Lemonade

“Michael, I am so sorry that I missed our session. I couldn’t find your office, and I know; I know I’ve been there many times, but I just kept driving up and down your street and did not know where to go. I don’t know what’s going on with that. I am so, so sorry!”

“Beth, it’s okay. You have PTSD. That’s what is going on. You need to utilize your skills. I can see you tomorrow at 6 p.m. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’ll be there. Thank you. I am so sorry.”

“No need to be. I’ll text you the address again. See you tomorrow.”

Michael is a therapist who specializes in PTSD. Most of his clients are veterans, but he makes room for people like me. He gave me a lot of helpful “skills” worksheets and meditations, but the best advice he gave me in coping with an episode was to keep cut up lemons in my car. What happens with my PTSD is that I lift off out of my body in a sort of sustained panic attack. The sting of lemon in my mouth can jolt me back. It’s brilliant and helpful, but like most other folks with this syndrome, I don’t go through life expecting to be triggered. I can go for years without an episode. That’s a lot of lemons to cut up for no apparent reason. 

And then BAM.

“How are you? Are you okay?” my friends inquired after my recent automobile accident.

“Oh, I am totally fine. It set off my auto-immune disorder, so I’m in some pain, but really I’m fine. It’s just a bit of pain.”

This drives my friend Jeffrey crazy when I say it. 

“There is no such thing as just pain,” he will say. He is ever gentle about it because he knows.

My mother went through a period which I call “The Black Years." A time when she was filled with rage, driven by deep trauma and fueled by alcohol. She was a hitter. She used fists and whatever she could grab. She kicked and hurled bodies into walls. 

“You are wasting precious oxygen that a worthwhile person could be breathing.”

He threw his clipboard when I told him she used to say that. My first therapist, Gary, was incredibly helpful to me when I first moved home to Los Angeles after ten years in New York City. He was one of the first therapists to work with people with AIDS. He and I were both on the scene early, well before they identified the virus, when “it” was called “Gay Men’s Cancer". I helped to found MOMENTUM in New York City in the early 80’s, and he fearlessly took on patients who were visibly ill before anyone knew what was causing it. 

Nearly everyone we knew from those years … gone. We both had trauma from that, but neither of us would have done it differently. 

I was seeing Gary frequently because I was on a television show at the time, which was run by a very angry, relentlessly mean fellow. This made what should have been a fun experience sheer misery. At least one cast member cried every day. It felt very much like being in a dysfunctional family. It was triggering, and I was having a hard time. 

 “What did he say? How did it go with therapy?" my friend Judy always asked. She was aware of how deeply I was affected.

“He told me that it is not safe to think about my childhood when I am alone.”

We looked at each other for a long beat after that and then collapsed into fits of laughter, tears rolling down our cheeks because it was, after all, hilarious.

I tried every day. The house was consistently filthy, but I tried. I would straighten things. Do last night’s dishes. Try to make it so that she would be calm and happy when she got home. Occasionally she was, and those were treasured hours. Most of the time though something would set her off, and she would go after one of us. I got in-between her and Laura, the youngest, as often as I could, but there was really no way to protect anyone.

“You are my fucking albatrosses!!! All of you!!! You have ruined my life!!" she would snarl between gritted teeth. Then the standard business: 

Punch. Kick. Pull hair. Hurl into wall. 

She was many other things too. She could be smart and funny, but she was not fully grown. She often told people that I was raising her and not the other way around. It was not an easy task for a ten-year-old, but I tried hard to convince her to act like an adult. Later, when I was 12, she let me wear her clothes, and we went out to bars where she was hoping to meet men. If that part of the story does not make you feel any better about the situation, I want you to congratulate yourself on being well-raised. I clearly was not, and I loved those occasions. She let me drink gin and tonics and bought me cigarettes too. So, though I now know that scenario was ill-advised, back then it was great fun … thrilling, even. 

Mom paid the mortgage, bought supplies, and dealt with raising four kids mostly on her own. None of that was easy, you’ve got to give her that. We kids fended for ourselves at mealtime, happy to eat stuff from boxes and tin trays. We smoked cigarettes and pot and drank whatever booze we could get hold of. We alternated between being out of control in a wildly permissive environment to being targets of an often unprovoked, always fully-escalated bout of violent retribution.

 She also had no remorse and rarely remembered what she had done. It was just the deal.

