Yesterday, while playing SudokuCombat against random strangers, I was competing against a guy named “joe”. As I made mistake after mistake, I jokingly said, “I keep screwing up because I’m watching UFC while playing!” and that prompted a conversation about MMA.

As it turns out, “joe” is a writer for Sherdog and he has several friends who are in training to be fighters, and after 40+ minutes of conversation neither of us had finished the damned Sudoku. He was surprised that I was a girl, and more surprised that I hadn’t become interested in the sport as a result of some guy’s interest, and we had some very good conversations about training, competing and what it takes to be a wicked MMA fighter. He confirmed a lot of my suspicions about how guys get into the sport and he confirmed my belief that it is one hell of a sport to train for when compared to other sports.

When he asked what I liked best about the sport, I didn’t want to say, “the homoerotic nature of it”, so I said, “it teaches me new methods of tackling my husband, pinning him to the ground and shouting, ‘DO YOU SUBMIT?’ over and over”. Joe approved, but said, “Y’know, seduction works just as well…”

Seduction is nowhere NEAR as much fun as a leg bar and a headlock, though. COME ON.

In all seriousness, what I love best about MMA – besides the sweaty, half-naked men rolling around on each other – is the incredible ‘raw’ power. These are men who train 6 days a week, lifting weights and studying multiple martial arts, who get into a ring with another guy and pummel the shit out of each other. At first glance it appears to be all about the brawling. At second glance, you notice the precision and speed. After watching for a while it becomes a fascinating dance of skill. To have a response to all your opponent’s moves, to anticipate what comes next, to use strength and agility and skill to counter every action – it’s amazing.

Yes, I enjoy the end result – sweat, blood, busted-up faces – but the skill is mindboggling. It is, as far as I’m concerned, the best sport in the world. I can’t wait for Coffee’s debut fight.

I was not in the rat room, however; I was sound asleep on my little pillow with my duvet pulled high over my head.

I have no idea what the hell happened between the time the alarm went off and when Coffee came to re-wake me. I don’t remember putting my head back down, I don’t remember thinking, “Oh, I’ll just lie here for a few more minutes” and I don’t remember turning the alarm clock OFF. Thus, when I bolted awake and found my dear husband a few inches away from my face saying something about getting up, I experienced a level of disorientation that can only be described as, “WTF happened here?”

Clearly this whole “not working” thing has done WONDERS to disassociate “getting out of bed” with “alarm blaring”. Have I mentioned lately how much I like my life?

Next up, breaking the bond between “daytime” and “need for productivity”.

(Who am I kidding? That one was the first to go..)

Although I have been accused of being self-centred – to varying degrees at varying times – I assert that this is mandatory and not frivolous. All we have in life, really, is ourselves. While we marry or partner with people we love, and while we have friendships and lovers and strangers to chat with, the only consistent presence is the self. When I’m left alone for any period of time, the only company I’ve got is my own mind, and it seems like a good idea to know what that mind is all about.

That introspection is what allows me to be a decent person. It won’t permit me to settle for anything less than what I need and want from life. It doesn’t allow me to simply ‘go with the flow’ for more than a brief period without getting itchy and wanting more. And it’s what keeps me looking around for more. For every thought or idea I have, there is a little voice that shouts, “Why? Why THAT?” and forces me to ponder my own motivations.

Another therapist asserted that examining the past could only take one so far in healing – that there comes a time, eventually, when one must say, “The past is over!” and begin to construct a new existence from the proverbial rubble. It is interesting, of course, to ponder how one came to be in the place one is, but it’s not crucial to mending the tears. Instead, it’s important to have the ability to dust yourself off, pick yourself up, and shove the past into a dark closet with a securely bolted door. I both agree and disagree with this idea. I agree that wallowing in the past isn’t particularly healthy, but at the same time being aware of the past allows one to avoid the same mistakes, to recognize why perceptions and ideas exist as they do, to have a more solid footing to make the appropriate changes and begin to grow.

Some have said that my anger toward my mother is useless. She’s dead, which means I can’t resolve the problems, and she’s not coming back, which means I can’t expect to gain a lot of new insight into her behaviours and actions and thoughts. Does it make sense to ruminate on the past, in this instance? Probably not. Does it make sense to examine it, question it, see how my own behaviours and thoughts stack up? Absolutely. That’s what I do – not just with regard to her, but in reference to everyone and everything. I need to learn from my own mistakes, of course, but I also need to learn from others’.

