Fixing April

One of the healthiest decisions I ever made (that I honestly didn’t even realize I was making) was the choice to leave my menstrual cycle alone.

(Edit – keep reading. Turns out we aren’t talking about periods at all today)

I really wasn’t going to lead with that, but I figured I should go ahead and just put it out there. I realize it’s 2019 but there are still some folks who are funny about talking about that kind of thing and I respect it. I didn’t want them to get a little bit in and feel ambushed by hormones and biology.

Anyway, I really thought I was going to start out by telling you about when I started taking the pill. Funny thing about that – I can’t remember. I just assumed that it would have been a pretty big deal to me back in 199whatever and I would recall the memory upon reflection. I can’t. I can’t even tell you if it was high school or the Navy. At some point, I transitioned to the Depo shot, stayed there for a while, and went back to the pill. But I can’t remember the particulars of those times either.

How interesting is it that there was a large chunk of my life I so misunderstood and underappreciated one of my body’s major rhythm and energy centers that I routinely fucked with it flippantly enough that it didn’t even create a lasting memory. Wow. That’s not quite where I thought this was going as it was a detail I hadn’t considered until just now. Makes me even more glad I just went ahead and put the whole period thing out there in the beginning because evidently, I don’t even know where we are headed this morning.

What I do remember is how emotional my second pregnancy was compared to my first. I remember what postpartum depression felt like. I was lucky that it was the second and not the first. Had it been my first maybe I would have dismissed it as normal or labeled it as a failure on my part. It was 2001 after all. The legions of mommy bloggers, Pinterest boards, Facebook groups, and Instagram inspiration weren’t around. Hell, MySpace wasn’t even a thing yet. Double hell, we had just reached the “more adults own cell phones than don’t” mark. Access to information was markedly different.

What I lacked in outside information, I made up for in self awareness and experience. I knew this wasn’t what all pregnancies felt like. I knew this wasn’t what bringing home all newborn babies felt like. I knew something was different and it was probably me.

That was my first experience with mental health pharmaceuticals and, in all honesty, it was very helpful. I’m thankful it went as well as it did as it was the time before a person could do a whole lot of research on their own or discuss with a larger group of people. It took the edge off long enough for me to “get myself right” which, gratefully, didn’t take very long. I am nearly certain that can be attributed to my immediate focus on diet and exercise. Of course, I didn’t realize that at the time. I just saw it as the appropriate steps needed to take off the massive amounts of baby weight I had packed on. It worked; the medication was appreciated and short lived.

In 2005 I lost my baby. That was a situation I had no frame of reference for. Again, the internet wasn’t huge. You knew who you knew, and a lot of business was still private. To say I was devastated and unhinged would be an understatement. In fact, it would be 2017, over a decade later, that I would find any comfort, peace, or closure.  On our back porch in the middle of a sunny day, I told him my story, Gracie’s story. My head rested on his back, my sobs transferred the weight from my heart to his shoulders. In 2005 however, I was medicated. Again, it was helpful, and I was thankful. And again, I wasn’t on it for very long. I got pregnant again quickly and stopped taking them.

Prior to that loss would be the last time things were easy for me emotionally. The next decade would bring a roller coaster of life with one real exception – you can see the drops coming on an amusement park ride; not so much with life.

In 2010 I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder II. This piece of information was not devastating. In all actuality, it was a comfort. It settled the air around me for a while. Those who routinely thought less of my personality felt comfortable “letting it be” and were patient in waiting for me “to get right.” It was a box I could step into, a shield I could hold up when judgements got to be overwhelming.

Unfortunately, it required me to agree that something was “wrong with me” and I had to take the steps to “fix it.” For the first time doctors were attempting to figure out which meds would effectively make me, at a person level, “better” instead of supporting me while I worked through a tough spot.

The last go at “fixing April” was Seroquel. It is an antipsychotic commonly used to treat depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. In my body, it was a nightmare. For three days, from the time my kids left for school until after lunchtime, I would sit, white knuckle clutching the arms of a chair, trying desperately to remember that I did not really want to hurt myself or someone else. After the first day, I called the doctor and was told the meds just needed time to even out. After the third day I flushed it all down the toilet. I didn’t have whatever amount of time those meds needed.

At this point, the internet is moving along pretty good. I start trying to learn if there is a way to fix myself. I refuse anymore prescriptions – even my birth control. I focus again on diet and exercise. I learn about mindful cognitive behavior. I’m vegan for over a year. I finish a 50 mile run. I discover chiropractic care and acupuncture. I get a great therapist. The only medicine I agree to is to control my high blood pressure because, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to do it on my own. Even then, I am guarded and questioning. The one time the docs tried to increase my dosage as the effectiveness was waning, I declined in favor of giving my acupuncturist a go at it first. She handled it.

I wish I could tell you I got real and strong and balanced. I didn’t. I got scared. The more effective and healthy I became, the more I realized I was never “broken” to begin with. But that truth didn’t coincide at all with the reality I was living. Worse, it was beginning to become very apparent that they never would. I was turning 40 and had been battling with myself for over a decade. I was scared to choose between the woman I was and the woman I was. That is not a typo. So, I burnt it all down. What would stay would stay and what wouldn’t, well, it just wouldn’t.

For what it’s worth, that was not the approach the therapist suggested. In fact, she strongly urged against it. But call it impatient, weak, scared, frustrated, whatever, I did not have one more measured step in me. I was too scared, too tired, and too over it.

What stayed was my desire to be better, my want of happy, my love of humanity, my need to know myself. What didn’t was the box, the shield, and the bipolar diagnosis. It took several months to let the embers of my inferno cool off, but when the dust settled, the diagnosis was rescinded. Turns out I wasn’t cycling through mood swings. I simply had allowed myself to attempt to function in an unfunctioning environment for far too long.

I will include the passage I encountered in my reading this morning that prompted this whole thing…but it probably won’t make any sense. I am already over 1300 words in and I really just wanted to tell you about how acupuncture fixed my damn periods and how embracing my natural cycle allows me to feel more connected to my Wild Woman nature. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

“Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. For several thousand years, as soon and as often as we turn our backs, it is relegated to the poorest land in the psyche. The spiritual lands of the Wild Woman have, throughout history, been plundered or burnt, dens bulldozed, and natural cycles forced into unnatural rhythms to please others.”

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves