Where to Start (A Poem)

There are many things
as a teenager
that you can't bring yourself
to say to your parents

Maybe you were drinking at a party
Maybe you spent the night at a boy's house
while his parents were on their Bahamian cruise
Maybe you scuffed your bumper parallel parking
and covered it with nail polish
and just hoped

They are withholdings of self-preservation

But then there are the things
that you cannot tell
because you want to protect
Them
Or maybe you don't know
where to start

Do you start with
I'm sorry
or
I'm lost
or
I'm broken

Do you start with
I need help
or
Please do something
or
Please do nothing

Do you start with
He was my friend
or
He touched me
or
How could he?

Or maybe you just wait
hope it goes away
and perhaps with time there will be
nothing
to tell

Creative Writing - Scene of Tension assignment

     "I looked over at my mother sitting in the driver’s seat of our decrepit ’98 Accord, but she would not look back at me. She stared blankly off into the distance as we sat stagnant at the red light. All of the sound had been sucked out of the car. The otherwise noisy squealing of the heater and clink-clanking of the engine were inaudible today.

I reached my hand toward the radio dial apprehensively, eager to break up the cloudy thoughts in my mind with some mainstream pop. A few notes from a song which I immediately recognized as “Say Something” by A Great Big World came meekly through the speakers. I love this song.

      As I turn my hand to increase the volume, my mother reaches over, pushes my hand away, and turns off the radio.

     “No.” she said.

     “Bu-”

     “I said no.”

     I lacked the energy to be firmer with my protestations. Typically this same scenario would have resulted in a verbal bloodbath, with me hurling the most creatively violent phrases my 15-year-old vocabulary could summon. But the brief but sharp exchange of syllables cut through my brain and reverberated in my head among the cloudy thoughts. I was already defeated. So was she. Asking either of us to arm ourselves for battle against each other was like trying to engage a wounded animal – mostly they just lie there consumed by their own pain, defending themselves only with brief outbursts of truly deadly aggression before they eventually collapse.

So … not today.

Green light.

The car didn’t move, though. I looked over at my mother again, her knuckles white on the steering wheel and her eyes glassy with tears of anger and disappointment … but mostly anger. She still will not look at me. I open my mouth and the intake of breath before I speak sounds like a scream in my head, but my mother responds by slamming on the gas before I say a single word. My head jerks back against the seat.

“Ow!”

I had said it before I even meant to. I wasn’t actually hurt, just surprised. My mother now has a funny look on her face; as if she’s holding something back? I watch her intently as her scowl turns to a smirk.

Her face finally breaks and she lets out a loud and intense laugh.

“Haha, wow … you should have seen the look on your face!”

She continues laughing until the tears fall down her cheeks. I don’t know whether to laugh along with her or fear for my life at this point. She wipes away the tears and finally looks at me. Her smile fades, and her face goes somber again.

She lets out a long sigh.

“I’m sorry, mom.” I say, once again before thinking.

She does not respond.

She pulls into a parking space and stops the car, pushing the gear shift all the way up to “park” and turning the key toward her to kill the engine. I hear her release the brake and we wobble a bit as she does.

A small black sign sits just outside my passenger-side window and reads “Preterm”. The building is huge, with several stories and walls of glass. I could see our car, my mother, and myself, in a reflection on the side of the building. It both disturbed and made sense to me … because in this moment I was Alice and this building my looking glass.

The clouds in my head started to dissipate as rain fell from my eyes, and now something rose from the pit of my stomach; tight and burning.

I opened the door and vomited on the pavement."

The Academic - Creative Writing - Word Sketches

This past week, we were asked to write some word sketches about family members, either close or distant.  I wrote three, but for the purposes of this post, I will be sharing only two.  They are, quite obviously, about my kids.

