In Sickness and In Mental Health
I can’t remember if it was hot or cold that night you walked me home from the brewery. I don’t remember what you wore (probably a checked button up) or if the stars twinkled or the porch light hummed. I do remember that I didn’t want the walk to end. I remember that I didn’t do my hair.
Earlier, when my roommate asked where I was going and I replied with “hanging out with Ryan,” I immediately followed up with “but it’s not a date!”
And it wasn’t, technically.
When I arrived at the bustling bar, you were sipping an IPA with another woman–married, just a friend!, you told me. Still, not a date.
I was right in not doing my hair.
I remember the lull in conversation once our walk home ended at my porch. How I inched myself backward toward the door and chuckled nervously. How I twirled my salmon pink flower earrings and forced myself to wait for you to speak.
“Do you want to go out to dinner with me?” you finally asked and a zing of heat rippled through my body.
Me, you really wanted to date me?
***
I thought about doing my hair for our first date, but decided against it. I let my wavy-ish hair air dry and hoped for the non-poofy best. I wanted you to see the real me. Be attracted to the real me. Choose the real me.
I prided myself that I was low maintenance. I was never the girl with her curling wands and make up routines and designer clothes, and I wasn’t going to start.
You kept asking me out, frizz and all.
***
When I first started coming to the weekly friends' dinner where we met, you labeled me “Short New Girl” as a counterpart to the other new guest: “Tall New Girl.”
Both introverts, we’d exchanged hundreds of group texts such as “who’s on main dish?,” “I’m bringing beer,” and multitudes of “over it” GIFs and workday banter before we ever texted alone.
Later, when we were engaged, I asked when you knew you wanted to get to know me better. When I morphed from Short New Girl to a girl you wanted to date.
Why me?
“I was interested after I read your post on depression,” you replied.
From the beginning, you were attracted to my writing (I mean, swoon right back–a man who reads and has good diction.) You never shied away from talk of mental illness and you were drawn to my vulnerability.
It’s one thing to read a post and resonate, to appreciate the honesty; it’s a different story to marry someone with mental health issues.
Six years into our marriage, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD was the reason my depression wasn’t going away, my anxiety was amping up, and why I felt irritable and overwhelmed.
***
“I’m not doing this!” I yell at the kids and slam down the plate holding my son’s peanut butter toast. I lean forward with my hands on my knees and heave in and out hot, panicked breaths. I feel the gnawing in the back of my throat; the prick of tears in my eyes. My world constricts and my thoughts race. I am failing again. I can’t even get the kids ready for school. I can’t get through five minutes without yelling. And I haven’t done my writing and I should have worked out and I should have known this would happen and I should have prevented it and think of all the other times you’ve failed, every hour, every day, every moment a missed opportunity.
You’re pouring coffee from the leaky carafe and see me shut down. You set down your mug and walk over. You rub my back and I am unreachable, still heaving, still reciting a ticker tape of failures in my head. You hug me and I am frozen. You tell me you love me, and I don’t reply. Minutes pass and you are quiet.
The kids yell for their breakfast and you replace the offending peanut butter toast with a plain slice as demanded by our six-year-old. You watch them eat then get them dressed. You load the kids with their backpacks and water bottles and lunches in the car.
You give you me space.
***
“Aren’t I disgusting?” I ask you as I look in the mirror and pinch the skin at my waist. “Ugh, these love handles,” I groan and sigh. I have no regard for your feelings, how it breaks your heart that I don’t see myself like you do, how it makes you feel about your own body when I nitpick my own.
I’m merely repeating the conviction I feel inside.
***
I interrupt your work again. I can see you’re in the middle of an IM, your fingers flying across the keyboard. You have to re-read my newsletter. I need reassurance on the wording, the font, the filter on the pictures.
You’re on a call, but I need this feedback now.
***
Seven years and two kids into marriage, I’m no longer that low maintenance girl casually showing up for dates. I’m alarmed, actually, by how high maintenance OCD recovery feels. How high maintenance I feel. How dependent I am on you.
I need exercise endorphins to combat the anxiety, expensive medication to keep from plunging into despair, time to write, time outside, time with my girls, and a somewhat clean house to even feel like I can start to handle life.
And while there is treatment for OCD and I’m so grateful, choosing to live a lifestyle of exposure and response prevention often leaves me feeling worse before I start to feel better.
In the OCD community, we talk a lot about sitting with discomfort and sticking with the ick. No one talks about how hard it is to be nice to our kids and spouses when we’re in the ick.
And in the middle of it all, you are taking care of me.
