Chapters of the Book will be posted as blog entries, showing on the left side of the screen, starting with Alienation at Work. Following is the Introduction.

Introduction

Monique Colver

 

We write this book with the best of intentions, and we relive it in order to move on. We’ve been through no more than many others, and our story is not so different from what can be found in a million communities. Attempts to quantify and qualify our experiences are pointless, but there is one fact that we can attest to: Mental illness sucks. As a corollary, mental illness is not the end of life. And you know what else? It’s okay to laugh at times. We did much of that during the worst of times and it’s what kept us, relatively speaking, sane.

We began this project long ago, when the schizophrenia and the borderline personality and the cutting and the depression without end first made their appearance. Or shortly thereafter. Most likely shortly thereafter, since, at the time everything started to fall apart, we were too busy coping with things falling apart. There is little time to deal with documentation at times like that.

 My ex-husband was schizo-affective. And borderline. Severe anxiety. Major depression. Or perhaps major anxiety and severe depression. I’m not always sure. OCD. And there are other diagnoses. He has managed to take bits and pieces of many mental illnesses and incorporate them into his very own, and we call them Stew Syndrome. His name is Stew, that’s why.

                                            

I wrote the following on November 4, 2004:

 

He’s at the gym. He just joined yesterday, he knew he needed to start regaining his physical health. He’s gotten heavier since he’s been ill, and has felt so badly because of his meds that he doesn’t get nearly enough physical exercise. When helping me move some furniture last week he became painfully exhausted quickly. So he has joined a gym, and he has promised to go several times a week, at least, in order to get back in shape somewhat. He’s only 33, after all.

 

He hasn’t been well, physically, for quite some time. The meds make him tired, he needs to sleep a lot, they cause him stomach problems, and eye problems, and it’s gotten so bad I don’t like for him to be out at night in the dark. It’s bad enough that when he does see things that aren’t there, it’s usually at night. Diminished eyesight in addition to that is certainly a good reason for him to stay close to home in the evening.

 

He hasn’t been well, mentally, for quite some time. Several years. I’ve about lost track. People ask me if he was like this when I married him. Well, uhm, no, he was not.

 

Does anyone know what causes mental illness? I don’t, but I’m not as concerned with what causes it as I am with what to do with it. I didn’t know, when it first appeared, what I was supposed to do, how to act, or what would happen. First he was depressed. Suicidal. Quit his job. Couldn’t do it. But he got another job and was doing well, and we’d moved from the wreck of a house we were renting into an apartment. Things seemed to be going okay.

“Seemed to be” is the operative phrase there, and has no basis in what was really going on. He was incredibly stressed, having trouble coping with pressure at work, feeling as if he couldn’t get anything right, having trouble concentrating. He was in school at the same time, finishing his B.S. at night. He was having trouble with relating to people.

 

One morning I walked into my kitchen, during the first week of a new temp job, and he was in the kitchen with a knife, and he was bleeding. It was the first time he’d cut himself. It wouldn’t be the last. I didn’t know what to do, what does one do when one’s spouse starts slicing himself? I took him to the ER. Hours later, after they arranged for him to have outpatient care daily for several weeks, I took him home. He said he’d be okay the rest of the day while I went to work. And he was.

 

I can’t even remember now the chronology, the series of events, when he had his psychotic breaks, which times were particularly bad, what sequence the crises came in, but they came quickly and they came over and over again, and it became an overwhelming task to just keep going. During a psychotic break he’d lash out. He lost touch with reality, with what was going on. We’d recently moved to a state where we knew no one, and I talked with his parents by telephone, and so did he, and they panicked, of course they did, none of it made any sense.

 

I didn’t think it ever would. His behavior resulted in an irreparable break in our relationship—irreparable, because he could not get better, and I had to make a decision that he would not be able to hurt me any more. So we split up by the end of that year.

 

He was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He was diagnosed, treated, retreated, spent time as an outpatient at the hospital where he’d go every day, and he lost the job he’d had as an underwriter, where he’d been doing well. He went on disability, private disability from the insurance company he worked at, and the reactions from his boss and his co-workers infuriated me. Made it worse. If someone were to go out sick for a “physical” reason, cancer or heart disease or something people can relate to, overtures would be made to the missing person. Nothing was done because no one knows how to act when someone has mental problems. And that, the apathy and the way his company treated him, made the situation worse. He was cut off from that also. All he had was me.

 

So I helped him as best as I could. Became his caretaker. His sometimes only link to reality. Sometimes his mother talks to me instead of to him because she doesn’t know what to say to him. I don’t like that, being in the middle, but if it helps I do it. His parents have been very supportive, have financially supported us as we’ve waded through the past couple of years when my primary goal was just to keep him safe, keep him off the streets, keep him alive, keep him from hurting himself.

 

People Ask Me

People often ask me, “Was he like that when you married him?” I don’t know why. It would be the ultimate in the “can I change my man to make him the way I want him” contest. No, when I met him he was funny, and smart, and motivated. He had a history of depression, but who doesn’t? Yes, I’m quite aware there are a few people who haven’t, but that’s more the exception than the rule, at least in my experience.

 

Perhaps I need to travel in new circles.

 

But no, he was not like that when I met him. I’m not quite that anxious to prove myself by remaking a person. It became obvious early on that there were certain behaviors that were troubling, but they were merely idiosyncrasies at that point. No big deal, no one’s perfect, and I have my own troubling behavior to deal with, so I’m not likely to point a finger at anyone.

 

But after we moved to Seattle, things went from bad to worse. His job was incredibly stressful. It involved working for a large home electronics store, interacting with people and customers and meeting sales quotas and all kinds of things he wasn’t accustomed to, nor inclined to by nature. So he quit and got another job, but it still wasn’t enough.

 

I can’t even say what happened first. There was suicidal ideation that he took himself to the ER for, severe depression, things of that nature, but nothing that was obviously psychotic. But he kept trying to be what he imagined was normal, and for the most part he was succeeding. He had a job where he was well liked and that appealed to his analytical nature. I had a job that did not appeal to me in the slightest, and I eventually walked out after several years. During the years I’d worked there I’d developed fibromyalgia, characterized by pain, exhaustion, and an inability to be as effective as I expected myself to be. I temped, then I started my own business. Though prior to that he’d had severe depression and suicidal ideation, it wasn’t until then that he became self-mutilating and psychotic. Sure, it was probably my fault – I’d say so, but I don’t have that much influence over anyone, so we can’t really blame me. I walked into the kitchen one morning and found him standing in the kitchen with a knife, with blood dripping off his arm. I took him to the hospital. He met with a social worker.

 

He had to go into outpatient treatment, which meant he had to be at the hospital every day. No work for six weeks. I tried to support him, both emotionally and financially. I was also in school working on a graduate degree. He used me as an excuse. I was neglecting him. I’d just gotten over a couple of years of being in pain from fibromyalgia (a condition which most certainly is not for certainty to be a lifelong problem, as I’m now symptom and pain free), and working as a temp, and considering going into business for myself.

 

After outpatient treatment he attempted to go back to work, and it worked for a short while. For a company that was primarily health care focused, his employers were rather unconcerned with his illness. Mental illness isn’t given the same degree of respect as physical ailments, and it frightens us in a way other chronic conditions don’t. He had people giving him contradictory messages, day after day. He was confused, frustrated, he didn’t know what to do. And he was in school too, trying to finish his Bachelors degree. As for his “evil” co-workers, I don’t think I ever had any illusions that anyone cared about him or what would happen to us, not after the first time when I had to go see his boss and tell him Stew was in the hospital. The response was rather like, “Yeah, well, good luck with that.” On the other hand, I don’t regard them as evil, as Stew does. Just uncaring. Just . . . uninformed. Just not interested. Like many people, they don’t know what to do or say when things like this happen. Do they think it’s contagious? Do they think it only happens to certain people? Do they understand how fragile the human mind is? Any human mind? Do they hope to avoid that knowledge by avoiding the evidence? Maybe. I don’t know. I like to think they’re just ignorant.

