Sunday, May 4, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Escape Velocity and the End of the Innocence
I am irritable when I arrive home. I am impatient and intolerant. Things are not put away. I go to the butter plate and find it empty. This is the tipping point for me and I become furious. Why didn't you refill the plate? Am I the one who always has to do this? Isn't this important to you? I pack an overnight bag and storm out of the house. I don't want the children to see us fighting.
I knew this was coming a month before. I had opened another checking account in my name. I had changed my Direct Deposit. I start taking strategic items out of the house. I take the filing box with the billing receipts. I take the tax records. With them I have financial control.
I return home but my heart isn't in it. We try to be intimate.
I feel exhausted from my marriage. I am Cinderella no more. I tried so hard. I can't carry this marriage. I couldn't work it out. It isn't what I thought it is. I pack my things.
I begin living at work, sleeping on my couch and showering in the locker room in the morning. I haunt the facility at night. In the sky I can see a spotlight for "XBOX 360". It is November 22, 2005. I spend Thanksgiving in my office. I cannot attend our mutual friend's invitation for dinner.
* * *
It is 1999. I am working as a software engineer. I am naïve and fanatical about my product. I value making it right above all. I think I am important. I make a software correction just like many others. I don't know that it will cost my company millions of dollars. I am rushing through my work. I am not putting in the time and effort to do a thorough job.
Working on this software correction, I can't explain the problem of why an item is missing from the database. The loss occurs over and over. Rather than make the effort to fully understand the loss of the item, I tell the computer to have a new policy to recreate item when it is found missing. When this happens, the item is then shared with other computers on the network; these computers previously had thought that copy of the item is deleted. However, due to the recreated item being sent to them, the other computers restore the item to their databases. I did not know that my change causes the records of old employees to come back to life to their employers, causing our customers great confusion.
I feel responsible. I feel ashamed.
* * *
It is 2004. The company is in litigation with regulatory authorities over licensing and patents for my software product. I am righteously indigent and protective that the product could be threatened and its intellectual property set at naught. I volunteer to work with the legal department, much at the detriment of my career, to evaluate licensing models. I later volunteer as an expert witness and write an exhibit essay on the team's sacrifice and the merits of our invention. The prosecution says our production is of no intrinsic value.
Our defensive is not effective and we are fined. I see that all our efforts are fruitless and a waste of time. The deck is stacked against us. They didn't give us a fair hearing and they weren't going to let us win. I tried so hard. I take the verdict personally. This was our child, brought to market through blood, sweat and tears.
What is worse is that I see the writing on the wall: our product production will be restricted and the days of aggressive development are over.
I take the loss personally. I am defeated.
* * *
In October 2005 I walked away from my church after eighteen years. Looking back, I can see that the reason I joined this church and served extremely diligently was compulsion toward fearful obedience. I literally felt that my marriage and service in the church was a matter of life or death. As in other facets of my life, I was a fanatic and passionate to succeed through shear effort of will.
By now, my mental façade was crumbling. My image of myself as savior of my marriage, my work and my church was self-delusion. My life had been carrying these institutions, killing myself in the process. I was realizing that the battle times were over and that the objects of my obsession had grown up to their limits in the current frame.
In October of that year, I was serving as a pastoral assistant. I had been chosen by the pastor personally and it was token of high spirituality. I was to give a sermon honoring the church and personal worship. No one expected that I would indirectly denounce the church for coercion and manipulation of the truth.
My words were taken from Isaiah 1:10-15.
The church practices and mode of worship were false. The church was an abomination, an iniquity, a thing hated, disrespected and ignored. The church had become a imperfection that was changing its way.
When I was done speaking, I don't think the pastoral leadership knew what I had done. There is only one person in the congregation who was heard to say "I don't think that's church doctrine". After the meeting was over, I went to the pastor and resigned. He had not long called me to the position. I threw away my leadership position and all that I had worked for.
* * *
I have been compelled to do everything in my life. I felt trapped in my choices, and being caught, worked as hard as I can to save myself by serving everyone around me.
My favorite part of marriage has been the rearing of my children.
When people ask the reason for my divorce, I say:
My children grew up.
I knew this was coming a month before. I had opened another checking account in my name. I had changed my Direct Deposit. I start taking strategic items out of the house. I take the filing box with the billing receipts. I take the tax records. With them I have financial control.
I return home but my heart isn't in it. We try to be intimate.
I feel exhausted from my marriage. I am Cinderella no more. I tried so hard. I can't carry this marriage. I couldn't work it out. It isn't what I thought it is. I pack my things.
I begin living at work, sleeping on my couch and showering in the locker room in the morning. I haunt the facility at night. In the sky I can see a spotlight for "XBOX 360". It is November 22, 2005. I spend Thanksgiving in my office. I cannot attend our mutual friend's invitation for dinner.
* * *
It is 1999. I am working as a software engineer. I am naïve and fanatical about my product. I value making it right above all. I think I am important. I make a software correction just like many others. I don't know that it will cost my company millions of dollars. I am rushing through my work. I am not putting in the time and effort to do a thorough job.
Working on this software correction, I can't explain the problem of why an item is missing from the database. The loss occurs over and over. Rather than make the effort to fully understand the loss of the item, I tell the computer to have a new policy to recreate item when it is found missing. When this happens, the item is then shared with other computers on the network; these computers previously had thought that copy of the item is deleted. However, due to the recreated item being sent to them, the other computers restore the item to their databases. I did not know that my change causes the records of old employees to come back to life to their employers, causing our customers great confusion.
I feel responsible. I feel ashamed.
* * *
It is 2004. The company is in litigation with regulatory authorities over licensing and patents for my software product. I am righteously indigent and protective that the product could be threatened and its intellectual property set at naught. I volunteer to work with the legal department, much at the detriment of my career, to evaluate licensing models. I later volunteer as an expert witness and write an exhibit essay on the team's sacrifice and the merits of our invention. The prosecution says our production is of no intrinsic value.
Our defensive is not effective and we are fined. I see that all our efforts are fruitless and a waste of time. The deck is stacked against us. They didn't give us a fair hearing and they weren't going to let us win. I tried so hard. I take the verdict personally. This was our child, brought to market through blood, sweat and tears.
What is worse is that I see the writing on the wall: our product production will be restricted and the days of aggressive development are over.
I take the loss personally. I am defeated.
* * *
In October 2005 I walked away from my church after eighteen years. Looking back, I can see that the reason I joined this church and served extremely diligently was compulsion toward fearful obedience. I literally felt that my marriage and service in the church was a matter of life or death. As in other facets of my life, I was a fanatic and passionate to succeed through shear effort of will.
By now, my mental façade was crumbling. My image of myself as savior of my marriage, my work and my church was self-delusion. My life had been carrying these institutions, killing myself in the process. I was realizing that the battle times were over and that the objects of my obsession had grown up to their limits in the current frame.
In October of that year, I was serving as a pastoral assistant. I had been chosen by the pastor personally and it was token of high spirituality. I was to give a sermon honoring the church and personal worship. No one expected that I would indirectly denounce the church for coercion and manipulation of the truth.
My words were taken from Isaiah 1:10-15.
The church practices and mode of worship were false. The church was an abomination, an iniquity, a thing hated, disrespected and ignored. The church had become a imperfection that was changing its way.
When I was done speaking, I don't think the pastoral leadership knew what I had done. There is only one person in the congregation who was heard to say "I don't think that's church doctrine". After the meeting was over, I went to the pastor and resigned. He had not long called me to the position. I threw away my leadership position and all that I had worked for.
* * *
I have been compelled to do everything in my life. I felt trapped in my choices, and being caught, worked as hard as I can to save myself by serving everyone around me.
My favorite part of marriage has been the rearing of my children.
When people ask the reason for my divorce, I say:
My children grew up.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
PDP-8 and the Halls of ZK
The first time I used a real computer was in the eighth grade in 1976. The computer was a DEC PDP-8/M.
(This picture is a PDP-8/E was taken at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle WA in 2013.)
You can read more about the PDP-8 here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8
Our computer used the old telephone-system teletype machines which were like the Volkswagen's of input-output consoles. They were very clunky and noisy. We had one video terminal which could display 12 lines x 80 characters. It was like Christmas one day when we learned how to clear the screen from within a program as well as address any position on the screen. I adapted a star trek game to display the game board continuously on the screen.
This early computer used wrapped wires on its mother board, and also used real magnets in its core memory. One amazing thing it could do is start up again without reading a disk. Not like today where the memory forgets everything when you turn it off. With this computer, after you turned it off, you simply turned it on again, toggled the starting address and it remembered where it was.
This computer had one of the most amazing tricks I have ever seen. A visitor or technician came to visit one day. He set up a radio next to the computer and inserted a disk. He showed us a list of files. We choose "ode to joy". When he ran the file, we heard interference coming from the radio that sounded like music. He had Christmas carols on the disk as well. But the computer was not an intentional transmitter. Someone had figured out that when the computer does operation X, it generates through interference this note. And operation Y, likewise another note. Someone had hacked the computer to do something it was never supposed to do. It was so clever. I think the FCC would have something to say about this!
When I was 15, the summer my father died, I taught BASIC programming to children at our local science center. I spent all my free time at the science center because I could get computer time in exchange for helping to operate it. The computer was a DEC PDP-11/34 with RT-11 and Multi-User Basic, which was a more sophisticated and powerful system than the PDP-8.
One aspect of the software which fascinated me was that you could change the supervisory layer of the system. We could write games, but we could also change what happened before the games happened. Not only could we change the logon screen, but we could change how the logon screen worked. We could change the tool programs that others could use. For me, there was something magical about being able to change not only the games, but the underlying system itself. It was like being able to change the laws of physics or the properties of the land we walk on.
I also remember what we did at night. We would take the system down to a single user, and run larger games under the core operating system itself. My favorite was game called ADVENT, which was originally developed by Crowther and Woods. It was a textual interactive fiction game which features puzzle-solving and treasure hunting.
You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
Those times came to an end as I moved away to live with my Aunt. The work I did at the science center was featured in The New Hampshire View.
The summer after my father died, when I was 16 years old, I was accepted as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation.
My starting salary was $215/week. In 1981 dollars. The salary was modest, but I would have paid them to work there.
I was there during the birth of Digital's most successful hardware/software system: the VAX-11 and VMS. The engineers behind this engineering marvel are to be found in the highest echelons of computing companies today. I did nothing of this myself. I was just lucky to be there.
There was a typing speed test program. It presented a list of words in multiple columns, and you had to enter the words as quickly as you could in the time allotted. It calculated your words per minute and kept a high-score list. The secretaries used to compete with one another for who could get the fastest time. One time, another intern and I conspired to fool the typing test. We used a capability called a "pseudo-terminal" to simulate a user to the typing test. Through the pseudo-terminal we sent the words electronically, giving us an inhumanly high score. Needless to say, the secretaries were highly impressed with us.
Another time, there was a gentlemen working in our group who was a little eccentric. He seemed quite paranoid and furtive. He carried a briefcase and the only thing in it was a stick of deodorant.
Now, in those days, we used a type of terminal called a VT-100. There was a bug in the firmware of the terminal where it would get into "infinite key mode", endlessly repeating the last key you typed. It was triggered by a sequence of apparently harmless characters. The operating system we all used has the ability to broadcast messages to other users or groups of users. For fun, the interns would broadcast the key sequence for infinite key mode to this poor guy. We all worked in cubicles and so anything loud would carry around the floor. We'd only do it once in a while, and when we did, he would scream "It's happening again!".
Another time, we accessed his files using my bosses computer account (we knew his password). We moved the guys files all around. He was very upset the next day. He became convinced there was a plot against him. He demanded an investigation. The audit trail only my boss logged in at the time.
I was there working as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation in New England for five summers.
Meanwhile, during my senior year in college, I was told by my professor that there was a scholarship available. All I had to do was apply. On the one hand, I never intended to go to graduate school and didn't plan for it. On the other hand, I was sick and tired how hard everything was for me and I just wanted to get out. I received a fellowship from General Electric to attend the graduate school of my choice. The money was supposed to be a teaching fellowship, but they weren't very strict about that.
In my last summer before leaving for college in 1984, a co-worker and I worked in the evenings on our own textual fiction game. We decided to situate the game in our own software development plant. The work of writing the underlying software of a computer system is a wizardly process and full of mystery. Our large floors of cubicles had a maze like quality.
The scope and features of the game kept growing. The pressure to do my day work and finish the game at night before leaving for school became too much. I experienced my first panic attack and have had bouts of anxiety ever since.
You started the game at the helipad. In those days, executives were transported by helicopter between sites. You then entered the building and interacted with the guard. You then explored the building, acquiring objects that would aid you in your quest. At one point, you had to visit a developer who was serious typing away, and ask his help to locate one of the necessary objects. There was a maze of cubicles which you had to navigate. In games of this type, a standard strategy for beating the maze was to drop an object into each interlinked step along the way through the maze. In our game, however, there was a cleaning crew that followed you around through the maze and moved your objects. In the end, you had to learn the combination to the company safe in order to obtain the reward and then return to the helipad to be picked up in victory.
