Are You My Father?

by Margo Walter

  The morning had been uneventful. The alarm sounded at six and I jumped out of bed ready for battle. I had laid out my clothes the night before and deliberately chosen an outfit that was suited for test taking. You know, loose and comfortable. I had the breakfast of champions, just like the cereal box advertised and enough coffee to alert my brain. The drive to the test site was about an hour, and I left enough time to drive there twice. Halfway on route, my eyes started doing funny things. They started weeping. I was extremely anxious so maybe that was the cause of this involuntary crying. Fortunately, I was prepared and had thrown a small packet of Kleenex in my purse. I arrived at the test site very early (on purpose) so I could find the best seat, near the front, and locate the ladies’ room. Semper Paratus!

  By the time the proctor started giving us directions, at 8 am on the dot, my nose was beginning to run continuously and both eyes required wiping every few minutes. What was going on? I was already halfway through my tissues, and my pencil had not touched the examination. This was a timed test and we were told that we had exactly two hours to complete and not one minute more. During that time, I was going to regurgitate all the course material that I had completed, facts and figures from the cram course that I took twice, and information that my creative mind was supposed to reconfigure for the test.

  Since we had to get permission to leave the room, use the facilities, or get a drink of water, I managed ten minutes of filling in little circles with my pencil before I had to leave and collect toilet paper, to stop the deluge. I kept running low on my supply and had to replenish with a trip to the bathroom. Running out of Kleenex was not on the list of excusable pauses in test-taking. Too bad!

  It was after the third exit that I knew I was in trouble. I could not see. My eyesight was clouded with tears that were the size of humongous drops of rain, and there was no stopping this waterfall. I just plowed through the test in silent prayer that it would soon be over. I did not finish the test when I heard, “Put your pencils down!”

  Two weeks have passed, and I check the mailbox every day for my test results. Finally, the envelope arrives, and I see the results in black and white. It is a very short letter suggesting that I retest. I failed by two points.

  Let’s go back to that fateful day. When I arrived home, my husband took one look and drove me the emergency room. Somehow, someway, I had gotten a piece of plastic in my left eye, and that was the culprit that foretold my fate of retesting and trying again. So much for failure!

  Today I am a practicing mental health professional and only recount this story when people ask, “Was the licensed counselor’s exam difficult?” There is usually a pause on my part before I respond, “Not the second time.”

  My internship began in January of 2000, a new century, and a new beginning. I was now a licensed professional counselor and had a paper from the state to prove it. Part of the licensing process was to complete a one-semester internship in the counseling field. I interviewed with the local Community Service Board and got lucky, incredibly lucky. My new supervisor assigned me to work with the substance abuse program, called Stepping Stones, and she had no idea that I was in recovery. Six weeks into the internship, I was offered a full-time paid position with benefits. It would be my last full-time job ever.

  Working with alcoholics and drug addicts is an incredible challenge. It is the only disease that tells you that you don’t have it. So, why seek treatment? The denial builds a considerable stone wall around the addicted person and waves a flag stating, “Leave me alone. I’m fine.” That is why it is absolutely necessary that the addict hit bottom, a place where the only choice is to get help or die. Most, but not all, the men and women in Stepping Stones had used up all their excuses, run out of people to blame, and were physically and mentally bankrupt. We had their attention, and most were ready to lay down the gauntlet and follow a new life plan. Group counseling, twelve-step meetings three times a week, and turn your whole life around was the prescription. It was a pretty simple program for complicated people, but not an easy one. The success rate was poor and has not gotten much better over the years.

  The first six months of this paid internship was brutal. Not only did I facilitate the recovery program, but I was also expected to carry a full client load. Scheduling clients, seeing clients, and referring individual clients is a full-time job without the substance abuse groups. Something had to give. I was managing my bipolar disorder and my own sobriety with my excellent support network. My spiritual program was not great but progressing.