 

We limped along like this, barely functional, and then one day he snapped yet again. The details aren’t relevant. Maybe I just don’t like to talk about it. The psychotic break that accompanied this episode caught me off guard. He accused me of being against him. He went to his own little world where reality took on a whole new dimension. I didn’t know where he had gone, but he was most certainly not present as he had been before, when he was just slightly nutso, when he was just unable to cope. He was psychotic. He did not know me, except as the embodiment of evil who was trying to keep him from the woman he loved. Or women he loved – he was not particularly good at differentiating among them by that time. After his problems started he had developed a habit of coming home and crying because (insert name here, it varies) didn’t love him back, and how could he ever hope to get over her? As the patient wife who knew her husband was having serious emotional and mental problems, I tried to be helpful, but really . . . I was devastated of course. Since then, I’ve discovered the most amazing life partner, but naturally at the time I didn’t know that would happen, or could happen, and I was devastated by the loss. I had thought he was the one person who would not let me down. As a result, it took me a long time to learn to trust again, certain as I’ve been that if it happened once, it can certainly happen again, and would.

 

And we broke up. I could not be married to someone who imagined himself in love with other women. He couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be more supportive. He needed someone to help him, advise him, comfort him, and why shouldn’t it be his best friend? That was me. The best friend. I was also the wife, but that distinction seemed to mean nothing to him, so it ceased to mean anything to me. It just couldn’t be done. He was hurt when we “broke up,” and said I left him first (it was always a matter of contention, with him insisting that he never acted on any of his feelings, but that was, I’m certain, only for lack of an opportunity, so we just ignored it from then on). The emotional understanding necessary to make sense of it all was just not available to him. I believe this to be a borderline trait, as I’ve witnessed it elsewhere: the focus on oneself with an inability to see anyone else as anything other than as a supporting player in one’s own life story. I was supposed to understand how hurt he was that his feelings for other women weren’t returned, and I was supposed to help him deal with that. For quite a long while I didn’t have the external resources to understand that not everyone saw the world this way. Subjected to this attitude day after day, I became certain that I was only a supporting player in even my own life.

Supporting players don’t get the good parts.

 

Diagnoses were made. Treatment options established. He went on disability from his job and eventually lost the job altogether. I kept working in order to support us, while feeling as if I were now the ultimate outsider. What did I matter anymore? I learned to cope. I felt lonely, I made some bad choices, I learned from my mistakes, I learned how to handle his crises, I learned how to deal with nutso behavior. I learned how to comfort and sooth and be patient. I’ve never been very patient, so this was good experience for me. And I became the caretaker. There was no one else. His family was in California, too far away to see what he’d become, and often I thought that was for the best.

 

His mood shifts, for years, were sudden and unexplainable. He was all over the map some days, from exultation to severe despair, and I had no hope of keeping up without putting my own health at risk. 2003 is mostly a blur, 2002? What was 2002? Was it a year? Where was I in 2002? I couldn’t tell you. Perpetually off-balance, attempting equilibrium gave me no time to do anything but survive, and hide. I was ashamed, partly, and I felt alone. And yet I remember we laughed a lot. We made fun of things. We looked for stupid stuff to laugh at. That was part of survival too.

 

Part of me became lost in 2003. My attempts to keep him safe resulted in what I would characterize as a breakdown. I had the entire world to take care of on my own, and it became too much.

 

I had to drop out of grad school shortly after Stew became ill. I suppose I had some resentment for that. He managed, despite his illness, to keep going to school, while I had to drop out because I had too much to do – work, take care of him, support us. I lost a lot of time, I lost part of myself, I became nothing more than a means to an end. I refused to abandon him, and some people could not understand that. How could I leave someone to drown? He’d talk about ending up on the streets, another homeless crazy person, and I told him that was not going to happen. And it didn’t.