I still and always loved her. Her three surviving kids remained loyal to her and supported her until the end. Like any origin story, it was complicated; very complicated at once sordid and terrible, heartbreaking, and hilarious. We will have to leave it at that for now. All roads lead back to her, but this is my story.

If you want to win an argument with me, that is easy. Yell. Just raise your voice to me in an angry manner, and I will cry and cry. I cannot deal with angry feelings well, so instead I will cry and cry and then shut down. Leave. If I cannot leave you, I will leave my body until I can leave you, and then I will be gone. It is not your anger that I am afraid of; it is my own. I might love you. I might want to stay and fight, but if you scream and yell I will have to go.

 At a recent high school reunion, a man approached me and said:

“Hey, sorry I was so rough on you back then, but I couldn’t help it. You were such an easy target.”

I did not remember him, and wasn’t sure what this statement was supposed to mean to me some 40-odd years after the fact, but I told him it was no big deal because I didn’t know what else to say.

Years and years ago, when I was working as a waitress, our head bartender sensed that I had difficulty with trauma. He got a big kick out of swinging a bottle toward my head whenever I came up to get my order. He enjoyed watching me duck, flinch, and freak out. I hated giving him the pleasure, but it worked every time. 

I can be tough though. Yell at one of my family members or friends, or a child or an animal in front of me, and I will not have it. I will rip into you. I will stand up to the guy screaming at the stewardess. I will draw myself up and battle you with everything I’ve got to protect the vulnerable. Just so long as the vulnerable person is not me. 

I have not spoken of this in years. Once in a while a story will escape from me or Laura that is almost too much for the listener to take in.

“What happened to your face?” the doctor asked her. She’d had X-rays done to determine if there was a sinus infection. 

“What do you mean?” Laura replied. 

“There are so many broken bones. All the little fine bones … a lot of them are broken. Were you in an accident?”

Laura did not know how to answer the question, because you just cannot tell your Ear Nose and Throat doctor that your mother repeatedly punched you in the face. 

When I was about eleven years old my father came for a visit and joined us at the table for dinner. I remember when I got up to clear the dishes (I was always helping, always trying to earn that oxygen), I spilled some liquid from a bowl of peaches in syrup. My mother sprang up and grabbed the bowl, slamming it on the counter, then grabbed my hair and started slapping me for being so clumsy. My dad rose in my defense and threw her on the ground, kicking her repeatedly, crushing one of her disks. Then he went home to his other family and left me holding the bag for it. Thanks Pop.

Family medical history is a tough one. Father’s mother: suicide. Mother’s father: suicide. 

A while back, a friend and I were leaving the hotel in San Antonio where we had stayed on a weekend trip. When the valet brought the car, some kind of pop music was playing loudly. I never play music in my car (too much stimuli), but somehow I did not think to turn it off. The lady in the phone began barking directions. I was in an unfamiliar town and, as per her instructions, merged onto a strange interstate. I was struggling.

“Keep left at the fork." 

I missed it and slammed on the brakes before remembering I was going sixty miles an hour on a freeway. My hands were clammy, my brain blurring. It took herculean effort to focus, but I somehow managed to change lanes one by one and made it down the off-ramp. I parked and tried to breathe—tried to stop my heart from pounding. My friend Jen stayed calm, grateful to be alive, and said gently:

“It’s okay. Let me drive. It’s okay. I want to.” 

I once had a panic attack on the freeway because someone sped past me at what had to be 90 miles per hour. (For Laura and me this is hard, especially if there is sudden quick movement to our left.) I somehow made it to the parking lot of Polly’s Pies and called my sister, sobbing. She talked to me for hours as we waited for rush hour to begin, so that traffic would be slow enough for me to drive home. 

We three surviving children all have PTSD. We all cope with it differently, but we manage. It’s just the deal.

There were other things that led up to it, but the recent accident must be what set it off, in earnest. In the last few weeks, I have tripped over the dog three times, twice landing fully on my face. This happens when I am lost in a loop of thoughts and lose track of where my body is. I have broken several plates and five glasses. I have dropped my phone countless times, stepped on my eyewear, and bruised my hip bone. My body has felt like it is on fire, my anxiety causing a relentless burning sensation beneath my skin. It has been impossible to stop the music playing in my head, but it was not until I fully lifted off in a public place in the presence of too much light and sound that I finally grasped it. 

