My Polar Opposite » Health

Armchair Therapist: Relationship Self-Analysis Edition

mypolaropposite — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:05:49 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwen/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

This time, it’s personal (#NameThatMovie)!

Today I realized that I still have some work to do, but I’m learning a lot about myself. And, as a result, this is THE LAST POST I will write on the Friend Boy saga because I’m going to take my own advice. One of my Twitter followers said that she read my blog because I wrote something that really resonated with her, and I write it a lot: I cannot change other people, or their behavior; I can only change my reactions to what they do. So today, dear friends, I’m listening to myself and I’m changing myself. On November 14, 2005, I had a relationship breakthrough; I know the date because I put it in a Word document that I have saved on my computer. Fortunately, it weathered the untimely demise of my iBook so that I can look at it when I feel myself doing something stupid. My breakthrough went a little something like this:

I am going to be myself regardless of what other people think, or what other people want me to be.
When I am true to myself, I am happy.
Exactly who I am and exactly who I want to be is absolutely fine, and people will like me for who I am.
No matter what happens, and no matter what other people think of me, I will always know how lovable and deserving of love I am.
I will not hide behind narratives that I have created for myself to keep me from getting close to people.
I do not need to hide behind a mask of who I think I should be or how I think I’m supposed to act.
It is worth the work and the discomfort to get rid of my “racket” and be free to experience real feelings.
Now that I have this realization, my perspective, my relationships, my happiness will be forever changed – for the better.

That sounds all healthy and shit, huh? Now it’s time to add another statement to my list of relationship health reminders, just so I can look at it again and again:

I will not spend time and energy on people that do not appreciate me for who I am.

It’s hard to be self-aware and check yourself when you’re about to go down an unhealthy path, but I’m going to do it in public this time, so I’ll be shamed into treating myself correctly.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I wrote what I believed was a really great post on how I’d been feeling now that my mother has been dead for nearly half my life. It was really difficult, and really cathartic, but I wrote it because when something is on my mind – and on my heart – I have to commit it to words. Also, many of you have lost loved ones and I’d like to think that in some way I’m helping other people with my blog topics. Or I’m making you laugh, which is helpful to me all the time. I don’t write for recognition, or sympathy, or empathy, but its nice when I get it. Judging by Twitter retweets, and comments here, on Facebook, and in person, I struck a nerve with a lot of people and I’m grateful for your reaction. I was most…surprised is the best word, I guess, that people who have never met me could be so caring about my feelings. Whether you honestly meant it or not, you said it, and I’m deeply touched.

My family and friends also reached out to me, knowing that Mother’s Day is usually hard for me, and gave the kind words that they always do. Conspicuously absent from any kind of comment was Friend Boy, who I know follows me on Twitter AND Facebook, but may not read the blog. For you eternal optimists and hopeless romantics out there, I know he saw my updates because he was on the grid. The best (and worst) thing about social media is that you can tell where people are, what they do, and when they do it. Sure, I might have been guilty of a little cyber-stalking, but who hasn’t? Friend Boy has been all over the internets, talking about whatever to whomever. Not a peep to me. No “saw your blog”, or “I know you were upset yesterday, how’s it going?” Only a Twitter request to do something for him. Humph! So basically, people who don’t know me from a can of paint went out of their way to comment on my blog, send it to other people, give me feedback, send me e-mail, cry while reading my words. But someone who actually knows me could not be bothered. Very telling, indeed. And I’m interested in a relationship with this person? Somebody check me back into the hospital because I clearly need to have my head examined…again!

You may be asking yourselves why I’ve devoted so much brain power to someone who ignores me and what’s going on in my life. Or wondering what difference it makes whether Friend Boy reads my stuff or says “hey dog, good work.” Because, ladies and gentlemen, I am The Queen of One-Sided Relationships. I date emotionally withholding men. I get all wrapped up in self-absorbed dudes and then try to change them into the caring mates that I want. I make excuses for why they don’t pay attention to me and I hang on far longer than is good for my psyche. I ignore signs that I should cut bait and hope that, when they’re finished whatever other thing they’re doing, they’ll be more into me. Know what? They probably won’t be more into me. Not because I’m doing something wrong, but because everything ain’t for everybody we’re not for each other. And my “racket,” for all of you Landmark Education folks in the audience, is that I’m somehow undeserving of male attention and will be alone forever, therefore choosing emotionally unavailable objects makes my worthlessness a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve blogged about this before, and when I put it in writing again, it makes NO SENSE to me. But it doesn’t have to make sense for it to be true.

I’m not mad at Friend Boy, or the Parade of Assholes that I’ve actually dated in the past. I’m angry with myself for being insane. You know, repeating the same pattern over and over, hoping for different results? People only do what they can get away with, and if they can get away with ignoring me most of the time and still get sex/dinner/attention/free web design services they’ll go ahead as planned. If, however, I stop myself from committing the energy to giving these men what they want and shift the focus to what I want and need, the universe will send me someone who appreciates me and the wishy-washy guys will just float away. I’m exaggerating the ease with which I’ll be able to change my thought and behavior patterns, but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say.

