1. At his request, I sent Stu a link to pictures Rick Taylor took at our Class of 72 40-year reunion. Those pictures brought memories back to me of the weekend a bunch of us spent together in 2009 in Lincoln City to celebrate turning fifty-five years old.
2009 was a difficult year. I was hospitalized twice. Debbie's mother and younger brother passed away. There was more.
Somehow, although I didn't know it at the time, in the spring of 2009, my dark experiences with mental illness came to an end.
It must have been about a year later that I realized I hadn't had any episodes over the past year of what Debbie and I referred to as me going into a black hole. In fact, my last such episode occurred around the time, in late March or early April of 2009, just before I contracted pneumonia and spent five days in the hospital. (I returned to the hospital for another stay not long after with a case of c-diff.)
I marveled today that it's been seventeen years since my last dark episode and I don't know why and no medical person I've talked with knows why those episodes ended after they'd been with me since high school.
I'm grateful for these seventeen uninterrupted years of living in the light.
2. I'm certain that another reason 2009 is on my mind is connected to my reading of The Mosquito. Medical and other sciences have advanced to the point that it's now common knowledge that mosquitos carry the malaria parasite and transfer in through bites to human beings. So far, this book has been about the staggering number of people who have died from malaria carrying mosquitos infecting them and how these massive numbers of death have affected centuries of military campaigns, the extinction or near extinction of indigenous people in the New World, and the value of African slaves who had developed immunity over the centuries and so could labor on plantations.
This is all more complicated than I can sum up here, but reading so much about physical illness, disease, and death returned my mind to how it's fairly common for people to accept the seriousness of physical illness, but do not regard mental illness with the same kind of compassion or understanding, in part, I suppose, because mental illness is often not connected to something observable, like a bacteria or a virus or a parasite, but can, in fact, seem to have no cause at all.
Back in my days of black hole episodes, if someone asked me, "What are you depressed about?", I wouldn't be able to answer them. These episodes often occurred when things in my day to day life were humming along just fine.
Medications help. Therapy helps. Often I hear people talk about people experiencing mental illness as needing to be fixed. That's very difficult for me to hear, as if mental illness were an engine problem or clogged sink drain.
3. Yes, today thoughts of disease, illness, and the difficulties of 2009 occupied my mind, but so did my good fortune in the years following 2009.
I think I can say, with certainty, that what I've enjoyed the most about living in the light has been how much more even my temperament is than it was for decades. I'm not prone to the mood swings I used to be. I don't lose my mind over trivial things. I'm quieter, calmer, more able to step back from situations, and much less prone to the strains of anxiety and fear.
Back in September of 2009, I wrote a piece on this blog about needing to settle down as a classroom teacher. I compared my teaching style to the all out, go for broke style of playing tennis exemplified my Rafa Nadal and challenged myself to teach in the style of the more measured and calmer Roger Federer.
Looking back, I think I partially succeeded, but old habits are difficult to change.
I wanted to maintain my enthusiasm in the classroom, but, at the same time, I wanted to quiet down, be less kinetic and less theatrical.
Over time, even after I retired, this attempt to change my approach to living life took hold. I conserved energy. I was easier on my nerves. I hope I became more predictable.
It sure feels that way today.
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