The kids have this book they adore called “The Very Impatient Caterpillar.” As the title suggests, the book is about a caterpillar who has a difficult time coping with the fact that metamorphosis takes two weeks. He tries to rush the process, cries that he can’t last the entire two weeks, but in the end, he makes it and transforms into a butterfly… only to learn, to his dismay, that migration will take a long time, too. 

It’s genuinely hilarious, and it gives us a good lesson to point to when any of the kids need to be a little more patient (after all, we do have to wait for things in this life, even if instant gratification takes too long). Carrie, in particular, has fallen in love with the voices I do for all of the characters and can recite the book without blinking, despite stumbling over a few of the larger words (“metamorphosize” is, after all, quite a mouthful for a girl of only two). 

*

I’m writing this nervously because I know how easy it would be to take the wrong way and be used against me. I file it with other things that could be taken the wrong way and used against me: that time I didn’t teach any Friday classes when I was supposed to, my struggle with getting to the office on time, my list of “incomplete” graduate school classes, my constant panicked running after my student loans, my obnoxiously blossoming weight. 

But.

Today, I learned a thing or two about shame, about how it serves as the critic on your shoulder saying that you’re not good enough, and then saying who do you think you are? And, as it turns out, that critic is just your mind messing with you. That when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you’re opening yourself up to failure, but you’re also throwing your voice out there to others who are going through the same struggle; your “me too” is the enemy of their shame and allows them to be vulnerable as well, to step into the light and see that the stupid critic on your shoulder is a liar. 

So here’s where I am. 

About a week, maybe two weeks ago, I found myself in a dark place again. I don’t know what precipitated it, except maybe the weight of everything I’ve been doing, from coordinating the kids’ therapy to trying to make the burden on Kyle as small as possible to my own health issues (more on that in a minute) just crashing down on me at once. I’ve been seeing a therapist once a week since May/June, but that Friday, I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to go upstairs to my big, comfortable bed, with the AC blasting on me, and just disappear. 

(naturally, only while the twins were napping–after all, doing otherwise would leave Kyle with too much to do, and I don’t want to do that)

Some part of my brain, the part that’s still rational, pointed out that all of this meant I probably needed to talk to my therapist, so I did, and she pointed out that with me still in this dark place, still going back to it so easily, we needed to do something more–the recent increase in my medication and the recent therapy weren’t quite cutting it. 

At her suggestion, I met with a psychiatric RN a few days later, and she took a look at my medications, but more importantly, she talked to Kyle. We don’t always notice when we’re drowning, and Kyle pointed out that I mask so much, even to myself, that it’s sometimes hard to tell; but he’d noticed that I wasn’t doing well. I was struggling to force myself to do things like take a shower. I was sleeping upwards of 14 hours a day and wanted to sleep more. I couldn’t engage with things that used to make me happy. Little problems seemed overwhelming. 

My RN listened to all of this and suggested to me, and to my therapist, that it might be a good idea if I looked into an intensive outpatient program, also called a partial hospitalization program. 

It sounds scary, right? Partial hospitalization. A step more and you’re hospitalized because you’re mentally ill, and that’s a scary thing. That’s something that only happens to people who’ve got it really bad or people who Los Angeles police in the 1930s need to silence or Kennedy daughters whose birth injuries cause them to be a little too scandalous for daddy’s liking or housewives who are more trouble to their husbands than they’re worth. It’s a black mark, a stain, something that can and will be used against you by people who’d rather you not live your best life. It’s a trump card that can be pulled whenever: “Well, I might not be able to tell you the five socioeconomic factors that led to the French Revolution, but at least I’ve never been partially hospitalized.” 

And it’s really stupid that society and our own biases make us think that way, particularly about mental health issues. Someone who has to do 40 hours of chemotherapy isn’t looked down upon or seen as being a hot mess because they’re doing something to heal themselves. Someone who goes to physical therapy every day for two weeks doesn’t have that therapy used against them by assholes (well. Depends on the asshole). Someone who needs a team of doctors to help them solve a physical problem isn’t seen as being weak or having a black mark against them. Why should mental illness be any different?

The prejudices against mental illness and mentally ill people are really stupid when you think about it. I take medication to help my body become less insulin resistant and to make sure that my brain is getting enough serotonin to function correctly. The last time I had bronchitis, I was too sick to get out of bed for a week; this last depressive downswing, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed at all if the kids didn’t need me. Yet my metformin and resting for my bronchitis are seen as necessary steps for my health, while my Effexor and resting for my depression are seen as weakness and laziness, respectively. 

Which, really, is why I’ve been reluctant to write about this. I’m afraid that somewhere, down the road, someone will find this blog post and use it against me. But that said, I think odds are greater that someone, somewhere, is going through this just like I am, and they think that they’re alone, and they feel ashamed for letting it get this bad and ashamed for having this black mark on their record. 

So, to you, whomever you are: you’re not alone. I signed up for the partial hospitalization program. 

It looks very different, I think, from how anyone would expect. I’ve been calling it a “class” to people who don’t need details (like my kids’ therapists; their ABA therapist had the misfortune of overhearing my entire first meeting on Friday because my computer fritzed out right before I joined the Zoom call). About 15 people, all ages, all walks of life, get together every day on Zoom for four hours with 10 minute breaks between sessions. We talk about our struggles and coping mechanisms, and we have psychologists who work with us to learn better coping skills, to rewire our brains so that the world isn’t as heavy, to hopefully move towards wellness. We have a psychiatric RN who monitors our medications and checks in with us to see how the side effects are. We’ve watched several TED talks. We take notes. We compare situations. We work with and for each other. 

It’s not a perfect situation, and today was only my second day in the program. Most of what I’ve been learning has been telling me where my issues originate, not how to fix those issues. 

Which, like. It’s the second day. 

And I’m journaling. I have a really cute journal that I decorated with stickers because it made me happy to do so. 

I took a walk today, only for about 7 minutes because my ankles were screaming at me, but I did it. I took a shower this weekend, and my hair is clean. I ate an apple for breakfast. 

I’m trying to make myself feel obligated to do these things so that I keep doing them, because I know they’re good for me. I know that they’re helping me, even if it’s not an overnight change. And I’m content being in this two week partial hospitalization program, because it’s like the impatient caterpillar’s chrysalis: it’s a safe place where I can deconstruct what’s brought me to this point and hopefully rearrange it into something more beautiful. 

And then maybe I’ll migrate.

*

Physical health wise, things are… interesting. I’ve been having lower left pelvic pain for ages now, more than a year, and I don’t know what’s causing it (ER reports that it was constipation are strongly off the mark). I’m supposed to see my gynecologist next week to try and figure out what’s going on, and that might require some surgery (nothing major, just putting a camera inside of me to look around, because as it turns out, this level of pain isn’t normal). I’m not even sure that it’s a gynecological issue. It could be my gastrointestinal tract finally deciding that it’s through with cheese (please no). It could be my hips suffering after bearing the weight of twins for 34 weeks. 

BUT the fact that it flares up most frequently around when I ovulate and around my period makes me think that no, it’s something gynecological, and I’m hoping something easily fixed. The last thing I need right now is to find out that I’ve got like. Cancer of the everything or something. 

Anyway. That appointment is on September 1. After that, health-depending, it’ll be time to start Sam’s school year and push on until the insanity of 2020 finally goes away. 

Which it will. We just have to be, well. Patient.