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[girlrunner77]

Tackled By God and Mother Nature

I felt super human rolling through my first split. I just PRed for my mile time on grassy rolling hills and it charged me with more confidence grasping the sense that I was going shock the universe. The falling pile of varsity runners at start of the race, the half bagel I ate at 4:30am, the burning in my muscles, and all the feelings of frustration and negativity I wanted to beat down made a savage animal out of me. It was a rush, a growl of my teenaged soul charging hills and elbowing my way out of the pack. My teammates cheering my name loudly in the distance and the pain in my body fueled my ego. Anybody who ever put limits on me was the nemesis I had to beat. I had no fear and made up my mind, this race was going to be epic. I was making this “tough course” my battle ground and my finish was going to be the victory over all of the demons. It wasn’t until I saw the finish, when pain transferred to gravity. My mind knew it was time to kick but a slow creeping, warm fluid began to flow from my gut and spread down to my thighs and up to my face. The air around me began to feel just a slight bit cooler. Something invisible was pushing my head backwards. My eyes wanted to keep sight of the flags at the finish but another invisible force severed my brain’s ability to control my warm, wobbly legs. All of my limbs filled with a warm fluid, wobbled, and then cut off communication with the madwoman who made them move faster than they ever had before. NO!! Expletives rolled in my head as my face met the grass. I had arrived at a situation most cross country runners fear, not being able to finish. It was my coach and a couple of race officials voices surrounding my crumpled body that I recall next. They were carrying me off the course, a promise coach made regularly. God and Mother Nature had gotten together that day and tackled me in a crucial moment. I physically couldn’t finish. I was set to hit a record time. I failed but that savage madwomen I met out on a hilly Baton Rouge Cross Country course would be instrumental in achieving unimaginable race times, goals, and accomplishments in the future. Though she is ferocious, unruly, and relentless, she still gives me the confidence to push through adversity. She conquers common fears and keeps me focused on goals. She is the biggest believer in me and doesn’t put limits on what I can do. When things that are beyond my control present themselves, I can’t be completely disappointed with myself. I can look back and be proud of the things I have accomplished because I know I didn’t spare a thing in my attempts. When my hopes are devastated and I feel the sadness of failure, I rely on those people who cheer me on. I am forever grateful for the ones with the strength to carry me🧡💙

[girlrunner77]

Sundays With Sarah

At some point in my life, my mother deemed me evil.  Maybe the hatred she had for my dad transferred to me when it became progressively obviously that I was alot like my father.  When you’re young, you lack the self awareness to make realizations such as that. I most certainly did and it lead me to making painful and ridiculous sacrifices to please her.  After turning 30, then 40, memories of my mother include things like making conversion with a waitress at Waffle House on Christmas Eve because my mother found some lame excuse to lock me out of the house.  Being an adult, my gratitude for friendly waitresses is boundless. For reasons I never had any control over, my mom was like the kid who liked to pour salt on slugs and watch them suffer.  I was a slug for a long time until I founds ways to wiggle away, avoid cruelty. 

Sarah, our WW3,  surely was a different type of victim of my mother.  It took me years to put it all together for myself but I’ll never know what’s in my sister’s head. As we’ve gotten older, she’s grown to trust me enough to share her paranoid ideas and feelings. The way Sarah puts completely unrelated events together, her obsession with having at least 6 rolls of toilet paper every Sunday visit, and her fixation with how to describe her levels of wooziness is a rainforest of exploration, there are so many layers to her mental illness. There’s so many levels to her thinking and ideas yet; at the same time, she barely notices the stove flame is lit or that she completely put all of our dirty dishes away without noticing thick stains of spagetti red sauce or crusty bits of food on the forks from Sunday lunch.  

Every Sunday, the overkill of thanks and appreciation begins as she puts her laundry basket in the back seat of my car. She shuts the door and makes sure to remind me not to put the car in drive until she’s in the car. Sarah, now 43 and a good 150 pound heavier than the soccer playing sister I grew up with, reminds me of the toilet paper and the Sprite Zero she so looks forward to having every week. 

