Bad Ideas and Poor Choices

I dare you. I double dog dare you. Ask me how I am.

Wait… hold on… there are some caveats.

In my experience, in both directions, when people ask the question, ‘how are you?’ the question is rhetorical. No. That’s not quite right. It’s a social agreement. We will ask, how are you, and what we’re really saying is, I see you. I acknowledge your presence as a sentient being. If you asked a dog, you might really mean it because, come on, dog communication is limited.

The second part of the social agreement is the answer and the answer had damn well better be, ‘I’m great! How ’bout you?’ Smile smile smile.

This is a really useful social agreement because if it’s done right, it can lift up an entire line at a busy pharmacy. What it is not, is an invitation to tell the truth, unless the truth is exactly what came out of your mouth as per expectations.

OK, we’ve got that out of the way. The next sort of ‘how are you’ has the potential to produce egregious results. You know, freaking land mines. As in, you asked and I opened my mouth and answered the question. You would think, therefore, that the asker would be at least somewhat prepared for an honest answer which would most likely include some, if not all, of the related emotions.

A friend from high school reached out via Facebook Messenger, honestly asking me how I was because in 2019 and 2020 and even 2021 it was perfectly obvious that I. Was. Not. OK. Not even slightly. I actually wrote and hit the publish button on what my cousin refers to as my Suicide Manifesto which was written in response to the number of people (80%) who reached out and shamed me versus the 10% that simply unfriended me, and finally the 10% that reached out and said, I’m here. The manifesto defends the right to die. Hard. Stop. For what it’s worth, that was the all time top hit of any post written between January 2007 and probably 2021. My blog wasn’t inactive at that point but it wasn’t at it’s all time peak either. The top posts were getting approximately 200 hits. The manifesto, published on a nearly dead blog, got over 500. I lost track of the number of times it was shared via the blog site or the Facebook link but it was astonishing.

No one said anything. There might have been one or two comments from long time readers but otherwise it was met with mic drop silence. Because, really, what do you say to something like that?

And what do you say when someone answers the ‘how are you’ question with stark honesty?

Apparently you run like hell. I did ask him. I did warn him. I did note, right up front that most people don’t really mean that when they ask the question and at that point in my life, or right that second, I was going to answer the fucking question. So I did. I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I did warn you. I won’t get into what that kind of question is looking for at this point. It is looking for something, but not the truth.

Fast Fucking Forward to February or March of 2024. I have a new doctor. Not a PCP, not a therapist, an MD specializing in the care and maintenance of people like me. Everything from the appropriate medication to a phone call to my step-mother when I didn’t answer the phone. She was worried. It was OK, but she was worried and she did something about it.

These docs are NEVER in network because insurance companies will reimburse for either 15 or 30 minute limited sessions and THAT is not enough to understand what’s happening inside a person. Especially people like me.

I call it my Dancing Mask. I took this term from a book series called Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I won’t bore you with the story arc, but I do want to acknowledge that particular source. In the context of the story, the term ‘Dancing Mask’ is what you put on when you need to read a room, be read the way you want to be read, and navigate whatever politics or shit that needs navigating and come out winning or at least alive.

My Dancing Mask is my number one survival tool and I’ve been carefully honing the damn thing for so long I don’t know how to take it off. There are two people in this world who can look at me and see through it. My doc sees through it almost as soon as I’m in the room. My step-mother sees through it when it starts to crack. I expect she’d see a lot more if she wasn’t so very aware of my boundaries. She doesn’t pry but she is alert.

My kids don’t see it because when they have seen it, the responses, while varied, did significant damage to all of us. My youngest may or may not see it but given that her father died last year and she spent the 15 months between diagnosis and death as his primary caretaker (while working and in school full time), she may not be able to cope with the possible loss of her mother.

When I say loss, I don’t necessarily mean death, but I’m getting to that.

My doc said, one day early in our relationship, ‘I get it. Just because you’re not clawing at your face and tearing your hair out does not mean you’re OK’.

Think on the ramifications of that. They aren’t good.

If I were suffering from a terminal illness that wasn’t likely to kill me anytime soon but severely limited my capacity to care for myself, I have no doubt that my entire family would gather around (something) and talk about how to take care of Mom. Because that’s acceptable. Even if I took off the mask, clawed at my face, and tore out my hair, dealing with this would be very difficult, mostly because we don’t understand it and we sure as shit don’t discuss it.

See? Look at me. Discussing it. In an anonymous blog space referring to myself as Mr. Joyce. But still, discussing it anyway mostly because my youngest daughter said, really, Mom, you need to start writing again. Can she click the link and read any of this? Probably not. But she knows I should be.

The loss of the parent you knew from early childhood to whenever now is, is devastating. Especially if it seems to pop up out of nowhere.

My mom vanished bit by bit. None of it was a shock. Best I can tell, she’s still breathing, but that’s all I know because she doesn’t talk to any of us anymore. She can’t. It hurts that bad, whatever it is (I have a pretty good idea). So, as hard as the premature loss of my mother might be, I could see it coming a long way off. My mother’s Dancing Mask has never applied entirely to her family. God knows she tried but we saw even if we didn’t understand.

I’m betting I’ll write more about this but that’s the headline.

*note, the top of post image was ‘borrowed’ from ZTenEva’s Etsy site.