Crying Wolf

A friend has said the way I have lived the last four years is to kick the can down the road dealing with whatever only when the road ends and whatever absolutely needs to be addressed. She’s not wrong. The multiple warning lights illuminated on my car dashboard? I realize at some point my car is going to stop working. The hole in my kitchen ceiling caused by a leak from the upstairs bathroom? At some point that needs to get fixed. The accumulation of empty boxes in my basement? Yes they need to be recycled. The parts of my yard covered in weeds? They drive me nuts but not enough to do anything about it. My garage badly in need of painting? I’m sure the neighbors are well aware every time they drive by. The road I’m on feels eerily close to its end.

Living moment to moment in unrelenting anguish, it is hard to think about the future or something that needs to get done next week. An excuse for sure but a darn painful one to hide behind.

I was vertically resting in the leather recliner underneath my cat blanket in the small treatment room in Vadnais Heights recuperating from the latest Ketamine treatment. I was fully coherent when the latest panic attack hit and hit with a vengeance. I was gulping for air, sweating profusely and could feel my heart racing. The device they place on me to monitor my heart and blood pressure during the treatments wasn’t working but I knew my heart was pounding hard. Eventually the nurse attendant entered the room to remove the IV needle from my arm. I told her I was having a bad panic attack and she went and got the nurse. I told them I didn’t think it was related to the treatment, that the attacks have been happening more and more and with more and more intensity. Once I feel one coming on, it’s almost made worse in knowing how long and how severe the others have been. The nurse attendant (who’s told me she loves how I dress… cat clothes), who has an impressive snake tattoo on her forearm, and who has helped in many of my treatments, asked if I’d like someone to stay with me. I said yes so she asked me about my cats. She said she understood how bad panic attacks can be, having suffered several in her life. After a few moments of silence she asked if music would help. I said yes. She said when she gets panic attacks sugar sometime helps so she asked if I’d like a Life Saver. That seemed aptly appropriate so she left to grab an iPhone and a variety of Life Savers. I chose jazz music and a cherry flavored Life Saver. She said for what it was worth, she appreciated my personality and that I seemed like a really nice person. 

The nurse returned and having discussed all this with the other nurse handling my case and the onsite psychiatrist who I met with for the first time before my treatment given how things have gone the past few days, and they decided to increase the frequency of my treatments. I said yes, but I don’t know. I’m in an even darker place now than when I started the treatments again. But that likely would have been the case had I not tried. The real ‘cure’ has to come from within, it always has. But I no longer trust my within to figure this out since it hasn’t been able to for the past four years (and beyond). The only reoccurring thought that has bubbled to the surface during all my treatments has been the necessity, the importance of publishing my memoir. So I’ve restarted that process again. 

I sat in the treatment room for over an hour trying to catch my breath and thinking I should be around people for as long as I could knowing my cats are spending less time with me in the hot weather. I buzzed the kind nurse attendant that I was ready to leave. She walked me down to my Lyft ride home. I thanked her for the Life Saver.

Best Case/Worst Case and Something In Between

Life is about telling ourselves stories; the story that defines our day to day life; the story of who we think we are, who we think we were, who we think we want to be. But all these are our own stories. They may not reflect a reality that anyone else sees. I wrote a memoir about the stories of my life. But it is written through my eyes only. Did anyone I wrote about, lived with, breathed with see any of the story the same way?

Here’s a story I’ve told myself over the years and totally believed in. That I suffered a severe mental health crisis my senior year of college and the year after my graduation that led to being hospitalized for depression. I was desperate to feel better. I listened to my friends, family and medical providers. But nothing was working. I felt worse and worse. Then it dawned on me the only way to get better was to find my inner voice again. Listen to it. So I decided I was going to write my masterpiece or die trying. It started with collecting up my best writing thus far if there’s anything worthwhile a grade school, teenager, college writing wannabe could write that was worth sharing. By collecting my best of best writing I saw there were common themes I wrote about throughout my life. I was freed by a thought that came out of the depression fog and I wrote something about the difference between fiction and nonfiction doesn’t exist. Again, we all tell ourselves the stories we live by viewed by our own lenses. This line freed me to write my story in a fictional way. And the previously blocked writing came flowing out. I was obsessed with writing my story in the form of the novel. 