"Jubilant. Inquisitive. Every other word is “why?” She always says, “I’m a seven year old but I’m as big as a ten year old!” with great pride. She believes that if she’s bigger, the world might take her a little more seriously. Sandy hair sits right under her jawline and waves in odd directions which make it look like you’ve never brushed it. “Goofy” and “dorky” are adjectives that suit her well when you omit the insulting connotations. She refuses to wear anything that’s “not pretty” and will fight you with all of her power if you try to make her wear jeans. She is expressive, and creative. There is an artful clumsiness about her, as if she is a nimble ballerina in her mind with a body too tall and clumsy to quite accomplish what she imagines. Her smile is mine, with a touch more quirkiness. There is untapped wisdom in her eyes and I wait patiently for its unveiling every day. If you asked her what she wants to be when she grows up, you’d get “princess” one day and “surgeon” the next. The third day, you might get “zombie-hunter”. She lives with her eyes wide open."
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"Sturdy, tall (for his age) and lean. The soft, youthful skin of a child who knows how to walk the earth but does not yet understand “don’t put that in your mouth” with 100% success. He knows what his name looks like, but can’t write the whole thing. Hair the same color as a perfectly-baked pie crust, and half the time at least just as sticky. A light shines from within him with energy and weightlessness, pouring out of his green/gray/hazel/moody eyes like laser beams of wonder, joy and hope. He’s always singing. Curiosity is written all over his face; typically in the form of a furrowed brow over some device beep-beep-blooping inches from his nose. His grin is only ever a grin, and never a smile. He is surprising and impressive and problematic. He lacks common sense in the most admirable ways you might be able to imagine, and embraces his new-found playground with clear, unbridled willfulness."

THE ACADEMIC - Abnormal Psych Discussion Post

The following is this week's discussion question, and my subsequent response, for my Abnormal Psych class:


Why is depression, and its treatment, so popular in American society?  It is very easy to acquire anti-depressants.  Are Americans more depressed today or seeking a quick fixes?


There are so many pieces of the puzzle working together to make this trend happen, in my opinion.  As others have said, people "don't want to take the time" to get therapy from a psychologist ... but I believe that there is much more at play than people just "not feeling like it".  For example, as much as awareness about depression has increased in the past few decades, and there is less stigma surrounding the disease, it is still there.  Many people in my generation grew up believing that depression meant weakness, danger, or "crazy"/unpredictable.  Even if you weren't brough up to feel that way, chances are you were not in a family where one of your parents or elders was going to therapy, and if they were, they were not open about it.  Much of the mental health culture in the United States is about hiding mental illness because it is perceived as weakness.  So, even if you have an open mind about mental illness, if you never had an example of someone seeking mental health care in your family, it still might be hard for you to accept that 1. you should go or 2. that you even need it.

I think another factor that is at work has to do with the pharmeceutical industry itself, and how it works in congruence with society's perception of mental health.  Taking medication on a daily basis is something that you can hide from friends, family, and co-workers much more easily than having to go to therapy once every week or two.  Americans also have to worry about how time taken off to seek mental health care will negatively affect their employer's perception of them.  Admitting to a mental illness or needing therapy could cause some employers to think that you aren't capable of performing your job properly, or that you are perhaps not capable of a promotion that may come up.  There is the possibility of social consequence when you disclose that you are seeking treatment for a mental illness, even though there really shouldn't be.  Because of these feelings, patients are more likely to accept medication-only treatment.  Yes, it's "easy" but it's also the socially "safer" option, which I believe plays a greater role in patient's decision-making about their mental health treatment.  Doctors hand out medication like it is candy.  You can literally schedule an appointment with a new doctor who has never seen you before, have a 15-minute appointment, and then walk out with an anti-depressant prescription.  I know, because I did it when I was 18 and I had a major depressive episode the first time I went to college.  And because, as a culture, we are not well-versed in mental illness, potential treatment, or most effective types of treatment, most patients accept the words of their doctors as being "good enough" for their care.  If a doctor gives you a prescription for anti-depressants and sends you on your way ... if that's good enough for them, it should be good enough for you, right?  I think that's the stance that many Americans take.  And, let's face it, there is no money to be made by big pharma if we actually made it public knowledge that medication-only treatment is basically the most bare-bones means of treatment along with a laundry list of side-effects which may include making you feel worse, or even suicidal.

I don't think that more Americans are depressed than they have been in the past, though I do think that more Americans, in general, know that depression exists.  I think that we've gotten enough awareness to know that, but we don't have enough education to treat it as the public health crisis that it really is.

Our healthcare system is also another obstacle that gets in the way of Americans seeking proper mental health care.  Many people can barely keep up with their medical bills for just their physical health, let alone their mental health.  And many healthcare plans provided through employers have limitations of coverage on mental health services, being typically either a percentage covered, only a limited amount of sessions covered, or even a costly deductible before any benefit is received.  Even after you pay into it with every paycheck ... you have to pay more to receive the benefit.  What sense does that make?  Even with NYS Medicaid, which is arguably one of the best health care plans you can get in NYS in terms of coverage, only offers 10 visits for mental health care annually.  The American health care system is reactive instead of proactive -- and when problems inevitably arise, we cover incomplete solutions and treatment, but not complete ones.