I am having an episode. I am not fine. “Cut some lemons!” I tell myself. “Use your skills!”

Do the exercise: Close your eyes. Picture yourself at the top of a stairwell. It is dark. There is a pinhole of light escaping from the room at the bottom. Search yourself.

10: FEAR—Find where it is written in your body and pull out the word written on a placard. Lay it down and step on it. 

9: RAGE—I never felt that before my mom died, but it is everywhere now. Pull it from your gut, the back of your head, the front of your head. Place the boards down and stand atop them. 

Step further.

I do this until I reach the bottom of the stairs. The last one. The light from the next room is brighter now, beckoning me to enter. Then I imagine myself turning to look up at the words which line the stairwell: Fear, Rage, PTSD, Sorrow, Ego, Pride, Shame, Self-hatred. Whatever has come up and been pulled out.

“Thank you,” I tell them silently. “I know you are just trying to protect me, but I will be okay.”

Sometimes I must repeat this exercise over and over again, but eventually it works. I do at some point get to sleep. I do feel better for at least a little while. 

What I have is a condition. I think of it as a nervous disorder. PTSD is not picky; it does not care how or why you sustained the injury. It is largely incurable, though there are treatments that help. I know to avoid the obvious things like fireworks and large crowds. I don’t like new cars–too many beeps–and I hate that weird light-flashing thing in the sideview mirrors. I no longer drive in the dark on unfamiliar routes and so avoid the risk of getting lost and becoming disoriented. My friends pre-screen movies for me to check for emotional or physical violence. 

I have enjoyed a long and interesting career, and PTSD has never gotten in the way. Acting is comforting, a respite inside the mind and body of a person who is separate but also a part of me. I have a wonderful life, and most of my days are joyful. The episodes are rare these days, and I have many helpful resources to turn to. The condition does not define me. It’s something I have, not who I am. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought I would share this truth because there are so many of us coping with trauma (which means too many). It is important to know that you are not alone.

Once I understood what was happening, I immediately contacted Michael, my PTSD specialist, and got some help. Soon the fog began to lift. Things are getting clearer. Eventually my sleep will be sounder, the music in my head subdued. I will drive again with confidence … albeit in the slow lane.

I am fine, or I will be.

It was around 1984. I had become deeply involved in the fight to help persons living with, and at that time still dying of, AIDS. 

“What happened to you?” Peter asked me. 

We were at St. Peter’s in NYC, working late. MOMENTUM, the AIDS program we co-founded with a handful of others a year before, was in dire need of funding. Our resources were running low just as the number of people who needed them was growing exponentially.

“What do you mean?”

“You are twenty-four years old, you are a beautiful girl, and you are here at 1 in the morning writing grant proposals with me, trying to feed and clothe a bunch of guys you don’t even know. It’s not normal. Something happened to you.”

“I really can’t talk about that. Trust me, you don’t want me to.”

“Why are you here? Why give so much?”

I cannot possibly remember how I answered, but this is how I felt:

It was in my body. The trauma of AIDS entered my whole being one fateful night when I volunteered to serve Thanksgiving dinner in the village. The young men who attended were terribly ill, many of them disfigured with Kaposi Sarcoma and other crippling effects of the disease. Life expectancy for people in the early days of the crisis was 6 to 8 months. As soon as I laid eyes on and held hands with them, those guys were a part of me. I deeply felt their pain, shock, and terror. I could not live with that if I was not trying to make it better. I had to help. I HAD TO HELP.

There it is: the lemonade.

All of us have experienced trauma. All of us have dark histories and bad dreams, but those are often our biggest gifts. Everyone wants to be cool, to be shiny and perfect so that people will regard us highly. We are taught to strive to appear calm and confident, but it is our terrible secrets that often bring us to the best in ourselves. 

It takes eleven minutes to go door to door from my house to where my sisters live. They have a giant tree in the backyard that sports a bounteous crop of lemons. I can have as many as I need, whenever I need them.

How’s that for luck? There are blessings all around us.

P.S. I sent this article to Laura to ask her permission to publish it. Her response perfectly illustrates both the validity and fragility of memory:

“It is fine, but just to clarify it was at the dentist office. They were doing x-rays for a root canal, and when the doctor said that I actually had a memory of the event and broke into tears, and she held me in her arms ‘cuz she understood without even having to say words. It was a pretty spectacular and awful moment all at once.”

Love you sis’.

On we go …