Functioning as an adult

Functioning as an adult

Functioning as an adult and notes from a violin teacher and her 6 year old student, W

I love W

W greeted me on the floor, writhing and whining Poor Smigel, it burns, it burns, it burns us. My guess is he wasn't into having a lesson. I don't blame him. It's hard work and it's like first getting into the pool when you're standing on the damp concrete, shivering in your warm dry swim suit. You dread that first plunge because it always feels cold, but once you're in the water, it's heaven. W slithered up the entire flight of stairs, still moaning and whining. The lesson proceeded normally after that, except at one point he asked me to hold his violin and bow, then started madly scratching his legs. This went on for a full minute and then I asked him if he was okay. He said today is my itching day. I said What do you mean, your itching day? He said Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays are my itching days. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are B's itching days. (B is W's best friend.) I said What's wrong with Friday and Saturday? W patiently explained that those are not itching days. I told him I didn't quite understand, so he picked up a pawn and a knight from the chessboard that's always on the floor, moved them strategically and tried to explain it to me that way. I still didn't get it but I respect his determination to make me understand. After the lesson, W offered me a piece of lemon candy called a Mega Warhead. It was so sour I think it took off the lining of my mouth, but I didn't let on that I was in pain. As I was leaving, W. said WAIT! and he ran into his room and came out with a small rubber chicken. He held it up and said BACH! BACH! BACH! BACH!

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I called my medical clinic this week and asked if they could refer me to a psychiatrist they asked if I was okay but it was more like OH DEAR JESUS OH MY GOD SECURITY!!! And I told them I was just feeling a little bit manic because there was water in my house and there were men in my house every day banging with actual hammers and the loud jet engine fans in my closet and in the other bedroom running 24 hours a day and sometimes I wonder what my electric bill is going to be because I am a functioning adult and I always look closely at my electric bill and compare it to the previous month and those fans running all the time running in my ears in my bones down to my feet but especially bouncing around in my brain are going to be expensive.

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I love W

I was 15 minutes late to W's lesson tonight because of a traffic snarl. He was a bit frantic when I got there, but I told him I would cut the lesson short if he worked very, very hard. W said your hair is getting whiter. I told him yes, yes it is. We didn't talk much after that. We were both tired. We just played Bach, and watched his bow arm. Watching his bow arm consists of me reaching over and stopping his bow when he gets to the tip, which is when the bow strays out over the fingerboard. This usually makes him giggle, but today it frustrated him. I kept doing it because if you practice the violin wrong, you learn bad habits that can take a lifetime to undo, if ever. Tissue memory, muscle memory, the body remembers. (This is not an exaggeration. Bowing is the most difficult part of playing the violin and I know accomplished musicians who have never learned it properly.) After our lesson, W took me into his bedroom to show me his brand new bed. It's tall. W said I want stairs to climb into it. The bed is covered with a beautiful quilt with deep blue and bright yellow stars. It's the first time he's asked me to come into his room, the first time he's invited me anywhere in the house except the foyer and the room in which we practice. It felt like a gift.

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The medical clinic told me that Washington does not refer Medicare patients or anyone else to psychiatrists which is odd considering they have referred me to a fancy pants dermatologist and gastroenterologist. Even though I am a functioning adult I don’t have any kind of insurance except for Medicare and my car because I am still only one or two rungs up on the functioning adult ladder. In my not to distant past I never checked the previous month on the electric bill because I was too poor to function as an adult I was a frightened child all the time.

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I love W

W: Do you want to hear my evil laugh? Me: After you play the Bach. W and I discuss a lot of things during his violin lesson. We've talked about poetry, painting, dance, sculpture, (his favorite story is me getting thrown out of the museum for sticking my fingers in Balzac's eyeholes) architecture, mathematics, history, science, running, swimming, and the ever looming OUTSIDE (he’s terrified of the OUTSIDE.) We talk about insects, books, composers, color, clouds, boats, snails and the fact that making a lanyard is never going to really be a fun thing to do. Today, W had this note for me: WRTING MAKES ME NRVS I had to agree. He then showed me how 2+2 = a fish, and how 7+7+7+7 = a window. I'd show you, but you need a pencil and a piece of paper. He told me that his friend D got kissed on the L by a girl. (L = lips.) He also found a picture in one of his father's books, and he showed it to me and told me it was Mr. Bach, when in fact it was Mary Queen of Scots, but I told him I could see his point even though he was about 100 years off, and this made me laugh so hard that W became slightly alarmed, and then he laughed so hard that a big long piece of spit fell out of his bottom lip onto his violin. I looked away and said I didn't see anything as he wiped it up. Our lesson was pretty much over at that point.