 

But enough with the introduction. The beginning is not nearly as important as the story itself. First, this important message from Stew . . .

 

______________________________________________________________

 

 

Introduction

Stewart Young

 

Welcome to my world. In these pages you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about several different mental illnesses. I’ve been diagnosed with major depression, severe anxiety, manic-depression, and borderline personality disorder. Though it hasn’t been officially diagnosed, it has been suggested that I might also suffer schizo-affective disorder. And although nobody has suggested or diagnosed it, I suffer many of the same symptoms that a schizophrenic would suffer. But, I must implore you, do not self-diagnose. It is imperative that you listen to what the doctors and experts say. The treatment regimen I’m on is for what I’ve been diagnosed with. I would never start a treatment regimen for an illness that I think I have, only for something that has been diagnosed by a doctor.

That, in and of itself, can be tricky. Since October of 2001 until today, I’ve had three M.D.s, two Ph.D.s, two MSWs, and three ARNPs treat me. I’m one of the lucky ones where most of the ten have agreed with the diagnoses. One of the ARNPs suggested I was something other than Borderline, but I decided to go with the odds and listen to the nine that seemed to agree.

 

But like I said, I was lucky. In some cases, Borderline is not as easily identified as it was in mine. In some cases, Borderline is a “catch all” bucket that all types of personality disorders are dumped into. The DSM-IV recognizes 11 separate Personality Disorders to include:

• Paranoid
• Schizoid
• Schizotypal
• Antisocial
• Borderline
• Histrionic
• Narcissistic
• Avoidant
• Dependent
• Obsessive-Compulsive
• and Personality Disorders Not Otherwise Specified
• (pdf.uhc.edu/what.php)

 Some psychiatrists (though fewer and fewer) do not recognize Borderline Personality Disorder as a true diagnosis. They feel the diagnosis is a “cop-out” and that more and different kinds of testing need to be used to further determine what is wrong with the patient. This flies in the face of conventional psychiatry as the DSM has listed Borderline Personality Disorder as a full-fledged diagnosis since the late 1970s/early 1980s.

 Just what is Borderline Personality Disorder? I’ve been told many things about it. One psychiatrist told me that it was being on the border between neurosis and psychosis. Okay, what does that mean? Remember the TV show, “Mad About You,” starring Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt? Everybody would agree that the characters played by Reiser and Hunt were neurotic – they tended to do things in a somewhat unconventional way. But they did things, and got their jobs done, and were able to have functional relationships with each other and with other people. Psychotics tend to do things in an unconventional way, but don’t get things done. There’s a break from reality. And relationships with other people are not at all functional. Thus, the Borderline bounces back and forth from being functional to being dysfunctional. The psychosis isn’t full blown – they can identify what is real and what isn’t, but they may choose not to. At least that’s one explanation.

 Another doctor told me that the phrase “Borderline” was quite the misnomer because Borderline Personality Disorder wasn’t actually on the border of anything. He suggested Generalized Personality Disorder would be a more appropriate, and possibly more useful, name for the disorder, as it was characterized by a general nature of symptoms.

Just what are those symptoms? The DSM-IV criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder are:

 Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder show a generalized pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and observable emotions, and significant impulsiveness. This pattern begins by early adulthood, occurs in various contexts, and is indicated by five (or more) of the following (from DSM IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994):

• Frantic efforts (excluding suicidal or self-inflicted cuts or burns) to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
• A pattern of intense and unstable interpersonal relationships that may quickly alternate between extremes of idealization (the other person may be “put on a pedestal”) and devaluation (the other person’s negative qualities are now exaggerated).
• Identity disturbance: sudden and dramatic shifts in self-image in terms of shifting values (e.g., sexual identity, types of friends) and vocational goals.
• Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially harmful (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating, excluding suicidal or self-mutilating behavior)
• Repeated suicidal behavior or threats, or self-inflicted cuts or burns (e.g., self-mutilating behavior)
• Significant, sudden changes in mood and observable emotion (e.g., intense periodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety, usually lasting a few hours and rarely lasting more than a few days; extreme reactivity to interpersonal stresses)
• Chronic feelings of emptiness; also may be easily bored
• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
• Temporary, stress-related psychosis (symptoms such as paranoia or grossly distorted body image)

          (Text from pdf.uhc.edu/what.php)

The incidents that Monique and I will relate to you here will show you how the Borderline Personality Disorder manifested itself in my case. I just briefly want to go through the 9 criteria, and underline which criteria affected me.