My mom used to say “the way you start off is the way you’ll end up” and “a leopard doesn’t change its spots.” Basically, if someone is kinda self-involved when you first meet them, they’re pretty much always going to be that way no matter what you do. So I’m writing off my interest in Friend Boy as destined to end up with me doing all the giving and none of the taking, and I’m nipping this “crush” or whatever you wanna call it in the bud. In the interest of filling my blog with aphorisms, I know that “the heart wants what it wants” and I can’t really turn off my feelings. I can, however, question why I even had them in the first place. Somewhere back in time, Friend Boy did show a passing interest in me. If you want to know the truth, he talked to me first, but that can only get him so far. The fact that this mishegas has turned into what I’ll call My First Mistake of the Decade is nobody’s fault. It will, however, be my fault if I sink emotional capital into this man when my investment doesn’t look like it will pay dividends. (I put my MBA to good use with that metaphor!)

So if you see me on Twitter talking about Friend Boy, will you please put me on blast? Remind me of this blog post, tell me you agree with me, or that I’m full of shit for not practicing what I preach. If public humiliation works for weight loss, then why not for the loss of my foolish ways? However, when you throw this post back in my face, don’t throw it that hard: you might break my ego.

Bipolars should be single: The final installment of The Friend Boy Chronicles

mypolaropposite — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:32:21 +0000

Controversial title, huh? Before you go off on me for suggesting that it is not possible for people suffering from bipolar disorder to maintain healthy relationships, read what I have to say here about myself and then feel free to judge me as you see fit.

Remember how I said that I was ready for love, talking all big about thinking clearly and prepared to make grown-up decisions like regular people? Well, I may have jumped the gun on that one and here’s how I know. Last week was a bad week. Not “check myself back into the hospital” bad; more like “I feel bad and I just want to stay in bed all the time.” For the most part, I did just that with the exception of a few showers, a job interview, and some talking on the phone. At some point this week, I realized that for the last few months I’d been riding high on a combination of endorphins, caffeine, serotonin (both natural and chemically-induced) and whatever other brain chemicals trigger bipolar mania. In case you care about my moods, this is everyday life for me, the stuff of 140 characters, not blog posts. My highs aren’t high enough to make me think I can fly or run with the bulls in Pamplona. They’re just high enough to make me feel slightly antsy, lose my appetite, and be really, REALLY productive. So, garden-variety Type A stuff with a little “I’m falling in love” sprinkled on top for flavor. For the record I am NOT falling in love, though I find it very telling that the “falling in love” feeling is a little bit like a manic attack. Blame it on the do-do-do-do-do-dopamine. And that infernal serotonin, which is the brain chemical my medications are responsible for altering. So…I guess I’m not really interested in Friend Boy, maybe I just need a new prescription.

In all honesty, last week was the big let-down, the big drop-down, and I went into my bipolar-depression cocoon which looks a little like this: staying in the house, avoiding people and commitments coated with an undefinable feeling of “blah”. Not bad enough to cry my eyes out (unless it was at the end of the last book I read – totally warranted, by the way) but bad enough to put my head under the covers and ignore the world. In the process of said ignorance, I grossly mistreated a classmate for whom I was supposed to do an internet project. Perhaps I over-committed myself when volunteering to help my friend promote his book, and one could identify my over-confidence in my own abilities as a by-product of a manic state. However, last week, in the midst of my depression-induced fog, I couldn’t quite focus long enough to work on said project, nor could I stomach the idea of talking to my classmate about my shortcomings. So instead, I didn’t return his phone calls. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do the work, but I couldn’t get myself together enough to do it, or to talk about not doing it without resulting anxiety, hyperventilation and feelings of worthlessness. I’d worked myself up into a classic “I feel crappy and I feel guilty” moment when I had a huge realization: I was treating someone else the way Friend Boy – and several other men in my life – have treated me.

Stay with me, readers, while I break it down for you. My romantic life has been plagued by all manner of men who’ve virtually ignored me. I often asked, what did I do to deserve this? Nobody deserves to be ignored unless they’ve wronged you in some manner. Yet I continually give plenty of people the cold shoulder: recruiters, sometimes my Dad and my friends, my classmate last week, and my job once right before I went into the hospital. I’ve been making excuses for myself, believing that my behavior was justified because I felt “sick”, or because facing up to people would cause me too much anxiety. No matter the reasons, though, I was still in the wrong just like the dates that didn’t call me back, or the guys that broke up with me via silence instead of a direct form of communication. I’m not necessarily saying that I can’t get some man to call me back due to karmic retribution. Actually, maybe I am saying that very thing, that I’m putting into the world the same behaviors that I dislike so much in others and they’re coming right back at me. So until I can figure out how to manage my ownself in relation to other people, I probably shouldn’t be trying to date anyone. And that means, kids, that Friend Boy is a no-go until I can get my shit together. This is one of those “everything happens for a reason” moments, and why this “bipolar” should be single for just a bit longer.

For the record, I did contact my classmate and beg out of the project. He was probably disappointed, and I can live with people being disappointed in me for a while. What I can’t live with is people thinking that I’m a jerk, so I’m going to try very hard not to act like one from now on. Call me on that if you see me.

I’m Rockin’ the Red Pump for AIDS Awareness. And fashion fierceness.

mypolaropposite — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:35:30 +0000

Ok, so it's not a pump, but these Birkenstocks are the only red shoes I have. You get the idea...

Today, March 10, is National Women and Girls’ HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD) and while it’s not my usual cause, I’m gonna talk about it. Here are the facts, directly from the CDC:

In 2007, more than a quarter of diagnoses of HIV infection in the United States were among women and girls aged 13 years and older.

More than 278,000 women and adolescent girls in this country are living with HIV; and almost 94,000 American women and girls with AIDS have died since the epidemic began.

