Implosion

It’s happening again.  I’m rocking myself backwards and forwards.  This is one of my behaviors that my ex-psychiatrist described as typical of children abandoned in orphanages.  It's a self-comforting action. When it acts up, I usually try to figure out what set it off, with little success.  Today, it seems pretty obvious--though I’m not completely sure..  The day started with a session with my psychologist.  The main thing we talked about was the repetitive negative nature of my relations with men, which seem to have gone from intolerable--severe beatings and psychological abuse, to being treated as an object to be used and thrown away.  There wasn’t time to talk about where this comes from, but of course I left wondering about it.  


When I go back and try to figure out why my relations with men are so fucked up, I always go back to what happened to me when I was younger. Memories that are distinctive, vivid, and yet I recall them as if they were someone else's memories.  There may be other explanations, than the ones I have in mind, but I may well be a ways from getting to them. Peter asked me last year why I don't just leave my traumas behind me, in the past. He can't understand that they are here with me every day, not just as memories, but as causes of repetitions, behavior and situations I must escape from. But I'm not ready to write about it.

Well actually I did just spend several hours writing about it, but I still don't dare post it here. While I was writing I was overcome by an insane obsession to drink. It felt like I was going to implode if I didn't. Only another alcoholic could understand how difficult it was not to run away into drink.

I want to try to write here more often again. During my last vacation I had what I call "beach brain," and as a result couldn't write. Since then I've been feeling like a member of a clean up crew after a natural disaster. Only this disaster wasn't natural, it's just my life, what happens when I let my vigilance down. Day to day activities have kept me from writing. There's more work to be done before I can write, but I'll be back here as often as I can.

That Baby

How long was it?  A week, two weeks?  I don’t remember exactly.  When the sidewalk falls out from under my feet, time becomes fuzzy.  There were about three days that I forgot to eat, just plain forgot.  Whenever that happens, afterwards, when I try to eat, I can’t keep it down.  I barf up the food, and then I barf because my stomach is empty and the acids are eating away at it.  I barf and I barf for days, and the pain becomes really agonizing.  My thinking gets fuzzy because I’m running on an empty tank. I spend the day eating small amounts of simple foods, which is uncomfortable and difficult, and waiting to see how much I can keep down.  I become so weak that it’s difficult to even sit up and watch movies, but I try--with a barf bucket next to me--because I don’t want to spend all of the day in bed.  At the same time that I’m trying to get my stomach to calm down and heal, I've been doing two things which make it worse: I chain smoke on an empty stomach which is just plain crazy, and I drink water compulsively, which means that there’s that much more available in my stomach to barf.

I’ve been working for years on my issue with eating.  My ex-psychiatrist said that it wasn’t anorexia, but like anorexia.  I’m more than happy to eat if someone cooks for me, or if I’m in a restaurant, but I find it extremely difficult to make myself eat when I’m on my own--which is most of the time.  Years ago, after a session with my psychiatrist, Hervé asked what I’d spoken about, and explained this issue.  He said to imagine that I was a baby that was hungry, and asked me what I’d do with this baby.  When he said that, I vividly imagined a baby in my arms, and throwing that baby to the ground, shouting: “I don’t want this baby.”

While I was waiting to get better, I started to get really scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself, that I would need help, I began to fear that I’d have to go back to a psych ward.  I asked a friend from the alcohol support group if I could check in with him each day about what I’d eaten, and if I’d taken my meds.  It’s working, because I can’t call and say that I’ve eaten and taken my meds if I haven’t.

I have other issues that seem to be intertwined with my eating issue.  I neglect health problems, letting them drag out for months or years before seeking proper treatment.  For example, once I badly injured both knees, and spent months barely able to walk, before I sought help.  I tend to get used to the pain and discomfort, no matter how bad it is.  About nine years ago, I went into a deep depression that kept me in bed for three years.  That was in my last apartment, which I’d renovated, nicely decorated, and kept spotless.  My personal hygiene was impeccable, and I went to great lengths to dress quite fashionably on a limited budget.  When the depression set in, my apartment went to hell, it became filthy, and I became filthy.  That’s not surprising since just getting out of bed to pee felt like a major accomplishment.  Curiously, as I got better, the sloth didn’t clear up.  I love a good hot long bath, or short of that a good long hot shower.  And yet, it has been a huge struggle to get back into the habit of showering and dressing nicely.  I’ve made good progress there, but my room remains disgusting.  Interestingly, I discovered in the bipolar chat room that many of us have issues with personal hygiene--we’re practically allergic to soap and water.  I guess that’s the depression end of the spectrum, and being better doesn’t mean being well.  It’s been a long hard climb out of that depression, and I’m not all of the way out of it yet. To make matters worse, the same problems with hygiene and cleanliness crop up for alcoholics--we have to build new habits when we get into recovery.




