Mildly Abnormal

I am a married, working mother of two young children, in the first and third grade. I am very lucky…I have a happy, healthy family, and a nearly full-time job, with a flexible schedule that allows me to have a career, but still be at my kids’ track meets and parent-teacher conferences. I can do it all.

That’s the myth, anyway, because I don’t know anyone who can do it all…not well, at least.

I am a part of a silent minority. We’re the people who, for the most part, can function professionally (or academically, during the school years), but we struggle privately with dysfunction that affects our personal and professional lives in ways we must hide. Maybe it’s alcoholism. Maybe it’s high-functioning autism, or anxiety, or manic-depressive thoughts and behaviors, or obsessions and compulsions. We can just barely toe the line that allows us to work and maintain a façade a normalcy, and this daily “covering” requires a tremendous amount of effort. Our families sometimes pay the price as the tension spills out at home.

I come from a family full of smart, intense people with emotional and neurological differences. Major depression, sensitivities, self-destructive behaviors, and autism characteristics…these are all part of my genetics, just like the dimple in my chin, and my left-handedness. As a child I also experienced traumatic events, which can have serious, permanent emotional and neurochemical effects. But I am a mother, a wife, and a worker, and year after year I put one foot in front of the other, because the alternative…to give up…isn’t an option. My family depends on me, and the commitment to do my best, however faulty my best may be, is one I take very seriously.

I have been moderately successful in my career. I have worked consistently, held positions in management, and been promoted every few years. I am currently the Director of a small non-profit agency, a job I find alternately rewarding and extremely stressful—particularly when there is public speaking, conflict, or a deadline involved, which is frequently. In fact, in the 20 years since I got my first job, I’ve done everything from waitressing and building sets for college theater, to facilitating training sessions and doing TV interviews. I have experienced a high level of stress in almost every job, excluding the ones that didn’t involve other people, and their expectations. Sometimes I long for the days when I was paid to sort slides in the art department for hours at a time. Such a peaceful job.

The past several years, balancing incredible pressure to keep a positive forward momentum for a small non-profit agency, raising high-need children, and keeping a household from falling into total chaos, have been extremely difficult. I think that would be the case for anyone. Though I have strengths and abilities that have allowed me to compensate for my challenges, this isn’t always possible. I struggle with severe anxiety and overwhelming emotion, or problems with what psychologists call “emotional regulation”. You might say I can be a drama queen…at times, my intense feelings get out of control and the person I become is unrecognizable to those who haven’t seen it. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it is my reality, and it’s not a choice. I hide all of this from my children as much as possible. But I know it still affects them, and that guilt…the knowledge that I am sometimes unable to be the nurturing person I would like to be for them, can sometimes be crippling.

I have tried three different antidepressants, which didn’t help much, and had significant side effects. The last one led to an emergency room visit after the second dose. I have had a full psychological evaluation and have been in therapy with a very experienced counselor, for years. So far, I have made moderate improvement. I can function, and for the most part, keep myself contained in the box my life requires, but it is a daily struggle. There is a constant stuffing down of my true offbeat self…every day I must hold it in, subdue it, and not let people see who I really am. I must “pass” for normal. But that’s no way to live. The real me may be abrasive and unpredictable at times, but it is ME. I have value and I deserve to live an authentic life. Everyone does.

But how can I truly live in a world that sees people like me as defective? If we are not calm and rational at all times, how can we be trusted with positions of responsibility? Yet people like me—significantly flawed, but with meaningful abilities—are already at work all around us. They, too, are hiding their authentic selves, and playing along with the myth that the professional world is only for the people who have it all together.  They’re hiding the drinking and drug use they use to numb their pain and get through the day. They’re hiding the anorexic bodies or scars from self-injury that they use to gain a sense of control in their chaotic lives, under their business suits and tasteful dresses. They’re pretending to work 70-hour weeks, when a lot of that time at the computer is spent on other, self-soothing, self-medicating activities: web surfing, compulsive shopping, gambling, porn. They’re filling themselves with pills, something, anything, that might work, that might “fix” them.

