Funny it's the little things that you wonder about.
The most profound being "I wonder what he's really thinking?" This past spring and summer a number of events came together that gave me ample reason to think and explore the reason I am who I am.
I have often said that I have tried to live my life as if no one was watching. My choices, like most choices, are neither good nor bad, they are simply choices. Choices may have good or bad consequenses, but they are merely choices taking on a life of their own after the choice has been made.
I decided to be honest and tell in my words who I perceive myself to be. This has brought me to a deep understanding of myself and a sense of peace that I thought I would never achieve.
My sister Mary forwarded an article that had been written about me and "mental illness" to her friend who happened to be the editor of the Globe and Mail.
I am not ashamed of my mental conditon in any way shape or form. It is part of who I am.
I had thought it was a family decision to present me with the option of being interviewed and after being asked, I said that I would be happy to help. I learned later that some thought it not to be such a good idea, but I'm glad we did it.
If we hadn't of been as open as we were about dealing with mental illness I don't think that the Globe and Mail series would have had the impact that it did. The story was entitled "Some are Born to Endless Night" and can be found at
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080620.wmhpeter21/BNStory/mentalhealth/
I was still experiencing problems with suicidal thoughts, they were always with me, when I agreed to be interviewed. I had experienced a rather severe bout and against the advice of my family and my best friend Mark I started smoking dope again.
I was going to discuss it with my doctor as I didn't think I could get through another day but my appointment was cancelled. I started that very day.
I knew that there was a risk of mania but I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.
Depression destroys the inside of a person's life (in their mind) but mania absolutely wrecks the outside of a person's life.
After each manic episode, I have to look back at the relationships that I have torn asunder. It's something that, if you are mentally ill, you deal with it. If you don't deal with it you just get worse.
After the Globe and Mail interview but before it was published, my friend Mark passed away. If I had been unstable and angry before, this didn't help. I tried to pretend that I was taking it in stride but I felt really guilty that I had not done enough to help him. Even before his death, in order to explain my feelings to the reporters, I was thinking about many things that were not exactly pleasant and I was taking my anger out on the ones that I am closest to.
I was saving the smiling, brave face for the people outside and shitting all over my family. I was angry and when I get angry I get a real hate on. People say that depression is anger turned inward. With mania, the opposite is true.
Sparing all the ugly details, it came to the point that I should be hospitalized. Of all the things that could happen I did not want this. I was prepared to hit the streets and leave my children behind before I went to the hospital.
For me, the hospital was tantamount to a death sentence.
They have made many improvements at the Miramichi Hospital since and will be implementing the Tidal Model soon and I am no longer scared to go there when I need to.
More details on the Tidal model can be found at
http://www.tidal-model.com/. I learned to tell my story in my own words through this model. It helped me more than I could ever imagine. Jane and Mary found the Tidal Model for me. I was introduced to it at the Royal Ottawa Hospital.
The key to the Tidal model is telling your story in your own words. Too often people think that we are speaking nonsense when we are only speaking a different language. Our mother tongue might be different than yours.
A perfect example of this was my first room mate in the F'ton psych ward. He spoke chess. He also spoke English but his mother tongue and most comfortable way of expressing himself was in the form of chess.
Unfortunately for him there was no one else who spoke chess on the ward. I spoke a lot of English and a little chess and he spoke a little English and alot of chess. We managed to work out a style of communciation that worked for the two of us. What I remember most is that he gave me cigarettes when I didn't have any.
In my life I have met many people who speak different languages. My brother speaks music and lyrics. That is the purest way he can convey his thoughts and emotions. He is not a gifted singer or musician so he listens to songs and forwards them on as a beacon.
Being in the psych ward forces you to become multi lingual and I have discovered that I have a knack for languages. That's what kept me sane while I was in hospital, but I digress....
I have tried to explain what happens to my thoughts when I walk. My suicidal thoughts are more focused. In the hospital in both Fredericton and Miramichi all I did was walk up and down the hallway.
Stephen King wrote a book under the name of Richard Bachman called the Long Walk. That book sums up how I felt for years.
Most of the time when there's a dirty job to do, it's always the bravest who undertakes the mission. In this case, my father came to reason with me about going to the hospital but the conversation did not go well.
This is an understatement. I have never been so mean to someone in my life.
If I needed to know something about my father's love for me, I came to understand it after that conversation. My father would throw himself in front of a train to save me. I know this because I was that train and I ran over him.
I'm not proud of that but I'm not ashamed either. My biggest shame came from something different.
He wanted me to go to the hospital and I didn't want to go. From his perspective, it was a matter of salvation, from mine, a bottomless pit from which there would be no return.