Everyone who touches my life in even a small way brings a new sort of insight. The woman at the grocery store who I spoke with for six seconds causes me to question my perceptions on ageing, to think about what kind of person I want to be when I’m eighty, to wonder why I like certain brand of yogurt best and refuse to try the other. After an appointment with my doctor to discuss a simple medical issue, I ponder my future health, how to maintain it, what medical school is like, what it must feel like to immigrate to another country and not speak the language, to ponder how one chooses to be a general practitioner, how it feels to touch strangers’ bodies all day, what it’s like to go home to his family at the end of the day.

Even the comments in my blog pop up a thousand new questions in my head. How did the person choose their nickname? Why did they select that location for their blog? What’s it like to live in their country or work their job or have their disability or experience their childhood?

My life is filled with questions.

At times, I know, it seems as if I question too much. There are days when I wish I could simply sit still and accept what happens rather than complicating the situation by trying to see every side of the coin. There are days when I wish I could simply say, “It is what it is” and wander off to eat a cookie with my mind a peaceful blank space. I can’t do it. I can’t toss the hamster off the wheel.

It’s a curse and a blessing. A curse because it causes me to empathize too strongly and, sometimes, to grow frustrated too quickly. I observe someone I care about making choices that seem, to me, to be completely lacking in introspection. I wonder if s/he has questioned why things happen the way they do, why patterns repeat, why this or that doesn’t work out. I forget that most lessons have to be learned the hard way in order to make sense. I remind myself that it’s much easier to make pronouncements on someone else’s life than it is on one’s own. Sometimes, though, I attack Coffee with statements that start, “What the hell is WRONG with people? Why do they…?” and he reminds me, again, that introspection is not something everyone embraces. It’s easier in many ways to go through life doing only the things we are told to – rather than figuring out what’s really best for ourselves. Just follow the path: birth, childhood, dating, work, marriage, babies, retirement, death.

It’s a blessing, as I said, because it keeps me on my toes. I know where I stand, at any given time, on issues like marriage and sexuality and money and work and feminism. I know enough to never say never – that my thoughts will shift and change as I learn more. Nothing is set in stone; everything is fluid. Black and white no longer exists, even as I’m certain about an opinion I hold. Every time I assert that “this is the way things are” I’m smacked in the face with a thousand questions that contradict my assertion.

It’s strange that so many people don’t question themselves with any regularity, and that they assume things cannot change. People in miserable marriages turn blind eyes to the idea of happiness on their own. Marriages, themselves, happen because “it’s what you’re supposed to do”. Children are born because married couples are supposed to have kids. Students attend school to get a degree in something they feel no passion toward simply because it’s a career that makes “good money” and, of course, “good money” is what life is all about. People refuse to take chances and ask questions that go against the grain, and I wonder how they sleep at night. How can you live a life unquestioned? How can you be comfortable going with “what society says”?

I like living my life intentionally and, for all my empathy, it’s nearly impossible for me to imagine living differently. I don’t want to subscribe to someone else’s idea of what a ‘good life’ is. I don’t want to fall into stereotypes and gender roles and doing things simply because “I should”. I don’t want to compare myself to anyone else and repeatedly ask if I measure up. I am learning to be amused, instead of angry, when someone insists that I be prodded back into the general herd of sheep. I am learning to laugh when someone tries to point me toward the path to happiness with no understanding of who I am and where I want to go.

I just wish it were acceptable to wander the world with a pointy stick, observing people who go with the flow and occasionally jabbing them while shouting, “IS THIS REALLY WHAT *YOU* WANT?’ Of course, then I’d be just like them, wouldn’t I?

You people are POOR FUCKING LOSERS. Leaving the game when I have only 2 spots left to fill, killing my chances at gaining some points and then freaking out and disappearing any time we’re connected for a future game? YOU SUCK, YOU BIG WHINY BABIES.

Love,
Dana

Coffee: Oh? That sucks. What did you eat?

Me: Umm.. uh.. nothing.

Coffee: Come on, tell me. What did you eat?

Me: I, uh, don’t want to talk about it.

Coffee: Tell me! What did you eat?

Me: Y’know those chocolate boulders from the Bulk Barn…?

Coffee: You didn’t. You DIDN’T.