In 2007, for female adults and adolescents, the rate of HIV/AIDS diagnoses for black females was nearly 20 times as high as the rate for white females and nearly 4 times as high as the rate for Hispanic/Latino females.

Then I read this idiocy with Antonio Cromartie of the NY Jets having 7 kids with 6 women in 5 different states. Of course it’s absurd that the Jets are paying him $500M to clear up his lingering paternity issues, and that will be the subject of another blog post. But the fact that these 6 women were willing to have unprotected sex with some dude just points out how sexually transmitted diseases are being spread within our community. The CDC also released this week the alarming spread of herpes in the US, with the rate of infection among black women at 48%.

Don’t sleep on herpes: its a viral infection, treated with the same kinds of drugs (antiretrovirals) that treat AIDS and HIV. As such, individuals with genital herpes are “two to three times more likely to acquire HIV and they are also more likely to transmit HIV infection to others”, according to Dr. John M. Douglas, Jr. of the CDC. So just because its “only herpes” doesn’t mean that it will remain as such through the course of your life.

I’ve never been so happy to be celibate in my life, or to have been born at a time when sex without a condom wasn’t really an option. Generation X was raised with sex education and birth control in schools, and fear of AIDS coinciding with our sexual awareness. Younger generations are not so lucky, and they’re paying for it with their lives.

What can you do? EDUCATE yourself and those you love about the spread of HIV/AIDS among girls as young as 13, and on the ways you can prevent the spread of all sexually-transmitted disease. For the love of God, use a condom. Or choose to abstain from sex, or at least limit your sexual contact to one partner. Do something.

For more information, check out my Twitter Girl @luvvieIG and “The Red Pump Project”, as they raise awareness about the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls. If you’re in Chi-Town, the organization’s inaugural fashion show, “Rock the RED: Bold. Fashion. Awareness.” will take place on March 25.

Sometimes a suicide needs a tribute – Updated

mypolaropposite — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:34:31 +0000

UPDATE May 21, 2010 – May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and today marks the 2 Millionth call to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which offers 24/7/365 telephone support to people in crisis, as well as a nationwide referral network so callers can get help in their area.

I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad that so many people have called the Lifeline: every call represents an individual in trouble who is reaching out for life, and I celebrate that. However, I know that there are so many people out there with plans to harm themselves that don’t reach out that last time. My friend, Valerie, was one of those people and she committed suicide in June 2006. Growing up in the 1980′s, I was frightened by Valerie’s behavior and didn’t know what to do to help her. Today the internet, social networking and blogging give us unlimited access to information about mental illness and suicide that would have been invaluable to me as a young person.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Call the Lifeline at 800-273-TALK. Find a doctor, a therapist, a community of support. DO NOT BE ASHAMED. Talk it out, get some meds, get to a computer and research all the people just like you who are living and happy and coping.

Or send me an e-mail: even if I don’t know you, I know what you’re going through and I know where you can get help. Enjoy the blog, and don’t be a stranger

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This may be one of the hardest things I’ve ever written in my life, aside from all those cover letters. No, I’m not going to let the sarcasm block me from saying something that I think is very, very important. Today is my mother’s birthday and I’m in mourning. Not for Mommy, though she did pass over 15 years ago and I still miss her every single day. No, I’m missing another very cool woman who taught me a lot, and taught other people as well. That woman is Valerie Burgher, one of my best friends who committed suicide in June 2006. She would have been 38 years old last Tuesday and she was funny and smart and talented and beautiful. To be perfectly honest, I was a little bit jealous of her when we were young and I’ll bet she was a little bit jealous of me in that pre-teen girl way. But we became best friends when we met in 7th Grade in Queens, NY. We were the only 2 Black girls in our class, and empirically the 2 smartest, so of course we bonded. It turns out that we had a lot more in common than that, things I wouldn’t realize until much later. Anyway, in school Valerie was always #1 and I was the perennial #2, but I didn’t mind. Her self-deprecating joke was that I was naturally smarter, but she worked harder. At the time I believed it a little, since I never studied a lick. But that’s not important; what’s important is that she was my bestest friend, like the kind of friend that you talk on the phone with for hours and hours and don’t say anything at all. We used to tape ourselves talking – the first podcasts! We used to watch movies together over the phone. My parents got me a separate phone number because they could never get a call, as Valerie and I NEVER got off the phone with each other unless we were at each other’s houses or at school. Good times.

Somewhere in 9th Grade, Val started acting a little strange. We were still girls but something was different. One morning she came to school for math team (I mentioned before that I was a nerd) and I noticed some scars on the side of her wrist. I asked about them, we fought, and Valerie stormed off. In retrospect, she was cutting – not trying to kill herself – and it freaked me the hell out. I thought I was going to die or my heart was going to explode. Our group of friends had a quorum and I learned that Valerie’s mom had been hospitalized years ago after a suicide attempt, and a second time after going off her medication. So young were we, and so without the internet for research that we didn’t know a lot about mental illness or family history or anything like that. I never told my parents about it because I didn’t want them to say I couldn’t see Valerie any more, or that I wasn’t allowed to go to her house. My parents are Black, we’re like that sometimes. It’s not monumentally important, but Valerie was biracial. Maybe that added to her pain, but I’ll never know.