1. Frantic efforts (excluding suicidal or self-inflicted cuts or burns) to avoid real or imagined abandonment: I think Monique can answer this one more objectively and subjectively better than I can. There are still times today that I feel she may “abandon” me. And I can get very clingy to avoid those types of situations.

2. A pattern of intense and unstable interpersonal relationships that may quickly alternate between extremes of idealization (the other person may be “put on a pedestal”) and devaluation (the other person’s negative qualities are now exaggerated): Good Lord do I know this one all too well. My putting people on pedestals is what eventually led to the collapse of my marriage. Women A-Z, the names aren’t relevant. Each of these I put on a pedestal higher than I put my own wife. But as soon as these people did something “wrong” (and they would never know they were doing anything wrong) I would devalue the relationship to nothingness. It’s a wonder that any of these women still consider me a “friend.”

3. Identity disturbance: sudden and dramatic shifts in self-image in terms of shifting values (e.g., sexual identity, types of friends) and vocational goals. This one may not be as applicable to me, as described, but I do have trouble identifying who I am. I think in one of the later passages I describe how when I was a kid, sometimes I would stare in the mirror and look at myself and lose track of who I was. I would have to repeat my name, address and phone number over and over again, to myself, to “remember” who I was. Even to this day, I don’t have a strong sense of who *I* am.

4. Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially harmful (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating, excluding suicidal or self-mutilating behavior): There’s no question I’m an impulsive eater. I can’t say I’m an impulsive shopper because I never had much money to go shopping with – except to buy food. I would be impulsive with sex had there been a willing partner around so I gave in to masturbation and masturbatory fantasies.

5. Repeated suicidal behavior or threats, or self-inflicted cuts or burns (e.g., self-mutilating behavior): That’s me. I’m a cutter. Can’t count the number of times I’ve cut. I used to do it batches of 13, now I’m down to 11. Usually a little ritual involving sterilizing the knife, and then I’d bounce it on my arm a half dozen times, and then slice. Six on one arm, five on the other. If it was really bad, I’d cut the top of my right hand (which is weird since I’m right handed). Then I’d wrap my bloody arms up in towels, then call Monique to let her know what I had done.

6. Significant, sudden changes in mood and observable emotion (e.g., intense periodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety, usually lasting a few hours and rarely lasting more than a few days; extreme reactivity to interpersonal stresses): At the worst of it, my moods could change quickly. I’d be as happy as clam shit one moment, and then have inconsolable sobbing the next. I could be joking and laughing about something, and then suddenly turn and be an anxious wreck. I imagine it wasn’t fun being around me in those days.

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness; also may be easily bored: Emptiness I know well. I still experience that on most days. I think it’s why I eat so much. I’m trying to use anything I can to fill up that pit that resides in me. I feel very much the hollow man most days.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights): The rage in me seems to have subsided quite a bit. I’d often release a lot of the anger at the gym. Not at anybody, but I think I bruised and battered my hand on the punching bag quite a bit because of the rage I was feeling. I don’t notice it so much anymore, except when I see political bumper stickers that I disagree with.

9. Temporary, stress-related psychosis (symptoms such as paranoia or grossly distorted body image): I still think I go through this. I remember one time, Monique and I went to a concert with bagpipes and drums (this was before I was diagnosed). The banging of the drums and the playing of the pipes and the general commotion of the audience sent me over the edge. I wanted to run down to the stage and stop them from playing. I wanted to rip my skin off. I wanted to puncture my ears with needles so I couldn’t hear anything. I was a wreck. I’m still that way with loud noises (and in my space, noise equals stress).