Me: I.. might have. I don’t feel very good.

Coffee: Those things ARE NOT FOOD.

Me: (indignant voice) Yes they are! They’re chocolate!

Coffee: No, they’re not! They’re wax in a candy coating. I can’t believe you ate them. Why did you eat them?

Me: I dunno. I mean, they were chocolate and I wanted chocolate and they were THERE and..

Coffee: I can’t believe you ate them. They’re NOT food.

Me:They’re not THAT bad.

Coffee: (looking at me like I’m on crack) Ah well, at least you enjoyed them while you were eating.

Me: Um.. no, not really. I just.. they were.. chocolate.

Coffee: I.. (insert look of pity) .. I… yeah.

The cage is nearing completion – the bulk of the work is done. I’ve been watching what the rats like to do in each section and learning more about their behaviour, all of which allows me to add bits and pieces to the cage as needed. I wanted the space to be well-planned and useful. This weekend I’ll be adding in a few more hammocks and tubes for the rats to climb on and sleep in, along with some extra boxes. The favoured ‘toy’ at the moment is a box of $0.99 kleenex that I placed into one of the rooms. This morning all of the tissues had been ripped out of the box, fluffed up and I couldn’t see into that particular ‘room’ of the cage. Tasha is to blame for that, I suspect.

The rats are fabulous to watch – I’m so glad we adopted them. They’re funny, they’re smart, they’re loving and they’re absolute party animals all night long. Nothing amazes me as much as how tidy the cage is before bed and how everything seems to explode before dawn. The rats are all curled up asleep when I venture in to examine the damage. All in good fun.

Here are a few photos of the cage that I took a while back. There are 4 levels with a total of 8 rooms. Each level has a ladder going up, and the bottom level features flexible ‘dryer’ tubing for added fun, and a rope ladder that allows them to access a very high hole between rooms. It’s stunning how quickly all of the rats are able to run from the bottom to the top, and it’s great fun to watch them waddle up and down the ladders. When the cage is complete, I’ll post individual room shots so you can see the ‘features’. All told, Coffee did some mighty good work on this cage.

In the meantime, here are two photos:

This is what the cage looks like closed. It’s currently in a corner of my master ensuite.
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These are the top two ‘floors’. The top right corner is the sleeping room – filled with soft towels, a ferret-sized hanging cloth tube (which all 3 rats pile into for naps together). The top left is a feeding room – with rocks thrown in for interesting texture. The rats have water in a bottle and a bowl, and this is where I feed them vegetables. The bottom right room (in the picture) is where the dry food bowls are kept – there are usually two – one for lab blocks and one for cereals, grains and cheerios. The bottom left (in the picture) is a box stuffed with kleenex that Tasha enjoys hiding food in. The litter box is also partially visible in that room.

My swapper was Lala who, through some sort of.. magic, was able to find Sugar Babies IN CANADA. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Let’s get to the pictures, shall we?

When a package arrives in the mail with THIS many stamps, you KNOW it contains something good. I have no idea what the hell Lala was smoking when she said her handwriting was all scratchy. I, of course, blurred her return address so you stalker-types couldn’t hound her for candy for yourself. But I left MY address visible so YOU can send me candy.
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The contents of the package! Oh my! Reisens and Tootsie rolls and Dots and Sugar Babies and Clodhoppers and Taffy! And a card that not only wished me an early birthday but told me I had to share the booty with Coffee. Which I did, because I am all about the sharing of candy. Candy sharing fosters the looooooooove. The business card in the photo informs me of the closest place in Ontario that sells the Sugar Babies. I am both pleased and horrified to discover how close it is.
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Did I mention the Sugar Babies? I did? Oh. Huh. They’re gone now, btw, so no, you can’t have any.

Love the candy swap. Love the Lala. :)

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In 1982 I moved into a new home in Santa Cruz. It was just a funky old cottage that had once been a barn, but I was ecstatic to have it. As I opened the front door to begin my first day there, a violet-crowned hummingbird bolted inside in front of me, stayed for a few minutes, then departed. I regarded its visit as a phenomenally good omen, and it turned out to be just that. During my years in that house, I wrote my first book, recorded my first music album, fell in love with the woman I married, and conceived my daughter. Almost exactly 24 years later, I’m meditating on your horoscope as I sit in my current abode. “Send me a sign,” I just said to the gods. “What’s in the works for Cancerians?” Now a violet-crowned hummingbird is dancing exuberantly in front of my window, peering in, lingering a long time. I take it to mean you’re at the beginning of a great opening.