The novel echoed the story of the movie ‘Amadeus.’ The narrator was a wannabe writer in awe of his friend’s writing ability, knowing he himself was somewhat of a hack. But the narrator was equally frustrated by his friend wasting his talents, wallowing in his own self pitying depression. My novel was inspired by a Bob Dylan quote about Dylan’s ‘Blood on the Tracks’ LP something about trying to write in the past, present and future at the same time and writing songs like a painting, where you can look at the whole or individual pieces of the canvass. Bob set a high bar for someone who’d never written a novel before. And I failed. Bit off more than I could chew. But in the end I wrote myself out of my depression by listening to my own voice again. I healed myself. Or that was the story I’ve told myself.

A dozen or so years later the crippling depression returned with a vengeance. With a vengeance indeed. I hadn’t healed myself and it was fiction, a foolish belief, to think I figured out how to do that. Granted there were a couple of life altering things that occurred during the dozen or so years; my closest ally, my Mom died. My biggest life lesson sharer, my first cat Mr. Max, died a short time after. I was lost again even though I was now in the middle of a proud of what I was doing career. An employee assistance program counselor committed to calling me every day to check in on my suicidal ideation level. Most days on the brink of the abyss but I knew I couldn’t leave Mr. Max’s successors, Diego-San, Thompson, and Theo, on their own. Yes, it took three cats to replace Mr. Max in my heart. I leaned on those call in check ins, but knew they would soon end because of the way insurance works. This latest crisis resource found me an insurance covered therapist, one who specialized in existentialism, a condition the fill in therapist diagnosed. So I reluctantly transferred my care.

I don’t want to end it this way. This? My career (clearly failing for the first time in my most important opportunity) and or/my life. I gave up in 2020, hoping I’d somehow just naturally die from sadness and everything. So I gave up on so many things. My love of music constantly listening to, going to concerts, creating my own…. (guitar and piano) was gone; my softball career that in a way began when I was nine years old; the love of my running, always faster than most; my attempts at being social, going out with friends, movies, and life… I haven’t found a way to continue any of those things since 2020. That’s on me. I marvel that everyone else figured out how to resume life after a year and a half being forced not being allowed to.

I’m now on a second medical leave from my job during an obviously critical time of my job. It’s accelerating my decline. I’m letting my team, my state, my country down by failing. It’s a heavy burden to deal with. I’m barely functioning on a day to day level… so many days trying to blot things out in bed, or with my head on my hands on my desk when I’m being paid to do my job. Finally identifiable panic attacks that have been happening for weeks. Accelerated by my acceptance of antidepressant medication that I once resisted? This sucks. Desperation and anguish aren’t sustainable states of mind. But that’s where I am, where I’ve been for so long now. 

The best me? I leave my job with some accolades, and publish my memoir that is successful in that people read it and relate and understand its message. That gives my life its ultimate meaning. Sharing my story is my destiny. I’m called upon to appear at events and podcasts to elaborate. 

The worst me? I can’t return to work which likely means being institutionalized losing my current housemates, three great cats, Alias, Norma and Kenta. They end up getting split up because who will take in a trio of cats? And that breaks my heart giving living most moments of the three of them I brought together. I lose my house that’s in a concerning state of disrepair.  My finances are sketchy. Will I outlive what I’ve been able to save vs. the ongoing debts incurred? Stressing me out trying to figure it all out. 

The middle most realistic case? I leave my job, publish my memoir, and it generates some interest. I find another job that helps me ease into retirement a couple of years from now. I fully appreciate my current trio of cats, so wonderful now and more wonderful going forward. 

