Chased By Darkness

Here I am … banging my head against the same wall … again … and again … AND AGAIN.  I know that I am not the first one, and I will surely not be the last one, but loving a child who has mental health issues and dealing with the horrendous tornado of emotions that occur because of those issues feels like the most alone place I have ever occupied.  I am usually able to remain optimistic and to see solutions.  But I am just so very exhausted this time that I do not know what to do.  Just trying to think about it makes my head want to explode.  I feel like giving up.  But I can’t.  My child needs me.

 People say that we, as a nation, have made great strides in de-stigmatizing mental illness.  I guess the fact that we don’t lock people away in horrid institutions to be ignored and mistreated for the rest of their lives is progress.  But speaking as one who lives continually in its midst, I would have to say that the stigma remains and that the misunderstanding of mental illness and its sufferers is as prevalent as it ever was. 

 Most people do not understand that a mentally ill individual can appear, for the most part, to be a “normal” human being.  They carry on intelligent, polite conversations, make good decisions, support themselves financially and maintain relationships with others.  My child is able to do all of these things, but as it is with many people struggling with mental health issues, it is an act that he has learned to perform to get by in a world which makes little sense to him.  He has learned enough people skills to appear “normal” because that is what the world expects of him.  But being what the world considers “normal” is so completely nonsensical to the way his brain is wired, the act he is forced to put on absolutely exhausts him.  Exhaustion leads to stress … stress leads to meltdowns … meltdowns lead to guilt and embarrassment … embarrassment leads to depression … depression leads to despair … despair leads to that dark place that I don’t like to consider.  Knowing that my child doesn’t remember a time in his life when he was truly happy and that he believes there is no point in continuing to exist in the physical world, has broken my spirit in to pieces so tiny that it is impossible to gather them all up without losing some along the way.

 Many people think that mental illness comes in “episodes” and that if you can just get them through another episode, things will look up again.  While my child’s illness is cyclical in nature, it is not something that ever completely leaves him.  The happy episodes he appears to experience are covering a darkness that he can never quite escape.  I try and try to shine light into that darkness, and sometimes a bright spot will stay for a while.  But mostly, he lives in the dark all of the time and I am always standing at the edge, trying to drag him back into the light, never letting him go, even on the days that the darkness is where he wants to be.

 There is also the belief that if we can just get him on the right medication, he will be okay.  Medication can surely help, but they usually (at least in this case) come with side effects that are as frightening as the illness itself.  Meds intended to combat depression and anxiety often cause a zombie-like sedation that counteracts the ability to be productive.  Or worse yet, sometimes the meds actually bring the darkness closer.  The types of medications prescribed for mental illnesses are not supposed to be stopped suddenly, so he’s faced with having to continue a medication that is making him worse, causing horrible anxiety because he is scared to death of the side effects, until he can wean himself off of it.   And if he happens to do well on a prescribed medication, the strong possibility always exists that he will eventually believe that he is well enough that he doesn’t need it anymore, so he will stop taking it.  ‘Round and ‘round it goes … and goes … and goes some more.

 Finding him the appropriate help in a world that pushes “tough love” and expects him to “suck it up and deal with it” is especially frustrating.  The stress of working with the public absolutely un-nerves him, but he is expected by society have a job and support himself.  He wants to support himself, and he can push back the anxiety he feels from time to time to work a minimum-wage, dead-end job.  But after a while, the anxiety builds to a level that he has a major meltdown and is unable to function in the workplace.  When that occurs, his feeling that he is a failure is, in his mind, validated as the absolute truth and the despair worsens.  And since he doesn’t qualify for a healthcare subsidy or Medicaid, he is only able to get bare-bones mental health services at clinics that are basically just for med checks and putting out fires if a client has a meltdown.  There is no affordable, consistent, personal and on-going treatment for him. 

