Tag Archives: mental health

The North Sea

“-ou’rrrrk makhhhhg g-ate iiime shhhow- there, skust two more pa–- go. How ——- feeling?” The new tender asked. 280 feet below, in the North Sea and nestled only a football field or so between a nearby cave system and the massive structure I am repairing, his voice comes through like a chipmunk squeezed out a straw. With trainees, it’s hit or miss, them knowing or retaining the idea that the water pressure ruins any hope of conversation back and forth. I can only make out his words with great effort. Great time two more panels. I’d say something back but every time I do he asks over and over again for me to repeat myself. Instead, I holster the welder and put my raised thumb in front of the camera, articulating the gloves like a sheet of clay wrapped around my hand.

“-ood, g-”

With a chipping hammer I begin removing the slag from the most recent line I’ve finished, the impact dulled to a numb rhythm in my hands. Two more doesn’t sound too bad. That’s like one episode. Half the time of a morning run. It’s a good line, but not as good as the last one. The work is tiring and we started a lot later than we had anticipated when planning this out in the first place.

Issues are rare for underwater data servers, and so when a large enough issue for repairs to be necessary occurred, I was at the top of the list of potential contractors. Well, not top of the list, probably someone local. Someone a little more skilled than me just below that. Then maybe me. I was in the top five for sure.

Three days ago, Friday, I had landed in Dundee to repair a fissure that had opened up on the side of the Hive data server deep within the North Sea. Prior to that I had no idea one even existed there. Progress.

The server, from my understanding of the brief, knew an unfair amount about me though and everyone else in the world. Hive only dealt with other larger companies to provide them with enough information to zig when we zig and zag when we zag, eventually mapping out the whole criss-crossing path of our society. The server demanded a tremendous amount of energy to generate an ongoing simulation of our potential actions. Then compare them with the actual results once enough time passes. Then revise the simulation based on those results for the next decision, over and over ad infinitum, becoming more in tune with us at each passing second. 

One of those malevolent capitalist landmarks you suspect exists, and when you learn it does you become overwhelmed by the violation just long enough to realize you can’t do anything to stop it from happening and concede.

The repair required 14 panels to be welded in place on the outside to hold the seams together and give enough stability to them for more thorough repairs to be completed from the inside. We brought extras, but as we were making our way to the dive location the fissure had grown, requiring not only all the additional panels we brought but also a second set of pumps to clear the water out faster once the seal was complete. 

Only two more left though. I disconnect the ground clamp, “Surface, weld complete, moving to the next, over,” and push myself up at a crawl to the next weld spot. As I do more squirrel talk comes through, “A, uhhh shmrmgmin is ning up —-. A —–t’up.” I can’t make any of it out, but I put my thumb to the camera again, just to stop the piercing noise grating my ear drums any further. I place the ground clamp on another panel from my pouch and begin forming the weld between it and the electrode.

Through safety glasses and a helmet the electric arc looks like dancing shatter marks on a windshield, lighting up the yellow surface all around in dull nicotine stains. My arms tense up in a held distance between the weld and the arc to give just enough space for a bubble to form. It feels like the weld is going well, and even perfect until a series of tugs on the umbilical screw up my focus. “What the fuck!” I exclaim, as much at the weld itself, dancing out of my control, as to the person responsible for tugging the line unexpectedly, “What’s going on up there?”

“Shhhgo- NO—-W NO— —W NOW!” they yell back in staccato and static, just clear enough to get me moving. I hustle because of the loudness of it, the urgency. I holster everything, check my safety equipment and start the long climb back to the platform. Hopefully not too long. The dive panel says 218 feet. 217. Then it flickers. Or maybe I’m flickering. Something rumbles, impossibly deep, as if the ocean itself is groaning. The pressure shifts, subtle at first, then all at once—a tremor I don’t feel, but somehow know is there, stretching out across the abyss. I suddenly feel like I’ve hit the dip on a roller coaster. The display drops from 217 to 112 and then flickers again, so does my light. Before they have the opportunity to stabilize they both go out entirely. I can’t know, but I do, everything goes out in a combined level of silence and eerie absence I’ve never experienced before.