I’m ‘dealing’ with a depression level that is exponentially worse than anything I’ve felt before. I’ve lived in a desperate, anguished state of mind and heart for a year and a half. It’s all too much. I can’t tell my story it’s been bureaucratically ruled. This time around I actually wrote something publishable that I’m extremely proud that I finished. Or haven’t been able to finish. It has sent me reeling in ways no one seems to understand. Just change your story in a slight way some suggested. Just remove parts of my message. NO! The threads are carefully and intricately woven. This isn’t about my status or making money from that status. This is about finding the meaning to authenticity, honestly and willingly share my soul. That’s not ever an easy thing to do. I didn’t write what I wrote without a lot of thought about what matters. Can I deal with not coming across in a certainly critical manner? I’ve exposed my most awful flaws knowing that was the most important message to what I’ve written…. Being a human being is all about being human.

The state of the world has also been critical in my need to exist. I confess it indeed is accelerating the state of my mental health. The insane attacks against my profession truly took a toll. I spent my career trying to make sure our elections were the best in the country. To be attacked in general, and in person has been too much to endure. I lost my passion for this work January 6, 2021. Climate change? Last summer it was dangerous to go outside and breathe because the world was burning. Political division? finding common ground? It’s crazy how both sides are believing in different realities. Yet we’re supposed to go along with our day to day lives and ignore our existential thoughts and feelings about the world burning around us? I don’t know how to do that. Too weak. Never have. I’m frozen in life, especially since 2020, disconnected from any connection that isn’t related to the feline housemates who give me a reason to feel something and to exist. And it furthers what makes me feel worse and worse every day. I’ve lost all connection with human beings and my failed attempt to turn that around by reaching out to others hasn’t made me feel any better and not feeling any better disconnects me more and more.  I’m critically disconnected. Thanks 2020!

I leaned on the medical professionals to help me way back when. And when I determined they weren’t, I turned inward and found a way forward. It’s dawned on me so late that this time around has even been worse. 988 the suicide hotline gave up on me. It didn’t occur to me until too late that the daily panic attacks over the past year were exacerbated by, if not rooted by my prescription antidepressants. Talk help with a bevy of mental health providers (what does it mean when multiple therapists quit on you?) has been only limiting and hopelessly damaging. All those years ago I had a support system of family and friends. Now days I don’t. I have recently reached out and gone out with important people in my life who expressed concern about the red alert crisis of my life. All those years ago I had people around me every day. Now days I don’t. Social media connections aren’t exactly helpful Anguish, despair, hour to hour, crisis existence. I don’t know how to deal and yet express how dark every moment has become and even harder to endure. I’m still around, mostly for my housemates and for seeing my memoir through publication but how do I find a meaningful existence to believe in?

I need to figure out a middle ground between the best case/worst case scenarios that are both feeling too fictional and rooted in the financial, something not worth continuing on for.

What’ll I Do?

I’m seated reclined in a faux leather recliner in a small room with a wood and glass door in a location 20 minutes from my home. The glass is treated to not let anyone to see in or out but to let the light in. I’m winding down from the latest Ketamine treatment, fully aware of my surroundings. I feel frail and old, just like I saw my Dad during the last medical appointments I accompanied him to. I’m in darkness except for the muted light coming in from the door and a lamp that is displaying different color dots of light moving around like the night stars on amphetamines. Ambient music is playing from an Alexa on a table near the chair. Like the most recent Ketamine treatments I never fully dissociated from the pain. And I was ruminating that this was the latest unsolvable problem. I agreed to these latest treatments just to get out of my head for a few moments. I didn’t really believe they’d cure me or even provide a route out of the unrelenting despair for just a few moments. 

The room is in a two story suburban mostly vacant office building that houses a title company a dermatologist office and a reality company. The visit began thankfully being driven to the building by first some friends but now by a Lyft driver. I’m not allowed to drive myself home. I check in with the front desk person after having filled out some online forms earlier in the day. Two of the three are standard psychological evaluation forms I’ve filled out many times during my past 28 years. Those two ask questions about my functionality. Am I having difficulty concentrating? With my sleep? With my appetite? Am I suicidal. My scores are maximum, confirming yes indeed day to day life has become unbearable. The third form confirms that if I try and drive myself home I will forgo any further treatments. Guessing that one is included for liability purposes. The front desk person asks if I’ve completed the forms and asks who is driving me home.

