Struggling For Purchase & Free Agency

A Great Depression: A Guy’s Field Guide to Therapists

Two psychologists meet at their 20th college reunion. One of them looks like he just graduated while the other psychologist looks old and withered. The older one asks the other, “What’s your secret? Listening to other people’s problems every day, all day long, for years has made an old man of me.”

The younger-looking one looks at his old friend incredulously and asks, “You listen?”

The mental health system has not been sympathetic towards me. For years I sought help only to slide ever more quickly down the slippery slope of depression, anger and despair. I thought it was me until I found therapists I could relate to and who treated me with respect, dignity and I began to draw comparisons.

Below are some suggestions based on my personal experience.

• The major difference between a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a mental health counselor and a therapist is money. The more they charge you the more they feel like they can treat you like shit. One of my emotional breakthroughs came during eight sessions with an intern who charged me $10 a session. Not yet jaded by insurance companies who made her feel like she was working in a factory she listened at a level few people have ever listened to me. Because she was a student, her supervisor sat quietly nearby rarely interjecting and only after he asked my permission. It was a profound experience to be the center of attention without being judged, criticized or shamed.

 Going to a college intern is like going to a barber college. It works as long as you’re not too picky about your appearance. And if they screw it up they don’t charge you.

On the issue of money: if you are a private pay patient you will be treated better than someone referred by your insurance company. After a session a private pay client writes out a check in the therapists’ name and they can pocket the proceeds without filling out any pesky forms. They love it.

• If you go to couple’s therapy with your wife you will be labeled the “presenting problem.” This means its all your fault. Get used to it, deal with it and become the most rational person in the room. Anything you do that displays anger, frustration or defensiveness will work against you. Take notes. Nothing rattles a therapist more than a client who takes more notes than they do. Once the initial sessions are completed you can approach the situation on your own terms.

When the therapist begins to take your side your wife (partner) will say, “Don’t you think he’s too young (old, inexperienced, charges too much)?

• Choosing a good therapist is like hiring a good mechanic, plumber or roofer: word of mouth. It’s not like finding a “good” lawyer because there aren’t any. You want a nuts and bolts guy not a dilettante. Within the first five minutes after they close the door you will know.

• You don’t have to tell anyone you are seeing a therapist, including your wife or your family. Otherwise, you will be sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and your spouse will announce: “Ray’s in therapy and he recently recalled his mother wanted to stop breast feeding so she rubbed Tabasco sauce on her nipples.”

Awkward.

 For the 50 minutes you are out of contact say you were at the gym, the doctor’s, the dentist or in a meeting.

• Mental illness is a monster. Give it a home. Don’t deny it’s existence because it will only make it stronger. Going into therapy is acceptance the monster lives within us. Nonetheless it is a fearful place but we have all faced fear before. The only thing a therapist does is help us face that fear. Never fear the question: “What’s wrong with me?” because you fear the answer.

 

With the help of a skilled therapist I understood I had to embrace my darkness so I could see the light.

 

 

 

 

Too Young for Medicare

For the past three years I have been a part of a group called Wise Elders/Jubilados. The median age is 75 with one participant who last year turned 90. (“Jubilados” is a Spanish term used to refer to those who are retired.)

The group has been meeting every Friday for the past 15 years.

After the last meeting I asked my self: As I’m getting older am I getting wiser?

In countless meetings of this group I have listened to and participated in discussions involving children, money, books, movies, politics and pets as well as innumerable other subjects that make up our daily lives.

When I began attending Wise Elders/Jubilados I recognized the elderly have been through more that I have (economic depressions, natural disasters, wars, death of family members) so I thought it would be a good idea if I listened to them.

Some people in the group are cranky, shy, introspective, irritating, opinionated, creative, annoying and some can’t stay focused. It occurred to me if I could climb into a time machine and travel back 50, 60, even 70 years and look up these people when they were youngsters and teenagers I would find them cranky, shy, introspective, etc…

In the same way, I suspect, my maternal grandmother was kind and empathic as a small child as she was when she died at the age of 84. My paternal grandfather was a non-stop chatter box from the time he awoke until he lay down to sleep. “He was born talking,” his sons would say. A great uncle was extremely shy and barely uttered a word to me but when he did he was soothing and encouraging. Several aunts were compassionate and thoughtful throughout the time I knew them.

In questioning why I get together with people from a previous generation which is fast disappearing (I will be 63 next month) the only reason I could come up with was “a search for wisdom” which quickly turned maudlin and self-satisfying. Wanting to learn how to “grow old gracefully” also fell into the same categories.