You give me space and grace. You are learning how to respond to my OCD.
You carry the mental load of not knowing which Aly will greet you in any moment: the happy confident version or the shell of me stuck in an OCD prison.
You’re learning that when I tell you all the ways I’ve failed, you can’t give reassurance. You say, “Maybe.” You hug me. You make up song parodies, “That thought is Poison!” You take the kids so I can write or workout.
You stay. You never judge. You never ask why I’m not over it yet. You never belittle my slow progress.
When you committed to love me in sickness and in health, neither of us knew how taxing it would be to maintain my mental health.
I’m learning, too.
You’re my biggest WHY in recovery. I want to fight OCD so that I can love you better. I want there to be space for you in our marriage, not just the throbbing urgency of my OCD.
I’m learning to lean into my values. I’m learning to resist the compulsions now for the sake of freedom later. I’m learning to treat you well even when I feel shitty inside. But progress is slower than I would like.
Marriage lays you bare in so many ways. And you see the real me every day: the anxiety attacks and the looping criticism, the roller coaster of emotions. And still you choose me, frizzy (now graying) hair, mental disorder, and all.
***
Small disclaimer: I know that all spouses deal with each other’s ish. This is just to name and acknowledge the role and toll fighting a mental disorder like OCD has taken on our marriage. I also believe all people (with or without OCD) are deserving (and undeserving!) of love.
***
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Love After Babies".
To making things we love
To scheduling play
To micro-delights
To daily joys
To childlike wonder
Cheers to making a life we love.
Morning light streams into the kitchen, hitting the dining table that my husband and I purchased when we were newly married seven years ago. The table now more closely resembles a workbench splattered with paint and crumbs, faded rings from hot coffee cups left too long, and errant dry erase markings that, apart from the whiteboard, do not actually erase at all.
As Ashlee Gadd says, “Creativity is happening here.”
My mom got me a fancy planner for Christmas with space to write up to eight yearly goals and break them down into monthly action items. Though it feels irresponsible, I have chosen only one goal for now: write my morning pages.
I have committed to writing every day whether or not I wake up before the kids. Whether or not I feel like it. Whether or not there are a million other things I should do instead (isn’t that always the case?)
So on mornings like today, when premenstrual insomnia kept me up half the night and we just got back from vacation and our schedules are all off kilter, I write my words while my daughter draws.
My four-year-old, Nadia, reaches for a new crayon. I chuckle at the sight of her. Her hair is crazed from sleep and her refusal to let me brush it; she holds the crayon in a balled up fist that I know her teachers will try to break her of once she starts kindergarten. Best of all, she is wearing the cherry topping hat from my ice cream sundae Halloween costume. She looks like a red teletubby.
“I’m making things I love,” she tells me as she draws picture after picture. She draws a rainbow, X’s and 0’s, snowflakes and fireworks, a road, a line, a heart, a cross for Jesus, a giant slide, and in big block letters: MOM.
In my own notebook, I’ve cataloged a list of to dos, a series of gripes and complaints. It’s part of the process, I’m beginning to understand, writing down the gunk to get to the good.
My daughter, she starts with the good.
I’m making what I love.
Hmm. Can it be that simple?
In my mind, obligations come first, enjoyment is secondary. What should I write? What should I do? What must come first? I must complete my task list before I do something fun. Most days my task list lingers; I never make it to the fun.
What if I don’t need to earn the things I love?
What if I can start with the good? Schedule them in, even?
One of the exercises in The Artist’s Way invites you to list out 20 things you enjoy doing and then make a date with yourself to do one of those activities each week.
If my daughter can delight in roads and lines and cherries, surely I can come up with 20 activities I might enjoy.
I start my list of deliciously impractical activities I love:
Ice skating
Hiking
Steaming hot jacuzzis
Roller blading
Scooter rides with the kids
The beach
A captivating memoir
Zumba dance classes
A one-on-one conversation with a dear friend
Writing
Fire pit gazing
Swimming
Hot baths while watching a crime show
Latin music Peloton rides, bonus points if it’s Tunde
TS Eliot
Writing cards
Reading my words out loud
The upside down rides at SeaWorld
Celia Cruz and Shakira dance parties with my kids
It turns out there’s a lot I love after all. I take out my fancy new planner, give thanks for five-morning a week preschool, and write in for Friday morning: Aly Artist Date, 9:30-11am, SeaWorld. (I live 20 minutes from SeaWorld San Diego and have annual passes.)
It feels so irresponsible, scheduling play before work, before the task list is done. As a writer and creative I want to make more things I love this year: blog posts and newsletter drafts, encouraging notes and prayers–maybe even a book.
