Not a Wasted Word

I’ve been struggling with a couple things lately, things that feel too big and opaque and complicated to write about here. Things like a lack of ambition, or less grandly, a lack of motivation to plan even a weekend away in the snow. Also friendship stuff, worry that my friendships are slipping away and wondering if it’s just a normal occurrence, because that is what happens to most friendships eventually, and especially those that are formed in middle age, and as moms. Or if it’s a failure on my part, yet again, to adequately nourish the relationships that are important to me. Or if it’s a failure – and this is what scares me the most – to be the kind of person people want to remain friends with.

So big questions, the kinds that I don’t really want to ponder, let alone put into words. At the end of the day, there is always a series of tasks that have to be accomplished – checking the kids backpacks, preparing the coffee maker, filling the water filter, emptying the ice trays, tidying the house – and by the end of it I’m tired and I just want to go to sleep. I don’t want to think about things. I don’t want to plan. I don’t want to look at cabins on AirBnB. I just want to listen to an audiobook and play a puzzle game. So I can fall asleep and start it all over again tomorrow.

I think a lot about work. I have to be on, on, on all day. And when I’m not on I’m planning so that when I’m next on all the stuff I need to ready.

I had to get some work done last Sunday night and my sister said, you’re so beholden to your job. And it stung because I try so hard not to be, to leave my work in my classroom, but I had a new group of 6th graders on Monday morning and that meant starting all over again, like it was the first day of school and I wasn’t prepared. So I put my computer away and didn’t do what I needed to do, and 1st period on Monday was kind of a disaster and I left a horrible first impression of unpreparedness with that group of kids. And for what? To prove to my sister, whose job history could not be more different than my own, that I’m not working too hard? I’m still mad at her for saying it, such a throw away line she probably doesn’t even remember uttering but that has stuck with me, and I’m even madder at myself for letting that utterance get under my skin.

{She said a few disparaging things that bothered me and I’m still working through why each one bothered me so much.}

I feel like I just want to do nothing but every day I have to do SO MANY THINGS. Is this a mood issue? Perimenopause? Just who I am?

I just finished the book Molecule or More about how dopamine drives desire but has nothing to do with satisfaction. This explains why I really want shit, but the once I get it, having it is disappointing. But dopamine also drives long term ambition and planning. and people who have over active near future dopamine activity, commonly have deficiencies in their long term planning dopamine circuits.

It’s easy to read something like that and say, AHA! This explains it! Even though I know it’s an over simplistic explanation at best, and surely inaccurate in many significant ways. And what does it me to understand that is the case? I guess I feel slightly less self-loathing when I know that some of my perceived shortcomings have biological explanations, but ultimately I don’t feel better about what I’m incapable of accomplishing.

I’ve read some articles recently about the downsides of over identifying with a diagnosis. A label can help you better understand yourself, and why you behave in certain ways, but if OCD or ADHD or Autism start to define every aspect of who you are, you may become limited by it. I can understand that. When I was first diagnosed with ADHD, it helped me disentangle myself from a tight know of self-loathing and a perceived belief of falling short of so many of society’s expectations. It also allowed me to access medications that brought me out of decade of clinical depression. The relief that the road map that a diagnosis of ADHD provided was very real. But over the years I found myself referring to that road map too often, even though when I could tell its topography was not longer serving me. Working on how and when to identify with my ADHD, and when to remind myself that it doesn’t define me, has been a complicated journey. One I’m still traveling.

The truth is, ADHD is tightly intertwined with most of what I’m most proud of as a person, and most of what I’m most ashamed of. I could spend my life trying to reconcile those to extremes, or just celebrate what I’m proud of and take small, consistent steps in improving what I’m not proud of. Just like everyone else.

I started this post over a week ago and added a sentence or paragraph when I found the time. I promised myself I’d publish it on Monday, regardless of where it was. So while I can’t really wrap all of this up into a meaningful bow, I will say that I’m feeling a little better about some things, despite some weird virus that resides primarily in my throat upending part of my weekend. I’m also noticing some physical symptoms that suggest hormones had at least something to do with my mood last week (I could (and actually have) put up several posts on how ill equipped I feel to understand the ways I should be incorporating permenopause into my current identity.) It’s so much harder for me to understand, and the guideposts provided by society are not comprehensive at all.