I never expected it, but we obtained our own little piece of notoriety.
You can read about it here:
http://www.kednos.com/kednos/Open_Source/The_Halls_Of_ZK
You can read more about the PDP-8 here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8
Our computer used the old telephone-system teletype machines which were like the Volkswagen's of input-output consoles. They were very clunky and noisy. We had one video terminal which could display 12 lines x 80 characters. It was like Christmas one day when we learned how to clear the screen from within a program as well as address any position on the screen. I adapted a star trek game to display the game board continuously on the screen.
This early computer used wrapped wires on its mother board, and also used real magnets in its core memory. One amazing thing it could do is start up again without reading a disk. Not like today where the memory forgets everything when you turn it off. With this computer, after you turned it off, you simply turned it on again, toggled the starting address and it remembered where it was.
This computer had one of the most amazing tricks I have ever seen. A visitor or technician came to visit one day. He set up a radio next to the computer and inserted a disk. He showed us a list of files. We choose "ode to joy". When he ran the file, we heard interference coming from the radio that sounded like music. He had Christmas carols on the disk as well. But the computer was not an intentional transmitter. Someone had figured out that when the computer does operation X, it generates through interference this note. And operation Y, likewise another note. Someone had hacked the computer to do something it was never supposed to do. It was so clever. I think the FCC would have something to say about this!
When I was 15, the summer my father died, I taught BASIC programming to children at our local science center. I spent all my free time at the science center because I could get computer time in exchange for helping to operate it. The computer was a DEC PDP-11/34 with RT-11 and Multi-User Basic, which was a more sophisticated and powerful system than the PDP-8.
One aspect of the software which fascinated me was that you could change the supervisory layer of the system. We could write games, but we could also change what happened before the games happened. Not only could we change the logon screen, but we could change how the logon screen worked. We could change the tool programs that others could use. For me, there was something magical about being able to change not only the games, but the underlying system itself. It was like being able to change the laws of physics or the properties of the land we walk on.
I also remember what we did at night. We would take the system down to a single user, and run larger games under the core operating system itself. My favorite was game called ADVENT, which was originally developed by Crowther and Woods. It was a textual interactive fiction game which features puzzle-solving and treasure hunting.
You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
Those times came to an end as I moved away to live with my Aunt. The work I did at the science center was featured in The New Hampshire View.
The summer after my father died, when I was 16 years old, I was accepted as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation.
My starting salary was $215/week. In 1981 dollars. The salary was modest, but I would have paid them to work there.
I was there during the birth of Digital's most successful hardware/software system: the VAX-11 and VMS. The engineers behind this engineering marvel are to be found in the highest echelons of computing companies today. I did nothing of this myself. I was just lucky to be there.
There was a typing speed test program. It presented a list of words in multiple columns, and you had to enter the words as quickly as you could in the time allotted. It calculated your words per minute and kept a high-score list. The secretaries used to compete with one another for who could get the fastest time. One time, another intern and I conspired to fool the typing test. We used a capability called a "pseudo-terminal" to simulate a user to the typing test. Through the pseudo-terminal we sent the words electronically, giving us an inhumanly high score. Needless to say, the secretaries were highly impressed with us.
Another time, there was a gentlemen working in our group who was a little eccentric. He seemed quite paranoid and furtive. He carried a briefcase and the only thing in it was a stick of deodorant.
Now, in those days, we used a type of terminal called a VT-100. There was a bug in the firmware of the terminal where it would get into "infinite key mode", endlessly repeating the last key you typed. It was triggered by a sequence of apparently harmless characters. The operating system we all used has the ability to broadcast messages to other users or groups of users. For fun, the interns would broadcast the key sequence for infinite key mode to this poor guy. We all worked in cubicles and so anything loud would carry around the floor. We'd only do it once in a while, and when we did, he would scream "It's happening again!".
Another time, we accessed his files using my bosses computer account (we knew his password). We moved the guys files all around. He was very upset the next day. He became convinced there was a plot against him. He demanded an investigation. The audit trail only my boss logged in at the time.
I was there working as an intern at Digital Equipment Corporation in New England for five summers.
Meanwhile, during my senior year in college, I was told by my professor that there was a scholarship available. All I had to do was apply. On the one hand, I never intended to go to graduate school and didn't plan for it. On the other hand, I was sick and tired how hard everything was for me and I just wanted to get out. I received a fellowship from General Electric to attend the graduate school of my choice. The money was supposed to be a teaching fellowship, but they weren't very strict about that.
In my last summer before leaving for college in 1984, a co-worker and I worked in the evenings on our own textual fiction game. We decided to situate the game in our own software development plant. The work of writing the underlying software of a computer system is a wizardly process and full of mystery. Our large floors of cubicles had a maze like quality.
The scope and features of the game kept growing. The pressure to do my day work and finish the game at night before leaving for school became too much. I experienced my first panic attack and have had bouts of anxiety ever since.
You started the game at the helipad. In those days, executives were transported by helicopter between sites. You then entered the building and interacted with the guard. You then explored the building, acquiring objects that would aid you in your quest. At one point, you had to visit a developer who was serious typing away, and ask his help to locate one of the necessary objects. There was a maze of cubicles which you had to navigate. In games of this type, a standard strategy for beating the maze was to drop an object into each interlinked step along the way through the maze. In our game, however, there was a cleaning crew that followed you around through the maze and moved your objects. In the end, you had to learn the combination to the company safe in order to obtain the reward and then return to the helipad to be picked up in victory.
I never expected it, but we obtained our own little piece of notoriety.
You can read about it here:
http://www.kednos.com/kednos/Open_Source/The_Halls_Of_ZK
Sunday, March 23, 2014
BiPolar Disorder and the Creative Self-Medicator
In the Spring of 2011 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, same as my Mother and my Grandmother. This is how I came to find out. I arrived to my appointment with my sleep doctor all strung-out. I had been prescribed various doses of Adderall, Modafinil, and Ritalin to combat my daytime sleepiness over the last few years. I hadn't sleep at all the previous night, my heart was racing, I was scared and sad at the same time. My doctor checked my condition. He prescribed Xanax and gave me the card of a psychiatrist to be evaluated.
The first psychiatrist talked to me about how I was feeling on the stimulants. I said great, but I was also feeling exceptionally creative and full of ideas. I said that I was writing a lot. She asked me to bring in a sample.
I said that the stimulants, that were original prescribed for excessive sleepiness and then also for ADHD-like symptoms, had the benefit of making me feel euphoric. I also admitted that I had taken the stimulants more often in order to prolong that bigger-than-life rapidity of thought that was so wonderful. After these periods of exceptional creativity, when I would stop the stimulants for a while, I would feel intense feelings of fatigue, guilt, fear and hopelessness.
Now, you could argue that being on a stimulant and coming off a stimulant medication could result in excitement and depression. But what I was feeling was a king-of-the-world kind of superiority, followed by a sadness so intense I could barely function.
I don't know whether the first psychiatrist said I was bi-polar, but got the impression I was being considered that way.
She gave me the card of a second psychiatrist, one who specialized in complex disorders (I also had Asperger's syndrome and a sleep disorder).
The second psychiatrist also specialized in people who wouldn't take their medicine as prescribed. I didn't like the other label, as I consider myself a creative self-medicator. If you knew how powerful and right and smart and full-of-self-esteem you felt when you were manic, you might understand how someone who would do anything to stay there.
Working with my second psychiatrist, it has taken two years to achieve control and remission of my mood disorder. We are working under the assumption that I have bipolar disorder and bipolar depression. The medications that are working well for me (Lithium, Lamotrigine) are the ones indicated for these conditions.
You can read about these conditions here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder
The article also talks about "bipolar depression", which is a kind of baseline sadness that continues even after the bipolar cycling is under control.
If you ask me when I became bipolar, I would say that I've always been bipolar, but the symptoms were not as intense and were adaptive in my life. I have found that deadline situations, where I am expected to work jobs back to back long into the night, tend to bring out a crisis mode panic action in me.
There was a period of time when I felt pressured to over-achieve, in my work, in my home life, and in my church. To compound that, this over-achievement required me to act against type, having Asperger's and being unable to understand social cues. And I had a sleep disorder which included sleep apnea. I was competitive in all of these areas and my star was rising. I forced myself to achieve. I was achieving it all: the best company, the perfect family, the exemplar of service. I was busy all the time and couldn't sit still. I was finishing laundry at 11pm and still hadn't finished cleaning the kitchen. I believe that in this time of high pressure and fear of failure that I drew on a kind of low-grade mania to achieve under difficult conditions.
To illustrate the feeling of being bi-polar, I will share with you some parts of messages I sent to my doctor, the second psychiatrist.
Letter #1
Letter #2
These letters convey more of a sense of the depressive side. Looking through my message history with my Dr., the mania exhibits itself in ways I'm not very proud of. My actions show high-energy, driving too fast, staying up all night, cleaning the house after having no sleep, intense bursts of writing, and impulse purchasing.
I am sorry to say that mania has not proved very useful in practice.
Mania is, however, the most wonderful thing.
The first psychiatrist talked to me about how I was feeling on the stimulants. I said great, but I was also feeling exceptionally creative and full of ideas. I said that I was writing a lot. She asked me to bring in a sample.
I said that the stimulants, that were original prescribed for excessive sleepiness and then also for ADHD-like symptoms, had the benefit of making me feel euphoric. I also admitted that I had taken the stimulants more often in order to prolong that bigger-than-life rapidity of thought that was so wonderful. After these periods of exceptional creativity, when I would stop the stimulants for a while, I would feel intense feelings of fatigue, guilt, fear and hopelessness.
Now, you could argue that being on a stimulant and coming off a stimulant medication could result in excitement and depression. But what I was feeling was a king-of-the-world kind of superiority, followed by a sadness so intense I could barely function.
I don't know whether the first psychiatrist said I was bi-polar, but got the impression I was being considered that way.
She gave me the card of a second psychiatrist, one who specialized in complex disorders (I also had Asperger's syndrome and a sleep disorder).
The second psychiatrist also specialized in people who wouldn't take their medicine as prescribed. I didn't like the other label, as I consider myself a creative self-medicator. If you knew how powerful and right and smart and full-of-self-esteem you felt when you were manic, you might understand how someone who would do anything to stay there.
Working with my second psychiatrist, it has taken two years to achieve control and remission of my mood disorder. We are working under the assumption that I have bipolar disorder and bipolar depression. The medications that are working well for me (Lithium, Lamotrigine) are the ones indicated for these conditions.
You can read about these conditions here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder
The article also talks about "bipolar depression", which is a kind of baseline sadness that continues even after the bipolar cycling is under control.
If you ask me when I became bipolar, I would say that I've always been bipolar, but the symptoms were not as intense and were adaptive in my life. I have found that deadline situations, where I am expected to work jobs back to back long into the night, tend to bring out a crisis mode panic action in me.
There was a period of time when I felt pressured to over-achieve, in my work, in my home life, and in my church. To compound that, this over-achievement required me to act against type, having Asperger's and being unable to understand social cues. And I had a sleep disorder which included sleep apnea. I was competitive in all of these areas and my star was rising. I forced myself to achieve. I was achieving it all: the best company, the perfect family, the exemplar of service. I was busy all the time and couldn't sit still. I was finishing laundry at 11pm and still hadn't finished cleaning the kitchen. I believe that in this time of high pressure and fear of failure that I drew on a kind of low-grade mania to achieve under difficult conditions.
To illustrate the feeling of being bi-polar, I will share with you some parts of messages I sent to my doctor, the second psychiatrist.