  At the end of my third year, the dam broke. I was physically exhausted and did not know it. I was not taking time out for me, and it showed. I was not directly lying to anyone; I just was not talking and was again lying by omission. About this time, one of my clients committed suicide. I had seen him late that evening, and it was our last visit. Memories of all my own previous suicide attempts came flooding back, and I realized that I was in trouble. Denial had grabbed hold of me, and I admitted to myself that I had been thinking suicidally for months. Just like many of my clients, I saw no other way out. There was only one safe place for me to go. Chris drove me to the psychiatric hospital, and the ECT treatments began again. I resigned reluctantly from my counseling position and was once again unemployed.

  ***

  I am sitting in a waiting room analyzing the recent course of events. Fear, confusion, and a little self-loathing seem to be present. “How did I end up here?” My husband and I are in Baltimore, Maryland, waiting for an appointment with Dr. Grover. The purpose of this visit is to get a collaborative diagnosis of my psychiatric illness and check my cognitive functioning. I am back at John Hopkins. This is where you go when you hit a brick wall, and you don’t know where else to go. My skin feels all tingly and I keep having these waves of nausea. The visit is the second referral to this hospital from my psychiatrist back home. He was a bit surprised by my last psychotic breakdown and wants collaboration on the best course of treatment to follow. In other words, even though I am medication compliant, have all the textbook symptoms of bipolar disorder, and have not missed one ECT appointment, my course of treatment is being questioned. They do not know what to do with me. More important, is what they are doing to me bad for me?

  For the next three days at the hospital, I talked to various therapists, worked every kind of puzzle, and took every memory recall test known to Freud and others. When you see that you know the answer and it will not emerge, it is a bit like being constipated. It is there, but it won’t come out. I felt incredibly frustrated and doubted my own abilities to spell my name right. The results, once again, confirmed the bipolar diagnosis with alcoholism and drug addiction. Duh! The recommendation was to continue therapy, counseling, twelve-step recovery, and to have ECT once a month as a maintenance function. It was suggested that I continue working, but only part-time, get lots of rest, and return to John Hopkins in eighteen months, not a year or two, but just in one year and a half. It took three years to return, and a lot happened in the interim. Let’s fill in some of the gaps.

  ***

  This entire story has a focus on my father, and we know that he is dead and buried. What about my mother whom I described earlier? Sticking to her hope for a geographic cure, she has now moved from California to the Turks and Caicos Islands. Her latest male companion died in Santa Barbara. He was probably the best catch yet and was indeed a wonderful man. Why go halfway around the world to a deserted island?

  It has finally occurred to me that my mother is probably living with an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. During her manic phases, she moves locations. The depression is well-disguised as she isolates and just does not talk to anyone. I could add a few more clinical labels, but telling her story reveals most of her personality quirks. There would be some controversy among family members in describing her character defects. It is at your discretion as to the glaring descriptors you might use. My mother is incredibly narcissistic, and we’ll leave it
at that.

  ***

  What about my older brother, Edward? He had been living in California. He was an engineer, designing miniature submarines, and was thinking of changing jobs. We never saw each other, and I did not believe he and my mother were frequent visitors. It was a surprise when I got that call that they were all leaving California and were moving to the British West Indies to develop a fifty-acre piece of raw land into a resort. What? Under further review, I found out that the island was called Middle Caicos in the Turks and Caicos and had fewer than hundred people in residence. Half of them were children, and most originated from Haiti. It was a poorly developed place that did have a couple churches, a one-room school, a visiting magistrate, and gorgeous white-sand beaches. At first, I was kind of jealous. It sounded like Gilligan’s Island. I guess the millionaire was my mother. The professor was my brother, Edward, and his wife, Terri, was the movie star. Except, this was not a reality show, and the characters were my family. It would be years before I visited this motley crew on their deserted island.