Well, I didn’t mean to be gone for a week, but as I expected things have been hectic since my sister came into town.

But this week we’re getting blissful break from the rain. On Sunday I ran on the Embarcadero and got caught in the rain for the second half of my run. At that point I was officially very over our wet weather.

But this week has been dry. And even sunny in some spots. I hope that continues.

I’m feeling stressed out and over loaded and I’m trying to identify exactly why that is and what I can do to ease those feelings. Unfortunately I think a big part of it is that I didn’t get to unwind during my break like I needed to, because of my friend’s mental health crisis. So I guess I just need to accept that and hope I can make the mid-winter break in February more restful.

I’m sorry I don’t have more time to write, but I just dropped my daughter at her second swim practice and my sister downtown, and I’m supposed to be at the dojo in less than an hour.

We got a break in the rain today, and it was marvelous! I was so taken by the color of the skies on the drive to work this morning, and I realized it’s the first time I’ve seen the sunrise since before the winter break. We’ve been getting SO MUCH RAIN. And there is more to come. Today was the only break in a week’s worth of rain. Tomorrow it starts again and it’s supposed to pour through Monday.

Our back room, the one that already had water damage, has gotten REALLY bad. It’s basically just a mold incubator now. The walls are covered in mold and it smells AWFUL. We already keep the door to that room closed, and don’t use it much in the winter because it’s FREEZING back there (it doesn’t have insulation), but now I don’t think we’ll be able to use it again until we get it gutted and rebuilt.

Normally this kind of thing would send me into a panic spiral, but it’s not. I think this is because it just has to happen now, so no choice has to be made. And if we have to do this now, we are pretty certain we will not be doubling (or tripling) the cost of the project to build inside stairs to connect the units. Would I LOVE to have inside stairs, absolutely. Am I willing to spend $50K on them? Absolutely not. And honestly, it’s probably best for both spaces if we just leave them separate. So now that I feel pretty confident about what we’ll do, I’m not so stressed about it anymore. I guess the thing I really hate is making difficult decisions.

Do we know how we’re going to pay for this? Not yet, but we’ll figure it out. This has been a back burner project for us since before the pandemic, we were just able to keep punting it because of the drought. That is no longer an option, and we knew at some point it wouldn’t be. We’ll figure it out.

Speaking of money, one of the main ideas of Your Money Your Life is to figure out how much money you make an hour (the actual amount, so how much you make a year, minus all the stuff you spend for your job (including clothes, work dinners, coffee breaks with your boss, commuting costs, etc) divided by the actual number of hours you work (which includes all the off-the-clock hours and commuting). I did a rough estimate of this (it was hard because I wear Vuoris to work at least once a week, which means I can’t really say that ANY of my clothes are work related, and I’m better about not spending my own money on school stuff, but I’m not better at tracking how much money that still is. Even commuting is hard because we charge our car in our house at night, so that exact expenditure is lost in our monthly PG&E bill).

So I calculated it as best I could, and the number ended up being pretty high. I’m sure I didn’t consider enough spending that happens because I work, so I rounded it down quite a bit, but it’s still a pretty decent number, one that might not help me reconsider my spending in quite the way I’d wanted. If I had done this 20 (or even 10) years ago, it would have been a MUCH lower number that would have made me think very differently about a lot of purchases, but now if the question is, is this purchase worth 30 minutes of my working life, the answer might be yes a lot of the time. I’m going to have to think about it some more, because I wasn’t expecting this result.

The happy part of this is that I make a decent amount of money now! I’m sure in comparison with others in the area it’s not impressive, but to pay a mortgage that we acquired in the 2012 market, it’s not bad.

Having said that, this home repair project will definitely be felt, which means we could absolutely be saving more than we are. A lot more. So, so much more. And now we need to, for something much more serious than a trip.