After my friend Mark died, I recalled his conversations about when he was homeless. In his particular state of mind, he was not unhappy. He was tired and sometimes hungry but he had created a world that gave him peace of mind.
I did not want to go to the hospital because I did not want to stop smoking dope. I knew that if I stopped smoking dope the black dogs would encircle me and devour me piece by piece, this time for good.
Even if I was going to be completely delusional, I was not going to stop smoking dope. I did not and was not going back to the pain that was my non stoned existence.
At the end of a horrible conversation, I asked my father for a couple of hours to decide whether or not I would voluntarily go to the hospital. He agreed and I made my escape.
I ran away for a few days and in my mind I was practicing to be homeless. Nevermind that I did have a car, had a few thousand dollars and was staying in Hotels but well ...... I was nuts...period.
In any event, I ended up in Doaktown and had the people that ran the cabin site phone my mother to tell her I was alright. I was far from being alright. I didn't have the strength to park my car before I collapsed on a couch in the cabin.
After I had taken about four showers to try and loosen a knot in my shoulder, I had a nap and decided that it was time to go home. I came out and my sister Sally was there. There was also an RCMP car. I knew that my time was up.
From this point on, I had to behave so I could get out of the hospital and hit the streets, or worse.
Sally asked me if I would freak out if I saw my father and I said no. I ran and gave him a hug and tried to pour out my love for him to make up for the vile things that I had said in anger.
I don't know if he could feel the emotion and love coming from my heart, but I did.
Instead of going in the RCMP car, I went to a restaurant with Sally and Dad. I was optimistic that maybe that I wouldn't be forced into the hospital.
I don't remember what I was rambling about but I know that I ordered a combo with deep fried mushrooms and that kind of thing.
I knew that because I was stressed and hadn't eaten that I would have to do something about the acid in my stomach otherwise the food wouldn't stay down very long. I drank a glass of milk and went into the bathroom and vomited. I was ready to eat.
When I started to eat, my father suggested that, instead of the deep fried platter, I should have a piece of toast to settle my stomach. I politely resisted and then he insisted a couple more times. It was gentle prodding.
There was no yelling forcing or anything like that. My reaction was anger, so much so, that it would appear that I was having a stroke.
I don't think that either Sally or my father had seen that type of emotion in me (or anyone else) before.
I can imagine their thoughts. Why would he be so upset about a piece of toast? What was he thinking? In any event, Ed Goodfellow of the Miramichi Police ended up taking me to the hospital.
I examine most things after a manic episode and try and make sense of what I did and why I did it. Like most people, I review events from my own perspective and after a manic episode I try and view them from the perspective of others.
When I lose friends or have hurt people after a manic period, I usually understand fully why they would rather not have me in their circle anymore. Sometimes, it's just too painful. I am saddened by these losses but I know I have no one to blame but myself. I never blame the mental illness.
I examined my conduct and I was sorry I had hurt those people who have tried to help me the most.
When I was in the hospital, my counselor, Marc Noel, came to see me and made some suggestions about issues that I needed to deal with.
Over the course of the next number of months, that's what we did. I focused on the most fundamental relationship that, for me, was out of whack and that was the father son relationship.
Why was I so angry at the person I admire most in the whole world?
During our conversation at Tim Horton's when I was so mean, Dad asked me how I could be upsetting my mother. He was confused because she was in his words "my hero". My mother is my mentor and role model, and all of the special things that mothers are. She is "my hero."
What I wanted to scream was that, he was wrong. For a son, there is no bigger hero than his father. My father was and will be for my entire life my biggest hero.
This brings us back to the matter of the verbal tug of war over the toast. I'm going to explain what I was feeling.
In our house it was a pretty relaxed atmosphere for the most part. There was discipline but it was fair. As was the case 30-40 years ago occasionally there was a strap at school or a belt on the bum at home. This was not unusual.
I got the belt exactly twice. I understood why I received it both times.
When I was about 7, I was talking so loud in Church that the priest stopped the mass and asked whether or not we wanted to sit up with him. I got a licking and although I was pissed off at the priest I didn't resent the spanking.
The second time was when I was around 15 and I stayed out until 2 or 3 in the morning after a dance that had been over at 11:30. I stood and took it...Dad had lost his temper and regretted it afterwards.
He apologized within minutes and although I was mad at him I wouldn't have changed that night for a million lickings. I had been talking to someone that needed some help and I did help.
I didn't see that person again until some 18 years later but as soon as I saw her she told me how important that night was.