Letter #1
hypomania
Hi Dr. Hope you are having a good Thanksgiving. I'm reporting a hypomania episode for the record, to prime our next discussion for meds dose change (which I'm not sure I'm advocating). Its been a while since my last episode. What's improved over previous is that I've needed no extra medications. The episode has corresponded to my son having come in to town this week. I've wanted everything to be ready and perfect and I've been pulling 'heroic' acts of multiple hard tasks in a day and pushing myself to have it all and give it all. Well this morning I took him to the airport and immediately I felt this pressing gloom and strong guilt and worthlessness descend. Today has been the opposite of the last few days, sadness, wanting to cry, hopelessness, guilt, unworthiness, fear. I'm really aware of the aweful lowness. But even so I am able to use selftalk and keeping busy and keep marching forward to get some things done and go through the motions. I really feel it, but I also have more presence of mind and less impatience. Even though I am not impaired, I have noticed I am not driving well today as I am not paying attention well and I'm making stupid decisions. It doesn't help there are a million drivers everywhere today. That's the report for the record. One hypomania for thanksgiving. Regards,
near overwhelming depression
Hello Dr., I've been putting off writing you a letter. No emergency. While I don't want to take too much of your time, I feel like I need to communicate to you the vividness of my feelings at this point in time, so we can talk more broadly about how I am, at other points of the week besides Friday. I've just taken a Xanax and we'll see if that helps. Now that a lot of the pressure is off in my life (cold season, allergy season, helping children with college applications, transitioning to new boss and new work) I am left with just myself as I am and my thoughts. There is crisis, no must-do checklist, no emergency or death-march. There is just me adapting to live a normal, non adrenaline life. And as I contemplate my day, my week and onward, with nothing forcing me or nothing to hide myself, I feel tremendous sense of emptiness. Of despondency, of inadequacy, of fear of the future, a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty in my job and work. When I'm not in a crisis, when I'm not in pressure cooker or a terrible situation, I am alone and empty and faced with just myself. I don't know that I have ever learned to face myself and live with myself as I am. I don't know what I should do. I eat. I read. I do the chores. I watch movies. But right now, there is this tremendous overwhelming sense of despondency when I am not busy and when I am not putting on a brave face for others. This terrible fear of myself and my empty life has been creeping back over the last few weeks. Last week during easter I went through the motions with the stim med, and it just magnified the struggle against the pointlessness. I hope and have some faith that tomorrow will be better and I will find a way to accomplish the kind of open-ended leadership my new boss wants of me, but I am terrified and lacking confidence I can do it (but I usually can). Is this fear for my new role. I am being asked to be a technical facilitator and guide what needs to be guided and unblock what needs to be unblocked for a team with an open-ended deliverable and an open-ended deadline. For some, this might be a dream job for creativity and interpretation and self-direction. But I am overcome by the lack of structure in my work, and in my life. I don't know what to do and how to live when I am not in a crisis or forcing myself toward a deadline. In some sense all my deadlines have come and gone for me in terms of work goals and getting the kids through their year at school and getting their college choices ready for them. We are all left now with playing out our choices. And my lot is really not a bad lot - its a pretty good lot in terms of job, money, family, health, possessions. And if things were to keep going as they are, well things are pretty good all and all - certainly nothing to complain about. But me, my life, my living - right now is directionless and without any hope or interest. Anyway, let me try to wrap up. I feel that the use of meds in the past few weeks, and the lack of real utility to the current meds, is that they aren't addressing this consuming sense of despondency, this 'post partum depression' of my life goals having gotten through the worst and now not knowing how to enjoy going on. I think back to the meds I have used and I keep thinking about the wellbutrin. It was flattening to an extent, but I remember also feeling not-sad and accepting of my life state. I don't feel comfortable in being myself at the moment and have felt so despondent this weekend that I would bear some flatness just not feel so said and alone and inadequate. I am not a danger to myself. I am just sharing with you the profound incompleteness and emptiness that I think is at the core of mental state. Or maybe this is my true baseline and it is a depressed one. I'll use the Xanax today. I'll go work a normal day tomorrow and I have some faith I will bounce back and keep going.
These letters convey more of a sense of the depressive side. Looking through my message history with my Dr., the mania exhibits itself in ways I'm not very proud of. My actions show high-energy, driving too fast, staying up all night, cleaning the house after having no sleep, intense bursts of writing, and impulse purchasing.
I am sorry to say that mania has not proved very useful in practice.
Mania is, however, the most wonderful thing.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
On Being Highly Sensitive
I really connected with the book, The Highly Sensitive Person (1996), by Elaine Aron.
Here is the review that I wrote on the site GoodReads.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/429435474
Here is a link to the highly sensitive person test by Elaine Aron.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test.htm
I answer true for all of these dimensions.
On p. 44, Ms. Aron relates how an infant's attachment to their parents is influenced by their parenting behavior . She explains that when an infant receives the message that they are too much trouble and better off being independent, the child develops an "avoidant attachment".
This reaction is described in this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_in_adults#Dismissive.E2.80.93avoidant_attachment
I feel the section "dismissive attachment" describes me best.
I think it is insightful that a lack of secureness can result in higher levels of stress hormone in a child. (p 34) Children and adults who are stressed for long periods of time are more prone to depression. (p. 200) High levels of over-arousal can lead to problems with sleep.
Ms. Aron's book helped me identify qualities that are a challenge, and qualities that are helpful.
Challenges
- Stimulation leaves me exhausted (p. 8)
- Deeply affected by other people's moods (p. 11)
- Difficulty functioning when I am being observed
- Trouble sleeping deeply, trouble falling asleep again (p. 25)
- Difficulty finding the right level of arousal: easily bored yet easily over-stimulated. (p. 30)
- Strongly effected by hunger (p. 42)
Benefits
- Greater awareness of the subtle (p. 7)
- Able to concentrate deeply (p. 10)
- Good at spotting errors, vigilance, conscientious (p. 10)
The list of qualities of a sensitive nervous system on page 11 is remarkable for its similarity to me: good at holding still, being a morning-person, being more affected by stimulants and depressants, and being highly sensitive to things in the air.
Since I have difficulties with sleep, it was revealing to see the list of sleep-related situations on the overstimulation test. (p. 50). I often have problems getting to sleep and staying asleep. I have a tendency to fall asleep in meetings unless I am involved. I often wake in the early morning before my time to get up.
Another interesting aspect of sensitivity is an intruding awareness of other's needs and moods. As it is described in the book, I have trouble keeping boundaries. "Many HSPs [highly sensitive persons] tell me that a major problem for them is poor boundaries - getting involved in situations that are not really their business or their problem, letting too many people distress them, saying more than they wanted, getting mired I other people's messes, becoming too intimate too fast or with the wrong people." (p. 61). This behavior has caused problems for me throughout my life and I am just now as a mature adult learning to mind my own business.
I am told by my Doctor that being an HSP is not a diagnosis but rather a cluster of traits. Be that as it may, this book has great descriptive power for me.
Here is the review that I wrote on the site GoodReads.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/429435474
Here is a link to the highly sensitive person test by Elaine Aron.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test.htm
I answer true for all of these dimensions.
On p. 44, Ms. Aron relates how an infant's attachment to their parents is influenced by their parenting behavior . She explains that when an infant receives the message that they are too much trouble and better off being independent, the child develops an "avoidant attachment".
This reaction is described in this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_in_adults#Dismissive.E2.80.93avoidant_attachment
I feel the section "dismissive attachment" describes me best.
I think it is insightful that a lack of secureness can result in higher levels of stress hormone in a child. (p 34) Children and adults who are stressed for long periods of time are more prone to depression. (p. 200) High levels of over-arousal can lead to problems with sleep.
Ms. Aron's book helped me identify qualities that are a challenge, and qualities that are helpful.
Challenges
- Stimulation leaves me exhausted (p. 8)
- Deeply affected by other people's moods (p. 11)
- Difficulty functioning when I am being observed
- Trouble sleeping deeply, trouble falling asleep again (p. 25)
- Difficulty finding the right level of arousal: easily bored yet easily over-stimulated. (p. 30)
- Strongly effected by hunger (p. 42)
Benefits
- Greater awareness of the subtle (p. 7)
- Able to concentrate deeply (p. 10)
- Good at spotting errors, vigilance, conscientious (p. 10)
The list of qualities of a sensitive nervous system on page 11 is remarkable for its similarity to me: good at holding still, being a morning-person, being more affected by stimulants and depressants, and being highly sensitive to things in the air.
Since I have difficulties with sleep, it was revealing to see the list of sleep-related situations on the overstimulation test. (p. 50). I often have problems getting to sleep and staying asleep. I have a tendency to fall asleep in meetings unless I am involved. I often wake in the early morning before my time to get up.
Another interesting aspect of sensitivity is an intruding awareness of other's needs and moods. As it is described in the book, I have trouble keeping boundaries. "Many HSPs [highly sensitive persons] tell me that a major problem for them is poor boundaries - getting involved in situations that are not really their business or their problem, letting too many people distress them, saying more than they wanted, getting mired I other people's messes, becoming too intimate too fast or with the wrong people." (p. 61). This behavior has caused problems for me throughout my life and I am just now as a mature adult learning to mind my own business.
I am told by my Doctor that being an HSP is not a diagnosis but rather a cluster of traits. Be that as it may, this book has great descriptive power for me.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
"Pull Yourself Together"
I don't have very many memories of my mother. I didn't know her. There was a time when I was so embarrassed of her that it was easier to say I didn't have one.
My earliest memory involving my mother is of my father cutting the hair of my brother and I in the late 60's when I was around 5. He was giving us crew cuts with an electric shear. My mother was crying: "they look like convicts!".
I have always enjoyed cole slaw without knowing why. I'm searching for a cole slaw recipe I can't find. I often order cole slaw myself, or politely have other people's. My children don't like it. It was after my mother's death that I had a memory of her making it. It had coarse cabbage and dressing and little black seeds on top.
We lived in Needham, MA from about 1966 through 1974. My father was very busy, completing his Residency and teaching in Boston. My sister was born in 1967. After that, my mother suffered from severe post-partum depression. She became increasingly withdrawn until she was institutionalized in 1971. During that period when I was between ages four to eight, what I don't remember is bonding. I don't remember nurturing or connecting. I remember just having to watch her. I remember her just sitting in the living room looking pretty but sad, smoking and watching soap operas. She is a figure removed from me, like a picture in a magazine.
* * *
My mother was born in New York City in 1936 to Robert Birkin and Priscilla Lowe. She was born prematurely. In those days, they never allowed a mother to be with her child. There was no essential bonding.
Priscilla was Cum Laude from North Western, described as a "cold fish", "extremely competent", tall and good looking. Bob is described as an "interesting guy", who lost his father early on.
In 1948, Susan, age 12, lived with her sister Anne, age 10, and their cousin, Don, age 15 in Chagrin Falls, OH.
Priscilla is described as smoking all the time, even when cooking. She would read while cooking. She put the pot on the table in front of the kids and that was it. The kids never got hugged.
One time, Priscilla hired a construction team to build a village for wooden statues in their yard. It would hold the set of African figures they had acquired from all over the world. It looked like the Taj Mahal.
Bob is described as remote and not happy. He worked at Cleveland Crane Engineering.
As a child, Susan is described as super, open, full of love and welcoming. She was a straight A student.
Susan's sister Anne died of polio about 1950.
Not long after, Bob informed Don that they were getting divorced.
Priscilla was committed to Winsor Sanatorium for schizophrenia.
Later on, Priscilla was to live in Chicago and rented out the entire floor of the Drake Hotel.
In 1951, Bob remarried to Jean Reynolds. Jean is described as an "ice queen". Jean was very critical of Susan. Susan did not live up to Jean's expectations.
* * *
It is 1972, and I am visiting my mother at McLean hospital in Belmont MA.
You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLean_Hospital
It is a very exclusive and well-endowed clinic. It is a facility of Harvard University which is where my Father received his medical degree. The Nobel Prize winning mathematician, John Nash, was treated here. His life story was told in the book A Beautiful Mind, with a movie of the same name.
I remember being brought to visit and sitting in a central café under an atrium. My mother is brought out and joins us at the table. The children receive snacks from the snack-bar. She is quiet and withdrawn. There is nothing to say.
In 1973, my father went to see Bob to tell him that he and Susan were getting divorced. He said, Susan's not behaving. He said that he loved her, but she wasn't available. He said he would financially support her.
My memories from this time forward are a series of visitations.
After she left McLean, she lived at a half-way house in Boston. She held a job briefly.
In the mid-70's, my brother and I would be put on a Trailways bus to travel from Nashua NH to Boston. The Boston bus station was a scary place. Often times my mother would meet us, and we wouldn't even leave the terminal. One time, we got off the bus and there was no one there to meet us. I left messages repeatedly with my father's answering service. There was nothing for it except to wait until the time of the return ticket.
Don's sister, Helen, helped my Mother return to Cleveland around 1980. She was put in a half-way house, and was trained to get a job. She wasn't stable enough to keep a job. She is described as being two people. At times, she wouldn't know people and say "why are you here?" At other times, she would recognize the person, and she would also know that her world had changed.
She lived in a nursing home for many years. Her son Tom brought her to Maine for the final years of her life, where she was surrounded by family.
***
"Susan Birkin is Bride of Harvard Medical Student" reads the newspaper article. It is Jun of 1959. My parents are married at the Federated Church. The wedding is described as the culmination of a college romance, Susan having attended Smith and Charles attending Amherst, receiving their degrees in 1958. We are told the couple will honeymoon in Bermuda, and then Mr. Lees will continue his studies at Harvard.
I remember having seen a picture of my parents riding motor bikes on their honeymoon.
After the honeymoon, Susan is described as being changed. She confided that she didn't want to ride the motor bike, but he forced her to do it. One time not long there after she jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. The family explained it as "just nerves".