The group has had discussions on wisdom and what it may mean but I can’t recall what was said. I think it’s because “wisdom” is an abstract principle and can lead to bland generalities and such discussions are fairly unproductive. I don’t doubt somewhere out there is a satisfying definition of wisdom that isn’t pseudo-profound explained by someone without a bottomless sense of their own self-infatuation.

To me wisdom is like pornography: I can’t explain it but I know it when I see it.

I have met famous wise guys such as Ram Dass and the Dalai Lama. I assume if I didn’t know who they were when I met them my impression would have been they are simple, humble human beings. They are also funny. What is good is wisdom without a few yuks?

My fellowship in this group has made me aware of how surrounded I am by the elderly. These days I can’t swing a stick in a crowd without hitting one on their spotted noggin. They’re all over. Many of them are working because they have to. Some of them doze at a stoplight. Standing under a huge sign in red letters that blares “BORDERS” an elderly woman with a Queen Elizabeth-size purse lightly touches my arm as I’m about to walk in and whispers, “Is this Borders?”

I have been looking for wisdom as a point of self-introspection and self-mastery. If I look in the right places I find it. Like the group in a California assisted-living facility who each Friday occupy a street corner (sometimes 60 strong) and wave hand-painted signs protesting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Afterwards they go back to their cottages and take a nap.

The “Ragin’ Grandmas” take over military recruitment offices to object to the active recruitment of high school students and the poor and they stay until they are arrested and carted off in their walkers and wheelchairs.

Then there’s Granny D who at the age of 89 walked 3,000 miles across the United States, while dealing with emphysema, severe arthritis, hearing aids (“The damn things are so small!”) and dentures to support campaign finance reform. (Campaign finance reform???)

The most compelling story is of the wise men of the Moken tribe in Indonesia who saw a change in the way the tide went out and listened to how the cicadas buzzed and told their people to climb a mountain hours before the Tsunami of 2003 hit and they saved thousands of lives.

I think wisdom is valued but we may not value the elderly. We want wisdom to be quantifiable, measured, logic-based and linear. What I have come to experience in hanging with the elderly is that wisdom is intuitive. A process rather than a result. It’s why there are wise seven-year-olds.

Also there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Rather like the difference between cute and beautiful. Cute I forget by the time I turn the corner. Beautiful takes up residence in my subconscious.

Now I realize my participation in Wise Elders/Jubilados was an attempt at a short-cut to wisdom. If I befriend a group of old people maybe they will shed some wisdom and it will stick to my sweater. Maybe if I listen to these people I can avoid some mistakes and I won’t turn into a dead-end.

Didn’t work.

It’s like going to a bookstore and looking for a title: How To Be Wise. My quest for wisdom has been a failure. It has been self-absorbed and indulgent.

Instead what I have found is a group of caring, decent, well-meaning people who live lives of significance and poignancy. They have taught me to accept and listen. Their stories are interesting, fascinating and luminous. They are patient and passionate. They have refined their lives to things that matter after decades of personal struggle. All of them plan to go kicking and screaming.

That is now my plan too. When I have my first stroke I’ll be sitting in my rocker on my front porch with a blanket on my lap, shaking my cane at passing traffic: “Slow down, you sons-of-bitches!”

For me the lesson learned is not how to acquire wisdom but to look forward to just getting old.

Knob Goblins Fear My Moxie

In my school pictures I am always smiling. My mother used to cut my hair so it always looked like she had used blunt shears and a cracked mirror.

I grew up among farmers and ranchers, Catholics, Hispanics, migrant workers:

Salt of the Earth.

I didn't see an African-American until I was 13 years old. I didn't know what
a Jew was until high school. I thought gays were men who were naturally happy and liked to dance.

I didn't eat in a restaurant until I was 16. "WHY THE HELL SHOULD WE GO TO A RESTAURANT?" my Dad would scream. "We got food right here!" 

My parents didn't have children so they could play with them. My only brother was 11 years older and paid me scant attention.

 

My brother, Ernest Jr., dyslexic and colorblind,
booked himself on a Mexican cruise
and once on board discovered the ship was bound for Norway.

I was small, skinny, asthmatic, wore glasses and a real smart ass. In fact that became my occupation. Born with web fingers on my right hand I had an operation at four-years-old to separate them. In the third grade some foul smelling, mouth-breathing farm boy asked me, "What's wrong with your hand?"

"What's wrong with your face?" I said.

POW!!!  In a second we were both rolling around in the dirt school yard.