“Yep, that’s your toilet paper and Sprite in the back”  I’ve stopped telling her that I wouldn’t drive off without her and I’ve come to understand why she needs such reassurance. I reckon it has more to do with our experience with our mother and less to do with her diminished brain chemistry.    

Sundays include me preparing a fruit and cheese tray and cooking a meal while Sarah puts her laundry in and swiffers our floors.  Swiffering the floor can’t be done incorrectly.  My parents, both the hardest working people you ever want to meet, had ingrained in us very early on that nothing is free and working was a means of independence.  Working means you’re able to contribute and if you’re a contributer, you’re still at the table playing your hand in life.  Sarah sometimes questions why her life doesn’t have the quality we all believed it would have when we were kids.  I do everything I can to stress to her how she has been our family glue.  Sarah’s illness has made us all a bit more compassionate, loving, and selfless because of our love for her.  

When she first moved to Georgia, her Sunday visits were with my mother who had temporarily moved with her, living in a house near the group home. Mom’s house was dark, reeked of cigarette smoke, and always had the TV blaring hysterical political news stories on some sort of loop.  Mom’s refridgerator was so packed with all types of cheese and meat, rare expensive food items, and random homemade meals in oozing containers, she had to tape the door shut; nevermind throwing anything away or doing without the extra things that spoiled. I didn’t visit mom every weekend then; Sarah really had no choice. When I did make the 45 minute drive, Sarah was always sleeping; despite the deafening TV.

Since mom has moved on, she comes to our house on Sundays. My husband and I fill it with smells of a meat marinating in a well loved pot of spices.  The light and vibrant colors from outside fill the window pains with a kalaidescope of colors from our gardens. The hiss of the stove flame and sounds of gurgling liquids are the loudest noise in our house. I make Sarah a cup of French Roast with the perfect amount of cream, sugar, and cinnimon. 

“Wow...I am so fortunate” Sarah says sipping her coffee, excited about lunch. “This is a great cup of coffee, Aimee....it’s so fancy”

“yep, that’s me...fancy and bojie” and I get a laugh out of her because I’m typically covered in yard clippings or my hair is matted under a hat.

Sarah gabs on while I nod and occassionally, interjecting my thoughts in her ramblings. Usually the topic is about what medication she is on and lately, what her stomach has been doing all week.  The detail she can go into is truly astounding sometimes.   

Like the Coriolis Effect on Earth’s winds, massive cocktails of heavy medications create a swirling pattern of side effects. It makes me sad but after about 20 years of managing Schyzoid Affective Disorder, we accept the side affects as the lesser of two evils.  In her youth, she fought against taking her medicine because of these side effects. We, including Sarah, have more fear of the next psychotic break. We all know better now. 

If I had a dollar for every “thank you” I get from Sarah every Sunday, I’d have a steady flow of cash.  It’s hard for us to undo the things we went through as kids.  We both share the feeling of not showing enough gratitude; we grew up with the sense that we were pawns in the way of someone else’s happiness.  

“Thanks for putting up with me, Aimee”

“Shoot, thanks for putting up with me, Sarah....you think you can tolerate me next Sunday?”

“hmm...more toilet paper, Sprite Zero, and some shrimp and grits?....sure, Aimee”

I think Sarah knows how grateful I am for every Sunday with her. 

A very wise woman once told me that when you’re heart is broken, it takes time to heal but there are also things you can do help that healing process. She said that when you’re really feeling low, make a plan to do something kind for someone else. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture or cost you money. You just need to invest with your heart...you don’t even need to let anyone know you’re doing something for them. Just knowing you made someone feel good from a random kind act does something to change the energy you feel from a broken heart. It’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten and when I feel sad about anything, I know doing the little things for my sister heals me. I see the gratitude in her face and in her words every Sunday with Sarah....and I’m wiggling away smiling 

[girlrunner77]

Run In The Rocks

I smell the grass, the Fall air filled with a change in season like firewood burning in the distance and all of the sudden, I am running with Sarah on Causeway Approach. Cars wiz by and I'm the bossy one insisting that she run to my right in the rocks and far away from the white line on the road.