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You can see how much better I am mentally these days. I actually live in a house purchased with money my dead horrible mother left me in her will. I no longer have a slumlord knocking at my door telling me he’s raising the rent again. I get a haircut at least twice a year. My clothes all fit and I have a Vitamix. You can’t get more functioning adult than that. My doctor called me after the alarming no I’m not crazy I just need a referral phone call to my clinic and insisted I come in the next afternoon. I had to say yes. I have a terrible fear of talking to regulation physicians about being bipolar 1 and having CPTSD agoraphobia panic attacks and severe anxiety. Regulation physicians really don’t get it and I have a secret feeling that they all want to lock me up because when I’m nervous I have a real knack for talking fast then stumbling over my tongue while doing so. My darling Johnny Cash Psychiatrist wanted to lock me up “for a while just a little while” and I asked him if I could write in there because I was working on Cadaver Dogs and he said no nope no way I might stab a crayon into my eyeball so I told him to fuck off. I think I scared him because I had a bad panic attack once in his office. I believe my fear is or might be well founded. That one flew over the cuckoo’s nest thing abides deep in my soul like Jesus and all his saints especially St. Lucy who scooped her own damn eyeballs out perhaps with a crayon and on walked around with them on a plate like they were Dilettante Chocolates. They were probably lock her up too!

Side note: Dilettante Chocolates is a chocolatier that used to be in Seattle and they are no more though my very soul longs for them. I have never found a better piece of chocolate ever.

I took my adult son with me to the doctor as my ADVOCATE because I learned from Elizabeth Aquino that if you ask for an ADVOCATE they pay better attention to you. I also walked right past the ever present scale and when the winged monkey nurse asked me to step up I said I won’t be doing that today and sailed right into the doctor’s office. Please read Elizabeth Aquino brilliant writing @elizabethaquino

Side note 2: Did you know that you all of you can skip the scale at your doctor’s office if it makes you uncomfortable? They make me uncomfortable because I was shamed for my weight for my entire childhood and most of my adulthood. If you skip the scale the bloody weigh in because you despise it or it terrifies you as it does me you won’t be arrested or anything. Nothing will happen! I didn’t figure this out until I was 55 years old.

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I love W

Today at W's lesson, I had him write a poem for J.S. Bach whose birthday is tomorrow. Here it is.

Dear Mr. Bach,
Happy birthday.
Have a good B.day.
Why did you have 22 children?
Did you play piano?
You'd look good in a hot-pink wig,
but first try it on.
Why did you write so many minuets?
You'd also look good in a work suit.
I want to be famous like you.

Your friend,
J.S.W.

Later on during the same lesson:

Me: Okay, Feral Bunny, quit stalling.
W: What will happen if I don't?
Me: I'll get cranky.
W: Will you turn into a feral bear and eat everyone?
Me: No, I'm a vegetarian.
W: Then you'll only eat vegetarians?

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When I got to the doctor’s office yesterday as a functioning adult meaning both shoes on the correct feet and my teeth in and my hair combed with my tall and muscular son who had a look on his face that said don’t fuck with my mom a son who knows what manic looks like (I’m so sorry to say my darling son I’m sorry I ever made you witness that) and who also knows exactly what meds I take etc. a son who knows more about psychiatry that any of those clinic yahoos. I mean he was fully prepared to be my ADVOCATE and you could tell the way the winged monkey nurse kind of squeezed away from us that she knew we meant business. I had to tell her everything about the water heater exploding and the subsequent flood and the hammering and the men in the house and my CPTSD getting massively triggered the whole goddamn drama as she typed squeezed away in her corner and she typed it all which is kind of weird but my clinic has a portal any patient can enter to read appointment notes and you know how I love portals. I could hear my voice rattling out of my mouth as it does when I am very nervous or when I am manic or approaching mania and I can’t make it stop. Once my doctor came in he rearranged my meds giving me more Tegretol (hilariously he was the one who made me take less Tegretol last year) and a little more trazodone so I can sleep I hope. Tegretol is my bipolar control drug. He told me that he doesn’t think the psychiatrist I am trying to contact as a functioning adult accepts patients who aren’t “locked up” though when I spoke to his nurse she told me he would be accepting new Medicare patients at the end of November. My doctor told me to come back in two weeks to see how the new meds are working but I told him we both knew that was not going to happen. In the end I was not sent to any 1950s lock up places where they put crazy people. I came right home and lay in my bed and listened to the goddamn fans in my closet that sound like jet engines.

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I love W

Tonight W and I mostly talked. We were both tired and I was late. He had forgotten all his music vocabulary words from previous weeks, but quickly learned the subtle and difficult bow marking that looks like this // that means a very slight lift of the bow, not even a real lift, more like a breath, like your bow is taking a breath. He understood immediately what I was saying and played it perfectly. As I was leaving, he reached down the back of his pants and said I'M GIVING MYSELF A WEDGIE! I asked why, and he said Because it feels good.

Well. There it is.

Thank you Darklings if you have read this far. You each get a gold star sticker.