My friends had nicknames like: Feo (Ugly), Chino (Chinaman), Gordo (Fatso) Chango (Monkey) and Flaco (Skinny).

When a friend saw this family portrait she asked,
"Where did you grow up? New Jersey?
This is the Corleone Family or the Sopranos."

I wanted to live in a suburb with Ward and June Cleaver. Instead I was living with the Manson Family.

The days would consist of overwhelming

Or deafening silence.

However it was easy to believe my own delusions.

And I still do.

I think it's why I'm smiling in all those early pictures.

A Great Depression: The Early Years

By the time I walked into the therapists' office I had had enough...

Seventeen years ago I was given a clinical diagnosis of manic depression. I had no idea what it meant.

Getting my life in order had been on my To Do List for some time. Now here I was sitting on the therapist’s couch telling him about failed relationships, countless jobs, drinking and smoking and a general feeling of worthlessness.

"So what else can you tell me about this?” he said. I have always found this question so inadequate it makes me foam at the mouth.

But he laid it out in no uncertain terms: I was mentally ill. Up until that moment I had been living in an unarticulated madness.

Great. I’m a failure and I’m crazy too?

Here's what happened 47 years ago...

***

My grandfather had been a deputy sheriff in the late 40s and early 50s. In those days deputies were patronage jobs so there was no training or experience necessary. The town sheriff simply handed you a badge and you went out and bought your own gun. My grandfather's uniform was a khaki shirt with khaki pants.

Under those stringent requirements I could have joined at the age of 10.

I visited my maternal grandparents frequently and I knew where the gun and badge were kept in the dining room. Next to the silverware. When no one was around I would slowly open the drawer and stroke the gold shield and feel the blue steel of the .38 revolver.

 

A box of Winchester bullets and the holster were also in the drawer.

When my grandfather died my older brother asked for the gun and badge.

In the early Sixties my parents separated. I went to live with my Mom. After several months they reconciled and made the decision to move to California. My Dad's family had moved to Los Angeles after the Second World War and my brother moved out there after getting out of the Army.

When we arrived in LA I was sent off by myself to enroll in the nearest high school. After several weeks things returned to normal, in that my parents were drinking heavily and constantly fighting. One day my Mom bought a bus ticket and went back to New Mexico.

My Dad wandered around the house singing the words to a Roy Clark song:

“Thank God and Greyhound, you’re gone

That load on my mind got lighter when you got on

That shiny old bus is a beautiful sight

With the black smoke a-rollin’ up around the tail light

It may sound kind of cruel but I’ve been silent too long

Thank God and Greyhound, you're gone.”

He hung around for a few days more and then drove back hot on the trail of my Mom to finish the argument they had started.

I stayed.

First I was sent to live with my paternal grandparents and later with my brother.

Life with my brother was bleak. Although he lived two miles from the beach he never went there. Each day after riding three buses from school I had to wait for him because he refused to give me a key to his apartment. After work he would warm up a TV dinner and sit in front of the television.  He had no friends and the phone never rang. I would sit in the spare bedroom and read. On weekends he would sleep, constantly.

 

My brother's apartment in Redondo Beach

One Saturday morning I left the apartment and spent the day at the beach. When I got back and knocked at the door he was in a complete rage. No reason, he was just pissed. Stomping into my bedroom he grabbed some of my clothes and threw them out the door. "Get out," he screamed. "Get out and don't come back!"

Terrified I started to leave, stopped, and said I needed to get my money. I had a grand total of $7.23. While I was doing this I could hear him banging around in the kitchen, yelling at someone who wasn't there. As I passed his bedroom I ducked in and got my grandfather's gun.

I was 15 years old.

It was Saturday night and the boardwalk was teeming with college students partying. That night I walked for miles, back and forth, not knowing what to do. As the night wore on the crowds disappeared as the bars closed. The beach was deserted. A bonfire still burned next to a refinery and I sat down to stay warm.

 

A refinery at Torrance Beach

I took the gun out my pocket. After some effort the cylinder flipped open. Three bullets. Spinning the cylinder as I had seen my grandfather do I slammed it shut.

The barrel felt cold against my temple. I pulled the trigger.

Click!

Nothing.

I released the cylinder again and gave it a good hard spin.

Cock.

Temple.

Click!!

Nothing.

I stared at the contraption in my hand.

Spin.

Cock.

Temple.

Click?

Nothing.

Shit.

I hate it when I try to do something spontaneous and it doesn’t work out.

And that was it.

I got up, walked over to a nearby trash can and chucked the gun.