Off to a totally unrelated topic: today I had to get my blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen levels checked for my ADHD meds refill, and the nurse asked me if I work out a lot, before telling me I was like a 20 year old. That felt really good, because I don’t look anything like a 20 year old anymore, and my weight gain is making some clothes a little tight, I was also SO RELIEVED that she didn’t weigh me, because seeing a number right now would do nothing for me except trigger old body issue stuff that I’m trying really hard not to fall into. (I was going to request she not say how much I weighed, but I’ve had mixed results with that in the past). I had been dreading the appointment all week, but instead I felt good about myself when I left. Hooray!

Did I mention the sun came out today? It really did wonders for my mood. I also think my hormones are leveling off. I hate having so little control over my base-line mood, but I guess I should embrace the days when I’m up instead of down.

Today was really energy intensive at work, but tomorrow should be a lot less so. And then we have a three day weekend! My sister is in town starting Saturday and it’s my mom’s birthday on Monday, so it won’t really be restful or relaxing (both of them require.. a lot of consideration, especially when they are together, so it will be a lot to spend 24 hours managing my mom’s birthday expectations and my sister’s but-this-is-my-vacation expectations, especially with the rain making it impossible for us to be outside). Still, I will take a day off when I can get one, because it’s almost impossible for me to take days off when I want to.

And my elliptical workout is done! I didn’t get to run today because of the appointment (all the parks are closed anyway, or I would have been a lot more upset about that), but I did get my cardio in. Nice to know it’s actually doing good things for my body!

(Hilariously, I’m pretty sure I’m in WAY better shape both physically and mentally, than I was in my 20s. Which was not lost on me when she said that.)

I’m back at work this week. Today is a PD day. PD = Professional Development = ALL the ineffective meetings about whatever new edspeak buzz word we’re focusing on right now (but will never mention again).

I will say that I REALLY liked our later Winter Break. This past week off was lovely. I’m not sure if the same thing will happen next year (my kids start break a week earlier and end a week earlier than I did), and I’m not sure what I would pick if I could, but it doesn’t matter because I have no choice, so I’m going to enjoy whatever kind of break I have (I know I’ve VERY lucky that I don’t need to travel to see family during the break, so it doesn’t really affect me).

Anyway, I enjoyed having four days off while my kids were back in school (they had Monday off). And I enjoyed having my break take place after Christmas Day.

And… my friend made it back down to LA. I don’t understand how they did it, but I’m relieved they did. I actually have a lot of bigger feelings about it, because their ability to buy a ticket, and navigate TSA and get on a plane and fly to LA flies in the face of their behavior over the past two weeks and the story I’ve told myself to tolerate the way I was treated as I tried to help. Lots of big feelings about it, but I’m focusing on the relief I feel that they are home and I am no longer the point person that their family and other friends are depending on.

This weekend was a little rough. I was feeling pretty down. Today I started my period which explains A LOT. Now I’m feeling a little better, just knowing that hormones are a big part of why I was so down this weekend. It’s also annoying to recognize that something I have NO control over, can hijack my experience so much.

I’m spent some time today writing down all my purchases for the first week of January. I’m finding Your Money or Your Life to be a somewhat challenging read for me – why is it so hard for me to articulate my values and purpose?! – but I’m committed to sticking it out to the end. And I’m committed to taking the steps outlined in the book (though I’m sure I won’t be able to accurately determine how much money I’ve ever made – babysitting was my main form of income for SIX YEARS, and I have no idea how much I made back then), at least for a few months. I want to change my relationship with money, and this book promises to TRANSFORM it, so I’m going to give it a try. I’ll keep updating you all about how it goes.

My daughter gets to start practicing with a swim team! It’s just one hour a week (because the practice starts at 4pm and her school doesn’t get out until 4pm except for early-release Wednesdays), but it’s a start! And we got her into an art class that meets for four weeks in February! These are both big deals.

And I’m going to press publish now because I had four personal items on my to-do-during-PD list and this was one of them, and it’s the only one I haven’t completed yet. Look at me! Setting goals and revisiting them!