I don’t need to be fixed, so much as understood and accommodated. I have good days and I have bad days. On good days I am everything the world thinks I should be: efficient, focused, rational, and creative. On bad days I am scattered, irritable, and anxious, and so far, I haven’t found a pill or a correction in my thought process that will change that, any more than my height could be changed with medication, therapy, or positive thinking. This is who I AM.

So what should society do with people like me? Should I be forced to pretend I am “normal”, falling further into despair with each failed attempt, and making myself sick trying to be someone I’m not? Should I quit working, and force my husband to bear the full burden of supporting our family in a part of the country where a single income is rarely enough? I have family members who have done this: they have dropped out of the work world, relying on others to support them, or living on a very limited income and doing without medical care and other “luxuries” as a trade-off. This isn’t an option for me. I want my children to have everything they need, including a mother who isn’t stretched to the breaking point. And I want and need meaningful work.

Should I ask for accommodations like people who have other, more obvious challenges? Maybe. I have always believed that we can do more harm than good by trying to hide our flaws. That’s why I would even go so far as to post such private thoughts as these on the internet. Being open lets others with similar problems know they are not alone. Admitting that I have these significant challenges does leave me vulnerable to the people who cannot, or will not understand me, because of the limits of their own experience, their need to pass judgment, or their inability to empathize. There will always be people who think my main flaw is laziness, an unwillingness to buckle down and try harder. But let me tell you, if you measure my accomplishments by the amount of effort it takes for me to achieve them--effort to do things that may be easy for other people--I am far from lazy. I also know that my continuing difficulties, and all of the painful things I have lived through have not made me stronger, but they have made me keenly aware of the struggles of others. Feeling like an outsider for more than three decades has given me insight into the plights of all kinds of marginalized groups. They matter to me, and I fight for them, because I know what it feels like to not matter, to feel like you have to fit into someone else’s ideal to have access to the comfort and security that “regular” people take for granted. That's the value I've taken away from the path I've walked. It inspires me to embrace my differentness, whatever the cause.

A few weeks ago, after a night out with friends, I had an unconscious episode in the car while Sean was driving us home. It was scary. Our family doctor sent me for an EEG. Nine days after the episode I walked into the neurology office and underwent an in-office EEG to test for seizure activity. It was a fascinating experience. Having spent the week before reading up on seizure disorders I was interested to find at the EEG that the stimuli intended to induce a seizure did cause me to feel a bit twitchy and odd, although those kinds of responses were “normal” to me. A week later I learned the results of the EEG: Mildly to moderately abnormal. An appointment with a neurologist, and eventually a more in-depth EEG were scheduled.  I am undergoing the 48-hour EEG as I write this, with 21 electrodes pasted to my forehead and scalp. Do I have a mild seizure disorder? I might. Simple partial seizures affect only a small region of the brain, can be unnoticeable to the observer, and even to the sufferer. They can cause a variety of mild symptoms that I experience regularly, including mood and attention changes.

Imagine if there were an treatable underlying brain condition that has been causing my anxiety and sleep problems. Imagine all of the people who go through their lives, feeling guilty that they lack the “will power” to change fixed aspects of their brains and personalities. Imagine the productivity and creativity lost to all of the hiding and stuffing down of guilt and shame, especially in our society that values achievement and power over most everything else. If reading this lifts that burden for just one person, it’s worth writing it and sharing it.

These days, all I dream of is a happy childhood for my children, and freedom from the pressure to do and be something that’s beyond my reach. I just want to be me.

What Are We Fighting About?

I was 11 years old the first time I held a gun. My mother, raising my sister and me alone, kept a handgun in the house for protection. One day she took the gun down out of her closet, showed me how to switch the safety lever off, how to hold the gun, and how to aim it. She talked to me about circumstances where it would be appropriate for me to use it. I was taught to never touch the gun unless there was a life-threatening reason to do so. I never did.