At five o'clock in the morning I knocked at my uncle's door. My aunt answered and she made up the couch for me. For the next three days I refused to talk. If someone addressed me I would stare them in the eye and not say a word. There was a thick glass wall between me and anything that might hurt me. For the first time in my life I felt as though I had some control.

***

And for the next 30-plus years that's what I did. The wall was so impenetrable, so  thick, built on such a solid foundation that no one could get through unless I let them and then it would be on my terms.

I seesawed from a manic phase to a depressive phase. While manic I was charming, creative, funny, engaged, sexy and vibrating with energy. In the depressive state I would stay in my bedroom for days, a Fortress of Solitude where no one could enter. I loved the manic part and used it to stave off the deep, dark depression which always came. Happiness was not something I could trust because it never lasted. But then I embraced the darkness and used my depression to isolate myself. And the more I isolated myself the more lonely I became.

Always I would crawl out of a depression and re-integrate myself into my family, friends and work. Other times I would wake up from a 12-hour nap and "Boing!" it would be gone. A hot shower, a change of clothes and I plunged back into the mania.

***

"I'm just tired of this," I said to the therapist sitting across from me. His elbows had been resting on his knees, leaning forward as I told him my story. Brow furrowed, lips thin from the tension he leaned back and took a deep breath.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said in the surly manner I found annoying but honest.

"Mania and depression are two sides of the same coin," he said. "It's curse is also it's promise. You will not feel this way forever."

I am not in the mood for ambiguity, I thought.

I never asked to be treated like this.

But I really wanted to believe him.

After all: that which didn’t kill me only postponed the inevitable.

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Dogs I have known

I sometimes go to the movies alone because I favor Samurai epics, sad French love stories and Norwegian independent films with misspelled subtitles.

Recently at a local art house I was standing in line to buy my ticket. In front of me was a woman with a dog on a leash. The dog, which looked like a Labrador mix, sat patiently heeled. The cute pooch also wore a yellow vest that stated "Assistance Service Dog: Please do not distract."

Of course my first impression was that the dog owner was blind but I'd never heard of a blind person going to the movies. As she paid for her ticket it was apparent she wasn't blind because she turned, looked at me, said "Hello" and smiled.

I walked over to where she and her dog were sitting in the lobby and asked if I could pet her dog. "Sure!" she said. "His name's Baxter." As I squatted down to scratch Baxter on the chest (dogs react defensively if you go for the top of their head) the dog shot a glance at his owner to make sure it was okay. I asked about the vest.

"I have epilepsy," the woman said. "Baxter can anticipate when I'm going to have an episode and he warns me. If he can't warn me in time and there are people around he brings one of them to me. If no one is around he lies next to me until it passes." She explained service dogs are used by autistics, those confined to a wheelchair and other disabled people who live alone but want companionship.

I watched them as they went into the theater and settled in.

It made me think of the dogs in my life. Certainly none of them were trained at any level. In fact, most of them just showed up at our doorstep and stayed after I fed them.

Below are my sketches of some of the dogs who have adopted me.

Hitler was my first dog. One day one of my Dad's customer's came by his gas station with a box of puppies. Hitler was there to greet me after school, splay-footed and full of energy. He was a garage rat, never going into the house. Mostly he slept under cars and tractors giving his coat a fine sheen of motor oil and grease. He chugged behind me as I rode my bike on narrow country roads and two-lane blacktops. During summer vacations he was constantly by my side.

Sarge came along after Hitler committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a car. Sarge could eat bullies for breakfast and served as a four-legged bodyguard. When some kid stole my bike he sniffed him out and his father called my parents to say our dog wouldn't let them into their garage. He ate oil cans and pinto beans. I never saw him sleep. After disappearing for a couple of days he would saunter back. Sarge taught me about loyalty.

Rose turned out to be a puppy factory. She showed up pregnant and had her first litter on a 40-foot cotton trailer parked next to the garage. The pups went quickly to customers and family. But in short order the next gaggle arrived and it was harder to have them adopted. By the time the third squealing pack made their presence known my Dad was ready to "send her to the farm" as the phrase went. Luckily one of his customers knew a veterinarian who needed a tune-up. When the trade was completed the vet's Chevy ran like a top and Rose was barren.

Moco (Spanish for booger) drank beer from a hubcap and his farts would make your eyes water. He had the ability to sleep 23 hours, wake up wondering where he was, eat what was handy, circle his blanket four times and doze off.

"If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater. . . suggest that he wear a tail."

- Fran Lebowitz