 

So that, in a nutshell, is Borderline Personality Disorder. In the next several pages you’ll be introduced to the cast of characters that have made up my life over the past few years. And then you will read about the personal struggles of a person who had to deal with me, as well as reading about the demons that haunted and still haunt me.

________________________________________________

Alienation at Work

This excerpt is from Stew’s writing on his cast of characters

 

Former boss and former co-workers at former place of employment, hereinafter referred to as Subsidiary of Big Health Insurer. I struggled with these descriptions. I didn’t want to carry my grudge too far and be too empathic about things. But I can only sum up these people honestly in one way – the embodiment of evil. I don’t say that lightly. These are some of the most crass, calculating, unfeeling, resentment filled, unforgiving, soulless people I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. And to think for three years I considered most of them “friends.” My true friends have never bitten me in the butt as much as these knuckle draggers have. And the former boss is the worst of the bunch.

 

My story at Subsidiary and Big Health Insurer goes back a while. I started at the Subsidiary as a temp worker, filling in for an underwriter when she was on vacation for two weeks. I admit, the first day I walked into the office it felt like a comfortable fit. Everybody was friendly, including the person who was teaching me. It was a fun two-week assignment, and the head of the underwriting department told me to keep in touch. He liked the job I did, and he liked the way I interacted with his people.

 

A few weeks later I had another temp job with another department at the Big Health Insurer. I made sure I said hi to the gang at the Subsidiary, and boss told me that a job opening of an Underwriting Assistant was coming up and that I should stay close and apply.

 

Well, as events happened, I got the job, and soon established my territory as one of the fastest Underwriting Assistants that the department had. (Actually, after about a year and a half of being there I learned how to calculate my results, and was doing 1.5x the volume of work of one co-worker, and about twice the volume of work as another.) My reward for doing such good quality work quickly was to be promoted to Financial Underwriter – a brand new position.

 

Unfortunately this is where things start to crumble. I was promoted faster than either of my co-workers – One had 2 years more experience, the other had about a year more experience. I was also promoted faster than anybody in the operations section (which was a terrain ruled by one of the coldest people in Seattle). So while publicly people applauded me on the promotion, secretly they resented it. I must interject here that the Subsidiary was a company of 25 people – 20 women and 5 men. All five men, save for myself and one male in operations were management level people

 

This Financial Underwriter position was a newly formed position. In an industry that lives and dies by regulations, this was the kiss of death. This newly formed position had with it no set of procedures or guidelines that one could follow. One was at the whim of one’s superiors when it came to figuring out what one was to be doing at any given time. One of my tasks was to help out the other Underwriters in, well, underwriting. Every year existing polices needed to be renewed, but an underwriter had to figure out whether or not if that policy could be renewed at the current rate, or if incidents had happened over the year that would force that rate up or down. One of my assignments was to do this underwriting process for policies in Eastern Washington. This should have been a relatively mundane day-to-day task that I could get help with from any of the other three underwriters. After all, one had just celebrated her 20th anniversary with States West Life.; another had been with the company 15 years, and another had been there for 10 years – 45 years of combined experience should have been a reasonable amount of resources for me to plug into. Wrong.

 

Because they each had their own way of doing things. You’d think Underwriter 1, having been there for 20 years, would have had a set of procedures for doing renewals of existing business – after all, I, had just finished compiling a list of procedures for the Underwriting Assistants, a task that received high marks from my boss, and my boss’ boss. But nope. Twenty years at the Subsidary and a procedures manual for doing renewals had not been developed.

 

Which would have been fine and dandy. I probably could have split the difference, had Underwriter 2 shown me exactly how she did things (after all it was primarily her load I was helping with by doing Eastern Washington). And I did. She sat down with me for hours at a time, showing me which buttons to push, and how to calculate experience-rated renewals for group life insurance premiums. She showed me how to program the database to allow me to pull reports based on all types of criteria. She gave me a wealth of data. And it was all for naught.

