Love in Dark Settings

What was happening during this time: My parents were trying to find a school that would take me in. They weren't succeeding.

Background to my retro daily life entries

* * * 23 September 1975: My problems at school and my time at a psychiatric ward.

I have promised myself I'd tell you about the "outside world," so here goes.

My troubles started in fourth grade when I was bussed to John Carroll [Elementary School] in Landover. The school itself was okay. And [the] kids were nice too. It was me that was out of place.

First, I started dropping out of P.E. [physical education]. Then I started getting in fights, with a boy named Craig in particular. Then came the downfall. I started reading books under my desk during lessons.

[I was too kind here to the school system. What I didn't say was that, with a few exceptions, I was given appallingly boring schoolwork throughout elementary school. My primary-school "education" culminated with me being assigned an exercise - at age eleven, shortly before I began reading Shakespeare at home, for fun - in which I was supposed to write out sentences (for example, "I went to the doctor today") and decide which punctuation mark should be placed at the end of them: period, question mark, or exclamation point. Not surprisingly, I rebelled against such insipid lessons, preferring to read novels during classtime. On the other hand, see below an indicator that, when provided with the opportunity, I wasn't willing to do more difficult work.]

Fifth grade was no better. Grades dropped lower, and I added a new trouble to my lists. I started attacking my teachers.

Last year was the ultimate. Even though I had my favorite teacher, Mr. DiGennaro, my work went lower and lower. Finally the schools decided to send me back to Center [School in Greenbelt]. But that was no better. Oh, the social jazz was all right. Except for a girl named Marie, I had no problems making friends. It was the work. My new teacher, Mrs. Korden, gave me twice as much work that was twice as hard. I just couldn't stand the load. I ran away from school, got suspended, came back, and ran away again. I left school in early May with a month and a half to go.

Meanwhile, I was having problems out of school. In February I entered Holy Cross Hospital of Silver Spring. I stayed there five days. (I only had one test [a CT scan] during that time, and that was on the first day), and came out sick, probably from my unbalanced diet. (I thought that hospitals were supposed to make you well, not sick!)

Later, in my psychiatrist's office (Dr. Palmer, a real fink!), I was told that part of the functioning of part of my brain wasn't working, which was the reason for my bad temper. I was, technically, "emotionally disturbed."

[A long explanation is needed here, because the factor underlying this diagnosis would remain throughout my childhood. You're going to see scattered references to it in all of my childhood journals, so I might as well give the full story here.

As a college student, I was told by another psychiatrist (who had examined my prior medical records) that my brain synapses weren't working properly, preventing my brain from sending the proper signals to shut down strong emotions, such as anger or depression. I was also told that I could train my brain to function properly, in the same manner that stroke victims train certain parts of the brain to take over work that other parts of the brain have ceased to do. I don't know whether or not the bit about the synapses was true, but I certainly had uncontrollable anger and depressions at age twelve, and I did have to learn ways to deal with that.

These days, the "emotionally disturbed" are called the "emotionally disabled." Even without that helpful terminology, I mentally made the connection between my condition and the conditions of other disabled people, and gobbled up every book I could find in the library on disabilities . . . which came in handy many years later, when I unexpectedly became partially sighted.

At any rate, I was struggling with two problems at age twelve: uncontrollable anger (sometimes manifesting itself in violence) and uncontrollable depression. My mother told me years later that I was diagnosed only as clinically depressed, not as a manic-depressive (which is called bipolar disorder these days). However, I have the right genes for manic depression, and all of my symptoms pointed in that direction. (As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, "The most extreme manifestations of these two mood disturbances are, in the manic phase, violence against others, and, in the depressive, suicide.") To this day, I still go through the classic bipolar high-low-high cycle, though to a much lesser degree than when I was a child.

I had a few unusual mental episodes around ages eleven and twelve - semi-trances and a strong feeling that the creations of my "pretend" world were real, even though I objectively knew they weren't - that might be called mildly psychotic (and were diagnosed as such by my psychiatrists) or might be called shamanistic, depending on which culture one is raised in. Since I was raised in a culture that taught me to be ashamed of not having full control over my conscious mind's processes, I set about ridding myself of these tendencies, which I was able to do within a short time. (I don't really miss those episodes very much; having a Muse is a much pleasanter version of them.) That was my only flirtation with psychosis; after age thirteen, I was functional enough as a manic depressive that, by today's terminology, I would probably have been labelled as having a less severe form of manic depression.

By "less severe," I mean in relation to what many others with this disease suffer; for nearly twenty years, I spent several days each month unable to leave my bed because I was crying non-stop from my depressions. I used to schedule my schoolwork for the days of the month when I was least likely to feel suicidal.