That summer, mom’s boyfriend taught me to shoot a 22 rifle. We went out in the woods and tacked targets to trees, and practiced shooting from various distances with my mom. Everyone was surprised, especially me, when I had the highest accuracy of the three of us. For some reason, I have very good aim. I have gone target shooting a few other times since then. I really enjoy it. Having worked in a Renaissance Faire gaming area, I can shoot a bow, a knife, and an axe with some accuracy. I have never aimed at an animal, or considered it. I’m not a hunter.

I have friends and family members who are avid gun users and collectors. They have a passion for guns. I don’t share this passion, but I do understand it. I have lots of collections. Let’s take paint brushes: each one has a specific use, can perform in a different way. One might be better to draw whiskers on a tiger, one might be better to paint the sweeping strokes of a sky. I have trusty paint brushes I use for many purposes, and some that only get used once in a while. I appreciate that gun enthusiasts might feel the same way. Each gun might have a story, or a specific function.

In college, I had a teacher who had a very different perspective on guns than I had been used to. When she had been a child, her seven-year-old brother had been at a friend’s house. The two boys were snooping through the parents’ bedroom, and came across a handgun in a drawer. My teacher’s brother had died instantly when his friend shot him in the face accidentally. Each semester she made a point of telling each new group of students her brother’s story, to humanize the reality of the need for gun safety for them. I paid attention.

I have never owned a gun, but I have sometimes wondered how I would protect my family if an intruder entered our home. The idea of having a gun and successfully disabling someone seems far-fetched  to me. I think the calm, steady head and hand that an accurate shot requires could elude me in that situation. But I do have an 18-inch hardwood club under my bed, and I can easily imagine using it if anyone came between me and my children. My family members and my dog are the only things in my house I would protect with deadly force. Yet there are other people, many of them, who seem excited by the idea of confronting a criminal and legally disabling them in the protection of property. I think of the overzealous neighborhood watch member, George Zimmerman. Armed with a deadly weapon, and patrolling the streets on the lookout for suspicious activity, he seems to have glamorized his role in local law enforcement. His gun gave him a sense of security and power to pursue what he thought was a suspicious individual. Regardless of what you think happened in the ensuing confrontation, it is unlikely that anyone would have died that day if George Zimmerman hadn’t been carrying a gun.

When Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, I started to wonder how we can keep guns out of the hands of unstable people. People who have that passion for guns bristle at the idea that the guns are the problem, that people like Cho, or the Columbine killers, or now, James Holmes, represent the average gun owner. They surely don’t. Perhaps it is the combination of the way we glamorize, almost idolize guns and violence, and our inability to keep them out of the hands of unstable people that leads us into this horrific situation, again and again.

According to Science Daily, “many scientific studies have established the connection between exposure to media violence and aggression and violence in children. For example, playing video games can lead to changes in attitudes and behavior as well as desensitization to actual violence.” As a society, we have to consider why we are creating such violent entertainment to begin with. What purpose does it serve? What effect is it having on our young people, whose brains do not fully develop their capacity for understanding cause and effect until their mid-twenties?

Every time there is an incident like the shooting at the Aurora movie theater, anti-gun people demand tougher laws for gun control, and those who care strongly about the right to bear arms counter-attack. Yet most people can probably agree, the right to bear arms is a fundamental American freedom, and few people are saying that all guns be outlawed. There must be some middle ground, where reasonable people can agree on strategies to keep guns out of the hands of these men who use them to massacre innocent people. If guns are meant for protection, why aren’t we protecting our citizens against their illegal and devastating use? And what are we doing to reduce the amount of violent and desensitizing imagery our young people are exposed to?

If we hunger for violent entertainment, what is the cause, and what is the effect?