It’s clear that I’m not just dealing with bipolar symptoms and alcoholsim, since I’m throwing that baby, myself,to the ground, saying: “I don’t want this baby.”  Clearly I have a problem with low self-esteem. Learning to take care of myself when I reject myself that severely is going to be a long and slow process.

The Cow

The Cow

When the Eastern block first opened up, beautiful hand crafted items showed up in the street markets here at criminally low prices.  Amazingly beautiful pieces of work that had taken hours of work and a lot of skill to create sold at such low prices, that you had to wonder how the artisans managed to eat.  There was a beautiful Ukrainian doll that I coveted.  I visited her often at the market, but couldn’t give myself permission to buy her.  And then one day, without knowing why, I let myself buy her.  I took her home and hid her immediately, without even opening the wrapping to take a peek.  She remained hidden for months, maybe a year or longer.  I forgot that she was hidden.  And then one day I remembered her, and looked for that package, found it, opened it up  and I put the doll on my shelf, where I could see her, astonished by her beauty.  Now you may well  think that’s wierd.  shortly after I’d put the doll out, during a phone conversation, I mentioned it to my sister and she said she does the same thing too.  Why are we like this?  Why do we let men treat us like shit?  Why do we hide gifts to ourselves?  We don’t feel that we deserve to be treated better?  We don’t feel that we deserve gifts?

In the beginning of the month I went on a compulsive and manic spending spree on eBay.  I spent money that I didn’t have yet on things that I really wanted.  I tried really hard to get myself to focus on what I needed to spend that money on--new glasses, and computer repair for example, important things.  But I couldn’t.  I couldn’t stop myself.  I searched methodically all night long, night after night.  When it became daylight, the light nagged at me, reminded me that I needed to sleep.  It nagged at me and nagged at me until I went to bed.  By then of course I had to sleep all day.  And when I got up, I’d try to do something else but I couldn’t.  I searched for things that I’d loved when I was in Japan, that I’d thought I would be able to save up and buy, or that I’d simply enjoyed going to look at.  Objects that I loved.  The craftsmanship in Japan is amazing.  Just standing and looking at those objects was a form of meditation.  The time I spent in Japan was one of the happiest times in my life.  I couldn’t have imagined that it would be ripped away from me so abruptly, so cruelly.  Life’s like that, you can only be in the moment, without knowing what will happen next.  You can choose to live in the moment, or you can try to deny it, run away from it.  Anesthetize yourself with alcohol, watch TV reruns and movies compulsively, play checkers compulsively, avoid leaving your room because you’re terrified to even walk out the door and up the street to buy groceries even when you’re really hungry.  You can avoid life.  There have been moments in my life when I have been in the now, but mostly I hide.  I hide myself from life like I hid that Ukrainian doll.

So anyway, I searched on eBay for handcrafted items, folk toys mostly, folk toys, pottery, bamboo flower arrangement baskets, dolls, lacquer ware and so on.  I even searched by every material I could think of: wood, fabric, ceramic, bronze, paper maché....  I looked and looked and looked, until I found something I really wanted, and then I bid on it, with the money I didn’t have.  This isn’t the first time I’ve gone on a manic spending spree on eBay.  The last time I did it, it got me into a lot of debt and created a mess that I spent years cleaning up.  I swore never again.  For years I wouldn’t even let myself look at eBay, just like I don’t let myself go into shops, and even avoid window shopping.  Manic spending sprees are a typical precursor symptom to an upcoming manic phase, and I do my best not to tempt my fate.  But bipolar is a disease, and no matter how hard you try to manage it, sooner or later it’s going to kick you down to the ground.