 

Because, what she neglected to tell me is that no matter how I did my job, if the forms weren’t correctly filled out when given to Operations, it was kicked back to me to fix.

 

Which again, doesn’t sound like that big of a deal. To which I reply, there was no set standard for how the form was to be sent to Operations. Any one of nine different people would receive my form with the renewal information (people – let me clarify: four of them were women over than 60, three of them were women over 40, one was a woman in her 30’s, and one was a guy in his 20s. [I don’t want to sound ageist or sexist, but these were people set in their ways and they weren’t going to change anything. These were women who, when we received new computers, were scared shitless for days because their desktop environment had changed. It’s the first time I ever heard of a department collectively complain because their computers were faster]). There were (at least) 9 different ways to fill out the forms. I just had to figure out which person wanted which format (which felt like it rotated on a daily basis.) Again, I was out of luck because there was no standardized set of procedures. I even told the head of operations the dilemma, and she proceeded to tell me to “just get it right.” It became so agonizing that I was given one form back with a sticky note telling me “Everything was correct, but everything needed to be in all caps.” When I became frustrated with that, I walked over to another person and asked her if she wanted it in all caps and she replied, “We never do it in all caps, that just looks ugly.”

 

So more and more of my work began returning back to me, which affected our team turn-around goals. (If the team made its goals each month for all months in a quarter everybody on the team earned a half day off. If the team made all 4 quarters it got an additional half day off – for a total of 3 free days off). By now my boss, pulled me aside and said, “you gotta get those forms done correctly and on time, or you’re going to cost the team its days off.” When I explained the situation to him, he nodded and said, “I understand. These women aren’t always reasonable. But you gotta play by their rules.” So I said I’d do my best and sauntered off to do my job.

 

But the forms kept coming back to me, and more complaints were lodged with the boss. And this is where I fault the boss – he did nothing to stick up for me. He let the operations manager and the operations team browbeat him into me taking the whole blame for the team losing their precious days off.

 

But that’s not what made the whole department evil. It gets worse from there.

 

It was customary to give cards on people’s birthdays. Typical office stuff. It was common for those who were closer to give cards on other special occasions – anniversaries, baby showers, wedding showers, etc. We’d pass the hat around and take up donations for co-workers babies…then the office secretary would run down to Baby’s R Us and buy a gift certificate. We had one lady who suffered from cancer and a donation was taken to buy her flowers or some other trinket for her hospital room. It was that kind of office.

Or so I thought.

 

C, who was out of work for a month with cancer, had a company get well card sent to her, plus many individuals (including me) sent her other cards. Some of the girls even called her up one day when she got home from the hospital to wish her well.

 

M’s 17-year old son was shot and killed at a party one tragic May night. The entire office went to the funeral. A condolence card was signed by each staff member. I sent another card on my own volition, and emailed M a couple of times after she came back to work to make sure she was doing okay. I even got into an online argument with a guy about gun control when she asked because she knew I was a good debater.

 

Even J, one of the newest sales people got thrown a party and had a $75 gift certificate when his son was born.

 

I was in the hospital on two occasions, both times for over 20 days. I received not a single card. I received not a single phone call telling me to get better. I received not a single email from anybody telling me I could talk to them.

 

My boss, the guy who wanted me to work for him, made absolutely no effort to reach out in my time of need.

 

Coworker 1 – the person who I laughed and cried with the most while during my stay at the Subsidiary, didn’t send me a single email. Didn’t call me. Didn’t lift a finger to see if I was okay.

 

Coworker 2 – a self-professed Christian who was the first with the birthday cards to even the people she didn’t care for. Didn’t even acknowledge MY emails to her.

 

Coworker 3 – I mourned the loss of her son with her. I made her laugh at my silly jokes. I understood her frustrations with the sales force. I even chatted with her about therapy. Made not a move to console me when I lost my mind.