 Faith used to help him, but lately, the darkness has become so overwhelming that it tells him there is no God, or if there is one, He surely must not love my child or He wouldn’t allow him to struggle so.  My child’s disability has dulled his emotions and his illness has stolen the emotions that he did have.  He believes that a relationship with God requires an emotional connection and since he doesn’t feel emotions, God must not want a relationship with him.

 So the darkness deepens.  It has a grasp on him that I am no longer able to break.  I am still holding on, as tightly as I can, trying to pull him into the light.  But the darkness is strong, and I am so exhausted that I fear I may lose my grip.  And the darkness is so seductive.  It calls to me too, encouraging me to turn loose of my child’s hand and to follow him in.  It leaves me teetering on the edge, still holding tightly to this child who has been my heart since before he was born.  My heart is heavy and my spirit bowed down at his suffering and the fact that, try as I might, I can’t seem to relieve it. The darkness taunts me – “Nothing you do makes a difference”, it whispers, “just let him go.”    And in the moments when I feel like I could, I feel a strong grip on my other hand.  It is so tight and so complete that I know without a doubt that it is my Heavenly Father, holding onto my hand as I hold onto my child’s hand, pulling us both back from the darkness.  He won’t ever let us go … He will never give up on us.  He can’t.  His children need Him. 

 

      

 

          

 

 

Best Friends Forever

This post is written in loving memory of my best friend, Janet Lynn Morris Benefield.

Wife of Brian Benefield, Mother of Kelly Benefield Carmichael,

Mother-in-law of Stephen Carmichael, Nana of Elizabeth & Sean Carmichael,

Daughter of Joe & Joy Morris, Sister of Jayne & Julie Morris.

She was a wonderful woman with a beautiful soul.

 

 

I have heard it said that good friends are hard to find.  Most people have only a few friends that they would consider to be their “best friends”.  It is my experience that if a person is fortunate enough to have a best friend, that friendship transcends time and space and endures through separation of miles and years.  Some friendships form instantly-the kind where individuals meet and feel an immediate and profound kinship with one another.  They feel like they have known each other their entire lives.  Other friendships form more gradually.  Acquaintances spend time with each other, many times due to shared interests or mutual friends, realize they have much in common, and a deep and lasting connection forms.  However the friendships begin, they are bonds that cannot be broken.   I am blessed to have had such a friend.  She was truly my BFF – my Best Friend Forever.

I met Jan through another friend, (I’ll just call her “M”) who was Jan’s co-worker at Erlanger Hospital.  Jan was having some folks over to her house to hang out and watch movies. M asked Jan if she could bring me and Jan, being the gracious soul that she was, said “yes”.  Incidentally, M also brought Ken Lunsford with her that night, so in the space of a few short hours, I met the love of my life, as well as my future best friend.  Sadly, my friendship with M was not the lasting kind, but I will be forever grateful to her for taking me with her that night.

A couple of months after meeting Jan, I was going to have some friends over to my apartment for a chili supper.  One of the guys who was coming was Brian Benefield.  I had met Brian at church and we had dated a little - before God smacked me in the head with Ken Lunsford.   ;)  M was coming and made the suggestion to invite Jan.  See, M was very good at matching other people up, just not as successful at matching herself with anyone.  Anyway, I thought it was a great idea and told her to invite Jan.  We introduced them to one another, and though I was busy being hostess, I did notice them talking to each other quite a bit.

About a month or so after my chili supper, I was talking to Brian one night at church.  Out of the blue, he said, “You know I sent Jan flowers, don’t you?”  Well, no, I didn’t know… hadn’t heard a thing about it.  As soon as I got home that night, I called M and said, “Did you know that Brian had sent Jan flowers?!”  To which M replied, “Is THAT who sent them?  Jan was thinking someone was playing a trick on her!”  It seems that Brian had signed the card, “From a friend”, leaving Jan to puzzle over who the “friend” might be.  Once M and I spilled the beans, Jan called Brian to thank him.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Ken and I got married in October, 1989, and about six months later, in February of 1990, Jan and Brian made their own trip to the altar.  I have always loved the fact that I met my husband at Jan’s house and then Jan met her husband at my house.