Then I am struck by a wave of force and pressure that feels strong enough to rip all the equipment off me like it were tissue paper. The whole structure I’m still clinging to slams into me, but stops short of breaking every bone in my body. Like the data server is pulling its punch, as ridiculous as that sounds. I lose my grip and get cast out into the black so fast my head is pinned painfully against the back of my helmet.

Vision gone, panel gone, comms probably gone, and with a massive underwater structure potentially boxing me to death while I try to repair it, I could argue sanity also gone. It must have been an earthquake, volcano maybe, or a gas field explosion. As I recognize the futility of guessing, I can’t stop myself from doing it. In the panic the process is like hyperventilating thoughts. The tragedy is that at this speed, heading into the gnarled structure of the cave system behind me, I’ll never have enough time to figure it out. I’ve never been so afraid in my life, and the confusion makes me disproportionately resentful. Like the world in this moment bamboozled me. 

Bracing for a violent death, I stop moving. Abruptly and painfully, without hitting anything but being tugged hard by the umbilical, smashing the safety glasses between the bridge of my nose and the diving helmet. Just as quickly I’m dragged back towards the waiting fist like wall of a facility I have no real qualms with. I have no idea where the fuck it is but I’ll know soon. Still, between being crushed by rocks or beaten bloody by a data server, I’ll always choose the latter.

When I hit my right side erupts, pain covering me like molten rock. The padding of my diving suit does nothing it seems, and the data server claims the broken bones it failed to earlier. How it feels, is that all of me is in pieces. But as the adrenaline escalates and the desperation takes over I can sense the difference between break pain and just pain-pain. My right arm for sure, a few ribs, maybe my collar bone.

“Surface, emergency, respond! Over.” I demand, fruitlessly.

I am a good problem solver, I have to be working in these conditions. Not that it is necessary every time, but when it is, it’s absolutely necessary. Part of good problem solving though is recognizing when a problem is unsolvable, and having the good sense not to try and solve it. Like when your whole right side is out of commission and you have no working systems to get you through 200 or so feet of water.

…

I can do this without them. Not because I actually can mind you, but because I have to. And someone up there might be waiting for me.

If my comms were working, they would have said something by now, but as I suspected they seem to have gone the way of everything else. Still, I can’t help but try once more, “Emergency, surface! Over.”

…

…

I tug on the umbilical while the copper tasting blood from my nose pools in my mouth, but there’s no give. No way of contact at all then. And, now that I notice it, no oxygen is coming in from the surface anymore. Great. I would prefer it if the growing lightheadedness was just a concussion. Using the only good hand I have left I switch my regulator out with the bailout supply, “Surface, no primary gas, switching to bailout. over,” I add, for no reason. Hopefully I can fix the issue on the way up, but regardless I need to get back beneath the sky soon. But not too soon.

The climb is agonizing both physically and mentally. Without any equipment I have to navigate the route at my best guess as to a decompression rate. With all the damage I already feel strange, and take a few breaks here or there not sure what the cause might be. Every stop I repeat my estimated depth over and over to myself, sometimes out loud sometimes not.

205, 205, 205, 205…

180 maybe? 180, 180, 180…

140, 140, 140, 140…

The longest ball drop countdown in history, and I’m just guessing. Glancing at the panel every few seconds, with unfounded hope. Waiting for anything encouraging.

At 127 feet (I think) I pass whatever it is that ruined this whole project. The umbilical is pinned somewhere to my left, probably the roof of the cave system on that side stopped the facility when it lunged at me, and pinched the cord there. I have no choice but to sever the umbilical to continue. They must be losing their shit up there, if they’re still there at all. If not, I vow to haunt them til the end of time.

At 120 I am free of the structure and pull out the Bourbon Tube from my emergency kit, holding the kit gingerly between my broken arm and broken ribs. Fumbling around for the tube, I lose my grip and have to let the rest of the kit sink but grasp the depth gauge before it goes. At least I’ll be a little lighter for this part. That in mind, I start dropping the welding gear that I can remove easily. There is still a long way to go and currents to work through.

I hold it to my helmet and see nothing. 115, 115, 115, 115.

Waiting.

90, 90, 90, 90…

And so on. Almost there but maybe already dead as much as it matters down here, with no gauges, and cut off from everything I would use to argue my existence, the idea seems reasonable. Only the pain in my face and body makes any protest otherwise. The thought that I may have already died and spent the last moments torturing myself in darkness is surprisingly embarrassing. I keep going in spite of this, comforted by the rationale that whether you are dead but feel (agonizingly) alive, or alive feeling dead, the next best action is still the same. Ascend, and hope someone else is up there less confused than you.