The pressure from my father and her step-mother was heavy. After she and Charles visit Bob and Jean, Susan is sharply criticized by Jean for looking disheveled after a nap. Charley doesn't respond but Don rises to her defense.
She is described as beginning to come unglued.
My parents lived in Boston while my father finished medical school. Susan wanted a TV. The story goes that my father didn't want a TV and wouldn't get her one because he claimed it would interfere with his studying. She was sad and unhappy.
At the time of my birth in 1963, my father is described as being happy and my mother enjoyed shopping for baby clothes.
She described as lovely, sweet, but sort of sad. She is described as being a little bewildered by life in general.
My father is described as being unsympathetic and giving little emotional support. It's described as a family trait. There wasn't much sympathy for weakness.
After my sister was born in 1967, Susan seemed to be at a loss for what to do. My grandmother told my mother that she should "pull herself together". Susan just sat there and cried, "But what does that mean?"
My earliest memory involving my mother is of my father cutting the hair of my brother and I in the late 60's when I was around 5. He was giving us crew cuts with an electric shear. My mother was crying: "they look like convicts!".
I have always enjoyed cole slaw without knowing why. I'm searching for a cole slaw recipe I can't find. I often order cole slaw myself, or politely have other people's. My children don't like it. It was after my mother's death that I had a memory of her making it. It had coarse cabbage and dressing and little black seeds on top.
We lived in Needham, MA from about 1966 through 1974. My father was very busy, completing his Residency and teaching in Boston. My sister was born in 1967. After that, my mother suffered from severe post-partum depression. She became increasingly withdrawn until she was institutionalized in 1971. During that period when I was between ages four to eight, what I don't remember is bonding. I don't remember nurturing or connecting. I remember just having to watch her. I remember her just sitting in the living room looking pretty but sad, smoking and watching soap operas. She is a figure removed from me, like a picture in a magazine.
* * *
My mother was born in New York City in 1936 to Robert Birkin and Priscilla Lowe. She was born prematurely. In those days, they never allowed a mother to be with her child. There was no essential bonding.
Priscilla was Cum Laude from North Western, described as a "cold fish", "extremely competent", tall and good looking. Bob is described as an "interesting guy", who lost his father early on.
In 1948, Susan, age 12, lived with her sister Anne, age 10, and their cousin, Don, age 15 in Chagrin Falls, OH.
Priscilla is described as smoking all the time, even when cooking. She would read while cooking. She put the pot on the table in front of the kids and that was it. The kids never got hugged.
One time, Priscilla hired a construction team to build a village for wooden statues in their yard. It would hold the set of African figures they had acquired from all over the world. It looked like the Taj Mahal.
Bob is described as remote and not happy. He worked at Cleveland Crane Engineering.
As a child, Susan is described as super, open, full of love and welcoming. She was a straight A student.
Susan's sister Anne died of polio about 1950.
Not long after, Bob informed Don that they were getting divorced.
Priscilla was committed to Winsor Sanatorium for schizophrenia.
Later on, Priscilla was to live in Chicago and rented out the entire floor of the Drake Hotel.
In 1951, Bob remarried to Jean Reynolds. Jean is described as an "ice queen". Jean was very critical of Susan. Susan did not live up to Jean's expectations.
* * *
It is 1972, and I am visiting my mother at McLean hospital in Belmont MA.
You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLean_Hospital
It is a very exclusive and well-endowed clinic. It is a facility of Harvard University which is where my Father received his medical degree. The Nobel Prize winning mathematician, John Nash, was treated here. His life story was told in the book A Beautiful Mind, with a movie of the same name.
I remember being brought to visit and sitting in a central café under an atrium. My mother is brought out and joins us at the table. The children receive snacks from the snack-bar. She is quiet and withdrawn. There is nothing to say.
In 1973, my father went to see Bob to tell him that he and Susan were getting divorced. He said, Susan's not behaving. He said that he loved her, but she wasn't available. He said he would financially support her.
My memories from this time forward are a series of visitations.
After she left McLean, she lived at a half-way house in Boston. She held a job briefly.
In the mid-70's, my brother and I would be put on a Trailways bus to travel from Nashua NH to Boston. The Boston bus station was a scary place. Often times my mother would meet us, and we wouldn't even leave the terminal. One time, we got off the bus and there was no one there to meet us. I left messages repeatedly with my father's answering service. There was nothing for it except to wait until the time of the return ticket.
Don's sister, Helen, helped my Mother return to Cleveland around 1980. She was put in a half-way house, and was trained to get a job. She wasn't stable enough to keep a job. She is described as being two people. At times, she wouldn't know people and say "why are you here?" At other times, she would recognize the person, and she would also know that her world had changed.
She lived in a nursing home for many years. Her son Tom brought her to Maine for the final years of her life, where she was surrounded by family.
***
"Susan Birkin is Bride of Harvard Medical Student" reads the newspaper article. It is Jun of 1959. My parents are married at the Federated Church. The wedding is described as the culmination of a college romance, Susan having attended Smith and Charles attending Amherst, receiving their degrees in 1958. We are told the couple will honeymoon in Bermuda, and then Mr. Lees will continue his studies at Harvard.
I remember having seen a picture of my parents riding motor bikes on their honeymoon.
After the honeymoon, Susan is described as being changed. She confided that she didn't want to ride the motor bike, but he forced her to do it. One time not long there after she jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. The family explained it as "just nerves".
The pressure from my father and her step-mother was heavy. After she and Charles visit Bob and Jean, Susan is sharply criticized by Jean for looking disheveled after a nap. Charley doesn't respond but Don rises to her defense.
She is described as beginning to come unglued.
My parents lived in Boston while my father finished medical school. Susan wanted a TV. The story goes that my father didn't want a TV and wouldn't get her one because he claimed it would interfere with his studying. She was sad and unhappy.
At the time of my birth in 1963, my father is described as being happy and my mother enjoyed shopping for baby clothes.
She described as lovely, sweet, but sort of sad. She is described as being a little bewildered by life in general.
My father is described as being unsympathetic and giving little emotional support. It's described as a family trait. There wasn't much sympathy for weakness.
After my sister was born in 1967, Susan seemed to be at a loss for what to do. My grandmother told my mother that she should "pull herself together". Susan just sat there and cried, "But what does that mean?"
Sunday, February 16, 2014
"Aye, there's the rub"
When I was a child, I had an electric analog clock. It was white and boxy. It had a gold wire that you pulled out in the back to set the alarm. The alarm sound was a buzzer mixed with a fire alarm mixed with an electric shock. When it woke me up, it jolted me out of bed with my heart racing and my mind filled with fear. Waking suddenly, especially in the dark, leaves me disoriented. I startle easily.
I think it is for this reason that I stopped allow myself being woken up by alarms - never again would allow myself to be startled during the night. Now I watch them throughout the night and anticipate them. I must have a clock with me in the room when I sleep. I need to watch it I need to always know where I am in the course of the night at all times. I wake in the night, check the time, and go back to sleep. I set the alarm at bedtime, to symbolically represent the end of my journey. But I only sleep lightly, especially the last two hours. I snooze myself for an hour anticipating the alarm time, and then shut it off a minute before.
I have always had poor sleep, as long as I can remember. I have always awoken without feeling refreshed. I have double black bags under my eyes that never go away. I can remember my teacher in high school saying that I shouldn't be this tired.
When I was in high school, I slept in a room in the basement without any windows. Today, a room like this would have been considered against code. There was no way to synchronize my sleep with the natural world. I had to work extra hard to sleep and wake in a place like this.
My father snored very loudly. He knew it because he talked about the remedies of his day, such as sewing a small round object into the back of one's pajama top. I mentioned once before that my father remarried, to an impractical actress. Before the separation, the first sign of trouble in the marriage that I remember, other than dismissing the maid, was my father being banished to another bedroom for his loud snoring.
I have always snored very loudly. My children used to put a towel under the bedroom door. When camping, others in the next tent referred to me as the Bear.
As long as I can remember, I have been quick to spring to action on rising, but lacking in that quality of feeling rested. I have always had that quality of sleeping with one eye open. This came in handy during the infancy of my three children - that I could arise to tend them in the night almost instantly. I am on alert in the night.
I have adapted to the reality of being unrested by keeping myself stimulated - by being busy and anxious and nervous. I can't sit still for very long. I am restless. I must be up and about, engaged with busy work. Otherwise I fall asleep where I sit.
This behavior of falling asleep in inappropriate public places is called low sleep-onset latency. I can remember in high school and college of the early 80's having the squiggly scrawl crash line in my notes, where I had dozed off in the middle of writing. After I started employment my managers were commenting on my visible sleep-crashes in meetings.
I can recall in 1990 when the president of our company came to our site to speak to the team. I was so excited to see him that I came to the room early to sit up front. However this proved my undoing as I feel asleep in front of him while he was speaking. I received a good talking-to after that.
At home, I cannot sit through an entire movie non-stop without standing up. I start to feel sleepy and sick and weak if I don't get up and move every fifteen minutes or so. I am always working around the house, if after 10p, to find some little chore to do like doing laundry or the dishes.
There's always more work to be done. I can't rest. Or else.
In addition to the falling-asleep incidents at work, and the snoring, my partner said that I gasped for air while sleeping. She said that I would stop breathing, then gasp suddenly, then fall back asleep. This is a tragic thing to have to happen to someone over and over in their sleep and they don't even know it. This is known as sleep apnea.
I started going to the sleep disorder center in the 1990's. It was there that I had my first overnight sleep study. A sleep study is like having an EKG, but with more electrodes. My first study was not wholly definitive, with the diagnosis of idiopathic hypersomnia. This is an increased tendency toward sleepiness for an unspecific reason.
The number of gasping incidents is measured by the AHI. My number was nineteen, which is in the moderate range. I was prescribed a CPAP machine which provides pressured airflow into my throat through a mask.
My sleep doctor said years later that if he had known of my bipolor disorder, he would have diagnosed my condition differently. Bipolor disorder can affect sleep, but also good sleep hygiene can manage the occurrence of manias.
http://bipolar.about.com/cs/sleep/a/0002_mood_sleep.htm
My first sleep study was in a cluster of rooms built into the below-ground parking garage of the hospital. Inside the lab there were control rooms with EKG machines for monitoring, hotel bedrooms for sleeping, and technicians awake all night for operating the study. As I was being escorted down the halls, I remarked that this ought to be a magical, mysterious place: the place where dreams were made. The techs looked at me like I should try working the night-shift.
Sleep studies do not monitor dreams. They monitor the cycles of sleep, in which dreaming may occur. Dreaming is associated with the REM phase, but dreaming does occur during other phases as well. The technicians do not see the dreams, nor can they control them. My dreams are mine. When I awake the operator asks me whether I dreamed.
There is something spooky about having someone watch you while you sleep.
Sleep studies remind me of the great novel by Ursula K. Leguin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven
The PBS film adaption of the novel is also excellent.
One of the powerful images from the novel that has always stuck with me is the association of sleeping deeply and sinking deeply into the ocean. We drop deeper and deeper into the depths. It becomes darker and more mysterious. What is it like to float there? What is it that we see?
In the novel, we question what is the relation between dreaming and our reality? Could this reality we experience be but the fevered dream of another tortured soul? And can our dreaming or stopping dreaming really change the future? Is it a different world after dreaming?
For me, one important lesson I have learned is the need for letting go and letting sleep. I tend to focus and hold thoughts and concerns in my mind, over and over in a loop. Sometimes I sleep a shallow sleep because I don't want to let these thoughts go. I hold yesterday in my mind and prevent it from passing.
Suppose you were to pull an all-nighter. Would the next day be the next day, for you? No, it would be hour 25 of yesterday. When you pulled that all-nighter, you held yesterday and retained yesterday's reality across the night. Now today is yesterday again.
Now suppose instead that you had gone to sleep. The day you did awake to would have been a new day, with an updated sense of priorities and perceptions. You would perceive the new day for what it is. You would have forgotten the hot mental state of yesterday, and would be assembling a new today based only on what is salient.
Here is a proverb on sleep:
"The wise man doesn't go to sleep when he's tired, he goes to sleep when he's sleepy".
I think it is for this reason that I stopped allow myself being woken up by alarms - never again would allow myself to be startled during the night. Now I watch them throughout the night and anticipate them. I must have a clock with me in the room when I sleep. I need to watch it I need to always know where I am in the course of the night at all times. I wake in the night, check the time, and go back to sleep. I set the alarm at bedtime, to symbolically represent the end of my journey. But I only sleep lightly, especially the last two hours. I snooze myself for an hour anticipating the alarm time, and then shut it off a minute before.
I have always had poor sleep, as long as I can remember. I have always awoken without feeling refreshed. I have double black bags under my eyes that never go away. I can remember my teacher in high school saying that I shouldn't be this tired.
When I was in high school, I slept in a room in the basement without any windows. Today, a room like this would have been considered against code. There was no way to synchronize my sleep with the natural world. I had to work extra hard to sleep and wake in a place like this.