After the cutting incident, things went back to normal. Valerie and I decided, as a unit, that we wouldn’t be attending private school at Fieldston or Hotchkiss (we’d been recruited simultaneously by the Prep for Prep program) and went to public school instead. Time went on, we broadened our circle of friends and she began dating a guy that a few of our other friends crushed on. Our other friends hated on Valerie a little bit after that. It was high school and girls get catty no matter how close they are. I’d made my peace with the fact that she was always the pretty one AND the smart one, but I never held that against her. She was my best friend, after all. Besides, there was just something so attractive about her, not just her looks, that it either sucked you in or made you jealous. You know that girl who all your guy friends are kind of in love with, even the gay ones, and you can’t fault them because you totally get it? Some people are just like that, I guess. She never knew it, though. It was like not ever thinking she was smarter than me or better than anyone at anything. She wasn’t modest exactly just, I don’t know, afraid of standing out, more so than the average teenager.

Anyway, around the time of the boys and the hating Valerie started to change a little. She was a little more broody, maybe a little bit erratic. We blamed it on the boyfriend. She spent 3 months in the Philippines with the Peace Corps our junior year after which we went to work at the same summer job and proceeded to apply to – and attend – the same college. Just like high school, I think it was a joint decision. My parents drove us up to New Haven for tours, then to Middletown for interviews, and on the ride back we decided that we’d be going to Yale, never mind that we hadn’t applied yet. We were going! Make it so! And we did, same major and everything. It’s amazing how much easier life was in high school, even when it was really hard. But college leads to adulthood and real issues.

Somewhere in freshman year, Valerie and her boyfriend broke up. It was him, not her, which I’ll always believe was motivated by jealousy. And as happens with these things, my best friend was pretty broken up by the break up. I only know that because she looked terrible, not because we talked about it like we would’ve in high school. Somewhere in there she disappeared into her dorm and I into mine. We did hang out occasionally, but I stopped understanding her. Rumors in small colleges spread like brush fires and I’d been told about her public drunkenness, rampant promiscuity and generally crazy behavior. At the time I was very confused and very embarrassed about hearing bad things about My Valerie, the innocent virgin (yeah, that’s right, ask around) in me shook her head and figured that this was where we parted ways. She went on to hang with the artsy coffee-house musician crowd and I hung with the gay feminist dance-party crowd. Then graduation. You can’t shake some people, and I met up with Valerie in Los Angeles in 1996, where she had a journalism fellowship with the LA Times. We chatted, I met some of her co-workers and felt vastly overmatched in intellect. I also felt like a child, like Valerie and her friends had become adults with real jobs while I was playing at it in advertising in NY. She still had that edge, that sad something I saw in college but she never talked to me about it. In lots of ways, I was a child then, and I wouldn’t have been able to handle her real truths. We met again at our 5th college reunion where I was struggling with depression (and didn’t know it) and she was manic (and perhaps knew it). When you don’t understand mania it just looks scary, especially if its wearing the face of the childhood best friend who always got you more than you got yourself. Anyway, we caught up with me nearly unable to follow her rambling conversation or pacing around the dorm room that was our hotel for the weekend. She revealed her plan to hook up with one of our classmates, as one often does at reunions. I know now that one often mounts a sexual offensive in the midst of a manic episode, but that’s from personal experience. In 1999, I knew enough not to criticize Valerie’s actions because I didn’t want to hurt her, but I’m sure my disapproval registered in some way. By that point we’d traded geographies with me leaving for California just as she was settling into Brooklyn and writing for New York Newsday. And that was that.

Years later I returned to New York and I might have seen Valerie in the Columbus Circle subway station. From behind I sized up a woman who could have been her but probably wasn’t. The age was right, but this girl was pretty chubby and had short hair, not like My Valerie at all. For a moment I thought, “people change” since at the time I was skinny and running 5K races, not at all the person I was even a few years before. But I didn’t approach the woman I saw underground because if it was her, I just wasn’t in the mood since I’d just come from therapy and didn’t feel like being drained by someone else. Probably wasn’t her anyway. I put that day out of my mind until months later, when I opened an innocent-looking e-mail offering me condolences at Valerie’s passing. I believe I said, out loud, “What the hell are you talking about?” as I responded to the note. By the time I pulled up Google I’d already been sent Valerie’s obituary from The Village Voice, for which she had written later in her life. She jumped in front of a train and died in the hospital the next day, ruled a suicide, not an accident. Valerie Burgher was 34 and suffered openly from bipolar disorder; her one-time best friend was 33, utterly shocked and bawling uncontrollably while she donated to NAMI. In those moments, years of memories came careening back to me, the good ones and the bad ones alike. I put everything together right then, sitting on the couch in my boyfriend’s living room, spilling tears onto his laptop. The erratic behavior, the mood swings, EVERYTHING. Even the guilt that I’d possibly seen her and was too selfish at the time to talk to her. In the next few hours I Googled everything I could to fill in the missing years and found that Valerie was still the same girl who I fell in love with in junior high. Funny, silly, creative, dedicated, smarter than me no matter what she’d say. She sang, played guitar, could bake a mean apple pie and grow plants. Bad dancer, brilliant writer and talented photographer, never really smiled in pictures because she thought she was ugly. Yeah, we never know what’s really going on inside someone’s head.