"I hate running in the rocks!" she says, huffing and puffing, mad and laboring

"Do you see how fast these cars are coming? Trust me...they don't care about us! If you are going to run with me, stay to my right!"

Sarah speeds up. She's yelling at me but its just Doppler Effect garbled messages as she trods faster on the solid white line.  Knowing she can't keep the pace, I frantically pray she gets back in the rocks even though it's slanted footing and running the rocks really sucks.

Was it foreshadowing? Maybe so. We don't run together anymore but I find myself sometimes back on that line, my pulse racing, hoping she trusts her big sister enough to not to go too far away from my protection.

[girlrunner77]

Unapologetic Voice in The Gene Pool

Once upon at time, I was a 14 year old girl living with my single dad and my two sisters.  Part of this experience was being in the Piggly Wiggly with my dad and him loudly asking me what color on the tampon box he needed to buy for me. A man of about 50 years old, he would ask me when he was halfway down the grocery store isle. I had gotten comfortable being uncomfortable.  That was my dad, blunt and not so apologetic engineer who just needed facts to get the task done.  At age 12, I got busted with cigarettes stored in my doll's underwear by dad, whose only response after that was to offer me a drag of his nasty cigar every chance he had.  

My teenage years seem to supply me with a triple dose of completely embarrassing moments to make me the super secure 25 year old who decided to take my mentally ill sister out for beer and oysters. This was on a good night before most of the psychotic breaks, trips to the emergency room.  She was 23 and really was just starting out of meds to see what would work.  Her symptoms were not quite as menacing as they were in her late 20s and certainly not like they are now. 

Sarah and I stroll up to our favorite seafood place of the Tchefuncte River to get ourselves some beer and raw oysters.  I remember eating them after working a track meet with my high school track coaches during my first year out of college. The memory of me swallowing an unintended large chunk of horseradish followed by a howl of laughter from the coaches was still fresh. I got the ol' whack on the back and cackles from men folk. 

Acceptance from the men folk, It made me love eating there even more when I came home from Georgia during the holidays.

Sarah wanted to sit at the bar so we did.  We were sandwiched between beer guzzling bearded men in their forties watching football and peeling crawfish.

Once we were seated and we put our order in, I casually as my sister,

"So, Sarah, how ya been?"

Sarah replies in a loud, another blunt, unapologetic voice in the gene pool.

"Well my anti psychotics have been making me hypersexual which isn't bad because I hear the shit I am taking causes way more side effect than that"

We got immediate eyeball attention from the dudes at the bar.

Damn.... being with family puts me right back in the Piggly Wiggly with my dad, wanting to know what color box of tampons to buy me.  

[girlrunner77]

Nothing To Say

When you grow up with little tragedies going on around you and you begin to discover that the people you love constantly suffer, turning off your own feelings and finding nothing to say is sometimes the only response.  The desire to make everyone happy or smooth over the situation overrides any attempt at having feelings of your own much less trying to communicate anything.  It was for me anyway.

All you want to do is make all of the rotten things go away so you shove any hurt or anger of your own down into dark places.  You just know those feelings are worthless.  They only make bad situations worse.  It is not until you gain life experiences that you realize you aren't ever gonna survive life without having feelings, understanding them, and communicating them effectively. Life is pain and if it hurts, its okay to cry, be sad, get mad, and feel helpless.  That is what makes us human.

I have all of these thoughts and then I think, damn. How does Sarah do it?  It inspires me to want to know more about what has taken over her...that chemical imbalance in her brain that tries to dull her shine, steal her emotions, and drive her to the edge.  Will we ever get to the bottom of mysterious mental illnesses?  I think of her suffering and like the child in me, I just want to make her happy and smooth over her situation.  In all my experiences as an adult, I find when she is in pain or distress, sometimes I still have nothing to say but I can write volumes.

[girlrunner77]

Soulless and Silent

It was Christmas, another season of people and sounds that overcame her. She refused to speak to my dad and her trust of our mother was almost non existent. Katie and I walked into the lobby where the lights were dim and it was an uncomfortable quiet.  Sarah had to approve of us being there to let us past the locked doors of the psychiatric ward.