 From that point on, Ken and I, and Jan and Brian starting spending lots of time together.  We were all close in age, and being newlyweds, we had a lot in common.  We also all attended the same church.  We just gradually became really great friends.  Just before our first vacation together (we vacationed together almost every year until Ken got sick), Jan suggested that we bring our niece, Michaelann with us, so that she and Kelly, their daughter, could keep each other company.  The connection between our families only deepened as Michaelann and Kelly (Sweet Pea and Kelly Sue) became very good friends as well.  When Jesse and Benjamin entered the picture, we knew that our relationships were too close for the boys to call them “Mr. and Mrs. Benefield”, so they became “Uncle Brian and Aunt Jan”.

If I were to try and write all the memories of my friendship with Jan through the years, it would certainly be a book, not a blog post.   They have been swirling around in my head constantly since Jan made her journey home to heaven in October.  Her absence has turned these memories into treasures because they are all I have left now that her sweet spirit is gone from this world.  To honor her memory, I will list a few of the strongest and/or sweetest ones.

·          Jan bought a gift for baby Jesse to give me on my first Mother’s Day.  She figured that it probably wouldn’t occur to Ken (he was a man, you know) that he might need to take care of that.  It was only a poster, but her thoughtfulness touched me deeply.

·         Jan so lovingly cared for us when we were in the hospital to have Benjamin.  Even after I rattled her nerves by almost passing out on her, she quickly recovered and took wonderful care of us throughout the birth.  Because I had a C-section, “Aunt Jan” got to hold Benjamin first.  She bundled him up and brought him close so I could kiss him.  She talked about how he looked like Jesse.  She is the first one to notice his dimples.  When I couldn’t hold him in the recovery room due to a severe case of shivers from the epidural, Jan happily took Benjamin down the hallway so she could show off “our” new baby.

·         When my Granny died, Jan kept Jesse and Benjamin at their home so they wouldn’t have to go to AL and be around all those people they didn’t know and see everyone so upset.  Instead, they got to spend the time having a “camp-out” in Aunt Jan’s living room.

·         When Jan got her BSN degree, Ken and I let Jesse and Benjamin stand up in their seats and scream “YAY AUNT JAN!” at the top of their lungs as she crossed the stage to get her diploma.  It was at UTC arena and there were a go-zillion people there, so I know she couldn’t hear them, but we were all so proud of Jan’s achievement and the boys loved being able to be a part of it in that way.

·         At Jan’s pinning ceremony, it was just the sweetest thing watching Kelly pin her mom.  Even though Jan was not Kelly’s biological mother, she was her mom from almost the first time they ever met.  Jan’s heart accepted that sweet girl as her very own, regardless of DNA. 

·         On the day we received Ken’s cancer diagnosis, Jan stayed on the telephone with me through more than an hour of sobbing and screaming.  I don’t remember that we even had much conversation, but she did not hang up the phone until she was sure I was calmer. 

·         The day Ken died, Jan stayed with me all night long.  She had already had her first stroke by then, and being in places other than her home made her very nervous, but she did not want me to spend that first night alone.  We didn’t talk much, but her loving presence was such a comfort.

So, so many more memories… maybe I will get to them another day. The thing I remember most is how Jan loved me and my family for all those years. In the ten years since Ken died and the boys and I moved to AL, Jan suffered with many devastating health issues. It broke my heart to see how she struggled. I can honestly say that the one true regret I have from moving to AL is that I wasn’t close enough to be more help during Jan’s last years. She knew how hard it was for me to be in Ringgold without Ken and she understood why I left. I am just sorry that I moved away from her. And even as I write that, I can see her smiling and hear her telling me to quit beating myself up about it. That is the kind of loving and understanding person she was. She was truly my “best friend forever”. I miss her with my whole heart.