  ***

  Back in the old USA, golf was taking priority in my life. I had gotten hooked about twenty years earlier but had to stop due to lupus. It is a funny thing about autoimmune diseases. If you live long enough, the affliction will either kill you or you will go into remission. I am one of the lucky ones, the symptoms started subsiding. I got back to golf with a vengeance. After joining my county golf club and buying a cart, the only thing that I needed was to play. I was currently unemployed, so time was not an issue. My golfing adventures took me within a thirty-mile radius around my house and eventually, I headed to Florida to visit my original golf mentor, Joan. My treks to Florida were special because of Joan and Linda, my first AA sponsor. Staying with these two women for one week every year was my annual spiritual retreat. They had known me at my worst and still loved me. There were never any masks that I needed to hide behind, and I could just be me. What an arrangement! What a gift! Linda liked to shop and cook. After a round of golf, Joan and I would come home to a wonderful, sumptuous meal. Occasionally, the evening would include a game of Poker, Phase 10, Skip Bo or we would go to a twelve-step meeting. For a nightcap, we all enjoyed our favorite coffee ice cream complete with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. If I close my eyes, I can taste that sweet, succulent dessert.

  We would play golf every day possible, and then I would reluctantly catch the budget airline special to home. It was basking on one of those spectacular courses in Florida, waiting to putt, that I got the call that would send me in a different direction. I usually do not carry a cell phone when golfing, let alone answer it. Maybe God was doing his anonymous thing again. For whatever reason, I sauntered over to my cart and picked up the call.

  ***

  It seems that being unemployed had made me available for an exciting new project. This woman calls and in the middle of my golf game asks if I had heard anything about pre-bond or post-bond treatment programs. She got my attention and asked if I would fly home to talk to the powers-to-be about a newly funded grant that needed my participation. My flight home was bumped up a couple of days, and the interviews began. Our federal government had found some monies to treat recovering alcoholics and/or addicts who had a comorbid diagnosis of mental illness. The details are a bit cumbersome, but the gist of the idea is simple. Judges have the option of assigning a perpetrator to a one-year treatment program instead of jail. The treatment plan is extensive. One screwup by the accused, and they go to prison without passing go. I was hired to plan the training for this bunch and to oversee a group of peers, who were already in recovery, to act as mentors. The team needed my personal experience with a mental illness and my expertise as a substance abuse counselor. Two problems existed: first, I was on disability, and second, I was told not to work full-time. My new boss had a solution for both. Decide how many hours I want to work and tell them how much money I want to make without affecting my disability income. In other words, I could write my own ticket and be hired because I had a mental illness and was in recovery. It was nice to be wanted, and I had no idea what I really was going to be doing. Life-changing events were about to happen.

  Before the new work schedule kicked in, my counselor and psychiatrist suggested another trip to Johns Hopkins Psychiatric Hospital in Baltimore. My mood had been stabilized, but my memory was feeble. Did I have cognitive damage from all the ECTs and should they be continued? The answer was yes and yes. No one would say what might have caused a slight cognitive impairment, but the memory deficit was another story. If my husband and I went to a movie on Friday, I would recall the title the following Monday but not the storyline, the plot, or any of the actors. All that information is somewhat superfluous and not of significant concern; but remembering names, events, and dates is significant. The consultation at John Hopkins summarized some actions steps that I needed to take. First, as previously recommended, continue the maintenance ECT once a month. My reaction to that suggestion was a disappointment. Taking one day a month, driving to the next state, receiving general anesthesia, suffering from a severe headache, recovering for the next two days, and remembering less was not the treatment plan that I would have selected. It is scary. ECT was another family secret, and I had already had enough secrets for a lifetime.

  I started going for treatments in a hospital, three hours from my home to avoid running into clients or other pillars of the community. It did occur to me if I ran into a person I knew having ECT, they would be just as embarrassed, feel just as stigmatized, and feel just as judged as I did. I opted to go out of town for treatments. This decision helped me to stand up to my whole support team and tell them in 2007 that I was done with ECT. I was not going to go for any more treatments, and everyone would just have to back off and see the results.