Today I have my own bipolar diagnosis and I can’t stop thinking about Valerie. First, I don’t know how she felt every day, but I get it all. Sitting in a psych ward I could see her volatile college years in my own Craigslist-bolstered promiscuity. I know why she sometimes drank too much and acted like an asshole, or why some of my other college friends didn’t like her or why she completely obliterated her ex-boyfriends, or why going to the Philippines and Cambodia with the Peace Corps could be interesting, but would never be far enough away for her to outrun her demons. I may not have done EXACTLY what she did, but trust that I’ve had my moments. And that they’ll be in the book. Anyway, after I got out of the hospital I decided that Valerie’s voice had been silenced but mine didn’t have to be. She was open about her disease, and her struggles became more powerful in light of her talents and success. I never got a chance to talk to my friend about living with a diagnosis, or taking medications, or any number of things that I’m sure we both have done every day to make through until morning. Sure, I feel a little bit guilty for ignoring her on the subway that day, and my emotional mind says that I could have helped her if we’d been able to talk so she didn’t have to take her own life. But my rational mind, as they call it in DBT therapy, knows that I can’t beat myself up about something over which I had absolutely no control. I do, however, have control over what I do now, whom I can help now, and what I can say now.

Right now is about eliminating the stigma of mental illness so that we’ll know what it looks like when we see it, know how to tell people to get help. Go to the National Alliance on Mental Illness website now and do some reading on depression, bipolar and suicide prevention. Then do some talking and some donating.

Silence is deadly

mypolaropposite — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:30:23 +0000

As generally happens when a celebrity dies suddenly, the vultures (read: tabloid speculators) have begun circling over Brittany Murphy (again, the right way to spell her name, look it up). The latest fodder for gossip is her use of prescription drugs, among them Klonopin, Atavan, Fluoxetine, Vicoprofen and Propranolol. When you rattle off a bunch of pharmaceutical names in a row like that, it seems rather ominous. Why was she taking all those? Did she overdose? Did Brittany’s doctors cause her death? What nefarious scheme was afoot at Casa de Murphy and Monjack (her husband) to support the continued abuse of narcotics? Before we get off on a tangent, I’m gonna make this drama simpler, if not less dramatic.

Hollywood is a lot like the rest of the world, though writ large for everyone to see. Whatever actors and musicians and non-specified celebrities do pretty much mirrors what we “regular people” do in our own lives. We all hide what we don’t want seen. The average person hides medicines in a drawer when company comes, safe from the prying eyes of those who just must peek in the medicine cabinet. You know you’ve done it. Or we see a shrink in another town so nobody we know will see us going in or coming out. Or we travel under pseudonyms and have or assistants fetch our prescriptions so TMZ doesn’t find out what we’re taking. Or we just lie and keep secrets and hope certain things about ourselves never come up. No matter who’s doing it, or how much money, power and influence they wield, it’s still subterfuge. And it may be killing us.

Here’s what I think about poor Ms. Murphy. She had diabetes, which is “documented”. She suffered from some kind of body image issue, which is sadly de rigueur among young starlets. She probably had bipolar disorder, according to the anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications in her possession. I’m a little fuzzy on the rest of her condition…perhaps she had a heart problem, and/or an addiction to pain medication. Or she had surgery and needed narcotics from a few different doctors so the tabloids wouldn’t report it as addition. I would wager that Brittany needed some time on “the inside”, not drug rehab, but some kind of psychiatric facility. Of course going to rehab is like going on vacation in LA, so much so that we watch people do it on TV shows. But checking into a mental ward is verboten, just ask Mischa Barton, whose 5150 psych hold earlier this year was blamed on some bad dental work. Uh-huh, blame it on the No-No-No-No-No-Novocain.

At this most wonderful time of the year, we should stop judging people, least of all those about whom we know so little. We should also start fessing up about our own shortcomings, likely a source of our criticism of others. Celebrities are easy targets because they seem so untouchable, so “perfect” that we have a hard time believing they could have real problems. Stand back because I’m getting on my soapbox again. Many people criticized Maia Campbell’s erratic behavior caught on tape this year. Message boards said things like “she’s a crack whore” and called her terrible names. The truth is, Campbell – like her late mother, author Bebe Moore Campbell – has bipolar disorder and was very much out of treatment this year when a sick-minded man exploited her condition on videotape and on the Internet. The truth is also that Maia was on drugs, and she was selling her body to numb the pain of her own disease, or of her mother’s death, or whatever human emotion was so unbearable it needed to disappear, but quick. Ready for some more truth: you’ve been there too, where it hurts so badly you don’t think you can make it another second. Fortunately, nobody was there with a camera, or a videotape, or a recorder poised to make money off your pain.

By the way, what secrets would we find in your medicine cabinet?

All I want for Christmas is self-esteem

mypolaropposite — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:00:33 +0000

Its hard to be a girl these days, harder than it is for a pimp. If I was a pre-teen now and I had to look at images of women in the media, I’m not sure how I’d turn out. So many things work against female self-esteem it’s a wonder the US produces any well-adjusted women. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, or at least since the last time I saw my goddaughter. Early in the AM on the day after Thanksgiving, or some morning that weekend, my goddaughter got into my bed and woke me up. She’s 11-years-old, but hasn’t quite gotten to that ‘tween “don’t touch me” phase, so she kind of flops all over you. Its quite sweet once you’re awake, but I digress. We chatted briefly until she touched my hair and said something like “yuck” or “ewww,” after which she decreed that my hair was nicer before (in braided extensions, or straight and shoulder length). Huh.