My father snored very loudly. He knew it because he talked about the remedies of his day, such as sewing a small round object into the back of one's pajama top. I mentioned once before that my father remarried, to an impractical actress. Before the separation, the first sign of trouble in the marriage that I remember, other than dismissing the maid, was my father being banished to another bedroom for his loud snoring.
I have always snored very loudly. My children used to put a towel under the bedroom door. When camping, others in the next tent referred to me as the Bear.
As long as I can remember, I have been quick to spring to action on rising, but lacking in that quality of feeling rested. I have always had that quality of sleeping with one eye open. This came in handy during the infancy of my three children - that I could arise to tend them in the night almost instantly. I am on alert in the night.
I have adapted to the reality of being unrested by keeping myself stimulated - by being busy and anxious and nervous. I can't sit still for very long. I am restless. I must be up and about, engaged with busy work. Otherwise I fall asleep where I sit.
This behavior of falling asleep in inappropriate public places is called low sleep-onset latency. I can remember in high school and college of the early 80's having the squiggly scrawl crash line in my notes, where I had dozed off in the middle of writing. After I started employment my managers were commenting on my visible sleep-crashes in meetings.
I can recall in 1990 when the president of our company came to our site to speak to the team. I was so excited to see him that I came to the room early to sit up front. However this proved my undoing as I feel asleep in front of him while he was speaking. I received a good talking-to after that.
At home, I cannot sit through an entire movie non-stop without standing up. I start to feel sleepy and sick and weak if I don't get up and move every fifteen minutes or so. I am always working around the house, if after 10p, to find some little chore to do like doing laundry or the dishes.
There's always more work to be done. I can't rest. Or else.
In addition to the falling-asleep incidents at work, and the snoring, my partner said that I gasped for air while sleeping. She said that I would stop breathing, then gasp suddenly, then fall back asleep. This is a tragic thing to have to happen to someone over and over in their sleep and they don't even know it. This is known as sleep apnea.
I started going to the sleep disorder center in the 1990's. It was there that I had my first overnight sleep study. A sleep study is like having an EKG, but with more electrodes. My first study was not wholly definitive, with the diagnosis of idiopathic hypersomnia. This is an increased tendency toward sleepiness for an unspecific reason.
The number of gasping incidents is measured by the AHI. My number was nineteen, which is in the moderate range. I was prescribed a CPAP machine which provides pressured airflow into my throat through a mask.
My sleep doctor said years later that if he had known of my bipolor disorder, he would have diagnosed my condition differently. Bipolor disorder can affect sleep, but also good sleep hygiene can manage the occurrence of manias.
http://bipolar.about.com/cs/sleep/a/0002_mood_sleep.htm
My first sleep study was in a cluster of rooms built into the below-ground parking garage of the hospital. Inside the lab there were control rooms with EKG machines for monitoring, hotel bedrooms for sleeping, and technicians awake all night for operating the study. As I was being escorted down the halls, I remarked that this ought to be a magical, mysterious place: the place where dreams were made. The techs looked at me like I should try working the night-shift.
Sleep studies do not monitor dreams. They monitor the cycles of sleep, in which dreaming may occur. Dreaming is associated with the REM phase, but dreaming does occur during other phases as well. The technicians do not see the dreams, nor can they control them. My dreams are mine. When I awake the operator asks me whether I dreamed.
There is something spooky about having someone watch you while you sleep.
Sleep studies remind me of the great novel by Ursula K. Leguin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven
The PBS film adaption of the novel is also excellent.
One of the powerful images from the novel that has always stuck with me is the association of sleeping deeply and sinking deeply into the ocean. We drop deeper and deeper into the depths. It becomes darker and more mysterious. What is it like to float there? What is it that we see?
In the novel, we question what is the relation between dreaming and our reality? Could this reality we experience be but the fevered dream of another tortured soul? And can our dreaming or stopping dreaming really change the future? Is it a different world after dreaming?
For me, one important lesson I have learned is the need for letting go and letting sleep. I tend to focus and hold thoughts and concerns in my mind, over and over in a loop. Sometimes I sleep a shallow sleep because I don't want to let these thoughts go. I hold yesterday in my mind and prevent it from passing.
Suppose you were to pull an all-nighter. Would the next day be the next day, for you? No, it would be hour 25 of yesterday. When you pulled that all-nighter, you held yesterday and retained yesterday's reality across the night. Now today is yesterday again.
Now suppose instead that you had gone to sleep. The day you did awake to would have been a new day, with an updated sense of priorities and perceptions. You would perceive the new day for what it is. You would have forgotten the hot mental state of yesterday, and would be assembling a new today based only on what is salient.
Here is a proverb on sleep:
"The wise man doesn't go to sleep when he's tired, he goes to sleep when he's sleepy".
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Panic and Anxiety
My first signs of panic were in my senior year of college. I remember losing the ability to squeeze the muscles in my armpits. There was so much tension in my upper arms that they went numb. I was very concerned about what this could mean. I didn't allow myself to go to the doctor at that time, so there was no way to have it checked. I remember walking across the Quad thinking: please hold me together until graduation. Please don't let me die now.
My first full-on panic attack came in the summer of 1985 before I left for graduate school in California. During that summer, I worked as a summer intern for a computer company during the day, and then I worked at writing my own computer game at night. I stayed up until eleven each time typing furiously, fueled by caffeine. I was afraid I was not effective at my day job, and I was afraid that the game wasn't complete and fulfilling my high expectations for it. I came back to the house I was staying, one night in Aug and tried to get to sleep. I lay in bed and felt a kind of shock or shudder or jolt every few minutes. Just when I would start to doze I would be shocked awake. My heart was already racing from the caffeine and the concentration and racing thoughts. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was afraid to go to sleep because something would happen. I would sit up in bed and wait for the shakes to stop. I was exhausted that next day. But I also became intolerant to caffeine: I couldn't drink any without feelings of fear and panic.
I'll go back to an earlier time to recall my feelings of anxiety. I think most of my anxiety is about not feeling safe. I have no family. I have no safety net. I live on a thin line that could break at any time. I am exposed to danger. Anything could go wrong and I'd have no recourse. There is no one to help me. I can only depend on myself
I think my earliest feelings of insecurity date back to 1974, when my parents divorce was final. My mother was institutionalized and we moved to New Hampshire with my father. My father was an educated man and a good provider and he was there for the children when he could. My siblings and I became latch-key children and bear responsibility at an early age. At that time, my father the doctor was only available through an answering service. As the oldest I was responsible for holding things together at home. If my younger siblings were fighting, I had no recourse but to settle it until my father could come home. I was anxious that our home-life would be all right and safe.
I have mentioned in another post that I was present in 1979 where my father lay dying on the basement couch and that I rode with our neighbor the doctor to the hospital. I think it was during that time that I again feared for whom would take care of me. My siblings and I were eventually taken in by father's sister, who we children did not know well at the time. But in that interval just after my father's death, I was unsure what was to become of us.
In the late summer of 1979 I was entering my junior year in high school. The setting was this: my father had passed away in August, my Aunt had three new kids to care for, her house was too small for her family and ours, the funds from our trust were not yet disbursed, we had only a month before school started, and our house needed to be made ready for sale. Being responsible, I made an audacious proposal: let me stay in the house on my own and take care of it. My sister, being the youngest, went back to my Aunt's home while my brother, the middle child, went to stay with a family nearby.
Looking back on that fall, it is what I don't remember that surprises me. I don't remember sleeping in that house. I don't remember eating there or shopping for food. I walked to school as always but I don't remember it. There was a neighbor who looked after me and fed me and washed my clothes. I don't know how I survived during that time. It was a lonely and deprived situation, but my physical needs were taken care of. I wasn't physically hurt. I recall that there was an estate sale for our belongings. I helped bag and tag the many items of my father's which we couldn't take. I lived alone there for two and one-half months.
Returning the late summer of 1985, I was nervous about graduate school in California, especially since I had gotten it in my head to drive myself across the country. I had purchased a used car for myself at the last minute and I didn't know its reliability. As I drove across the country on I-80, I remember lying awake in the hotel rooms wondering if I would survive the night. I would feel the same sort of jolting-awake shocks, and all I could do was to sit up, back to the wall, in the dark, and hope it would pass. I imagined dying in the hotel room, with no one to find me but the maid. I survived each day and made it to San Francisco without incident.
When I arrived at graduate school, I felt there was something terribly wrong with me. I was nervous and scared and had heart palpitations. I was truly afraid that I was going to need to be hospitalized. Although I never did go to the doctor's generally, I made an appointment at the campus clinic. The story I gave the doctor was a disorganized, guilt-ridden tale of how I must have had a bad lifestyle to hurt myself and I was afraid I was irreparably ill. The doctor gave me an EKG. When he saw it was normal, he sent me on my way.
My first full-on panic attack came in the summer of 1985 before I left for graduate school in California. During that summer, I worked as a summer intern for a computer company during the day, and then I worked at writing my own computer game at night. I stayed up until eleven each time typing furiously, fueled by caffeine. I was afraid I was not effective at my day job, and I was afraid that the game wasn't complete and fulfilling my high expectations for it. I came back to the house I was staying, one night in Aug and tried to get to sleep. I lay in bed and felt a kind of shock or shudder or jolt every few minutes. Just when I would start to doze I would be shocked awake. My heart was already racing from the caffeine and the concentration and racing thoughts. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was afraid to go to sleep because something would happen. I would sit up in bed and wait for the shakes to stop. I was exhausted that next day. But I also became intolerant to caffeine: I couldn't drink any without feelings of fear and panic.
I'll go back to an earlier time to recall my feelings of anxiety. I think most of my anxiety is about not feeling safe. I have no family. I have no safety net. I live on a thin line that could break at any time. I am exposed to danger. Anything could go wrong and I'd have no recourse. There is no one to help me. I can only depend on myself
I think my earliest feelings of insecurity date back to 1974, when my parents divorce was final. My mother was institutionalized and we moved to New Hampshire with my father. My father was an educated man and a good provider and he was there for the children when he could. My siblings and I became latch-key children and bear responsibility at an early age. At that time, my father the doctor was only available through an answering service. As the oldest I was responsible for holding things together at home. If my younger siblings were fighting, I had no recourse but to settle it until my father could come home. I was anxious that our home-life would be all right and safe.
I have mentioned in another post that I was present in 1979 where my father lay dying on the basement couch and that I rode with our neighbor the doctor to the hospital. I think it was during that time that I again feared for whom would take care of me. My siblings and I were eventually taken in by father's sister, who we children did not know well at the time. But in that interval just after my father's death, I was unsure what was to become of us.
In the late summer of 1979 I was entering my junior year in high school. The setting was this: my father had passed away in August, my Aunt had three new kids to care for, her house was too small for her family and ours, the funds from our trust were not yet disbursed, we had only a month before school started, and our house needed to be made ready for sale. Being responsible, I made an audacious proposal: let me stay in the house on my own and take care of it. My sister, being the youngest, went back to my Aunt's home while my brother, the middle child, went to stay with a family nearby.
Looking back on that fall, it is what I don't remember that surprises me. I don't remember sleeping in that house. I don't remember eating there or shopping for food. I walked to school as always but I don't remember it. There was a neighbor who looked after me and fed me and washed my clothes. I don't know how I survived during that time. It was a lonely and deprived situation, but my physical needs were taken care of. I wasn't physically hurt. I recall that there was an estate sale for our belongings. I helped bag and tag the many items of my father's which we couldn't take. I lived alone there for two and one-half months.
Returning the late summer of 1985, I was nervous about graduate school in California, especially since I had gotten it in my head to drive myself across the country. I had purchased a used car for myself at the last minute and I didn't know its reliability. As I drove across the country on I-80, I remember lying awake in the hotel rooms wondering if I would survive the night. I would feel the same sort of jolting-awake shocks, and all I could do was to sit up, back to the wall, in the dark, and hope it would pass. I imagined dying in the hotel room, with no one to find me but the maid. I survived each day and made it to San Francisco without incident.
When I arrived at graduate school, I felt there was something terribly wrong with me. I was nervous and scared and had heart palpitations. I was truly afraid that I was going to need to be hospitalized. Although I never did go to the doctor's generally, I made an appointment at the campus clinic. The story I gave the doctor was a disorganized, guilt-ridden tale of how I must have had a bad lifestyle to hurt myself and I was afraid I was irreparably ill. The doctor gave me an EKG. When he saw it was normal, he sent me on my way.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Hypographia
Hypergraphia is an intense desire to write.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraphia
I have bipolar disorder. I have also taken stimulants such as Ritalin to treat attention and alertness issues.
I have always been a detailed, technical, thoughtful and analytical writer. I learned to touch type early and can type quickly. In my work as a computer troubleshooter, I often thought through writing. I would often generate long emails for a single subject to a single recipient.