I’m not very good at goals. I was thinking. maybe my goal for 2023 should be to get better at articulating goals and then checking in on my progress with them. So my goal for this year would be… to get better at goals?

Blerg.

The good news is there isn’t a lot about my life I’d like to work on. That is a positive! There was a time when I would spend this part of the year lamenting how much weight I’d gained, and devising strategies to lose it. But this year I’m not worried about that. I have definitely gained some weight, but as long as my clothes still fit I’m refusing to get on the scale to see exactly how much I’ve gained. I think, in the absence of old Halloween candy and holiday treats, I’ll stabilize again.

I do want to test for my blue belt before summer, but I have a community at the dojo to help me with that goal.

Professionally I have no goals right now, which strikes a part of me as sad, but not a very big part of me. I’m trying to embrace the general satisfaction I feel at work, and to not think too much about my lack of ambition.

I guess the one thing I want to get better at is planning, in my personal life. I am VERY good at planning at work – sitting down with my teaching planner is one of the ways I calm myself when things feel especially hectic. I always have a general idea of what I’m going to do for the coming month (in each class) and every Thursday and Friday I spend time writing out detailed lessons for the next week.

But my personal life is not like that. I do use a personal planner now (this is the second school year I’ve used it) and it definitely helps, but I’m not taking full advantage of it. It even has a space at the top of every month and each week to articulate goals, and reflect on what I did well and what I could work on, but I only sometimes fill those parts out. I’m just not very good at long term planning in my personal life. I kind of let external forces drive a lot of timelines (like I start thinking about summer in early March, so I am ready for the Rec and Park summer camp sign up on the second or third Saturday), which works well enough but doesn’t provide much satisfaction.

When my kids were younger, these systems (or lack thereof) worked well enough. We couldn’t do much with them, travel wise, and we mostly just looked for camps that would help them kill the summer hours. And then the pandemic happened, right when that would have changed. And now they are older and suddenly everything seems to need more forethought.

Maybe my goal should be to meet with my husband once a month to talk about what is coming up and decide who will do what. Maybe that change would be enough.

I also want to get my kids into the habit of doing their chores without so much reminding. Focusing on that would be provide dividends that would compound naturally.

And of course there is money. I always want to get better with my money, because the truth is I’m not intentional about it at all. I don’t think I would say I’m bad with money, but I believe I’ve gotten this far without ever paying interest on a credit card because of privilege and luck (just another way to say privilege in this context), and really nothing else. But I don’t want to teach that mindset around money to my kids. And we’re finally at a place financially, where it’s clear that if I were more intentional with my spending, it could really make a difference.

We have big trips we want to take with the kids in the next few years, trips that right now feel prohibitively expensive. But I don’t think they have to be, if we plan for them. So far our international travel has been geared toward affordability, but as the kids get older and we can count on one hand the number of summers are daughter will reliably be home, I’m realizing that if I want to take them to Hong Kong (where I grew up) or Japan (where they want to go) or Australia (on everyone’s bucket list) or Spain, we’re going to have to have WAY more money saved.

Camps are also much more expensive, and not just because Rec and Park opens priority registration to kids in need early, which leaves almost no spots for middle class families in mid-March. My kids actually want to try new things at camp, like baseball and basketball for our son and art for our daughter. And those kinds of camps are $600+/week, instead of the $200/wk we were spending before the pandemic. Even if my kids just do four weeks of camp each, that is a $3.5K+ price tag! If we want to go to St. Louis AND anywhere else, we’re talking $10K+ a summer (much more if we manage a big international trip).

We also have to rent a car in St. Louis now, which means that trip costs an extra $1K. And my daughter wants to try a week of sleep-away camp, which will be three times more than a week of day camp. It all adds up.

Again, we have the means to do a lot of what we want, but only if we’re spending intentionally.

I’ve already talked to my husband about setting up monthly meetings, where we can have a couple drinks and review our spending. The good news is my husband doesn’t spend much, so I could make big changes without his participation. The bad news is, that means it primarily falls on me.

