This morning started off badly. Emma walks into our bedroom with her “woe is me” face on, ready to lie on our bed next to me. Meanwhile, my husband is dressing and is spooked to have someone just walk in on us and tells her to “Get the hell out of here!”
Was that terrible of him? I thought it was great. Having some boundaries set in harsh language works with our Emma. At least having our bedroom as a safe haven away from her constant gloom and doom will give me someplace to take a break. I assume she scooted downstairs to go lie on her bed and stare up at the ceiling, but at this point in time, I had had enough of her and the constant weight of her problems on my shoulders, and I didn’t care what she was doing so long as she was out of my sight and hearing.
To exacerbate the situation (big word meaning make bigger), I was planning to go to a gathering of good friends last night. We get together quite often, and because of Emma’s condition, I missed the last several times.
Yesterday afternoon, Emma and I went to see her psychiatrist and we stopped off at a local store so I could buy some delicious side dishes to take to the evening’s table. Emma knew that I was looking forward to seeing my friends. More often than not, my husband would also go since he enjoyed the company, the food, and the fun.
However, just around 6:00, Emma walks into my workroom and says that she doesn’t want to be home alone. She wants Dad to stay home with her. I knew that she could handle staying home alone for a few hours, and this evening with friends was something that I was looking forward to for a week. But she wanted one of us to stay home.
Reasonable? Maybe from her point of view, or any other psycho babble expert.
But to me, it just ticked me off. It ticked me off to the point of saying either Dad and I go together, or we don’t go at all. The third option of just me going and Dad staying home was not on the table because I was so angry (my own shortcoming and short temper).
That we don’t go at all was just fine with her, even knowing how I had bought food to take to the event and would be missing out on our friend’s company. It didn’t matter how I felt – she expected someone to be with her because most of the time, someone is.
So last night, she got both parents staying at home with her – even though one of us (me) would be in the workroom working on computer stuff the way I always do. [*note: Emma got her expectation of not being left alone.]
After my husband’s blow up of “Get the hell out of here” this morning, I actually had a nice quiet breakfast by myself at the dining table since Emma was still out of sight and my husband was off and out of the house on his job.
The constant drumming in my head is Emma, Emma, Emma. Whenever she is around me, what I hear from her is Me, Me, Me. It’s a drag and it wears me out.
Life is funny – and if you open yourself to whatever is out there, you get insights that are just right.
A phrase from the video of Wayne Dyer popped into my head: “If you would like to accomplish something you must first expect it of yourself.”
Expecting something for yourself is much stronger and more true than the law of attraction, dream boards, thinking positive, etc. kind of mumbo jumbo. Everyone who has taken a personal improvement course has done these or heard of those and not had their wishes, goals, or dreams fulfilled. They wish, they hope, but deep down inside, they don’t expect it.
Everyone has expectations for other people, and we get really upset when they don’t meet them. This is different – expecting it of ourselves, the expectations for ourselves. These thoughts were racing through me just as Emma came up while I was finishing up my breakfast of coffee and toast. It was as if a lightbulb went off – an AHA! moment.
You see, Emma goes around and tells anyone willing to listen to her about what she is going through – the sound of sirens, the lights hurting her eyes, how faces start to look scary, how she permanently damaged her brain because of Ecstacy (MDMA) while on Zyprexa, how she had bad thoughts (these seem to have subsided somewhat), how she can’t survive. Everyone who she tells her symptoms and problems to gets very overwhelmed or upset and tells her to hope and pray or not to worry or some other nice words, which bounce off Emma’s consciousness because she doesn’t believe anything will work.
For about a week, she was fixated on the idea of being admitted to the State mental facility so she can be a ward of them and have someone watching her 24/7 so she doesn’t do anything to hurt people. She really thought it was a good idea until she began to understand that these facilities are not like a luxury hotel and the ward is filled with people who might be really scary because of their own disorders. The reason she was so fixed on being there was because she would need someone/someplace to be there for her in her condition, which she was going to have forever.
We had to continuously assure her that she could live with us forever, that we would always be there for her. She called her more compassionate younger sister and would let her know that she felt like she couldn’t survive and would her sister take care of her forever (after Mom and Dad passed away was the assumption).
Of course, we all assured her – she would be taken care of by somebody, no matter what.
Whenever the possibility of her becoming normal again would come up, she would say “No, I know that I did permanent damage to my brain”, and then go into her litany on her seeing and hearing problems, sprinkled with her sometimes scary thoughts. Giving her tools to cope with bright lights (sunglasses) and sounds being loud and scary (sound proofing head phones) would help, but she has to be constantly told to put them when and if she was experiencing those problems.
Geodon was making her hands tremble and she would pace constantly (akathisia). Her symptoms were not (and really were never) those of schizophrenia or bi-polar disorders, but she was too afraid to stop taking anti-psychosis drugs. She was sure that she did not have HPPD. She was sure that permanent damage was done to her brain and what she was looking for was physical proof of that damage even though tests showed that her brain was intact and not damaged. She discounted that her mind, her psyche, her thinking were of importance – because she had permanent, irreversible brain damage.
“If you would like to accomplish something you must first expect it of yourself.“
It didn’t matter what I was expecting for Emma – getting over her psychosis, visual and auditory problems, and back to being self sufficient. I knew it was possible and the constant visits to several doctors and therapists would make it possible.
It didn’t matter that her many doctors and therapists were searching and doing their best to find whatever was needed so she could deal with her problems, and expecting that their therapy would work. It didn’t matter that all diagnosis on the physical level indicated that nothing was wrong with her brain. It didn’t matter that one potential diagnosis of HPPD (hallucinogen persisting perception disorder) was spot on for her sight and hearing hyper acuity.
What was Emma expecting for herself? A lifetime of abnormal vision and hearing with helplessness. A lifetime of not being normal, independent, confident. A lifetime of being on drugs to combat schizophrenia (currently we are questioning that diagnosis). A lifetime of living in fear.
If she could not change her expectation of what her future would be, she would live the life that she was currently expecting for herself – doomed to never be well.
She picked that exact moment to sit at the dining table as I was halfway through my morning meal. If she had come 5 minutes later, the thought of her getting what she expected would have passed on, to be replaced with other thoughts of less significance. The brain is fleeting and so overwhelming in that way.
In this writing, I have now made it permanent. I believe that it is one of the most powerful foundations to her becoming normal again.
She MUST expect that she will be normal, and all the forces and power within and without her will do whatever in order to meet that expectation.
What I must do is get her to alter her expectations. I will be asking her often what she expects for herself, and work on getting her hopes turned into expectations.
I’ll be more brutal – maybe my husband’s “get the hell outta here” would work more effectively than love, love, hug, hug, pat pat pat on the back whenever she comes to me with her “I don’t think I’ll survive this.”
This non-mother-of-the-year expects to live the life of fulfilling my own dreams and goals. This has been majorly interrupted with Emma’s intrusion into our lives.
If she continues to expect (and get) her doom and gloom, I may be expected by society, family, and Emma to shift the expectations of my life to that of catering and caring for a paranoid, anxiety ridden broken shell of a daughter for the rest of my life.
I don’t think I can do that. I cannot continue to breathe hope, love, and positives into a shell of a person who expects to be forever damaged. She must choose to become whole again. Perhaps what she needs is the kick in the pants, the “get the hell out of here” whenever she does the poor me, poor me, poor me, forever.
The saga continues –