I take a seat in a small waiting area. Usually there are others there waiting as well. My friend who drove me to some appointments says there are a lot of people coming in for treatments. I share that is not a good sign. There are too many people still suffering in this post-apocalyptic world. Eventually I’m led to the room with the faux leather chair and Alexa and starlight lamp. The person leading me back to the room varies, but they are all very nice asking me about my day and week. They strap a device on my wrist with two finger attachments to monitor my blood pressure and heart rate. They leave the room and wish me a good infusion. Next a nurse enters along with usually another staff person. The nurse questions me about my how the previous treatments have gone and my current suicidal ideation level. Bad news with both. The nurse asks me about the dosage of my treatment. Do I want to increase or decrease? I don’t know. We agree to the Ketamine amount for this session. The nurse leaves as the other staff person inserts an IV into one of the veins in my arm. They turn off the lights and leave the room wishing me a good infusion. I tell Alexa to play some ambient music as I put a blanket I brought with me that has cartoon cats on it and cover my eyes with a blindfold. 

The Ketamine eventually kicks in, lessening the pain of my day to day existence, but I never fully disassociate from ‘reality.’ I always know that I’m sitting in a chair under a cat blanket listening to ambient music on an Alexa. Worrying about the Lyft ride home. I again recognize I feel as frail as Dad looked and wondered if he was cognizant enough to feel how alone he felt in his journey and knowing how minimally effective most medical treatments end up being. They can prolong life but is the quality of the remaining life worth even the effort it takes to get out of bed? Is there any hope left? Is it false hope?

One of the more insightful feelings from the treatments is there is a definite connection between my first serious breakdown in 1987 and this one. The connective tissue is my writing. In 1987 I suffered from my first writer’s block. I couldn’t write because it was too painful. This time around I wrote about my life of writing and depression in a result I’m very proud of that explains the connection between writing, feeling and thinking… I was able to write my novel with the first line of a writer finally figuring it out that the difference between fiction and non-fiction doesn’t exist, doesn’t in the end, matter. It was a freeing revelation insight that led to a 300 page unpublished novel, until now, my greatest accomplishment by far ever. All writing is fiction obviously told from a singular point of view. Many wounds and up and downs later, a dozen year puzzle of a memoir was written during this most recent devastingly sad time when there are political and day to day (I see constantly riding our light rail) differing versions of reality that have grown since 2020. 

Different realities, desperately clinging on to the familiar. Ketamine and writing. The core of my memoir is about being as authentic as I can be. Telling my life story in the most authentic way. I’m reminded of the Imgmar Bergman film ‘Persona” where halfway through the movie there is an apparent technical break in the film and when it resumes, reality is different. 

The staff have advised me to think about positive affirmations during the Ketamine journey. And I try my best. The most effective are reminding myself my heart and my ability to love remains because of living with the three latest great cats who mean the world to me. What will happen if I’m no longer around and they hopefully have a dozen or more years to live? I don’t want them separated but who is going to take in three cats? These thoughts are included in my memoir from a previous time and specific encounter with cat lover who tragically did take her life and leave her cats behind after sharing with me how much they meant to her.

The nurse after learning I write after the Ketamine sessions urged me to focus on writing about what life looks like without depression. This had been suggested by other healthcare practitioners during the past four years of trying to figure things out. Trouble is, and has been, I can’t picture that life. Publishing my memoir, having others read and like it, promoting it and being given speaking opportunities about its message are part of that vision. But the dark side of the vision is no one cares or reads the memoir or those that do don’t like it. I don’t exactly come off as the most likable person ever. I expose my many flaws hoping readers will respect the ‘courage’ and the overarching essential message about living in this world is to realize all of us are flawed and that is the essential lesson in understanding the most human being lesson we can learn. 