Edited, because I forgot to link to Freewill Astrology! Oops!

Earlier today, on returning home from Coffee’s immigration proceedings, I cracked open the book Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by Peter Earley. I had read a review on Salon, I believe, and had added it to my library request list in the hopes of reading it sometime this summer. I started it this morning, as I said, but I finished it this afternoon. I couldn’t put it down.

Mental illness is something that preoccupies my mind on the best of days. It began when I was a child and my mother made a mysterious reference to my “crazy uncle Benny” – a man I had never met, nor seen, and had never heard of before. I asked more about him and with reluctance, she said, “There’s a fine line between genius and madness”. That was shortly after I was identifed as being “gifted” and the idea of that fine line wore heavily on my mind for a number of years. To this day, I still don’t know what was ‘wrong’ with Benny, only that he died in a halfway house. He was my father’s great-uncle.

In university, after flipping majors a few times, I chose Psychology. I liked the idea of understand people’s motivations, and the concept of abnormal psych intrigued me greatly. Brain disorders and the effects of medications, psychology experiments and BF Skinner.. it was fascinating. It’s ironic, at best, that I was kicked out of my psychology major when my mother died and I became too depressed to go to class.

Later, I worked for an office full of therapists and psychiatrists (around 1996) and saw that the vast majority of people who entered the office looked as ‘normal’ as anyone else. The idea that ‘crazy people’ weren’t all locked up and wearing straight jackets was hammered home to me. The stories I heard and the notes I transcribed were difficult for me to read, but I assumed there was more to the story than I was being told. People don’t just.. go crazy, right?

My interest continued when I was diagnosed with situational depression and later when I was given the SAD label. Toss in some bulimia and, for fun, mix in a dash of anxiety disorder and.. well, here I am. A well-managed mental patient.

In the grand scheme of mental illnesses depression, the kind I’ve got, isn’t much of a blip on the radar screen. The media says it’s overdiagnosed, anyway, and the prescriptions being written are doubling in frequency with each passing moment. We’re a society that likes relief in a pill. But, for people like me who dutifully swallow our Celexa/Prozac/Zoloft/whatever, the pill allows us to continue on our merry way without much in the way of complications. A decreased libido, perhaps, or a bit of weight gained, and the dark clouds lift and.. life goes on. Even my anxiety disorder, as much as it caused havoc in November of last year, was easily (comparitively, I mean) managed with the right combination of meds.

During the time of my serious anxiety, I regularly feared that I was losing my mind and I regularly worried about how to stop it. I suspect that didn’t help eradicate the anxiety, really. I wasn’t hearing voices and I wasn’t hallucinating, but I was unable to sleep for days, unable to eat anything other than oatmeal, unable to go anywhere or do anything beyond pace and cry and shake. I was terrified of absolutely nothing and everything all at once. I knew on a rational level that there was nothing to fear but I couldn’t stop my brain from releasing chemicals that spoke to the contrary. I’d chant, over and over, “Everything is okay. Everything is okay.” and then the fear would wash over me as certain as if I were facing a firing squad. I’m intelligent enough to know that it was a misfiring in my brain – I read the web sites, I read the books (I wasn’t sleeping; I needed something to do) and I still couldn’t stop it. For a control freak like myself, it was the worst feeling in the world.

I started to question everything. What had I eaten? Was I sleeping badly? Coffee was as perplexed as I was, perhaps more so. I couldn’t explain to him how bad it felt. I couldn’t express that I was terrified – completely and utterly terrified – 24 hours a day for almost a month. I looked online to try and find a treatment centre – a place where I could be loaded up with any drug they wanted to fill me up with. A place where I would be safe. Late at night, after Coffee had fallen asleep, I would lie on the sofa alternating between cold sweat and tremors, telling myself that if it got any worse I would just kill myself. I was starting to feel as though it were my only option.

Once I was on the antidepressants/antianxiety meds I felt a thousand times better. The Clonazepam and the Celexa teamed up to reign in my hysteria, I began to sleep and eat again, and other than a few panic attacks over the past few months (literally 2 or 3 of them) I’ve been fine. No problem. All good. Like I said, my “mental problems” are minor. If you hadn’t read it here, and if I didn’t tell you, there’d be no way to know. I haven’t taken any Clonazepam in a very long time, but I keep them around for ‘safety’.