Somewhere close enough (hopefully) to thirty feet I stop and count out 3 minutes before proceeding. Bobbing in the current, rattling off numbers, I start to notice a glimpse of light above me. The stars, but absurdly so. I can just barely make them out, even so there are so many it seems impossible that I am returning to the same sky. I climb a little further and try to count out the minutes again, forcing myself with great effort to adhere to the decompression routine. While looking around for the platform, unsure of how far off course the currents and my own injuries had carried me from my original destination.

It’s too dark to make anything out in the water, and I am still too deep to see much of anything above without straining, just the hint of all those twinkling lights and their sirens song drawing me out gently.

I force myself to wait and listen with eager eyes, the pain slowly being drowned out. It’s harder to do than I expect, a feeling of weightlessness I hadn’t perceived before making it more difficult to stay still. Maybe I ascended too fast.

…

Hoping enough time has passed, I climb again cautiously. The stars now overwhelming the sky behind the distortion of water, like a mouth full of milk laughed over a carpet of night. I reach up and wave my hand through it, making sure that it’s real and begin counting again. The water follows my hand in translucent cords like a school of fish. I have no idea what to make of it, other than giving it more time before surfacing.

15 minutes later, I finally breach the surface. The sea clings to me affectionately and I have to wipe it off like jello. I’ve surfaced into a surreal landscape where gravity seems to be just a suggestion and massive globs of water bounce playfully over the surface of the sea in slow, lumbering arcs, not in a hurry to get anywhere. Some rise, then pause mid-air, as if reconsidering their trajectory before falling again while other errant globes drift towards the stars, as I had been doing all evening. They shine bright enough for me to look for the boat, or the dive platform or any place to pull myself out, but there is nothing. The sea is empty and alien to me, and the sky above is a chaotic love child of Dali and Pollock.

Looking up through the fractured sea I notice a single diamond shaped patch of darkness cut from the pattern of the night sky. It moves slowly against the backdrop of the galaxy, the starlight bending around it in slivers, barely perceptible otherwise. I wave and begin to remove my helmet carefully to get a better view, but to my horror I am struck immediately by the lack of oxygen and scramble to get the helmet back on.

I don’t live long. The dark shape stays with me only briefly and then disappears before I can make out whatever it is. When I can’t breathe anymore I take the helmet off anyway. By that time, it makes sense, and the stars are waiting.

Bill Brody

“It was the drugs,”
              they said,
“the trauma”
“the loneliness,”
loading him up with excuses
              he had no business
              nor inclination to carry.

He was busy,
                    always.

Ideas, drawings, paintings
            inventions, stories
                              political campaigns
                                          music, movies,

             shooting out of him
                              all hours of the day or night.

Leafy green things, alive and vibrant.

      though in the winter he would turn statue outside
                                  naked
                                        cold

                          for hours alone
                                no one to prune the eccentricities
                                      or take him inside

      and he would call me sometimes
            to talk through the night;
screaming at me of
                        decay, darkness, the hollow in himself
                    but never saying any of it out loud

Like a dead tallow tree bursting with life.

Asylum

This macrocosm is heavy inside
held by a few dozen windows
a handful of doors
openings that force the world small
less than the words on paper
an image echoed on closed eyes
nothing to desire or be afraid of

Outside – looking in
this place is nothing.
No one looks here on purpose
eyes have better things to do
only visiting when lost.

A world this small from the inside
Leaves no hope for those looking back
to see…

Dementia

Let the mind get lost in traps
find new ways to fight back
as memories degrade and collapse
reclined on the backs of warmer days

Navigating those labyrinthine paths
hidden behind all those well-worn masks
that have long been unrecognizable
amongst the moments masked by confused vitriol

The thoughts that remain are like loose balloons
escaped to the skies from a once crowded room
through a window opened long ago
when there was room for air and levity

But now there is so few balloons left afloat
your identity reduced to a scrawled note
“I that was and am shall be again
nothing of note is new, make room for the past.”