What else? I’m living with two four year old cats from the same litter that bonded from the start and a two year old soft and cuddly guy who has aggressively found his way with the other two and me, in an inspirational way. I desperately want to see their lifelong journeys together. Maybe I get hired as a Walmart greeter to support my debt and expenses and live a much less stressful existence. Maybe that lessons the pain and insanity of the past four years (and beyond)? I don’t know if that is a vision that works. 

Depression has always been my Achilles heel, my biggest weak spot that has always strategically known the precise way to shred me to unsolvable jigsaw pieces, destroying any sustainable livable years. The fear with agreeing to another round of Ketamine treatments and taking time off from work was what if it didn’t work? What if I didn’t feel just a little bit better figure out a way to think more positively? Well here I am. What is next?

Declaration of Distress

Last winter, I was standing on the platform waiting for the light rail to arrive. There were only a handful of us waiting for the train on either side of the tracks. A woman at the far end of the side I was on began walking toward me. I was standing about in the middle of the platform. When she got close, I knew she was going to ask one of two questions: “can you spare some change?” Or “do you have a cigarette?” She was in her mid-30’s wearing a ragged winter coat and sweatpants. “Do you have a dollar or two to spare?” She asked me. I told her I no longer carried any cash on me. I didn’t want to offer I have a Venmo account. She thanked me and instead of walking up the tracks to the next person, she stopped and stood right next to me. “You have a nice face,” she said to me. I thanked her for her kind words. We stood in silence for a few minutes and then she asked, “Are you OK?” I don’t think anyone had asked me that since the pandemic. “Been a rough few years,” I offered up. She agreed. I thanked her for her kindness not remembering the last time I shared such a true human moment. Eventually she made her way to the other side of the tracks and engaged with another weary looking soul. 

Months later I was in the darkest place ever. Most days, most moments I was in absolute unrelenting emotional anguish unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, gasping for some relief. I understood the individual responsibility of showing up at work everyday. Work was the only thing giving my life structure. Had it not been for my job and knowing I owed it to my cats to feed them, clean their litter boxes and snuggle when offered, there was nothing else getting me out of bed other than somehow forcing myself to leave the house and ride the light rail to Twins and Timberwolves games. The unanswered question was how I could continue in a job that was killing me and any hope of ever getting better?

I started suffering from my latest bout of depression around a dozen years ago. It was major, making day to day life difficult. I found a therapist who finally diagnosed me with something that made sense, “existential angst.” I’m obsessed with finding the meaning of everything and when I discover most things don’t have much meaning, I suffer angst. This got exponentially worse during and since the pandemic. The passion I felt from my career work evaporated quickly as my skills noticeably declined to the point of attending most meetings and feeling like my soul was leaving my body. How did things get so dire so quickly(?). 

I read about the ‘Say Hey Kid,’ Willie Mays still one of the greatest baseball players ever before I ever saw him play. The first time I saw him was during my first season as a baseball fan (thanks Mom!) when during the post-season he played centerfield for the Mets despite his inability to throw the ball. So every fly ball out, or hit to centerfield meant one of the corner outfielders racing over to get a short flip from Willie to return the ball back to the infield. His place in the lineup was more ceremonial and honoring than actually who might be on the bench and a better option for success. 

During this same time, my favorite Viking of all time, Fran Tarkenton was leading the Vikings to three Super Bowls (all lost) in route to a hall of fame career. The only QB that had better statistics was Johnny Unitas, who Mom pointed out was another who hung on too long, hurting his team and his legacy. And that’s exactly how I’m feeling now. Absolute anguish every day almost every moment I don’t have something, anything, to distract my mind.

I do wonder how I would feel about all this if given another terminal diagnosis with a disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s? Would others understand this challenge differently? They give us drugs and therapy and experimental treatments for depression. Is it any less a disease than something physical? Mind over matter? Just suck it up? Stop dwelling, stop indulgently feeling sorry for myself. I lived a privileged life. I really don’t know. Depression for me is about feeling sorry for myself, listening too much to my negative voice/thoughts. But I’ve suffered from vastly different depression in my life. 