As a person, I want to make a life I love: filled with exercise endorphins, Latin beats, meaningful connection, family adventures, and deep belly laughs.
In 2023, I am committing to start with the good to make a life I love. I don’t have to earn the fun; it’s there for the taking. Regardless of my output or productivity, whether or not I feel like I “deserve it,” I am allowed to play.
“You know what I love more than the things I putted on my list?” my daughter asks me as she scoots her chair closer to mine.
“Mom!” she squeals as she hugs me tight. I squeeze her back then pick up my pen to write:
This, this moment right now. Creating with my girl with the crazy hair and sweet words, making things we love, together.
I am grateful for this life I get to make, the love I get to choose.
So cheers to making and doing things we love this year
To scheduling play
To micro-delights
To daily joys
To childlike wonder
Cheers to making a life we love.
***
How about you? Can you list 20 things you love? Can you schedule one activity you love each week? Can you find one micro-delight in each day?
***
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Cheers!".
She’s making a list
A grandmother’s love smells like garlic and onion and browning meat. It feels like the cold squish of raw meatball mixture in the palm of my hand.
In May 2007, my mom called to tell me that my grandmother had stopped eating.
There was a flurry of decision making and angst. Should I finish finals week? Should I pack up my on-campus apartment and come home early? Could I postpone my final project for my Advanced Composition Course? What about my Spanish Literature and Culture exam?
I stayed at school. My grandmother held on.
***
The strum of shuffling cards and the sharp smell of garlic filled my grandmother’s small apartment.
As a toddler, my older sibling couldn’t say her name: Nancy. Nini stuck.
Nini and I were playing rummy again.
We probably ate my favorite garlic noodles. I loved the white pasta shells in a creamy garlic sauce mixed from a packet of powder (this was the 90s and I was ten–don’t judge). For dessert, Nini probably scooped chocolate cherry cordial sorbet (another favorite) into curly pink bowls. Our spoons clinked against the bumpy blown glass and our lips smacked at the cold sweetness.
I’m sure I rambled on about the kids in my 4th/5th combo class with Mrs. Stanbach. Midgame, I must have jumped up to demonstrate my level 5 gymnastics floor routine. Nini listened patiently while I explained in detail my new favorite leotard–the silver starburst across the chest, the teal crushed velvet smooth to the touch, the keyhole clasp at the nape of my neck.
Nini listened, nodded, and let me win. At the end of the game, we tallied our points and I wrote down our scores on the yellow notepad on the corner of her dark wood dining table. I added up the numbers; I meticulously kept track.
***
“One-two-three-flip,” I instruct my son as I demonstrate with my own pile of cards.
“When we have the same number, we break the tie with a war,” I explain. I tried to teach my six-year-old Rummy, but I couldn’t remember the rules. Sure, I could Google Rummy rules, but I know from the few times I played with other friends that Nini followed her own procedures. I viewed her special rummy rules as another one of her quirks, like how she would safety pin her socks to her pajama bottoms to prevent them from riding up and creating a draft on that tender inch of ankle while she slept or how she tracked her daily calorie consumption on a pad of paper on her dining table.
“Did Nini play that you needed to have 4 in a straight but they could be any suit? Or did they have to be the same suit? Do you remember the rules?” I message my mom.
My mom doesn’t remember.
I teach my son War instead. Flip-grab-slide. Flip-grab-slide.
***
“One-two-three-lift,” the CNAs repeat as they transfer my grandmother to her bed. The room is silent, no machines alert us to her internal arrhythmias, no wires tangle in her blankets.
She signed a DNR back when she was lucid. Before Alzheimer’s or whatever callous disease wrenched her memory, safety, and security from her, from us.
It’s Christmas Day 2007. She has outlasted all the doctor’s predictions and prognoses. She has made it to the one day of the year we are all guaranteed to be home from school and our various jobs and lives. She chose the one day we were guaranteed to be together.
I like to think she waited for me.
***
We kept a running tally of our Rummy scores. By the time Nini started forgetting the rules and playing became too tedious, we’d probably kept track of a decade's worth of points. I prided myself that our tally was untarnished. We had started with the whole family. As soon as I learned to spell the names, I wrote out across the sheet of paper: Aly Nini Cam (my younger brother) Penny (my older sister) Susan and Jerry (I always felt so grown up writing Susan and Jerry, not mom and dad). I wrote the score below our names. After each round, I added the points and calculated a new total.
I stacked up the scores, never dropping or misplacing or starting over. I insisted.