So I guess that will be my main goal: intentional spending. Which hopefully will lead, eventually, to financial intelligence. I’m (re)reading Your Money or Your Life (which I bought year(s?!) ago and never finished), which should help. The thing is I’m not the kind of person who wants to buy a car every few years, or dreams of upgrading her house (we joke we’ll stay in this one until they wheel us to the assisted living center two blocks away). We don’t even splurge on vacations (you may remember we only went to Hawaii this summer because we had a(n almost) free place to stay and the airfare and car rental were incredibly cheap).

So many of the examples of unnecessary indulgence in the book don’t apply to us, but we absolutely have too much stuff. And it was my credit card that purchased most of it. Those relatively small purchases add up. I know that being more discerning with my spending would make a difference, possibly a really large one.

And now I have actual financial goals to work toward. I never felt a particular draw to FIRE, and we’ve always been so fortunate to be able to live within our means (at least since our son left childcare, that has been relatively easy). I do stress some about college (okay a lot) but that feels like such a giant price tag that daily decisions couldn’t really touch it (of course they could, but it never felt like that enough for me). So now that I have actual vacations I want to be ready for, I think foregoing little daily doses of consumer pick-me-ups will be easier to forego.

It seems like meeting with my husband once a month is the first step. We could talk them about spending (and I’d have that meeting to hold me accountable), and how the kids’ chores are doing, and the general state of our lives.

It’s already January 3rd and I’m fighting something inside myself to sit down here.

The only thing I know for certain is that there will be no New Years post in this corner of the internet. At least I don’t think there will be. And I want to write it out, and put it into the world, if only to absolve myself of my own expectations.

Things with my friend have been hard. And heartbreaking. It’s hurt me and hurt my marriage. I’m feeling pretty lost and alone.

But I took today to recoup. And I’m feeling a little better.

I’m going to step away from the situation with my friend for a couple days. It’s clear to me now that I cannot help him. It’s just beyond me. And it doesn’t help anyone, least of all him, for me to let myself get taken down with him and his mental illness.

So that is where I am at. And I wanted to check in and let people know that I’m okay. Or I will be.

I’m so thankful my break is not over yet. I really need the next three days.

I’m assuming this post will be all over the place. Because that is where my brain is at.

I’m currently on the elliptical. My kids are on the pullout couch bed next to me, reading. I pulled the couch bed out this morning because tomorrow my husband and I need to sleep on it (we have friends staying over) and I figured I might as well let the kids hang out on it for a couple days. We had it out for a week during our Covid quarantine, so it brings back memories of lazy days. It’s also just a little different, and sometimes that can go a long way.

This morning they played video games on it. For several hours. It’s raining outside and I declared it a “stay home and chill day,” which we all need. I’m getting the house ready for our friends to stay over. This means a big(gish) clean – vacuuming under the furniture and such. The good news is the upstairs was already in good shape (thank you kittens!) and the kids’ rooms don’t have to be presentable (thank you doors!). The other good news is the downstairs really needed it, so I’m glad I have a reason to get it done.

Our house is not very big, but it’s honestly all I can manage. I still sometimes read the blogs of other women who posts shots of their sprawling common areas, and beautiful master bed suites and get a pang of jealousy, but it usually passes pretty quickly because I know I couldn’t manage spaces like that. I’m sure those people have other people come and clean their spaces for them, and I aspire to one day have regular housecleaning services help me out, but even with help like that I know I couldn’t manage a 2,000 square foot home, let alone something in the 3,000+ square foot range. Our house is plenty big for our family and it’s plenty big for me and I honestly no longer understand the desire for more.

I’m sure it helps that my friends all have houses about the same size as mine. We all make about the same amount of money too. It makes things easy. It’s easy to relate to each other when we’re all coming from a common place. I think part of why I like to read blogs so much is to get an idea of what it’s like to live in a different way – a different part of the country, with different weather and cost of living. It’s also really interesting to read about what other jobs are like (my close friends and I all work for the feds, state or city so even that is, in the end, pretty similar).