And I still question my sanity on a regular basis. I don’t trust my brain to always work in my favour anymore. How can I?

In Crazy, the author’s son is diagnosed with schizophrenia after some bizarre behaviours in his personal life. As things escalate he becomes paranoid and delusional and refuses to accept treatment. His father, a journalist, tries to obtain help – and fails. There are laws in place that don’t permit his son to be hospitalized against his will – and his son, convinced the world is conspiring against him, won’t sign any papers. The author decides to investigate the mental health system in America in order to help his son and, possibly, to help others.

There are a lot of interviews in the book with patients, parents, medical professionals, government agencies and police. There are a lot of statistics. But the personal stories are what got me – as usual. The interviews with patients who had been living normal lives – productive, professional, happy lives – before they were literally struck down made me cringe repeatedly. I empathized with both sides of the debate. If Coffee were behaving in a way that I knew wasn’t ‘him’, I would want to do everything in my power to make him healthy again. The flip side, of course, is that I’m also not positive I can accept the idea of medicating and treating people against their will. But if they can’t make a rational decision, is it okay to let them go? If they truly aren’t harming others or themselves, is it alright to allow their quality of life to degrade? So many of the patients commented that they were grateful for forced interventions – that they hated being locked inside their heads with hallucinations and messages from God. They were pleased with the increased quality of life that came with consistent care.

But they also talked about the side effects – the lethargy, the dull flat affect, the weight gain. They talked about a loss of control. The relapse rate is extraordinarily high with mental illness as a result of those unwanted effects. And since it’s often a gradual slide back into insanity, they would stop taking the pills and feel great for a short period. Once the illness had taken hold again, though, they were unable to remember the light and the struggle would begin again.

A big portion of the book revolves around the criminal justice system and how it deals with mentally ill individuals. Many people commit small crimes while ill – doing things they wouldn’t normally do (from shouting profanity on street corners to breaking into a home in order to ‘save’ a non-existent baby that God told them was in trouble). The justice system can’t force them to seek treatment, for the most part, and the jails are not equipped to handle them appropriately. Halfway houses aren’t run effectively and don’t permit appropriate supervision. There is no one to insist the patient take medications. Just reading these sections filled me with a sense of futility and despair.

One of the biggest messages in the book, if one were to look for a big picture lesson, is that our society frequently turns their collective back on the things we fear most – and that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. We try to rationalize mental illness by saying that it’s a result of drug abuse (not true) or genetics (sometimes true). We look for ways to say, “That won’t be me, because..” and then we quickly turn our backs. We don’t want to be educated on the subject – we want to pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s easier to make a twirly-finger near our ear than it is to acknowledge someone’s personal hell and the fact that they did nothing to bring it on themselves. It’s like winning a really bad lottery.

At any rate, I really would recommend the book. It’s a very worthwhile read even if you already know a good deal about mental illness – and it’s even more worthwhile if you’re the sort of person who prefers not to think about these things. Approach it from a clinical perspective, a statistical perspective, a health-care perspective or a legal perspective – whatever works for you. You won’t be the same when you’re finished, and that’s not a bad thing.

Thank you for all the good vibes and good luck wishes!

I can’t begin to describe what a relief it is – like a huge weight off my shoulders – to know that he’s permanently here. Can’t be deported (barring any sort of behaviour that I like to think he’d avoid anyway) and can go pick up his OHIP card (free health care for all!). We both grinned like fools for quite a while this morning. My Canadianish husband.

Even though there wasn’t any real doubt, and even though the letter clearly stated they were going to accept him, it was still.. nerve-wracking. We’ve made so many jokes in reference to the Simpsons episode where the police set up a sting operation to catch criminals by sending a letter that they’ve “won” a free boat that, well, it was starting to concern me! In the end, the interview took about ten minutes, the questions were all straight-forward, and there was very clearly nothing to worry about. Still, when the immigration officer attached the Canadian VISA to his passport I started to cry. We’re done. It’s over. He’s permanent.

I have a lot of stuff to catch up on – not the least of which is some serious blog-posting – but I’m unspeakably exhausted this morning. I’m going to take the dogs on a long walk, then come home and relax. I’ll post soon.