Mental illness can feel like a life sentence in solitary confinement, without possibility of parole. There’s just no point. But even in the most hopeless lives, having just one positive thing to do, one activity to focus on, can change everything. Here are two rather amazing stories about finding that saving grace, and recovering from major mental illness.
Lao Tzu says, “Teach without talking.” I had a teacher like that once, who showed me the meaning of support. This teacher was different from others I have had, in that it was green and didn’t move much, let alone talk. In fact, it was a rubber plant who had had a bad childhood. Its previous owner had kept it in a dim corner for years, and it had to grow way out to get some sun. The trunk or main stem gradually became so bent that the slightest touch could send it toppling over, spilling dirt on the floor.
Eventually the strain of fighting gravity wore it down, as hard lives will do, and it became infected with no less than three fungi or molds. It had white spots, gray patches and black growths on every leaf. When I took some leaves to the nursery for diagnosis, the staff said, “don’t bring those things in here! They’ll infect our whole stock!” They sold me some antifungal spray, but advised me to throw out this plant to protect the others.
Help is out there, often in unlikely places. One afternoon, I was riding a MUNI bus through a working-class San Francisco neighborhood. Seated across from me was a group of young African-American men, dressed mostly in sweat clothes with basketball shoes. An apparently homeless man pulled himself laboriously up the steps and showed the driver his transfer. He was dressed in dirty slacks, a ripped shirt, and a light sweater riddled with holes, little protection from the SF fog.
Inspiration is taking the week off. (I think she went skiing at Lake Tahoe with Hope.) Instead, I’ve got two stories of people surviving for unusual reasons. If they’re too quirky for you, come back in a couple of weeks. I’ve got some very inspiring stories in the pipeline.
Reasons to live are not always pretty. It’s not always about “seeing my granddaughter graduate” or “helping save the rainforest.” Some reasons are more like Jan’s, a 60 year old woman with bone cancer I took care of in San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital. I remember she wore jewelry and makeup and applied them every day. Even in a hospital bed with dressings on her legs and IVs in her arms, she managed to look good.
My friend Cesar works with homeless and troubled people, and he’s really good at it. But when he asked his Goodwill job training class in San Francisco if they had ever been leaders, they were baffled. Some got angry. “How can I lead anybody else when I can’t even stop drinking myself?” one woman asked.
I used to lead a six-week self-management program for people with chronic conditions at a Kaiser Permanente hospital. Iris was 60 years old when she came to one of these classes. She was a short woman with straight black hair and glasses, who walked slowly with a cane in her left hand. Iris had high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, and two and a half years before, she had had a stroke. Since then, she had mostly been moping around, not doing much of anything.
Seven years ago, I was rescued by people who never knew they were saving me. That May, I was stressed out about finishing my first book, and trying to pay bills with free-lance writing gigs. Because of stress or for some other reason, my multiple sclerosis started going downhill fast. My fatigue was terrible. I would spend about two hours a day working at my computer, and the rest of the day I was mostly in bed. I would go for days seeing no one but my wife, Aisha.
Acquaintances and casual friends are important, but they don’t make you wake up saying, “I can’t wait to see so-and-so today.” What keeps us going is close relationships with others. Many of us fear forming close relationships, because they inevitably wind up putting demands on our time. But as Mark Haven showed me, the rewards are worth it.
Sometimes, what seems like exile to a desert island can actually be a ticket home. My friend Sylvia’s 82-year-old mother Mabel fought as hard as she could to stay in her suburban house. When poor health finally forced her to leave, she found a new life opening up where she least expected it. Continue reading
When I worked at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, I had an 82 year old cardiac patient named Wilson. First name Mel, but he preferred just “Wilson.” He was one of those classic crotchety old guys, wrinkled, with a scruffy white beard. He had been a Merchant Marine and could swear like it if he felt it necessary. But he also had a gentle sense of humor and was a favorite of the nurses, because he could make us laugh.
Wilson had come to hospital because of a heart attack, and he was still having frequent angina (chest) pain, requiring nitroglycerin for relief. One day, Dr. Simon, the hospital’s top cardiac surgeon, a tall distinguished looking man in a suit, not a lab coat, came in and told Wilson, “We need to do coronary artery bypass surgery on you.” Continue reading