When I started being in a manic state, I would write in a manic state. I often thought during those times that I saw patterns and truths that others did not see. If I read in the manic state, I would often start scribbling frantically in the margins as I made associations. Many of my favorite books are disfigured in this way. It is funny and sad to see the scrawls.
Later, as the mania became more intense, I would stay up all night thinking intensely. Perhaps I would crash before dawn for a few hours rest, or I would be up into the next day. Typically that next day I would feel horrible. Some of the worst feelings I have ever felt: exhausted, fearful, hopeless and sick. That day I would have to clean up my mess from the night before. And sometimes I would have to go to work and pretend like I was fine. But very consistently, toward the evening of the second day, I would have a burst of Hypergraphia. I sometimes likened this burst to throwing up. It is as if I had consumed various ideas and writings during the previous day, then stayed up all night churning my brain, then the next day have a distillation regurgitated forth.
It was the pages of scrawling hand-text that finally tipped off one doctor that I needed to see a psychiatrist for a mood disorder.
Being also a compulsive keeper of my every written page, I saved and organized my hyper graphic work into what is now ten binders, each two inches thick. I feel it is going to be a great challenge to find anything useful in this.
I have found that mania is a wonderful thing. I feel that, when you are manic, your thoughts associate much more readily and feedback much more quickly between themselves. You are able to develop and hold marvelous theories, and you are able to reinforce your private beliefs much more easily. But the problem with manic thoughts is that they make little sense or have little utility when shown to the outside world. In short, manic thoughts and theories are not understandable or useful to others, who do not share the heightened, abstracted mental context in which they were formed.
How do you make anything out of 1000 pages of navel-gazing?
I like the early writing of Phillip K. Dick. His creative ideas have been the basis of many SF movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_K_Dick
He may have suffered from substance abuse and mental health issues.
He developed a detailed inner mythology, which he captured on paper in periods of Hypergraphia.
After his death, these notes were compiled by researchers into a book called the Exegesis.
I have a copy of this book. It is wonderful, awe-inspiring and completely impenetrable. One would have to read over 900 pages and master his idiosyncratic language to understand him; and then have the task of finding meaning that could apply to the real world.
My Hypergraphia has stopped. I still like to write. I do a fair amount of writing in my job. The difference is that now I only write what the other person needs me to write. I don't write more than what is necessary. I have realized that my reader only has energy to consume just the text that they need and no more. This isn't an imaginary scenario where I write whatever I want and my reader reads every word and welcomes and acts on every additional thought I include. In the real world I am concise and actionable. No one has the extra stimulated energy to do otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraphia
I have bipolar disorder. I have also taken stimulants such as Ritalin to treat attention and alertness issues.
I have always been a detailed, technical, thoughtful and analytical writer. I learned to touch type early and can type quickly. In my work as a computer troubleshooter, I often thought through writing. I would often generate long emails for a single subject to a single recipient.
When I started being in a manic state, I would write in a manic state. I often thought during those times that I saw patterns and truths that others did not see. If I read in the manic state, I would often start scribbling frantically in the margins as I made associations. Many of my favorite books are disfigured in this way. It is funny and sad to see the scrawls.
Later, as the mania became more intense, I would stay up all night thinking intensely. Perhaps I would crash before dawn for a few hours rest, or I would be up into the next day. Typically that next day I would feel horrible. Some of the worst feelings I have ever felt: exhausted, fearful, hopeless and sick. That day I would have to clean up my mess from the night before. And sometimes I would have to go to work and pretend like I was fine. But very consistently, toward the evening of the second day, I would have a burst of Hypergraphia. I sometimes likened this burst to throwing up. It is as if I had consumed various ideas and writings during the previous day, then stayed up all night churning my brain, then the next day have a distillation regurgitated forth.
It was the pages of scrawling hand-text that finally tipped off one doctor that I needed to see a psychiatrist for a mood disorder.
Being also a compulsive keeper of my every written page, I saved and organized my hyper graphic work into what is now ten binders, each two inches thick. I feel it is going to be a great challenge to find anything useful in this.
I have found that mania is a wonderful thing. I feel that, when you are manic, your thoughts associate much more readily and feedback much more quickly between themselves. You are able to develop and hold marvelous theories, and you are able to reinforce your private beliefs much more easily. But the problem with manic thoughts is that they make little sense or have little utility when shown to the outside world. In short, manic thoughts and theories are not understandable or useful to others, who do not share the heightened, abstracted mental context in which they were formed.
How do you make anything out of 1000 pages of navel-gazing?
I like the early writing of Phillip K. Dick. His creative ideas have been the basis of many SF movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_K_Dick
He may have suffered from substance abuse and mental health issues.
He developed a detailed inner mythology, which he captured on paper in periods of Hypergraphia.
After his death, these notes were compiled by researchers into a book called the Exegesis.
I have a copy of this book. It is wonderful, awe-inspiring and completely impenetrable. One would have to read over 900 pages and master his idiosyncratic language to understand him; and then have the task of finding meaning that could apply to the real world.
My Hypergraphia has stopped. I still like to write. I do a fair amount of writing in my job. The difference is that now I only write what the other person needs me to write. I don't write more than what is necessary. I have realized that my reader only has energy to consume just the text that they need and no more. This isn't an imaginary scenario where I write whatever I want and my reader reads every word and welcomes and acts on every additional thought I include. In the real world I am concise and actionable. No one has the extra stimulated energy to do otherwise.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Asperger's Syndrome: it's not a bug, its a feature
It was in 2004 that I learned I had Asperger's Syndrome. There was a feature in the Sunday Seattle Times. I had one of those moments of self-identification when you realize you are looking at yourself. I was 40 years old.
You can read about it for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome.
I think it is interesting that Asperger's Syndrome is named after an Austrian doctor who documented child patients in 1944. I am constantly amazed by the sophistication of weapons and technology of the German empire as evidenced during WWI and especially WWII. Is there a connection?
I also think it is interesting that the condition did not receive a standardized diagnosis until the mid-1990's. What is it about this cluster of diagnosable conditions that resists easy recognition? I'll offer some thoughts on this later in the article.
There is some comfort in having a name for what you have, or who you are. There is some relief in knowing its not just me, that I'm not just a failure for no reason at all. It gives me part of the answer to the question I have asked myself over and over: why is everything so hard? It makes me sad for myself, to recall all the struggle and shame and humiliation and inexplicable under-performance that went undiagnosed from birth. It is my wish that early childhood diagnosis and intervention may help other children to grow up properly treated and accommodated.
It is sixth grade. The teachers do not understand why I walk around the edge of the playground by myself, looking at the trees, imaging they are pipes or alien machines.
It is junior high. The gym teacher takes attendance. I dread my name coming up because I know I will have to speak. Do I say Yes or Here? The gym teacher makes us run laps around the yard. I throw up on the locker room floor. Later, the gym teacher makes us do a routine on the balance beam. I fail the maneuvers and fall off. Later, the gym teacher calls me into his office and forces me to read a poem above not quitting.
It is high school. I am to play baseball with the class. I take my turn at bat and strike out. And again. I am not able to coordinate my swing with the ball. It is humiliating.
The most chilling thing to me about the Asperger's Syndrome traits is how spot-on they are.
It is the time between sixth and seventh grade during the summer. I realize there are other people. Until that time, there was only the house I lived in, my father (when he was present due to being a single-parent and a Doctor), and my brother and sister to the extent I needed to take care of them and mediate their fighting. There are people besides me. I just noticed them.
In Junior High I realized that I exist. Which is to say I realized that I existed as being perceived by some other alive things, although still largely irrelevant. I was teased and mocked on a regular basis. I did not know, until I was put down, that there was a properly masculine way to carry one's books. I was mocked for not knowing that there was a Super Bowl and who was playing.
I realize now that, by and large, other people do not exist for me. It is as if I am invisible, or that I think I am invisible to them and they cannot see me and harbor important thoughts about me. It is also that other people are like manikins to me: empty scarecrows that are placed in the seats of the class room. Aside from the mocking, there wouldn't have been much difference if I attended a school completely by myself. Because I did.
In class I am a good student. But I do not care at all what other people think. Sometimes I shake things up just to be different or a show-off. In class we are each asked to name an example of an exclamation. When it is my turn, I yell "AARRG!". When asked to create a sentence to be diagramed, I write: "Every globule of gaseous moisture has an inner luster of a metallic hue". [the first half isn't the original quote, but you get the idea].
I have no dates. I don't got to prom. I have no friends, except for two physics nerds like myself. I don't care. I go home and do my homework and read.
I have no emotional connection between my one brief girlfriend, between ninth and tenth grade. I am sitting in the dark with her discussing Love. I tell her something like, there is no Love, or I have no Love, or I how can I know what Love is. She is crying and I feel misunderstood.
Restricted and Repetitive interests and Behaviors
It is 1971, outside Boston MA. I am watching re-runs of Star Trek, Gilligan's Island and the Wild, Wild West. While doing so, I am playing with Lego's. But I never build anything. I simply categorize the shapes and colors. Or if I must build something, I build a cube or a pyramid. I am more interested in what the types of the pieces are, than using them to build anything.
Soon, I have seen and memorized every episode of Star Trek. My favorite episodes are The Doomsday Machine and the Galileo Seven. But there are many more. I know all the plots, the parts of the ship, and the guest stars. To this day I often surprise people with my ability to name the title or describe the alien in a given episode. There is an homage to the episode Arena in the move Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
It is 1976 and I am 13. It is seventh grade. At that time it was rare to have any kind of computer in a Junior High, much less a mini-computer (half way between a mainframe and a PC [which didn't exist yet]). Actually, the first year, the school has a kind of giant pre-calculator, called for its manufacturer, Olivetti. I am able to write a primitive program, getting the machine to count down in a loop. The next year, our math teacher accomplishes an amazing acquisition and we have a working Digital Equipment PDP-8/E with high speed paper tape reader, a real video terminal (only 12 lines) and 4 noisy teletypes [like a VW bug crossed with a typewriter]. I was the chief assistant. I could do a cold start of the computer by toggling in the bootstrap sequence. I could start the software called "Multi-User BASIC" by configuring the about of memory (16K? 32K? 12-bit words). I knew all of the BASIC code for all of the games we had, and liked to tinker with them.
In 1979 at the age of 15, on a lark, I type up a resume on a typewriter and send it in to Digital Equipment Corp. The resume and cover letter are forwarded to their internship program. I receive a summer job programming for the amount of $5/hour. I develop simple database applications for their quality department. I am surrounded in the internship by college students.
Speech and Language
Frequently I have difficulty answering the right question. The trigger which caused me to write this essay was one of my Doctors asking me if I liked to write. I answered that I sometimes write at work. And back a few years ago when I was manic, I had hypergraphia and filled a whole box of journals with thoughts and feelings. He went on anyway, and said that, since I was able to articulate my conditions so clearly, perhaps I should write them down. Oh, he was just asking if I would like to write something!
Often when I am asked a question, I over anticipate what the asker might have in mind. Do I need to defend myself? Am I in trouble? Does the person asking have the historical context? Does the person asking know that their question has multiple subtle interpretations? Or that there could be multiple answers depending on their time and resources involved? Did they ask the right question? Should I reword it for them? All these things run through my head and cause me to respond with To Much Information.
One of my favorite examples preoccupation with Jargon is a collection of slang from the computer culture of the 1970's. It was called The Hacker's Dictionary. http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html
I studied the Hacker's Dictionary. I liked reading the Hacker's Dictionary just for being a dictionary. In the era from 1978-85, I knew people who worked on the college mainframes or worked on them myself. At that time, hacker speech was a normal part of our vocabulary. I liked to slip hacker phrases into my everyday life. Such as "he's some RANDOM guy from the English department" or "I can't PARSE that" or "We're going to LOSE BIG here". I liked "bogus", "canonical", "feature", "hack" (high praise) and of course "kludge" (disrespected insult). You might say that hacker culture was a dialect and its own private world, and I loved to live it and use it, even in the outside world.
Motor and Sensory Perception
It was 2007, at the age of 44, when I realized that I hated water. Or that the feeling of water was painful to me. Or that the minutest difference in the temperature of water causes me extreme amplified feelings of the stimuli. I remember as a child being distrustful of the shower because of its fickle behavior, having a handle whose meaning changed depending on what room you were in. How you had to work to adjust it just so, and then having the temperature jolt high or low at a whim while it was running.
It is 1971 and I am to take swimming lessons in the local lake. I am told to walk out on the dock and jump in the water. I do this and the water feels like needles, extremely cold, like being plunged into ice water or being shocked. It is painful to make this transition quickly. And I do it again, day after day.
It is the 1990's and I am still married and raising my children. My children love the water. Some of my children find the water soothing, and quite enjoy taking a bath. I never take a bath: I don't lie how it feels and the disturbing signals. When we travel, I take the job of chaperoning the children in the pool. In each case, it takes my body five minutes to acclimate. My children have already jumped in without a moment's thought. Five minutes for the pool. Twenty minutes to get all the way into a hot tub.