Now I’ll admit that at such an early hour, the Afro was not its most spherical and needed desperately to be picked. Usually I take umbrage at referring to my hair in pejorative terms, since its healthy and growing and has neat-o little ringlets. In this particular case, I couldn’t argue with my goddaughter since she doesn’t really know what naturally-textured hair feels like. Her mother, aunt and grandmother wear relaxers. She goes to a multi-ethnic school with kids of all cultures and hair types. Even her brother and father wear closely-cropped hair, so she has virtually no occasion to encounter Black hair as it grows from the scalp. Still, her reaction to the feel of my hair really hurt, but not because I took it personally. In judging my kinks, she was also judging herself, and I wanted so much more for her.

Why do girls and women hate ourselves so much? When did it all go so horribly awry? I blame Hollywood, and by “Hollywood” I mean the entertainment industry. When I heard of the tragic death of Brittney Murphy (yes, that’s how you spell her name) this week, my first thought was: anorexia-induced heart failure. She may have had H1N1, and she did suffer from Type 2 Diabetes. But you can’t deny her dramatic weight loss after Girl, Interrupted, which is weight she really couldn’t afford to lose. A little working out, sure, and some toning up for definition. But pointy shoulder blades, protruding elbow joints and thighs the same size as your calves don’t say, “I’m eating healthy now,” they say “I have an eating disorder.”

The problem is that we don’t talk about eating disorders among actresses anymore because, apparently, a star’s weight is nobody’s business. Except that when you prance your emaciated body around on TV, and you say you look that way because of “diet and Pilates”, you make it everyone’s business. I have lots of friends who act, and all of the have been told by agents and casting directors that they need to lose weight in order to get work. And they’re not voluptuously Size 16-and-Sexy like me! They’re Size 6 women, and men with 32-inch waists, who work out and eat right and apparently need to start starving or get lipo for career advancement. Have you ever seen a TV actor up close? A lot of them are good-looking, but I’ve never seen so many sunken eye-sockets in my life. They all look like lollipops, big heads on abnormally-small bodies. Like it hurts to sit down because they’re so bony. But on screen they look beautiful, and aspirational, and have completely normal results that can only be achieved through abnormal means. There’s no way I’m gonna raise a girl to believe that heroin-chic is natural, or that Tyra Banks’ “real” hair just comes out of her head all straight like that. Imagine the disappointment when their body and hair and life don’t turn out like the people on TV?

Unfortunately, I don’t think we have to imagine a generation of women raised hating themselves because that generation is here and they’re on reality TV. The onslaught of stupid women doing stupid things on TV is astounding to me, but not as incredible as the fact that so-called “women’s” networks are responsible for publicizing the worst of our sex. I’m going to single out Bad Girls’ Club as the worst of the culprits, since it glorifies the insipid behavior the show is supposed to prevent. Here’s an idea: find the most self-centered, materialistic, self-hating 20-something women who are prone to violence, and put them in a house together with liquor, cameras, and shit-else to do. Of course, they’ll all magically learn to control their tempers, start sharing make-up tips and doing each others’ hair, right? And then they’ll wax eloquent about their behavior, making profound confessions about becoming productive people and having healthy relationships. Yeah, I don’t think so. At least Celebrity Rehab has a clinician. Oxygen just has limos and admission to the VIP section of some bar/lounge/club on the Sunset Strip which, in my experience, is far more conducive to self-awareness than some time on the therapy couch. At this point, I don’t know what’s worse: a TV network for women pretending to help anyone with this farce, when all they’re no better than Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild; a cadre of young women willingly acting a damn fool on international video for outcomes that remain, at least to me, undetermined; or the viewing public of women (and men) who promote this kind of behavior by watching, and tweeting, and blogging about how funny the show is.

Maybe I’m missing something, or I’m a killjoy, or there’s a 65-year-old church woman trapped in my hot 30-something body. Does anybody else see what’s wrong?

Is Steve Jobs better than me?

mypolaropposite — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:24:19 +0000

In a rare moment of humility, I’ll admit that I’m not the smartest person in the world. Whew! Even further, I may not even be the smartest person I know, but I’d confidently put myself in the top 5. And as one of the smartest people I know, I can recognize brilliance when I see it, and Steve Jobs is a brilliant guy. He founded Apple, left, then came back to the tune of $1 a year and stock options worth a gazillion dollars. He deserves the money, says she who types this blog from a shiny new MacBook while gazing lovingly at her iPhone 3G. Apple has killer products, killer branding, and everyone knows this – even Bill Gates (who is also brilliant and deserving of my compliments).

But does Steve Jobs deserve better healthcare than the rest of us?

He announced this week that he got a liver transplant during his 5-month leave from Apple, and thank God he’s doing well and getting back to work. The rest of us aren’t always so lucky, considering that Steve all but bought his new liver. I don’t really have a problem with that because, well, he can afford it, and because he’s now promoting organ donation and registry to everyone who follows him, all quintillion of us. The philanthropist in me, and the person who is herself an organ donor, applauds the use of personal illness as a social movement. And I’m about to do the same thing right here.

When you have a bunch of money, or work for a corporation that has a bunch of money, you get the best healthcare money can buy. Look at Magic Johnson. But when you have some money, or no money and no job or a random job with no health insurance, you might not look as shiny and happy as Magic or Steve. You’re probably waiting at the emergency room or the free clinic right now, or somewhere praying that you and yours never get sick. And I’m not talking about flu and stomach virus sick. I mean really, chronically, I-need-a-specialist ill. Cancer, diabetes, heart attack…car accident. It can happen to anyone at any time, no matter how well we take care of ourselves, and most of us really don’t.

