America, suicide rates are actually lower at that time of year. Studies suggest that while the holidays can bring up some very difficult emotions, they also tend to evoke feelings of familial bonds and these feelings may act as a buffer against suicide.”
The Canadian Mental Health Association

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“Dear George; Remember: No man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love, Clarence.”
It’s A Wonderful Life (b/w 1946)

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In a few hours I will wake up, drink a lot of orange juice, take my medications, turn on the TV, sit down and start to wrap the presents I bought yesterday.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so uninterested in Christmas. Maybe it’s age. Honestly, at the moment, I just want anyone interested in giving me a gift this year to just mail me a cheque.

This evening my girlfriend and I finalized the plans for the next four days. Her oldest son will be with his father for the afternoon of the 24th, plus one hour in the evening. In between those visits he’ll be with us for Christmas dinner.

Christmas morning we all have breakfast together and open gifts, then it’s off to my girlfriend’s parents for lunch and gifts for the kids. Christmas Eve the ex-husband takes his son for their dinner, while me, my girlfriend and our son, go to my parents for dinner.

Which will be the first time in almost two years that my son and my grandmother will be in the same room — it’s a long story, basically she’s evil and I don’t want her stink on my son.

There’s a big part of me that feels as though I’m caving in, that I’m going to allow my grandmother off the hook for the stupid, ignorant and malicious things she said — and still believes.

But, even if it was the right thing to do, boycotting last years Christmas, staying away from my family altogether, felt like a kick to the stomach.

I’m still not sure we’ll be going to dinner with my parents. I’ve told everyone “maybe”.

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YouTube Alert.

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I don’t know. My grandmother is sick and getting sicker. She’ll be ninety in a few weeks. She’s been abusive her entire life, and gotten away with it because no one was willing to stand up to her. At least not for long. My mother, after she found out my grandmother hit me, kept my brother and I away from her for a entire year.

My grandfather has spent years trying to distance himself from her. Finally, after 60+ years of marriage, he managed to convince her it’d be better to have separate rooms in the retirement home they live in.

Anyway. My grandmother was never very interested in Christmas either. When I was a kid, my father, who was a true believer in communism… it’s not that Christmas wasn’t allowed, or that he didn’t allow us all to celebrate Christmas, it’s that it wasn’t even considered.

After my mother escaped with us, Christmas — as a gift receiving experience — became a reality for my brother and I when I was eight-ish. But my grandmother — who grew up during, and in the middle of, the absolute worst parts of The Depression — never seemed to take it seriously.

It was always a family joke, my grandmother would wrap he gifts in a plastic bag with some masking tape, then make sure the price tag or receipt was in the bag.

I’m not, in any way, saying that was abusive. Just that it was like a constant drip from a tap you can’t fix. Everyone else taking the moment so seriously, wrapping everything, handing a gift solemnly to a loved one, and there’s someone in the back, smiling because they know it’s just bullshit. And here’s your socks wrapped in a grocery bag.

So I’m not sure how whatever Christmas spirit I’ve had has lasted this long.

A few years after we left him, my father settled down again and had two girls. With them Christmas was a reality. Christmas and birthdays, something else we missed out on, were always celebrated. Maybe not as a religious event, his common-law wife was one of the original Earth Momma’s, but they did all of the secular traditions — a tree, decorations, a supper, the gifts, the cards.

When we were finally on our own, my mother went through hoops like an acrobat (no alimony, no child support) to make sure my brother and I had presents under the tree. We usually spent Christmas with her parents, on my grandfathers hobby farm or, later at his cottage. But we usually had a little “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree in the living room, with some decorations and lights, in our home.

When I was eighteen we moved in with my mothers boyfriend, and his two young children. He has always been a Christmas maniac. Lots of gifts for everyone, a massive tree, games, lots of lights and decorations inside and out, huge meals and an annual street-hockey game with kids from around the neighbourhood.

It was pure culture shock. And I was right at that perfect age where anything new, everything better, was a reason to start a revolution. Christmas at home became something to resist.

…which is a common theme running through all of my Christmases. Resistance. I’ve always resisted the ‘group hug’ aspect to Christmas. I’ve always felt drawn to it all, but disappointed when I finally got there. Or something.

Thankfully this shit only happens once a year.

Now I get to have a few hours sleep before I help perpetuate the illusion that there are supernatural beings who watch our every move and judge us to be good or bad and worthy or unworthy of grocery bags full of socks, to a six-year old.

…speaking of which, I do use wrapping paper now. I went a long time wrapping gifts in newspapers, but after a few years I started to notice similarities between newspaper as a wrapping tool, and plastic bags. Kind of like I had become the person in the back of the room trying to show everyone it was a waste of time. Or something.

So… Merry Christmas. I hope you’ve got a reason for the season. Really.

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Posted in Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Christmas, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Poverty, YouTube | 9 Comments