Things that I am not enjoying in life right now:

Debt. I have a car loan and three credit cards. My total credit availability is nearly zero. I make my payments on time and I rarely pay only the minimum.

Employment. I am employed full-time as a retail department manager. I get paid very well. The company provides great benefits. I do not get along with my fellow managers because I am very policy-oriented and I like to be fairly professional, they do not. There is a clique of managers in our store, it’s existed since before I was employed there. It creates an unprofessional environment. I am glad to be gainfully employed, but I wish I could work somewhere that didn’t operate on favoritism and friendship. I never get positive feedback and am constantly having to motivate myself, and give myself kudos for a job well done. The only feedback I ever seem to receive from my managers is something negative. It’s infuriating.

Medical bills. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s this year, before this year I had never had any major extensive medical bills. I am supposed to have a colonoscopy every six months because my dad has colon cancer. It puts me at risk for developing cancer, so they want to keep a close watch to make sure that if it does they can catch it early. 

Medication. I have a maintenance medication that I am meant to be on for the rest of my life. I read that the medication could be causing issues to my kidneys. I’ve been experiencing soreness under my ribs on my back.

Making appointments. I may need glasses, but I’m not sure. I definitely need to see a gynecologist for my menstrual cramping. The first day of my cycle is always met with debilitating cramping and body aches, and I have often missed work because of this. Both these things take time and money, and I’m not sure that I can prioritize them.

Being tired. I’m exhausted today but that may be the physical anguish, that is menstruation, at play.

Me-time. I’m not really sure what to do with my free time, when I’m not doing anything with my husband. I was sitting trying to think of what I do for fun and I couldn’t really think of anything aside from watching Netflix and YouTube videos… That’s not great. I usually spend time with my husband doing things. Anything with him is fun, as long as we aren’t annoyed with one another. Just now I was watching YouTube videos, but it made me feel empty and deflated. I should be reading. In the end, I chose to sit down and write this shit.

Myself. Most of all, I’m not enjoying myself right now.

Drowning In Confusion

Drowning in confusion. That was the state of my existence for approximately two months, maybe longer.

I was not given information about what Crohn’s was, or how it would impact me, aside from it being “an inflammatory bowel disease characterized by inflammation throughout your digestive tract”. In an attempt to inform myself, I tread upon thin ice, fell through, and found myself drowning.

I read about everything that could go wrong.

I took existing statistics and mashed them together to create new, more terrifying, super-statistics.

I was afraid of doing things that the month prior I was doing with great joy. I had anxiety before this year, but because of the self administered drip-feed of medical propaganda, I was on the verge of agoraphobia. I was away from work for almost two months and had tremors at the thought of returning. 

My husband struggled, I’m sure- actually, hear it from him yourself.

Brendon, how was that experience for you?

There are a lot of layers to that struggle. First and foremost, I love my wife very much and was heartbroken to find out that something like this could affect her so severely, forever. I understood that there were ways to manage it so it wasn’t debilitating but even ‘managing’ it is more than what I would want for her. But there is more than that. We are not just individuals anymore, we are a couple, a family. I was upset for Austin the person, for all the reasons above. 

But I was upset for Austin the wife too for entirely different reasons. Austin, my wife, was scared to do the things we enjoyed doing together. Biking, exercising, running, etc. But I myself, (Brendon the husband man) still wanted to do those things. These opposing situations created friction that was difficult for us to deal with. In doing them I felt guilty because I knew the impact it had on my wife. In not doing them it made Austin feel guilty that her medical issues were limiting my enjoyment in life. Both of us developed an underlying resentment on top of the other stressors inherent in the issue. That resentment also developed a sense of guilt, and it was all cyclical and felt rather hopeless.

On top of that there was Austin, the family person, who’s same fear impacted the relationship she had with our children and the things she was willing to do with them. The emotional toll all of this was having translated to bad moods, poor communication and isolation behavior which is never well received by kids. Watching that as the other half of the monarchy that rules over our family was difficult and disheartening as well.

Financial impacts were hard on both of us too, but how can you value income over one’s health? You can’t without feeling like a monster. Yet at the same time very real threats to our livelihood rose out of the ashes of the old Austin the diagnosis had tried to lay to waste. As a caring husband you can’t really say anything, but you can’t hide the calls you have to make on a weekly basis to your mother for help, or trying to apply for other jobs to either supplement the income or replace the income you already have with something better. That too developed into some very guilt heavy resentment over those months.