  Now, we are ready to start the new job. The life-changing event came outside of the work parameter and was part of a volunteer position that I accepted at the same time. Across the country, beginning in Memphis, Tennessee, the Crisis Intervention Team training was spreading. Law enforcement, dispatchers, firemen, and other first responders were learning what to do if the call involved someone with a mental illness. Taking them to the ER, locking someone up in jail, or taking them to a shelter was very ineffective. It was time to teach this helping population how to help. I was asked to participate by attending the training in Memphis and speaking to each new class from the perspective of the mentally ill person. Standing in front of policemen, detectives, and others who might interact with the mentally ill population was a colossal undertaking. For the first time, I was “outing” myself in my community, taking off all my masks, and telling this group what it was really like. The stigma, the confusion, the misdiagnosing, and the poor treatment of those with severe mental illness were about to improve. The first time that I spoke, the room was packed, and my anxiety was building. Since I do not perspire, I have another skin sensation which I experienced at Johns Hopkins and is equally terrifying—my skin tingles. There is a slight tremor, but nothing that anyone else would notice. I heard my name, and I was being introduced to the crowd.

  Thirty to forty-five minutes seemed like a lifetime until I got up to speak. It was done, over, finished, and people were clapping after what looked like a movie that had been streamed in triple time. It went extremely fast, and I did not keel over, forget where I was, or stumble over my own story. I told the truth that day, and the response was overwhelming. After being individually thanked by twenty-plus people, I took my seat and felt this giant boulder being lifted off my back. Family and personal secrets do keep you sick. Being truthful, sharing from your heart, and honestly telling others about your story help you feel accepted, loved, and less ill. At least that is what I experienced that day, and at every other training that I did for the next three years.

  My new position was relatively easy, based on the jobs that I had previously. No problem finding some peers to participate or designing a training program that would
be useful. I am very relaxed with most people and could certainly relate to this group who chose treatment over jail. The staff for this Bridge program was dedicated and passionate about their work. We were a good team. I guess that I do have a three-year itch, as it was about that long when I started feeling stressed about my job. I had successfully stopped the ECT treatments, changed medications several times, but was still having difficulty getting a good night’s sleep. My job description included twenty-eight hours per week, and I was expectantly working overtime between forty and fifty hours per week and not getting paid for the extra time. Being an overachiever followed me into every job, and this one was no exception. I was not suicidal but very depressed, and I could tell that my brain chemistry was off. Fortunately, my support team, especially my spouse, recognized some telltale symptoms and suggested that I quit the job, take a hiatus, and maybe go for a short hospitalization. I did all three and continued to be on the faculty of the CIT training. Since my story was out there, it was OK to be the person living with a mental illness, and I got involved with several mental health agencies in my spare time. Serving on the Board of the local Mental Health of America did not cut into much of my golf time and satisfied my need to be of service. I had stabilized with my new medication regiment and was sleeping through the night with only three trips out of bed, around 1:13 am, 3:16 am, and 5:20 am every night. Am I the only one who wakes up on the hour and some minutes or does everyone see seconds on their digital clock? That sleep cycle is about the same today. If it works, don’t fix it.

  ***

  It was time to visit my mother and learn more about those islands. Chris and I drove to Charlotte, North Carolina, and climbed on board the flight to Providenciales, which is known as Provo and is the most significant tourist spot in the Turks and Caicos. If you don’t know where they are, look them up. We had to. It is approximately 500 miles east of Miami and 100 miles north of Haiti. My mother and brother had successfully developed this island. The resort centered around one of the most beautiful white sand coves in the British West Indies. It was not entirely deserted, but almost. Most of the natives, called “belongers,” are from Haiti and make a living with construction or taking tourists caving, fishing, or snorkeling. After landing on the main island, you can take a ferry (that my brother owned) or a flying puddle-jumper that lands on a very bumpy sand runway. Our first visit is worth description.