Bliss

I wonder if it is my new drug. I took a drug once long ago to relax me, and my doctor said it would take 6 weeks to become active. It’s been about that long since I’ve been taking my new psychiatric medication, so that may be why I was bursting with happiness yesterday. Or it could have been the unseasonably warm temperature that was making me feel positively giddy all afternoon. It could also have been due to another lovely email from CAYA about the technical writing I did for them. They have invited me to accept a credit on the instruction sheet three times, but I told them that technical writers don’t do that.

I feel very proud and lucky to be aware of being so happy. I feel blessed to be actively, consciously, and spontaneously happy. I’m an optimist, too; optimism may often go with positivism. For me, it comes from nature. One of my earliest memories is of making teeny bouquets of tiny blossoms, binding them with tall grasses, and giving them to women in my neighbourhood. I was four. And when we left our home later that year, I was offered a bribe to be happy about the move. My father asked me what I wanted as a house warming gift, and I chose a Double Flowering Almond tree.

Being in nature, on the trails, in the forest that borders my yard, on our beaches and on the sandstone sculptural plateaus of our waterfront, I feel part of something bigger. I feel connected to my planet and the cosmos. Nature is my church.

When I was in college creative writing course, the hardest papers to write were papers on a topic of our own choice. For one such assignment, when I saw our neighbours taking down a favourite tree, I ran over to their yard and measured all the pieces of the tree—their length and girth—as they were stripped of life. I counted rings, and the number of main branches. And I took my measurements to the forestry faculty and found people to help me estimate the volume of wood and the age of the tree. I also got, with their help, an idea of the volume of water it took to grow the tree.

There’s another potential reason for my bliss: it could also be due to the revelations of insight and nomenclature that have come to me from because of my breakdown.  Although it has been a pretty challenging 8 years since it came on, and even though I’ve had to face some harsh facts about my past, I understand myself and that has been a healing experience. Understanding my symptoms are the result of neglect, and that neglect is so heinous a form of abuse, makes sense to me, whereas telling me I have FND meant nothing to me or to anyone I knew. 

The FND experience has kind of ‘flattened’ me. I think that’s why I can now watch movies without crying or jerking or seizing. I don’t feel calm, I feel flat. It could be the drugs. Or it could it be what happens when, on the one hand, I’ve had an epiphany about who I am, which is a significant achievement, and, on the other hand, I’ve had to face the horror of my backstory.

Regardless, although it was a damp and overcast Winter day yesterday, I felt as good as a Summer day on a beach. All these days that yield nothing to write about, are healing days. I have no symptoms. I can even go to the grocery and “pass,” as long as no one tries to engage me in conversation. I can quip with my friend, Bernadette, at the grocery store, and feel ‘normal.’

Finally, my bliss could be because all the snow is gone. When I looked out over the backyard yesterday afternoon, I liked what I saw. In its deadest of deads, my backyard and its gardens looked good. And my front yard, where I tried twice, with soil and seed, to grow grass and failed, looks really good right now with its mosses and teeny weeds yielding a lovely green and natural cover.

God, I’m happy. It must be the drugs.

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The last thing that would ever happen to me was going to be, going to a psychiatrist. I thought going to one was a sign of weakness or failure. My fear was based on how I saw psychiatry portrayed on television and in movies. More than that, though, I felt fine!

When I was a young teacher, I went to a school party in the home of a senior student. Well into the event, I came upon a young teenager doing terrible harm to herself in the host’s garage. The girl was the niece of the host. I went to fetch the host for help, but he dismissed me and the urgency of my concern, telling me that she was going through something that she would have to work things out for herself.

When I was with Steve, we offered our home and services to a friend who lived in a small apartment. She wanted to have a party, so we offered our home, and we did all the cooking and baking for the party. At the end of the party, our friend, her best friend and her best friend’s husband were all who remained; at that point, Steve and I joined the party.

Our friend’s best friend had a full leg cast on one leg, and she walked with crutches. It was Winter and there was ice on the patio that linked out house to the garden path. When it was determined that it was time for everyone to leave, the husband got up, fetched his coat and left. I was horrified. I got the wife her coat, fetched her crutches, helped her up, and walked her to the car.

Both the “she’s just working it out” man, and the “I’ll go warm-up the car” man, were psychiatrists. That cemented by mistrust of the psychiatric profession. And then I met Dr. Shoja, and what a trip we’ve had together.

In the movies, the psychiatrists do all the heavy lifting for oblivious patients. That is the opposite of my experience. Dr. S. gives me a woman of exceptional education and an ideal understanding of her role as a mentor to talk to. I trust and value the safe and knowledgeable partnership she offers me on my path to understanding and acceptance. 

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Late last night, something wonderful happened. I’ll write about it here tomorrow.