Eventually you just have to tackle that fear though. You have to identify the value of what you’re doing to protect yourself from any and all risk against the value of living your life in a way you love. That’s how we broke the cycle without breaking each other. Because we realized that we were worth taking some risks, and we always had each other to see us through to the otherside. 

Thank you Brendon, I appreciate you sharing what that experience was like for you. I am incredibly grateful that I have you in my life and that you were there for me when I needed help resurfacing.

It wasn’t easy. We fought a lot. At the time, I believed that I had every right to live in fear, and I felt like he was telling me that I didn’t. I applied every grim statistic to myself because I had every right to, but the point that I kept missing was that I didn’t have any reason to. He was always trying to help me understand that distinction, and eventually I did.

Stress is a very large contributor to “flare-ups” , a sudden showing of more severe symptoms, in Crohn’s patients. In “educating” myself, I was causing myself so much unneeded stress that was actually perpetuating my symptoms and increasing the possibilities of certain frightening circumstances, such as cancer, becoming a reality in the future. I was making myself sick! In choosing to be afraid, I was choosing to abandon my family, and live a very sad, and most likely short, life. 

So I started thinking more positively, letting go of the things that I had no control over, and prioritizing the things that I love. I can’t control whether I get cancer in the future, but I can control how often I get to feel the satisfaction of kicking my husband’s ass at a bike race.

I’m still working on myself, and staying positive and productive is a constant battle, but I believe that it is worth it.

If you find that you have a diagnosis, are confused, and you are wanting to know more about it, I would recommend that you find resources that can help guide you and support you rather than attempting to go at it alone. At the very least, have a support system of friends and family on standby to help give you a more positive perspective on things.

Living With a Chronic Illness

Living with a chronic illness is something that I am new to. I was diagnosed at the start of this year. Here’s how that happened. Forewarning, I discuss bodily functions in this post. Don’t read it, if that kind of thing makes you squeamish.

About two weeks prior to my diagnosis I was bloated, gassy, and constipated which I had taken milk of magnesia to try and relieve. Constipation was not new to me.

One day at work I felt abdominal cramping and when I went to the bathroom I found a substantial amount of bright red blood in my stool. 

I was freaking out because my Dad has colon cancer. Because of that my mind immediately defaulted to “It must be cancer!”

I broke down crying while on the toilet at work. I called my husband to let him know what happened and he calmed me down, and helped me remember that we wouldn’t know what’s wrong until I saw a doctor; he then recommended that I speak to my manager. I had a full-blown panic attack in my manager’s office and then went home.

I went to a clinic where, for the first time in my adult life, someone looked at my butthole. The doctor checked to see if I had a hemorrhoid that may have ruptured, but I didn’t, so she referred me to a gastroenterologist. I went to a gastroenterologist the next day and was scheduled for a colonoscopy the day after. 

The bowel preparation for the colonoscopy was one of the worst things that I have ever experienced. 

After the colonoscopy I was informed that I more than likely had Crohn’s Colitis but they would have to wait for the results of the biopsy that they took to come back to know for sure. The biopsies came back within the next 48 hours and I was officially diagnosed with Crohn’s Colitis and prescribed an anti-inflammatory medication that I would potentially have to be on for the rest of my life, this is when I got to experience medicated enemas for the first time, 30 days worth.

As a woman in her twenties, already struggling to be confident in her own skin; having diarrhea, mucus, and blood coming out of my ass multiple times a day, wasn’t exactly a confidence-booster. 

My self-esteem took a huge blow. 

My relationship suffered. 

My outlook on life was bleak.

I was drowning.

I have a parasite…

I have a parasite.

It originated in the depths of my gut, crawled up my spine, behind my brain and then enveloped it. It comes with a heavy heat, like the inside of a car in Phoenix, Arizona on a summer’s day. It is rooted in my psyche, but occasionally manifests physically. The heat is followed by a fog, and the mind is made obscure. Irritability and confusion kick in thereafter. All of this is happening while I am working, spending time with friends, doing chores, or attempting to binge watch a new show. I attempt to shake it off but it clings with a strength I currently cannot overcome.

This parasite that wreaks havoc on my mind and body is known commonly as “jealousy”.