My existential angst picked therapist told me he didn’t believe in a broken human being. Didn’t believe someone, anyone, couldn’t heal. And here I am years later. I point to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Cracked Up’ essays.’  Depression is like a cracked vase, put together again yet the cracks remain, or suffering from a skin wound where the remaining skin struggles to heal the wound. 

I’m taking the most substantial time off from work since I was hospitalized in the spring of 1988. It’s an act of desperation. . Self sufficiency has long been my mode. What happens when you discover only much too late, that’s an arrogant and selfish point of view? What do you do when your last ditch effort to merely find a way to exist miserably fails? Ketamine? An escape from reality or the reality you believe in even when others’ don’t. 

It’s definitely pride versus reality.

The one clear thing that emerged during the five Ketamine treatments is I need to publish my memoir. It’s killing me to have it done, being ready for over a year to share my story into the universe, only to have someone else tell me I can’t publish it. That decision sent me into a tailspin that gets worse every day. I’m very proud of what I’ve written. it took me over a dozen years to write, but in the end it accurately captures my lifelong struggle with depression, and tells that struggle in a very human way. To turn the pain into something expressed in an artistic manner is my proudest achievement. 

I haven’t written anything since completing the memoir over a year ago. And most of the year before that was spent re-writing bits of the story. Writing is core to my emotional well being and who I am and I didn’t realize until far too late how much I’ve suffered without it. I was hospitalized years ago because for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find a way to write. After being treated medically for depression I eventually found my way out by writing an unpublished  novel. I rediscovered my voice. The irony of this even darker depression isn’t lost on me. I’ve written the closest thing to my masterpiece that I ever will, it’s ready to be published, and now it’s drifting down the river away from me. 

I don’t at all understand why someone I never met decided my memoir violates the state’s code of ethics because I’m gaining personally from my professional position. I started writing my memoir in 2012 long before I was appointed the State’s Director of Elections. One out of the six chapters is about elections and that chapter almost entirely is about my career in elections before my current position. I never expected to make money off writing a memoir. Indeed it’s quite possible I will lose money since I hired a company to edit, help publish and market my book. This was never about money. It was trying to write the story of my life in an entertaining and artful way. Finally finding a way to tell my story.  It’s always been most important to me to write a publishable book. it’s never been remotely important to me to profit off it in any way other than making the universe just a little more kind. The people who made the devastating decision haven’t even read the book. I shared the elections chapter with a couple of them. The only person I’ve shared all this with doesn’t understand why I’m such a rule follower. Why don’t I just stop abiding by the rules that are ridiculous and make no sense in the larger scheme of things? Something about trying to remain obedient to the rule of law… Something that is in my genetic code.

I’ve never defined my life by my professional career. Certainly my career is part of who I grew up to be, but it’s a small part of who I am. I’m proud of the success I’ve had in my career but it’s far from what I’m most proud of in my life. The memoir at its core is about surviving depression and learning or not learning how to live the most human being way I can even if much of my life has failed at doing so. If there’s a universal message, if anything I’ve written resonates with others, it will be that part of the story. It was telling that when I attended a college reunion a few years ago, most people had no idea this was an actual job, nor what it was responsible for doing. Several thought being an election director meant running a campaign. It clearly would have violated the code of ethics if a company paid me to write a memoir because I’m the Director of Elections. I don’t see people lining up to read about election administration. 

I took a two and a half week medical leave. I hoped to get at least three things done: fix my toilet (broken handle), fix my scooter (stalled every time I stopped) and feel a little better. I surprised myself by figuring out the first two; hardly having any success as a handy man in my past but YouTube videos were helpful in both repairs. The third? Was it even a realistic possibility? What does feeling better feel like?  Four therapists ago I talked about feeling broken and diminished. My therapist pushed back against that notion saying humans can’t be broken or diminished, it was a false notion. The toilet flushed a bit differently and the scooter didn’t sound the same as it did before the stalling began. But both worked in their new versions. So can I?