I’ve spent the last month busting my ass to work to pay for those eBay items.  Made myself ill by pushing myself to work even though I’m not well enough to work.  I’ve spent years fighting to work, and failing again and again because my health wouldn’t permit it.  I was given full disability for a reason.  And it certainly wasn’t because I didn’t want to work.  After six years on a waiting list for job retraining, I went through eight months of exams, interviews, and tests, for it.  The French government told me that I couldn’t work, that I’m an artist, and I should do my art, that society needs artists.  That it’s okay just to be me.  And for this they give me just enough money to survive on each month.  But I fight to work, thenI accept that I can’t, and then go back into the ring for one more round.  I thought that I was done fighting, that I could accept my life as it was.  I thought that at last I could keep out the voices of people who can’t see my invisible disability, who say:  “You look great, you’re doing fine, you talentad and competent, you should be working.”  “You’re normal, so stop slacking.”  

Inevitably, bipolar kicked me to the ground again, I had a manic rip again, on eBay, using promises of payment instead of money.  And the day that manic rip stopped and the morning I awoke to see what I’d done, I felt lke I was inspecting hurricane wreckage.   I had to begin working to clean up the mess.  It’s taking everything from me.  It takes up so much of my time and energy, that I haven’t been able to deal with simple daily tasks or activities.  I haven’t been able to go to my alcohol support group meetings.  I’ve become increasingly disconnected from reality.  Some days I can see that it’s there, I try to grasp at it, but it’s just beyond the tips of my fingers.  

Now, I’ve almost finished paying my bills.  I can almost get back into daily life.  It’s there, I can see it.  Yesterday I managed to get myself out of my room to go to a meeting.  Every step and every minute outdoors was terrifying.  It was a beautiful day that I could have been part of.  Other people were out there, out in the streets, being part of life, and I felt like I was looking through a window.  It was terrifying, it was difficult.  I had dressed well and put on my favorite perfume.  I saw people that I knew, and I said that , “Yes, everything’s going great.”  I struggled to focus, to listen carefully to what people were saying, to be present for others.  Yes, it was hard, but I did it, I took those first steps out, back into the world, once again returning from some other place.  Terrified that I was just days away from having to go back to the psych ward, I asked my psychologist for help.  She introduced me to the psych nurses, so I can go in and talk as often as I need to, without having to go back to the psych ward.  And she gave me suggestions of other ways I can ask people to be supportive.  This way I can take baby steps out into the world, while learning not to be so self-destructive, which will do me a lot more good than lying around in a hospital bed bored out of my mind.

And then there is the cow.  The eBay purchases started arriving, and I could had a pretty good guess from the size and shape of the package, and the location of the sender, what was in it.  I’ve been stacking the boxes up, without opening them.  It would be difficult well nigh impossible to hide them here in this room, but I can ignore them, by staying compulsively in front of my computer.  I’ve been hiding the gift of life from myself.  In many ways, the most insidious way being through alcohol.  Alcoholism hides life from you.  People often think that drinking is your fault, after all, you’re the one who choose to drink and you should just choose to stop drinking.  “Just use some self-control, like other people do.”  Well some most folks can do that, but for alcoholics it doesn’t work that way.  Alcoholism is a disease, and not just any disease, it wants you dead with a vengeance.  Sure, lots of diseases kill, but not this way.  Alcohol turns you into the living dead, it wants you dead before you get to your grave.   It robs life from the living.  Methodically, it robs you of your dignity, your self-worth, your self-control, it takes your job, your spouse, your children, it robs you of everything.  It kills your soul.  It’s Evil.  Oh, you may not believe in God, or you may accept that there God exists, even if you have no clue of what God is, there is some benevolent force out there that gives our lives meaning and purpose.  But a force out there that wants to destroy meaning and purpose?  Oh no, we don’t want to believe in that.  But I am a witness, as are countless others, that Evil is out there, and alcohol is one of the seductive ways that it introduces itself into our lives.