I’ve been that sick, and I suppose that I still am, and I kinda have health insurance. After a 5-month medical leave, I didn’t go back to work like Steve Jobs, I got sacked. Canned with no severance, only some unused vacation time and the option to use COBRA to continue my medical coverage to the tune of over $600 a month for an individual! Unemployment only gives you $1600 a month, so where do food and rent fit into this picture? Luckily I could move in with family until I get back on my feet and cut back on a few things, but what if I didn’t have that?

I toyed with the idea of not having COBRA, but I take medication every day which would cost over $600 a month on its own. Plus regular Dr. visits to the tune of about $600 a month sans insurance. And its time for my yearly gyno exam and related tests, which likely cost $1000 for the visit and the labs if you have to pay out of pocket; can’t do that yet. Then there’s the ear infection that I have, which needs a specialist visit then some medication and follow-up. I haven’t seen the ENT yet because I’m waiting for the COBRA to kick in, but my neck now hurts, my ears are ringing, and my ear canal is swollen shut – no, I’m serious, it really is. So I’m not homeless, old, uneducated, an immigrant, or a parent and I could be looking at some potentially bankrupting healthcare costs. There but for the grace of God go you or anyone you know. Of course I signed up for COBRA, and thanked God that Obama put a subsidy in the stimulus plan: I now pay 35% (under $200) of the original out-of-pocket cost, which used to cost me about $65 when I was working and could honestly have afforded to pay the full premium.

So it kills me that when President Obama reveals a healthcare reform bill that could make my situation better, all some people can do is BOO him and call him a liar. Or harp on one small provision in the plan that will allegedly turn us into socialists. (Some of these folk probably went to State colleges, which is the public education option, so I think they should have their education costs pro-rated for inflation and increased to the costs of a private university, then have to pay it all, TODAY, into Social Security and Medicare just for being selfish and ridiculous and short-sighted. I got your death panel right here, Joe Wilson! On a side note his website is “temporarily unavailable…[d]ue to exceptionally high traffic”. Or due to the fact that he’s a rude jackass. If I didn’t have to save my money for medical bills, I’d be in his face right now…)

But wait a minute: I forgot to mention that the majority of my medical bills are for mental health. You know, the sickness you can’t see so you can’t really prove it. I should be lucky that my care is covered under insurance at all. I’m not saying that operations and chemotherapy and radiation aren’t serious. But I am saying that my disease is serious and should be covered too. I’ve already said my peace about antidepressants and the like, and that they do work. But the meds that I take aren’t covered at the dose that I take because some accountant at United Healthcare decided that it costs too much. So even though I have a scrip written by a doctor, and even though I’ve been doing better than ever at this dosage for the last 6 months, I still have to pay over $200 a month with insurance for my pills. That is, when they let me have them all at the same time. The insurance company sometimes refuses to pay the whole amount at once, and I have to go back to the pharmacy every 2 weeks. Compare this with the fact that I think my dad went to the V.A. for a non-essential Viagra prescription and probably paid less than $20 for it. Insert appropriate outrage here, then request a personal refund on all the penis pills issued this year.

For those of you who say, “how about therapy instead of drugs?” let me say that I’m in therapy and my insurance plan (which is actually “Cadillac” compared to others I’ve seen) only covers 20 or 30 mental health visits a year, not the once-a-week sessions that are needed to monitor meds and get the full therapeutic effect. Plus the copay is higher than for other specialists- $50 or $60 a visit. Its a little thing called “mental health parity” which Ted Kennedy was working on, with his son Patrick (who also happens to suffer from bipolar), before he died. This is why we all love the Kennedys: they’re just as screwed up as the rest of us, but they turn it into something really great for the public. I sorely missed Teddy’s voice during this last round of reform discussions.

Even though I rant, I’m not that bad off compared to the folks President Obama mentioned in his speech last night. People who have been bankrupt by medical costs, or kicked off insurance for using it too much and eating up profits in Hartford, or having kids so sick that they can’t work even though they need to in order to afford treatment. I’m incredibly lucky. And thankful. Thankful that I still live in a country where we still have choices and would continue to have them under Obama’s healthcare plan, no matter what Charles Boustany and the rest of the GOP want you to believe.

By the way, the good Dr. Boustany has degrees from good ol’ public schools University of Louisiana and Louisiana State…guess someone forced him to go there instead of Tulane! The Democrats in Louisiana should ask for a refund on his education.

(T. Lynn Lloyd steps carefully off her soap-box, trying desperately not to trip on her way down.)

Cancer? Heart disease? Suck it up, you slacker.

mypolaropposite — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:33:18 +0000

On CNN today, Jack Cafferty mentioned a study finding that more than 1 in 10 Americans are taking anti-depressants. This number has doubled in the last decade, as has the amount of money spent each year on direct-to-consumer advertising. On his blog, Cafferty invited people to respond with why they think anti-depressant use has increased.

Many people noted that these are depressing times we live in – recession, unemployment – and people are seeking treatment for their emotional maladies. Perhaps. Others remarked that after 8 years of the Bush administration, it’s surprising that more people aren’t on psychotropic drugs! Point very well taken!