I am very sensitive to noise. I cannot study or read if there is any music or distracting talking going on. I used to have to ask my roommate to wear headphones while playing his music while I was studying. Sometimes, I had to ask him still to turn down the volume because I could hear the sound in the headphones. At home, there is only a small range of volume at which the TV can be set at, or otherwise it disturbs me greatly. Even if I am not in the room, the ambient noise of something that is too loud bothers me to the point where I can't be in the house.
The processing of sound is also different for me. When we are driving and the traffic gets complex, I turned down the radio so I can think more. I cannot understand people when I am in a cocktail-party or noisy environment. I cannot easily discern the speech from the noise. It upsets me greatly if multiple people are having separate conversations near me.
One interesting thing I've noticed when watching movies is that I get more out of them if I watch them with the English subtitles (or closed-captioning hard of hearing-impaired) turned on. It seems as if the depth and appreciation of the movie increases by a third or more. I realize that with me, even though I hear spoken words, they don't fully sink in or register. I think sometimes that even though I can hear, I am actually deaf in terms of fully decoding human speech. I don't understand what people say and I miss a lot of the nuance. I wish that everyday interactions in the world were subtitled!
Late diagnosis
I asked a question at the start of the essay: why was it that Asperger's Syndrome was recognized as a standard diagnosis only in the mid-1990's, when presumably the condition has existed since the 1940's (and probably before)?
I don't know what the answer is, but I am offer this thought. When you look at the defining criteria for Asperger's Symptoms, they are categorical, that is symptoms for a symptom. Take "restrictive, repetitive pattern of interest and behavior". It doesn't say "pre-occupation with trains" or "memorizes names of stars". Normally, if you look at a diagnosis for depression, say, it might say "prolonged period of sadness". It doesn't say, "prolonged period of feeling something". That is, most diagnosis are for first-level experiences that are exact and specific. Asperger's symptoms can be about anything in a particular way, that makes them special.
You can read about it for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome.
I think it is interesting that Asperger's Syndrome is named after an Austrian doctor who documented child patients in 1944. I am constantly amazed by the sophistication of weapons and technology of the German empire as evidenced during WWI and especially WWII. Is there a connection?
I also think it is interesting that the condition did not receive a standardized diagnosis until the mid-1990's. What is it about this cluster of diagnosable conditions that resists easy recognition? I'll offer some thoughts on this later in the article.
There is some comfort in having a name for what you have, or who you are. There is some relief in knowing its not just me, that I'm not just a failure for no reason at all. It gives me part of the answer to the question I have asked myself over and over: why is everything so hard? It makes me sad for myself, to recall all the struggle and shame and humiliation and inexplicable under-performance that went undiagnosed from birth. It is my wish that early childhood diagnosis and intervention may help other children to grow up properly treated and accommodated.
It is sixth grade. The teachers do not understand why I walk around the edge of the playground by myself, looking at the trees, imaging they are pipes or alien machines.
It is junior high. The gym teacher takes attendance. I dread my name coming up because I know I will have to speak. Do I say Yes or Here? The gym teacher makes us run laps around the yard. I throw up on the locker room floor. Later, the gym teacher makes us do a routine on the balance beam. I fail the maneuvers and fall off. Later, the gym teacher calls me into his office and forces me to read a poem above not quitting.
It is high school. I am to play baseball with the class. I take my turn at bat and strike out. And again. I am not able to coordinate my swing with the ball. It is humiliating.
The most chilling thing to me about the Asperger's Syndrome traits is how spot-on they are.
- Difficulties in social interaction and non-verbal communication
- restrictive, repetitive patterns of behavior and interest
- preservation of linguistic and cognitive development
- physical clumsiness
- atypical use of language
It is the time between sixth and seventh grade during the summer. I realize there are other people. Until that time, there was only the house I lived in, my father (when he was present due to being a single-parent and a Doctor), and my brother and sister to the extent I needed to take care of them and mediate their fighting. There are people besides me. I just noticed them.
In Junior High I realized that I exist. Which is to say I realized that I existed as being perceived by some other alive things, although still largely irrelevant. I was teased and mocked on a regular basis. I did not know, until I was put down, that there was a properly masculine way to carry one's books. I was mocked for not knowing that there was a Super Bowl and who was playing.
I realize now that, by and large, other people do not exist for me. It is as if I am invisible, or that I think I am invisible to them and they cannot see me and harbor important thoughts about me. It is also that other people are like manikins to me: empty scarecrows that are placed in the seats of the class room. Aside from the mocking, there wouldn't have been much difference if I attended a school completely by myself. Because I did.
In class I am a good student. But I do not care at all what other people think. Sometimes I shake things up just to be different or a show-off. In class we are each asked to name an example of an exclamation. When it is my turn, I yell "AARRG!". When asked to create a sentence to be diagramed, I write: "Every globule of gaseous moisture has an inner luster of a metallic hue". [the first half isn't the original quote, but you get the idea].
I have no dates. I don't got to prom. I have no friends, except for two physics nerds like myself. I don't care. I go home and do my homework and read.
I have no emotional connection between my one brief girlfriend, between ninth and tenth grade. I am sitting in the dark with her discussing Love. I tell her something like, there is no Love, or I have no Love, or I how can I know what Love is. She is crying and I feel misunderstood.
Restricted and Repetitive interests and Behaviors
It is 1971, outside Boston MA. I am watching re-runs of Star Trek, Gilligan's Island and the Wild, Wild West. While doing so, I am playing with Lego's. But I never build anything. I simply categorize the shapes and colors. Or if I must build something, I build a cube or a pyramid. I am more interested in what the types of the pieces are, than using them to build anything.
Soon, I have seen and memorized every episode of Star Trek. My favorite episodes are The Doomsday Machine and the Galileo Seven. But there are many more. I know all the plots, the parts of the ship, and the guest stars. To this day I often surprise people with my ability to name the title or describe the alien in a given episode. There is an homage to the episode Arena in the move Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
It is 1976 and I am 13. It is seventh grade. At that time it was rare to have any kind of computer in a Junior High, much less a mini-computer (half way between a mainframe and a PC [which didn't exist yet]). Actually, the first year, the school has a kind of giant pre-calculator, called for its manufacturer, Olivetti. I am able to write a primitive program, getting the machine to count down in a loop. The next year, our math teacher accomplishes an amazing acquisition and we have a working Digital Equipment PDP-8/E with high speed paper tape reader, a real video terminal (only 12 lines) and 4 noisy teletypes [like a VW bug crossed with a typewriter]. I was the chief assistant. I could do a cold start of the computer by toggling in the bootstrap sequence. I could start the software called "Multi-User BASIC" by configuring the about of memory (16K? 32K? 12-bit words). I knew all of the BASIC code for all of the games we had, and liked to tinker with them.
In 1979 at the age of 15, on a lark, I type up a resume on a typewriter and send it in to Digital Equipment Corp. The resume and cover letter are forwarded to their internship program. I receive a summer job programming for the amount of $5/hour. I develop simple database applications for their quality department. I am surrounded in the internship by college students.
Speech and Language
Frequently I have difficulty answering the right question. The trigger which caused me to write this essay was one of my Doctors asking me if I liked to write. I answered that I sometimes write at work. And back a few years ago when I was manic, I had hypergraphia and filled a whole box of journals with thoughts and feelings. He went on anyway, and said that, since I was able to articulate my conditions so clearly, perhaps I should write them down. Oh, he was just asking if I would like to write something!
Often when I am asked a question, I over anticipate what the asker might have in mind. Do I need to defend myself? Am I in trouble? Does the person asking have the historical context? Does the person asking know that their question has multiple subtle interpretations? Or that there could be multiple answers depending on their time and resources involved? Did they ask the right question? Should I reword it for them? All these things run through my head and cause me to respond with To Much Information.
One of my favorite examples preoccupation with Jargon is a collection of slang from the computer culture of the 1970's. It was called The Hacker's Dictionary. http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html
I studied the Hacker's Dictionary. I liked reading the Hacker's Dictionary just for being a dictionary. In the era from 1978-85, I knew people who worked on the college mainframes or worked on them myself. At that time, hacker speech was a normal part of our vocabulary. I liked to slip hacker phrases into my everyday life. Such as "he's some RANDOM guy from the English department" or "I can't PARSE that" or "We're going to LOSE BIG here". I liked "bogus", "canonical", "feature", "hack" (high praise) and of course "kludge" (disrespected insult). You might say that hacker culture was a dialect and its own private world, and I loved to live it and use it, even in the outside world.
Motor and Sensory Perception
It was 2007, at the age of 44, when I realized that I hated water. Or that the feeling of water was painful to me. Or that the minutest difference in the temperature of water causes me extreme amplified feelings of the stimuli. I remember as a child being distrustful of the shower because of its fickle behavior, having a handle whose meaning changed depending on what room you were in. How you had to work to adjust it just so, and then having the temperature jolt high or low at a whim while it was running.
It is 1971 and I am to take swimming lessons in the local lake. I am told to walk out on the dock and jump in the water. I do this and the water feels like needles, extremely cold, like being plunged into ice water or being shocked. It is painful to make this transition quickly. And I do it again, day after day.
It is the 1990's and I am still married and raising my children. My children love the water. Some of my children find the water soothing, and quite enjoy taking a bath. I never take a bath: I don't lie how it feels and the disturbing signals. When we travel, I take the job of chaperoning the children in the pool. In each case, it takes my body five minutes to acclimate. My children have already jumped in without a moment's thought. Five minutes for the pool. Twenty minutes to get all the way into a hot tub.
I am very sensitive to noise. I cannot study or read if there is any music or distracting talking going on. I used to have to ask my roommate to wear headphones while playing his music while I was studying. Sometimes, I had to ask him still to turn down the volume because I could hear the sound in the headphones. At home, there is only a small range of volume at which the TV can be set at, or otherwise it disturbs me greatly. Even if I am not in the room, the ambient noise of something that is too loud bothers me to the point where I can't be in the house.
The processing of sound is also different for me. When we are driving and the traffic gets complex, I turned down the radio so I can think more. I cannot understand people when I am in a cocktail-party or noisy environment. I cannot easily discern the speech from the noise. It upsets me greatly if multiple people are having separate conversations near me.
One interesting thing I've noticed when watching movies is that I get more out of them if I watch them with the English subtitles (or closed-captioning hard of hearing-impaired) turned on. It seems as if the depth and appreciation of the movie increases by a third or more. I realize that with me, even though I hear spoken words, they don't fully sink in or register. I think sometimes that even though I can hear, I am actually deaf in terms of fully decoding human speech. I don't understand what people say and I miss a lot of the nuance. I wish that everyday interactions in the world were subtitled!
Late diagnosis
I asked a question at the start of the essay: why was it that Asperger's Syndrome was recognized as a standard diagnosis only in the mid-1990's, when presumably the condition has existed since the 1940's (and probably before)?
I don't know what the answer is, but I am offer this thought. When you look at the defining criteria for Asperger's Symptoms, they are categorical, that is symptoms for a symptom. Take "restrictive, repetitive pattern of interest and behavior". It doesn't say "pre-occupation with trains" or "memorizes names of stars". Normally, if you look at a diagnosis for depression, say, it might say "prolonged period of sadness". It doesn't say, "prolonged period of feeling something". That is, most diagnosis are for first-level experiences that are exact and specific. Asperger's symptoms can be about anything in a particular way, that makes them special.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Raised In A Doctor's Office
One of my doctors suggested I write about my life experiences.
My father died on July 29, 1979. I was 16 at the time, going into my junior year. His death came as a surprise to everyone. He had battling melanoma for several years though skin grafts and chemotherapy. But most of us assumed he was in remission. He was a dermatologist, and that summer he closed is office for the usual vacation and he came home to die alone.
I found him in the basement where it was cool lying on the couch. He told me to fetch our family friend, who was another doctor. I don't know where my brother and sister were, who were younger than me. When he arrived, we supported my father into the doctor's VW bug and we raced to the hospital. I remember the doctor flashing his headlights on and off on the highway to get people to pull over. My father was placed in intensive care.
My aunt came to watch over us children. I don't think she had been to see us there more than a handful of times, such was the relationship between my dad and his sister. I remember her receiving a phone call a few days later, and she took the receiver away from her mouth to say in a matter of fact way, "He's gone."
Not long after, my aunt asked me if I wanted to come to the hospital to say goodbye to my father. When we were there, I was shown into sterile sparse medical room with an examining table or gurney in the center. My father's dead body lay there. I can't remember of he was naked or only exposed from the waist up. He looked white and his skin tone wasn't normal anymore. I watched him for a while as expected and then we left. I was told this would bring me closure.