I had a lump in my throat and I blinked to keep tears at bay.  I couldn't fall apart in this place.  It was a luxury I could not have.  What right did I have anyway to show that kind of emotional display? I wasn't a prisoner of this place or my own body.  I had freedoms she would never have and to cry seemed inappropriate.  

We were buzzed in finally, walking with a nurse making cheerful conversation.  We brought a bag of clothes and toiletries with us through several sets of double doors until we reached a large room with a nurses station and patients on couches.  Sarah walked out of a room taking her name plate off of door...paranoid but she was walking, in charge of her motor skills. We sat on the couch and gave her the bag. There were few words exchanged. Katie looked at me and I knew she felt as sad and uncomfortable as I did.

Sarah didn't respond much to our banter. She was medicated, unkempt, but safe. A man in his forties sat next to Katie and began to stare. Katie offered him a hello to which he said...How old are you?...

How old do I look?

Well, you got some wrinkles on your forehead.... I would say 32?

Yeah, I will be 32 in a few days

Katie was completely disgusted but understood where she was.  I laughed, grateful for the conversation.  I asked him how old I looked.

I would say about 16 or 17

I laughed and told him I was 30. Katie chuckled but still kept her look of disgust.

Again, the man continued to stare at Katie.

Is that your real hair color?

uh, yeah..

How come I can see your roots?

Again, Katie sported a look of disgust. I laughed. The nurses shot me looks of disapproval. 

Sarah remained on the couch, no emotion or response. I was grateful for that man keeping the floodgates strong even if it was at Katie’s expense.

An older black woman was circling nearby. Sarah remained silent, refusing conversation. All we got out of her were one worded responses. She had no feeling behind her eyes, soulless and silent.  It was scary and the tension was almost too much to bare.

I focused my attention on the older woman. She was returning conversation.

“Hi y’all....I’m Birdie.” 

“Oh like...bye bye biiirdee! I’m gonna miss you so!  bye bye biiirdee..why’d you have to go?”   I find myself singing in the psych ward.

I got more looks of disapproval from the nurses and my older sister, Katie. I didn’t care though. It released a bit of tension and it also prompted the end to our visit. 

[girlrunner77]

World War 3

I grew up as the middle child of three girls in southern Louisiana eating mudbugs, going fishing with my dad, and playing outside from sun up to sun down. My baby sister Sarah was the neighborhood tomboy. She played football with the boys, always had dirty nails, and hated taking a bath.  She had this purple tri-cycle that was not to be touched; if you did, you better watch your back because that was “MINE!” according to Sarah.  Sarah was spunky and at family gatherings, she would make my great uncles and aunts laugh at her impressions of Aretha Franklin belting out “My mammy said ta go ta Wal-mart” like Aretha might do. She was a 9 year old scrappy, freckled faced blonde girl and made up songs like that all of the time.  It was odd and so hilarious. Sarah always had the elders roaring and rolling with laughter.  She liked to wear her yellow football jersey shirt and when I was in junior high school we called her World War 3 because she as a real pill to wake up for school in the morning.  Waking Sarah up had to be done delicately and I typically was the one to do it.

When we were in high school, I was a senior when Sarah was a freshman. She loved soccer,played the saxophone in the band, and though she hated it she also ran cross country to be with me.  At this point, our parents had divorced and I was the big sister she liked to follow around. Sarah would make me coffee every morning and we would chatter on at the bus stop before school.  I was 16 when Sarah’s teachers would come to me to help her write essays or review for a test.  Being the older sister, part of me wanted to mother her and look out for her and the other part of me was annoyed at this understood responsibility.  When I left for college though, Sarah’s behavior drastically changed.