However the majority of the respondents blamed Big Pharma, doctors and Americans in general. Apparently marketing works, so now we can just walk into the physician’s office and demand Prozac or Zoloft (we always could) just because we saw the ads on TV. Apparently doctors are more scrip-happy than ever (probably they are, since insurance companies actually squeeze doctors as much as consumers. No wonder Obama wants to overhaul the health care system) and the dispense anti-depressants even when they’re not needed. Then there’s my favorite explanation: Americans have really high expectations, leaving us depressed and despondent when life isn’t easy, so we head for the pill bottle instead of pulling ourselves up by our pioneer bootstraps. Here’s the link to the blog so you can see what I’m talking about:

http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/05/more-than-1-in-10-americans-on-antidepressants/

REALLY?!?!?!?

Brace yourselves, because I’m getting on my soapbox. How about anti-depressant use is up because diagnosis of depression has increased. Depression is not “the blues” or “I’m just feeling sad”. It’s a disease, and one that can be fatal if left untreated. Sometimes treatment means talk therapy. Sometimes it means therapy and medication. Sometimes it means therapy, medication and ECT. What it doesn’t need is people dismissing it as something you can get over if you just try hard enough, pray hard enough, or wait for it to go away. Then when you can’t just shake it off, you feel weak and stupid and – you guessed it – more depressed and completely misunderstood. And every other mental disorder is like that: a disease that has a treatment, even though its “all in your head.” Nobody would ever make comments like this about cancer or diabetes or heart disease, and I’m outraged.

Tracey’s gettin’ upset! Unlike the armchair psychopharmacological specialists on the CNN blog, I actually know what I’m talking about here. It’s confessional time, kids. I went to Yale. I have a masters degree. I’m relatively successful, career-wise. I’m smart. I’m funny. I’m beautiful. I’m incredibly modest. And I’m also bipolar. Clinically not casually, like when people say things like “I’m really manic-depressive with my cleaning. Some days I have to clean everything. Other days I just don’t care”. (Yep, that’s a quote, and a not-at-all valid way to describe your cleaning habits.) What “bipolar” means is some screwy stuff with how your brain is wired, and you process things differently than people with good circuitry, and that wiring makes you feel different: really “high” some days, and really “low” others. When you feel different, you act different. When you act different, sometimes you do stupid shit that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Like getting drunk on St. Patty’s Day and bringing home some Marine whose name you’ll never remember. Or perhaps you stay in bed all day and cry, or sleep, and beat yourself up about all the ways you’re worthless. Or you go to work and can’t understand anything because the part of your brain that concentrates just isn’t working. And you get angry because if you can’t do your job, you really are worthless, so you cuss out a few coworkers, the boss, even the head of HR. You didn’t really mean to do it, but it just kind of happened, and you’ll sit at your desk and cry about it for the rest of the day.

For those of you who think it’s weakness, run through that list of things in your head while you’re looking for a job and trying to graduate from business school. Or when you’re writing some 20-page English paper right after your mother died. Or when you’re writing a blog that’s simultaneously witty, funny and heartwrenching. Oh yeah, and do it all without telling anyone, not even your family, what you’re going through because you’re embarrassed, you think it’s your fault for not trying hard enough, you don’t want them to think you’re just too sensitive, or you just need to go to church, or you should get a boyfriend and that will make you happy. Then tell me that if someone told you there was a reason for the way you felt, that you could try something to make it a little easier, that you wouldn’t try it. I’ll give you that answer: fuck, yeah, you’d try it.

My road to bipolar disorder (and antidepressants and mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety meds) was through workaholism, church, smoking, overeating, a GP who prescribed Paxil that I never got filled, therapy, “oh, you have low-level depression”, Zoloft, more therapy, out-patient therapy, a little Xanax, moving a few times, short-term disability, some other drugs that didn’t do shit, lots of crying, hospitalization (thanks to the people who visited me and brought me goodies!) and, FINALLY, a very useful medication cocktail and doctors that I like and can work with (that would be 3 of them, and they actually talk to each other…who knew?) I’m doing really well, not an emotionless zombie in spite of the massive dose of meds I take every day, laughing and crying when its appropriate, like a “normal” person. But I’m gonna keep taking them as long as I feel this good. And contrary to popular belief on Jack Cafferty’s blog, it’s actually more expensive to pay for my meds than for all the doctors (Stay tuned for a blog about my experiences with the insurance company.)

If anyone had any idea how angry I get when people dismiss mental illness, they’d run and hide from me and then they’d educate themselves and donate some money somewhere. You should do that too. The latter, not the former. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has a campaign they call “Stigma Busters”. It’s designed to help people understand that mental illness and taking medication isn’t “weakness” or “laziness” or anything else that it isn’t. Stigma keeps people quiet, keeps them embarrassed, and almost kept me from writing this because what if a potential employer sees my blog? I’ll never get a job. And everyone will know and they’ll look at me different and treat me all weird. And I’ll never have another date again, because who wants to date someone with bipolar disorder? Perhaps I’ll have to worry about all that. Perhaps I won’t. But I’m more worried that many other people are suffering RIGHT NOW and they can get the help they need. One of those people was a good friend of mine, and now she’s gone, so I’m doing this for you Valerie.

Look at the PSA below, donate to NAMI, link to this blog post and pass it around to other people you know so they can learn something and, hopefully, laugh a little. And don’t treat me any differently, unless its to applaud my courage or my writing skill, or offer me a book deal. I love that stuff!

FYI, the bug guy hit on me while I was writing this blog. It appears that my romantic record remains intact!

Educate yourself: http://www.nami.org

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT5LKShjA7Q]

If you’re on Facebook, donate to my Cause, Fight the Stigma of Mental Illness: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/57339/15471722?m=1b2abeb2