I don't have very good memories of my childhood. I'm not sure if that is because of my condition, or whether there were too many things I didn't want to remember. I think my earliest memory of my father is indirect, of him and my mother fighting or there being raised voices. My mother had post-partum depression, bi-polar disorder, and alcoholism. I heard the story once that, when my mother was rushed to the hospital to give birth to one of us siblings, perhaps my sister, my father was on the golf course. I think my mother suffered in part from demanding expectations and a lack of sociable attention.
My father worked hard in those days doing his residency and lecturing. I remember him retreating on a regular basis to his den in the basement, which had a accordion partition to close him off and from which he was not to be disturbed. Although not a violent or mean man, he was demanding of perfection. I remember him becoming very angry if any of us children were to spill our milk at the table, resulting perhaps in corporal punishment.
When my father's mother was alive, we used to visit their house on Cape Cod in the summer. To us kids the grandparent adults came across as very strict and proper but very smart. The talk went right over our heads. But they weren't very affectionate. Entertainment involved competitive croquet. Looking back, what strikes me the most is my father's strategy for dealing with bathroom breaks on the trips from Boston down to the Cape. I am not making this up when I tell you my father had an empty plastic gallon ice-cream tub under the seat. We were supposed to use as a bedpan if we had to go along the way.
My father, having been raised above our grandfather's hardware store, was good with carpentry and locks and electrical work. As children we were very pleased with the homemade bunk beds he made for each of us. A fond recollection that I shudder at now was the construction of a tree platform in a tree the yard. He designed a flat platform that fit in the "Y" of a large tree perhaps twenty feet up. The platform was designed to accommodate the tree limbs expanding, which everyone thought was very clever. What it didn't have was walls. After it was planked, we would climb up to it by putting our feet on a series of bolts, not unlike climbing up a telephone pole. Perhaps on the request of our mother or other prudent souls, he cluttered the elegant simplicity of the platform in sky with a rope railing around the perimeter. Despite the obvious dangers, nothing much happened. The thing that happened, happened to me. The children were engaged in a race to see who could ascend to the platform the quickest. Somewhere near the top on the climbing spikes, I slipped and fell to land on my back. I was stunned, taken to the doctor, and ultimately found to be fine.
Both my father and mother were practical in their way. My father kept a second refrigerators in the basement with a stock of Carling Black Label beer. My mother, being also an alcoholic (or being driven to be one), would be getting into the beer. To prevent this, my father surrounded the fridge with a chain and lock, the chain being enclosed in plastic tubing. One day my father came home to find the chain sawed through: my mother having found the hack saw in the workshop.
My mother was institutionalized around 1971 with severe bi-polar disorder and went to a clinic in Belmont MA. She never fully recovered. My father explained his reasoning for divorce to my mother's family. In a rare ruling for that time, my father was granted full custody of the children.
In 1974 when I was 11 we moved to New Hampshire where my father started his practice. A first, my father hired a day time care-giver to watch us kids. However, evening babysitting soon became an issue as my father was dating a lot with the local divorced singles group. He devised a system of "babysitting ourselves" where we were each paid on a decreasing scale to watch ourselves. It wasn't long before we were letting ourselves in after school and fending for ourselves until dinner. My father, being a doctor, wasn't always home on time. After I while was asked to prepare dinner two nights a week as well as look after my siblings.
Perhaps my father's greatest contribution to child-rearing was 'times'. Times were regularly scheduled appointments, usually one-half hour, to do something with father. Typically we worked backward with the youngest at 7:30, the middle child at 8:00, and my time at 8:30. Of course, in typical doctor fashion, if the prior appointments ran later, the later appointments slid. On a tough day my time might not start until 9:30. During my time I remember playing chess, reading and learning to pay cribbage. To his great credit, my father as the doctor always kept his appointments.
On a side note about chess, he taught me a principal that says with me to this day. I was never, and still am not, much of a chess player. My mind just doesn't work like that. But he would let me win, or almost win. I remember having several pieces remaining, and him having only his king. I said that I win. He said that you have to mate the king. So I moved a piece, and he moved his king out of the way. I chased his king all over the board but he would move the king each time. He said the game was a draw unless I could pin the king. He eventually hinted to me how to do it, and the game was over. Being in the computer field today, it is the core principal of an computer algorithm that it must finish.
One of the saddest stories about my father was his re-marriage. If my father is anything like me, his ability to detect people's faces is triggered especially by bright faces. What I mean by that average women was average faces are ok, but women's faces which are larger than life, brighter than life, have an usual attraction and power over us. My father had brought home women he had dated from the divorced singles group before without anything really clicking. But after attending the community theatre, he started dating an impoverished actress who was lovely but very different from him. She had two children.
It seems like the courtship was a short time. Before we children knew it, we were moving to a house with seven bedrooms and six bathrooms. At my step-mother's direction, we were redecorating the house with modern 1970's style with mirrors on the walls, a sunken couch, a water bed and a full wall mural of a garden of Eden with a scantily dressed nymph. Quarters were prepared for a live in maid, and it seems now that my step-mother was set for an easy time of it. After the honeymoon, I imagine reality set in. The maid was let go. Not long after that, my father was seen sleeping in another bedroom.
Perhaps two months after the honeymoon, my siblings and I came home from school to find that my step-mother and her children had moved out. It was a surprise. I called my father at his office and asked him what we were going to do. He said: "go get the silverware out of the basement".
I believe that the problems I have now with attachment and side-effects of neglect come back to this upbringing.
My father was a very intelligent and hardworking man. He lived his life valuing his work and not such much other people. However in the last few years of his life he began to put people over objects, by serving in a church and giving more service. He counseled the terminally ill. The contribution I remember most however is that he volunteered to work at the VD clinic on Thurs night. I can't think of any human condition that is as close to stigma of leprosy as VD. I can only imagine that the people who attend such a clinic are despised by society. The fact that my father would willingly and voluntarily give his time to help these troubled people is a testament to his charitable heart.
My father died on July 29, 1979. I was 16 at the time, going into my junior year. His death came as a surprise to everyone. He had battling melanoma for several years though skin grafts and chemotherapy. But most of us assumed he was in remission. He was a dermatologist, and that summer he closed is office for the usual vacation and he came home to die alone.
I found him in the basement where it was cool lying on the couch. He told me to fetch our family friend, who was another doctor. I don't know where my brother and sister were, who were younger than me. When he arrived, we supported my father into the doctor's VW bug and we raced to the hospital. I remember the doctor flashing his headlights on and off on the highway to get people to pull over. My father was placed in intensive care.
My aunt came to watch over us children. I don't think she had been to see us there more than a handful of times, such was the relationship between my dad and his sister. I remember her receiving a phone call a few days later, and she took the receiver away from her mouth to say in a matter of fact way, "He's gone."
Not long after, my aunt asked me if I wanted to come to the hospital to say goodbye to my father. When we were there, I was shown into sterile sparse medical room with an examining table or gurney in the center. My father's dead body lay there. I can't remember of he was naked or only exposed from the waist up. He looked white and his skin tone wasn't normal anymore. I watched him for a while as expected and then we left. I was told this would bring me closure.
I don't have very good memories of my childhood. I'm not sure if that is because of my condition, or whether there were too many things I didn't want to remember. I think my earliest memory of my father is indirect, of him and my mother fighting or there being raised voices. My mother had post-partum depression, bi-polar disorder, and alcoholism. I heard the story once that, when my mother was rushed to the hospital to give birth to one of us siblings, perhaps my sister, my father was on the golf course. I think my mother suffered in part from demanding expectations and a lack of sociable attention.
My father worked hard in those days doing his residency and lecturing. I remember him retreating on a regular basis to his den in the basement, which had a accordion partition to close him off and from which he was not to be disturbed. Although not a violent or mean man, he was demanding of perfection. I remember him becoming very angry if any of us children were to spill our milk at the table, resulting perhaps in corporal punishment.
When my father's mother was alive, we used to visit their house on Cape Cod in the summer. To us kids the grandparent adults came across as very strict and proper but very smart. The talk went right over our heads. But they weren't very affectionate. Entertainment involved competitive croquet. Looking back, what strikes me the most is my father's strategy for dealing with bathroom breaks on the trips from Boston down to the Cape. I am not making this up when I tell you my father had an empty plastic gallon ice-cream tub under the seat. We were supposed to use as a bedpan if we had to go along the way.
My father, having been raised above our grandfather's hardware store, was good with carpentry and locks and electrical work. As children we were very pleased with the homemade bunk beds he made for each of us. A fond recollection that I shudder at now was the construction of a tree platform in a tree the yard. He designed a flat platform that fit in the "Y" of a large tree perhaps twenty feet up. The platform was designed to accommodate the tree limbs expanding, which everyone thought was very clever. What it didn't have was walls. After it was planked, we would climb up to it by putting our feet on a series of bolts, not unlike climbing up a telephone pole. Perhaps on the request of our mother or other prudent souls, he cluttered the elegant simplicity of the platform in sky with a rope railing around the perimeter. Despite the obvious dangers, nothing much happened. The thing that happened, happened to me. The children were engaged in a race to see who could ascend to the platform the quickest. Somewhere near the top on the climbing spikes, I slipped and fell to land on my back. I was stunned, taken to the doctor, and ultimately found to be fine.
Both my father and mother were practical in their way. My father kept a second refrigerators in the basement with a stock of Carling Black Label beer. My mother, being also an alcoholic (or being driven to be one), would be getting into the beer. To prevent this, my father surrounded the fridge with a chain and lock, the chain being enclosed in plastic tubing. One day my father came home to find the chain sawed through: my mother having found the hack saw in the workshop.
My mother was institutionalized around 1971 with severe bi-polar disorder and went to a clinic in Belmont MA. She never fully recovered. My father explained his reasoning for divorce to my mother's family. In a rare ruling for that time, my father was granted full custody of the children.
In 1974 when I was 11 we moved to New Hampshire where my father started his practice. A first, my father hired a day time care-giver to watch us kids. However, evening babysitting soon became an issue as my father was dating a lot with the local divorced singles group. He devised a system of "babysitting ourselves" where we were each paid on a decreasing scale to watch ourselves. It wasn't long before we were letting ourselves in after school and fending for ourselves until dinner. My father, being a doctor, wasn't always home on time. After I while was asked to prepare dinner two nights a week as well as look after my siblings.
Perhaps my father's greatest contribution to child-rearing was 'times'. Times were regularly scheduled appointments, usually one-half hour, to do something with father. Typically we worked backward with the youngest at 7:30, the middle child at 8:00, and my time at 8:30. Of course, in typical doctor fashion, if the prior appointments ran later, the later appointments slid. On a tough day my time might not start until 9:30. During my time I remember playing chess, reading and learning to pay cribbage. To his great credit, my father as the doctor always kept his appointments.
On a side note about chess, he taught me a principal that says with me to this day. I was never, and still am not, much of a chess player. My mind just doesn't work like that. But he would let me win, or almost win. I remember having several pieces remaining, and him having only his king. I said that I win. He said that you have to mate the king. So I moved a piece, and he moved his king out of the way. I chased his king all over the board but he would move the king each time. He said the game was a draw unless I could pin the king. He eventually hinted to me how to do it, and the game was over. Being in the computer field today, it is the core principal of an computer algorithm that it must finish.
One of the saddest stories about my father was his re-marriage. If my father is anything like me, his ability to detect people's faces is triggered especially by bright faces. What I mean by that average women was average faces are ok, but women's faces which are larger than life, brighter than life, have an usual attraction and power over us. My father had brought home women he had dated from the divorced singles group before without anything really clicking. But after attending the community theatre, he started dating an impoverished actress who was lovely but very different from him. She had two children.
It seems like the courtship was a short time. Before we children knew it, we were moving to a house with seven bedrooms and six bathrooms. At my step-mother's direction, we were redecorating the house with modern 1970's style with mirrors on the walls, a sunken couch, a water bed and a full wall mural of a garden of Eden with a scantily dressed nymph. Quarters were prepared for a live in maid, and it seems now that my step-mother was set for an easy time of it. After the honeymoon, I imagine reality set in. The maid was let go. Not long after that, my father was seen sleeping in another bedroom.
Perhaps two months after the honeymoon, my siblings and I came home from school to find that my step-mother and her children had moved out. It was a surprise. I called my father at his office and asked him what we were going to do. He said: "go get the silverware out of the basement".
I believe that the problems I have now with attachment and side-effects of neglect come back to this upbringing.
My father was a very intelligent and hardworking man. He lived his life valuing his work and not such much other people. However in the last few years of his life he began to put people over objects, by serving in a church and giving more service. He counseled the terminally ill. The contribution I remember most however is that he volunteered to work at the VD clinic on Thurs night. I can't think of any human condition that is as close to stigma of leprosy as VD. I can only imagine that the people who attend such a clinic are despised by society. The fact that my father would willingly and voluntarily give his time to help these troubled people is a testament to his charitable heart.
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