I was just thinking it would be cool if there were a database of blogs that you could search across different aspects of one’s life. Geography. Profession. Income. With kids or without. Single or co-habitating. I wonder what I would specifically search for if I had the choice? Honestly, at this point it’s so hard to find any new blogs to follow, I’d probably want to read them all.

And… it’s taken me way more paragraphs than I expected to go there, but I can’t not write about it. My friend, the one who is having a mental health crisis, won their right to refuse medical advice and treatment. They were released yesterday morning. They are basically just as bad off as they were exactly one week ago when the crisis began. Why it was determined they are not a danger to themselves or others is beyond my comprehension. They are still hearing voices. They are still sure the End of Days is coming. They don’t even remember information about our shared past together accurately. It’s heartbreaking to see it happen. It’s heartbreaking to talk to them and ask to see them and be told, maybe in a few days. It’s heartbreaking to hear how scary their reality is.

It’s hard. Hard not to be able to help. Hard to start putting things in motion for someone to watch my kids, only to realize it’s not necessary. At it’s least upsetting it’s disruptive and distracting. At it’s most upsetting it’s sob-inducing. But life goes on and there is nothing I can do. I’m the only one of his friends and family in the area though, so I’m left shouldering a lot.

The friend who is staying over tomorrow is one of their friends and I’m so relieved to have someone here who understands how hard this is. It’s been putting a big strain on my marriage (I want to write another post about how different people process the mental health crises of others later), and I know having my other friend here will be like having a salve for my soul. I think this friend feels the same way (and that all of this is straining their relationship in similar ways).

But since I can’t do much except try to push away the feelings of hopelessness and grief, I clean my house and tend to my children. The new year is coming and I know it’s a time of looking forward and planning and setting goals. And I want to do all that, but I also can’t right now. I just don’t have the mental capacity. Instead I’m trying to focus on what I need and giving myself those things. I’m also asking for help.

I do think one thing I want to focus on in 2023 is asking for help, specifically from my family. Yesterday my kids helped me clean out my car, and honestly they did the heavy lifting themselves. They vacuumed the floors and scrubbed the rubber foot mats to my satisfaction (and then some). My son can legitimately clean the upstairs toilet and my daughter empties the dishwasher every time (among other things). There are more things they can do (and already do), and I’m going to start having them do more (and not follow along after them doing things again). I’ve already talked to them about a couple kitten-related chores I need them to start managing. My husband is also willing to take on more around the house, and I’m brainstorming a list of tasks to hand over to him (at his request).

I’m also going to put reminders on their tablets, so they will hopefully do them without me asking. The biggest barrier to my kids helping around the house is the nagging needed to have them do it. We definitely need better systems in place to make their tasks habits.

I started to write about other things I want to focus on in 2023, but I think I have enough for a separate post and since this post was already two or three different posts mashed into one, I’ll stop here.

Sending warm thoughts into the world. For my friend, and anyone else who is lost and hurting right now.

{I started this on Christmas Day but I’m just getting it up now. It’s been that kind of break.}

Since we had kids, Christmas Day has vexed me. We are so lucky to have both sets of grandparents close by, which is generally amazing, but can make holidays a little tricky to navigate. My in-laws are usually gracious enough to cede prime-time holiday hours to my parents, but on Christmas we always want to see both. What ended up becoming our tradition was a Christmas Eve visit at my parents’ house, followed by Christmas morning at my in-laws (after sleeping at home) and then Christmas afternoon with my parents.

This arrangement has made for a really frenetic and intense Christmas Day.

But this year I asked my husband if I could go for a run at the end of our stay at his parents’ house. They live by Golden Gate Park and it would be super easy to get in a 30-45 minute run. He said that was fine, so I brought my running gear and at noon I headed out.

It was so nice to get out in the fresh air (I even felt the sun on my face for a mile or two) and to get a break from the expectations of the holiday. I got back right in time to pack up the car, and I showered at home while my husband fed the kittens.

I think I may just make an afternoon run my new Christmas tradition. We’ll see if I can make it stick.