I went through a series of therapists, all of whom made matters worse rather than better. (That I portray psychology in a positive fashion in The Eternal Dungeon is a tribute to my Muse's faith in human potential. I certainly never encountered good psychology as a child.) I was never placed on anti-depressant medication. I don't know why this was so when I was a child, but as a college student I tried an anti-depressant, and it put me to sleep for twenty-four hours straight. I've got the sort of body that responds strongly to medications' side effects, so anti-depressants probably wouldn't have been the best solution in my case.

In the month that I met Doug - September 1990 - the clinical depressions stopped abruptly. They never returned, even when I went through very bleak times in subsequent years. My best guess for the cause of this unexpected change is that loneliness may have been triggering many of my depressions until then. Perhaps, during that "honeymoon period" right after I met Doug, my mind was able to train itself not to be clinically depressed. Or maybe I just received a miracle cure. :)

My manic tendencies (which I wasn't fully aware of as a child, since they were overshadowed by my depressions) became the greater problem after that. To this day, I'm hypomanic whenever I receive certain triggers, such as going on the Internet. However, my hypomania is something that I'm getting better at regulating, now that I've identified most of the triggers.

As for my uncontrollable anger: I think I can partially thank the staff of my seventh-grade school for helping me deal with that. I do know that I put a heck of a lot of hard work as a child into calming myself down whenever I got angry. As a result, my uncontrollable anger gradually disappeared over the years, along with my tendencies toward violence.

Now you can see where certain of my story plotlines came from. :)]

After I left school in early May my parents put me back in the hospital, the psychiatric section this time, while they decided what to do with me (whether to throw me out or not, I suppose). The ten days I spent there were murder. The youngest [patient] there was 16, and he left the day after I came. He did warn me, though, "It seems nice now, but when you've been here five days, you'll be wanting to get out." And, though I didn't believe him then, he was right.

[Thirty years later, my mother still had tremendous feelings of guilt over this episode. Needless to say, my parents weren't deciding whether to get rid of me; they had been medically advised to place me in a psychiatric ward for observation. My main problem in the ward was the same problem that had led me to read books under my desk at school: sheer boredom. I, an inveterate bookworm, had been placed in a locked ward with no children's books. However, I partially overcame that problem, as noted below.]

But I'm glad now that I went there. For one thing I learned a new card game (Scat). For another thing, I found a great book, When Eight Bells Toll, by Alistair MacLean. [This was a well-written spy novel filled with lots of guns and scenes of violence. I'm still wondering who decided to place that book in a psychiatric ward.]

* * * 24 September 1975: Loading on the guilt trip to school officials.

I had planned to tell you yesterday whether I was to be interviewed by the school, but mother convinced me to put off her calling another day, so I'll go ahead and read you the letter I wrote them. It goes:

Monday, September 22, '75

Dear Sir

Three weeks have passed now since school started, all my friends (if you want to get technical about it, I'll say neighbors; I have very few close friends) are in school. I've waited three weeks, and today I asked my mother for the address of your school.

I realize you have many children waiting who need more help than me, and I sympathize with you.

If you choose not to help a child who attacks [their] teachers, fights with other kids, runs away from school, and didn't do school work, that's your decision. I can't interfere.

However, if, years from now, I get jailed for stealing or drugs, one of the first things I'm going to do is write to tell you so. I'll let your conscience do the rest.

Yours truly,
HEP

Neat, huh?

Great news! Mother just told me that the school's going to interview me on October 28.

[The school that was spared receiving my letter was Devereux, a school for the emotionally disturbed in Pennsylvania. Its main claim to fame is that Sylvester Stallone was one of its graduates. My parents were being forced to look as far afield as Pennsylvania because my county school system wouldn't allow me back in, and the county had no special schools for the emotionally disturbed.]

* * * 6 October 1975: Tutor.

Tutor coming tomorrow. Please stay tuned to this diary for further announcements.

* * * 4 June 1976: A new school.

A few things have changed in the half year you've been lost [i.e. my Blue Diary had gone missing]. I am presently in Cheltenham Center, a spec ed school. [Cheltenham Center was a "special education" school located in Cheltenham, Maryland, which is in the southern part of my county. Later renamed RICA Cheltenham - and not to be confused with this notorious boys' village, whose grounds we were located on - Cheltenham Center was started in 1976 for emotionally disturbed kids aged twelve to eighteen. I was one of the first two students to attend.] I have different ideas now, and am more subdued. I have gentled that struggle inside me (though by all means it hasn't stopped), and I've found some answers. I am at the moment on my way to the Virginia Mountains to write and meditate. Life is beautiful.