 

Coworker 4 – I think I understood her better than most people. I was often the first person she would come see when she was having computer problems. She shunned me with silence.

 

These are the evilest people I ever known. I wrote them all an email around the holidays after I got out of the hospital the second time.

 

Hi there…

 

 As some of you may know, November 13th is my termination date.

 

 I just have one question for most of you – why didn’t anybody ever call to check up on me? Send me a card telling me to get better? Even a simple email saying that I was thought of?

 

I put in what I thought were three quality years there with y’all. I thought I was liked and respected. But I know now that I wasn’t.

 

 For those of you who don’t know what happened to me, I’ll tell you -

 

 On May 28th I woke up with severe stomach pain. The pain was so bad that had Monique not stopped me, I would have taken a whole bottle of pills (I don’t even know what I grabbed) and was going to wash it down with a bottle of wine… I wanted to die.

 

I went to the ER where I was diagnosed with a peptic ulcer and major depression, with suicidal thoughts. I was admitted into the Steven’s Hospital psychiatric care unit.

 

I spent a month there in intensive group therapy. During this time, it was on an almost daily basis that I would wake up with severe images in my head, and I would grab a knife and slice on myself. Sometimes I would wake up with the thoughts of filleting myself and frying up and eating my own flesh. I became obsessed with the thoughts of hurting and maiming myself. Over the past 6 months I’ve probably cut myself, on purpose, over 100 times. I’ve scratched myself with my own thumbnail to the point of leaving scars. I’ve tried to strangle myself, and I’ve done some nerve damage to my fists for punching things.

 

 So after that month in the hospital I got to see a therapist twice a week, a psychiatrist once a month, and group therapy once a week.

 

I now have $15,000 in hospital bills, because Premera has screwed up on handling my claims. I’ve burned through my 20 psych visits per year, pretty darn quickly, so I’m out over $300 a month for medical care. I’m on 8 different medications just so I can halfway function in society without harming myself or others. I still have visions, and I still cut myself occasionally. But get me around a group of people and I tend to get a bit psychotic.

 

I’ve been diagnosed with major depression, anxiety, paranoia, borderline personality disorder, moderate psychosis, with a hint of schizophrenia. I take meds to help me sleep at night, and meds to help me wake up in the morning.

 

And here’s the greatest part of it all. Because I’m so unpredictable day by day (some cases hour by hour) my wife has left. I can’t really blame her.

 

So now I have to move into a one bedroom apartment. My friends that I can trust have moved out of the Seattle area to look for work elsewhere. My family is trying to be supportive, and they do their best, but they’re 700 miles away.

 

And you know what hurts the most? The thing that hurts more than taking a knife and cutting chunks of my arm? The fact that none of you ever took a moment to ask me how I was.

 

The fact that even when I (and Monique) tried to contact a few people and was ignored sliced through me. People I thought were reliable, people that I thought I could count on, people that I took time out to ask how they were doing when they were in the midst of their own hell…. didn’t even have a minute to ask me how I was doing.

 

 What did I do to any of you to deserve that?

 

 I know each of you have a story that you can tell that rivals mine…we all go through our own personal hell at one time or another…and there’s no way that mine is of any significance to what any of you have/had/or are going through. But…at least if I knew about it, I hope I remembered to sign the card that was passed around, sent you a quick email asking how things were going, gave you an extra smile in the file room, did something to show that I was at least human enough to care.

 

I’m more disgusted with myself even thinking that people at **** care.

 

“We’re here…we’re with you” – bunch of bull.

 

I can’t honestly wish that any of you have a happy holiday season. The best I can do is I hope none of you have a tragic holiday season…

 

 

Stew

 

 

And you know what I got from writing that? I’ll tell you what I got. I got a call from the Sheriff’s Office and a frantic call from my psychiatrist making sure I was okay. Even when I reach out to slap them upside the head, I get smashed back thinking that I was doing something wrong.