In hindsight, this could have been an early sign of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder–compulsive accounting, rigidity, inability to let go or pivot, be flexible.
Nini was the only babysitter we ever had, and my parents left us with her often. Quickly Jerry and Susan were dropped from the scorecard. Then Penny lost interest, preferring to play with transformers and Ninja Turtles instead. Cameron’s interest waxed and waned depending on if Penny was there to play with him.
Two names remained: Aly and Nini.
When my siblings did decide to join in, I would write their scores on a separate page. They could win that game that day, but they were disqualified from the long game, the real game, the real score.
Game after game, I tracked our points and placed the updated card next to Nini’s calorie pad.
***
My mom and I scooch closer to Nini on the bed. We each hold a bony hand, caress her cold fingers. The drum of my heart takes the place of any monitors. Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum.
My mom whispers, “We love you, we love you, we love you,” and her tears drop onto the white, starchy sheets.
Nini’s breath rattles and her sharp inhales drift farther apart until we think it’s over. We are frozen in the silent, negative space. We don’t move or breathe. Our eyes lock. Minutes march on.
I’m about to release my hand from Nini’s stony grip when she sits up and gasps, strong and startling. We jump. This happens three, maybe four more times until we’re convinced it’s not the end. She stopped eating in May and now it’s Christmas and if anyone can hang on, she can.
***
Nini kept a notepad on her dining table to track her calories.
In her scrawling cursive, she’d write: Blueberry muffin: 200 calories, a splash of Lactaid in the coffee: 20 calories, a glass (or two) of wine: 120-240 calories.
She was always stacking, always adding, always tracking. How did I never notice we were the same?
I wish I could ask her now. Had her doctor given her these strict orders? Did she ever miss a day and how did that make her feel? Could she stop tracking if she wanted? Were we driven by the same anxiety? The same compulsion to track our progress, the same need for certainty to “know” we followed the rules and did the right thing? Said the right thing? Ate the right thing?
Are we the same?
***
In the cold nursing home room, we wait and wait. The minutes stretch longer. I notice the chipped polish on my thumbnail, I try to unbend her knobby knuckles, not knowing if they’re clenched with arthritis or stiff with death.
“You did a good job, Mom,” my own mom says. “It’s okay to let go.”
We wait until the silence does not give way to another striving breath.
We wait until we know. We wait until we’re flooded all at once: a rush of relief and grief and disbelief.
I move my hand from Nini’s, grab my mom’s, and squeeze.
***
If you ask me what a grandmother’s love is like, I would reply in a smorgasbord of senses. A grandmother’s love smells like garlic and onion and browning meat. It feels like the cold squish of raw meatball mixture in the palm of my hand. It tastes like M&M cookies and melting butter on fresh baked blueberry muffins.
Love sounds like the shuffle of cards and the ramblings of a shy girl finally releasing her words to an attentive audience. Love looks like “doing our cuticles” together. She never called it girl time or a manicure, or–horrors–a mani/pedi. Nini would fill a bowl with warm, soapy water and let my fingers soak. Then gently, so gently, she’d push back my cuticles with a wooden tool.
During our sleepovers, we would play Rummy, watch I Love Lucy, do our cuticles, cook, and bake.
I remember sitting on the counter making cookies, the mixing bowl pressed between my feet as I stirred with a wooden spoon. I piled the dry ingredients into a dome-shaped mountain, then watched as the wet ingredients flowed down the volcano. I would stir until my arms tired and I’d switch hands.
A grandmother’s love smells like fresh baked cookies and looks like a rummy score card spanning a childhood. A grandmother’s love looks like a woman who tracked her every calorie, baking us the good stuff anyway.
***
“Uno, uno, dos, dos, tres, tres,” I deal out the cards to my son, counting in Spanish to reinforce his immersion kindergarten program.
I think about grabbing a pad of paper to keep score, but stop myself. I want to say that I’ve loosened up my rigid thinking. That I no longer care about keeping score, but I confess I don’t grab for the pad because I’m not sure I’m doing it right. We’re trying Rummy again and I can’t remember Nini’s rules. Am I teaching him the right way? If I don’t write it down, then the wrong rules don’t count.
I force myself to sit, to teach him anyway. I let him peek at my cards and I point out his own matches. His giggles fill our living room.
If I’m going to track and count and tabulate, can I stack these moments instead? Can I pile them, one on top of the other, never crossing out or starting over, adding up to a childhood of feeling loved?
My son talks about what he wants for Christmas (a transforming lizard) and he pauses every so often to demonstrate his ninja moves. I listen and nod. I let him win.
***