This week has not been what I expected. I absolutely just need Christmas Day to be behind me, and soon it will be. In the meantime I’m trying to spread out the excitement, because my kids are losing their minds waiting and revealing everything on the same day will be too much. So today we’re celebrating Meowy Catmas. We won’t be with the kittens much tomorrow, so I’m glad they are getting all their presents today.

I got the kittens each a stocking at Target when they went on clearance. We open all presents at the grandparents’ houses so we don’t even have stockings at our house. It was fun to have a couple up this year, even if it was just for a week.

The little one in the middle is for the bearded dragon, who admittedly has been shortchanged on attention since the kittens came.

I built this last night. It’s also an early Xmas present for my son, because it will go in his bedroom.

Lynx loves this new tunnel. Panther isn’t so sure.

They also got a bunch of stocking stuffers. I definitely went overboard, but they also actually play with these things. Our old cat was not interested in anything really, so I haven’t bought a cat toy in 10 years. It’s fun to pick things out for cats that will actually play with them.

See! They love this stuff!

These kittens are nuts and they have turned our lives totally upside down. They are absolutely the biggest reason I’m so exhausted right now. But they are also awesome and we love them so much.

Meowy Catmas, every mew.

On Wednesday my friend texted asking if I’d heard from another friend who was up in Bay Area but missing. They had abandoned their car on the side of the road on Monday and it had been impounded. They were leaving disturbing voicemails on their friends’ phones, but wouldn’t pick up when friends’ called them. Maybe they will call you, my friend said. Since you’re the only one who still lives in the Bay.

They texted me (incoherently) that afternoon and I immediately called them back.

What followed was one of the most traumatic and upsetting evenings I’ve experienced in a long time. I spent over two hours driving around the airport trying to get my friend to tell me where they were. They kept saying Jesus was guiding me and I’d be there soon. As it became evident I was not arriving like they hoped, they because agitated and started saying disturbing things. Things that made me feel unsafe. Initially I had hoped to meet them in a public place and have law enforcement come to help. By the end I hoped to get eyes on them so I could relay their location to the authorities (their parents had reported them missing as soon as they could – 48 hours after the car was impounded).

In the end it didn’t matter because I never did find them. I just ended up driving home, in tears.

Nine of their friends went to work calling hotels and motels in the areas around where they had me driving, to no avail. We went to bed that night hoping they didn’t hurt themself or others while we slept.

I did not really sleep.

Thursday at work was horrible. My friend was posting threatening things on Instagram, but even that, coupled with what they had said to me the night before was not enough for police to ping their phone to find them.

A couple people were able to get a hold of them, but they couldn’t respond coherently to requests. We couldn’t figure out where they were, but it seemed like they were still in the Bay Area.

This morning their parents called me to say they has been arrested and were being taken to the hospital. They wouldn’t leave aconvenience store so the owner called the police. The police will not release them because of their mental state, so they will be 5150ed.

I am the local contact since I’m the only one who is up here right now. Their parents will be flying up from LA soon. I may be getting their car out of impound, but only if they hand over their keys voluntarily.

It’s been a lot. I am exhausted and devastated.

This friend was a really good friend of mine. In college, when I was kind of a mess, this friend was always there for me. We traveled around Europe together our junior years, when they were studying abroad in Florence and I was in Spain. I wasn’t always the easiest person to be around back then, but they were always there for me. They were always kind, and never judgemental. We’ve continued to be there for each other as adults too. Our birthdays are five days apart and we celebrated together a lot in our 20s.

I am so devastated that this is happening to them. Psychosis is not something one just bounces back from, even with the right meds (and they have stopped taking their meds before). I don’t understand how someone I know and love can become someone else entirely. It feels like, if it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.

They have parents that love and support them. They have money and resources (and parents that have more of both). They have friends who care and are willing to help. And ultimately none of it will matter, because mental health is not a priority in this country and we don’t have the systems in place to truly help people having sustained, severe mental health crises.

They will be held and medicated until they are stabilized, but then they will be released and left to their own devices. And this will probably all happen again.

I want to write more but I’m tired. This has been such a drain on me mentally and emotionally. I’m glad they are relatively safe now and hopefully will be getting the help they need. I hope….