When I was in college, I didn’t come home much because I always worked 30 hours or more a week and my class load was usually in the neighborhood of 19 hours a week.  I didn’t have much time for what was going on at home but I knew Sarah had grown depressed and withdrawn. She got her hair cut really short and sat in her room composing music.  Sarah didn’t have many friends and she would sometimes say the strangest things.  Sometimes, I’d come home and notice Sarah sitting in a dark corner, completely silent and nonreactive.  I think we all just chalked it up to “teenagers are just weird”. 

Sarah went on to study music in college. She played the saxophone in the USM Band. She did fairly well her first semester, playing in the band and composing new music. She wanted to study music but wasn’t sure how she would do that and support herself.  In our family, our dad preached hard work and being self sufficient young women.  When Sarah began sleeping through her favorite classes and went through stretches where she couldn’t sleep, her grades dropped and it was obvious that she couldn’t sustain the academic life so far away from home. She took a few semesters off to work at a grocery store then a restaurant.  Sarah worked on eating right and working out. She started running again and quit taking the anti depressants she had been on since she was in high school.

After growing bored without academics, Sarah started back at a school near home. She enrolled as a computer science major realizing that working with computers instead of people might be more her speed. She became disinterested in her music and became more withdrawn.  At this point, I had graduated from college and had been working in Atlanta, Georgia when I got a call from my dad.   He got a call from the Hammond Police. She was wandering the street, wearing a t-shirt with all of her band medals from high school and a pair of sweat pants in sub 40 degree weather. The police picked her up at 2am because she was trying to get into someone’s car and she was babbling.  My dad and step mom went to her apartment to investigate. They found that she had unplugged every single electrical appliance and lamp, took everything off the walls, and had made neat piles of all of her belongings in the center of the room.

From that point on, our family would go through periods of time where Sarah would be okay then fall into episodes of psychotic breaks where she had to be hospitalized for not sleeping for days or just trying to get off of her medicine. She did things like take off in the middle of the night to wander the interstate, trailer parks, and surrounding woods.  At one time, the police found her car running at stop light. She stole my stepmother’s car once to go joy riding while my parents would be frantically calling everywhere to find her. Things like this would be followed by days where she couldn’t be found.  By the grace of God though, we always found her or she would wander up to my mother’s doorstep.  It was always a struggle for her around the holidays, too many smells, sounds, people.  Sarah finally moved in with my mother so she could keep her supervised.  

I never felt so lucky to be young, educated, healthy, and in control of my life because my sister would never have that.  Whenever I would come home for a visit, Sarah would be doped up to the point where one or two words was all she could respond with or the over stimulation of people during the holidays would drive her to another psychotic break.  My parents were always in contact with the police, the local hospital, and her doctors.  My dad, aged with frantic worry, would tell me how the thought of her being alone in this world when he was gone woke him up in the middle of the night.  I never felt so guilty for not allowing Sarah to tag along when we were younger or for not coming home more often to spend time with her when she was in high school.

Tired of seeing my parents so over worked and stressed, we all decided that we needed to find a long term facility and have a long term plan for Sarah.  This needed to be a place that would work with us and have the compassion for mental illness.  No options were cheap and as sad as it had made all of us, my dad and I went looking for a place for Sarah.  We went to nursing homes and private agencies when we finally found a group home for adults with mental illness. Weathered by the psychotic episodes, my parents and Sarah were open to having her go to live near me in a facility in Conyers, GA.  For the first time, I felt like in some way I was able to ease my dad’s stress somewhat and assure him that Sarah would not be a homeless, wanderer like so many other mentally ill people out there are.

Sarah is 35 now and the heavy medicine she takes has diminished her hearing and some of her sight. She can no longer enjoy music because it is too stimulating and the extra 150 pounds she carries prevents her from walking for more than 5 minutes much less playing soccer.  Sarah is no longer the spit fire with the sun burned cheeks and the energy to pounce anyone at a game of 3 flies in but with the help of the people who work at the group home, Sarah smiles. She hugs my neck when I see her and remains present enough to notice when I need a hair cut or to ask me about my week.  We can go shopping and get our nails done though she can only take so much. After years of hospitalizations, drug adjustments, and visits with her staring through me virtually speechless with no affect, I have some of my sister back telling me when something makes me look fat or that I look really pretty.