A few years ago, I started using that particular night as an excuse as to why I was angry at my father. That simply is a distortion of reality. I didn't want anyone to know why I was sometimes pissed off at him.
My mother and father are good, decent, loving people. They are and will continue to be my idols but children sometimes overlook that people, even parents, are fallible.
My father taught me much of what I know about group dynamics. I learned many sayings from him and most important was "Learning by doing it right is education, Learning by doing it wrong is experience and experience is the better teacher."
Lessons from my father were never intended to be mean. For example, there is an expression "if you sprinkle when you tinkle be a sweetie and wipe the seatie."
I failed to do this on some occasions and my father taught me a lesson that makes me wipe the seat. He beckoned me into the bathroom that I had just vacated and pointed at the seat with a few sprinkles on it and had me sit down.
There was nothing mean spirited about it. It was learning by experience.
I didn't use the same technique with my son but hey, sometimes he forgets to wipe up. I don't forget and it's a valuable lesson. I tell my son to remember because girls sit down when they pee.
When I was about 9 or 10, I was joking around with my brother Donnie in our bedroom and for whatever reason whipped out my pecker and peed on his bed a little. It was no more than a few drops but my brother told my father and I was punished.
I should have been punished for stupid thing like that. My father made me wear a diaper for awhile.
Now this is the type of thing that, in our house, should have morphed into a family legend that we could all split our sides laughing about years later. Like the "peanut butter sandwich incident" or how my sister Ann got her nickname "grape".
It should have morphed into a funny story like the time all six kids were going to chip in a $100.00 each to buy a race horse for my father on Father's Day just to imagine the look on his face.
Every family has funny stories like that. My father wasn't being mean spirited. He was annoyed that I had done such a childish thing but he wasn't angry.
I have come to discover that shame is the most crippling emotion of them all. The thing that I was most ashamed of wasn't my mental illness or my bankruptcy or all the trouble I had caused in my life. I could talk about those things.
The thing that caused me the most shame was that I was, until about age 11, a bedwetter.
People that were bedwetters know the shame that you carry. In an episode of CSI, one brother (10) killed the other (8) because the younger brother had told all the other kids about being the older brother being a bedwetter.
I understood the rage that would come from that shame.
Other people may hide the shame they feel from growing up poor or lack of education or any one of a number of things but, for me, the biggest shame was the bedwetting.
If one thinks the "uncluttered mind" is about bedwetting, for me at least, it's not.
It's about being different and scared because of that. We constantly wonder "what will people say?" and let it influence our choices.
This has consequences both good and bad.
I still remember my first sleep over/birthday party at a friend's house. I got a new sleeping bag and I had a great time. There was a bunch of us. I woke in the morning to find that I had wet myself. My friend's sister helped me clean up and wiped away my tears but I was ashamed and I didn't want to go to school the next monday because I thought all the kids would laugh at me. I was in grade two.
The diaper thing was too much for a bedwetter. There was no ill intention but I resented the hell out of it. Part of me wanted to ask "What were you really thinking?" People don't ask that question very often because it's private and located in the personal, private part of the mind.
Instead we speculate on "What's he really thinking?", often coming to the wrong conclusion, again with good or bad consequences.
No one ever knew the effect that it had on me and I never told anyone how it affected me until I told my counselor Marc who asked me to examine why I almost had a stroke in the B&L restaurant over a simple piece of toast.
I was going to explain in detail why I was mad but what came out was "He put a god damn diaper on me.
It was something that my best friend Sally didn't even know. I hadn't even told Sheila and I tell her almost everything.
There... I had said it and the planet didn't crack in two. Imagine my suprise. Later, I confessed to the bedwetting. I was confronting the most shameful thing in my past. In the uncluttered mind of a child, I was judging my father by the only tools that I knew.
Anger and shame could not cripple me anymore.
I went to my Doctor and explained some of the same things and asked for an anti depressant. He prescribed Imipramine which ironically is also used for involuntary urination.
Within two weeks of taking the anti depressant and my "confession" to my counselor, I stopped having suicidal thoughts. My "Endless Night"was over. I have survived "the Long Walk."
The shame of being different no longer cripples me and I am looking forward to a long a productive life and being a better father, partner, brother and son.
I found I was looking for something. I found it. I found God. I had proof of design and that's enough for me. I had dismissed him as a child.
My philosophy can be summed up in a single phrase " everybody gets what they want, but first everybody gets what they need." I'm going to start with myself and William and Sarah. It will be my life's work.
I am alive and I'm feeling happiness. That, to me, is a miracle.
My father is my hero. He saved my life. All over a piece of toast! Funny it's the little things ...