Anyone, I stacked up the packages, all but one, because it surprised me. It was smaller than anything I was expecting.  What had I ordered that would come in such a small box?   I opened it out of curiosity.  Inside was a small Japanese kokeshi paper maché cow with a head that bobbles.  That particular shade of red which is so common in Japan, with abstract designs on it.  I put the cow on my shelf in a spot where  I see it often.  I gaze at it, and it brings me joy.  Real joy.  It’s been a very very long time since I’ve felt such joy.  It keeps catching my attention.  Sometimes I feel that it has answers to questions that I haven’t asked yet.  Sometimes I just observe it.  Sometimes I am in awe that a craftsman or craftswoman made this cow in Japan, with love and attention without knowing where that cow would go or who would love that cow. And now it is with me in Paris, on the other side of the world, a link between myself and someone about whom I know nothing.  Our lives are mainly made up of links between ourselves and people we don’t know.  We just tend to think that it’s the links we’re aware of that are the important ones.

There is a zen teaching that the best way to control a bull is to give it a very large field and just observe it.  I think this is the teaching that I should be paying attention to now.  I’m the bull who needs a very large field.  The best way for me to control this bull is just to observe it.  I’ve been fighting and struggling for years to control my alcoholism, to control my bipolar disorder, to control my life, and the harder I try to control these things, the worse they get.  I’m going to give myself a very large field now, and just observe.

One Step At A Time

I’ve just returned from six weeks in Palma de Mallorca, where I spent most of my time on the beach tanning, bobbling in the water when there were waves, and floating like a jellyfish when the water was flat.  When I visit, often the first two or three days I’m at the beach, my mind is busy thinking about all sorts of things and I find it hard to shut the thoughts out, then the effect of the sun and the beach takes hold and my mind reaches a relaxed and meditative state--I can be here now.

I had intended to blog at least once a week while there, but found it impossible to write.  I was just too relaxed to concentrate on anything.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I did get to lots of my alcohol support group meetings, and spent a lot of time writing out my Step work. I was able to concentrate well on that, but unable to bring myself to think about the issues I want to address in this blog.  I don’t even know if I’m ready yet now.

The first week or so after I get back from Peter’s, it’s like I have jet lag.  My sleep schedule gets turned on it’s head.  I surf the net compulsively, and watch movies and TV series compulsively until dawn, then I spend the day sleeping.  That's typical addictive behavior. I avoid my daily reality.  I quite sure why that is, although there is a radical difference between being at Peter’s and being here. Here, I feel the imperative to rebuild my life, to get things done, and as often as not, I slip out of being here now. I've been living here and now more and more though, since I stopped working. Rebuilding my life is daunting--usually I'm courageous, but I can slip into fear and hide from it.

Peter spoils me rotten.  He pays my airfare, does the shopping and cooking (he’s a fabulous cook), and cleaning.  When I get up in the morning, he’s set out freshly washed beach towels, and prepared my lunch.  And he prepares fabulous dinners.  It’s like staying at a 5 star hotel, and then some.  Whenever I arrive, there are new clothes for me in the wardrobe, and he can’t help but buy me even more, even when he asks me to remind him to stop, which I do.  

It’s a real vacation for me, not only because I don’t have to worry about a single thing, but because I get a break from my head.  Peter doesn’t fully get how much of a vacation it is for me, since as he says I don’t work here.  Whereas he works quite hard.  When I’m here though, I can find my life rather exhausting.  Dealing with daily activities can be a bit of a struggle since I have no external structure.  I get run down trying to do things, and feel like I’m not getting anything done.  Yes, I’m sober now, yes, I’m not depressed, and yet I haven’t figured out how to lead a productive and satisfying life.  The real problem is that my expectations of what I can do get too high, and then I have trouble not beating myself up for not living up to them. Or I tell myself: "My life is in stasis," even though I've been growing since I've been in recovery.  I really want to be doing my photography, but it still isn’t happening. Instead of focusing on what I'm not doing, and what isn't happening, I need to focus on the opposite.

Peter used to think that two weeks was as much of a visit as he could take, then he extended it to six weeks in winter and six weeks in summer, which worked out quite well.  So this visit he proposed that I spend three months in winter and three months in summer, as a transition towards living there full time.  I was very happy with the idea of being able to enjoy both the advantages of being there and here.  But I just found out from my social assistant that in order to stay on disability, I can’t spend more than three months abroad per year.  Although I can retire abroad, so I have to go back to the idea of rebuilding my life here.

I can understand why I fought so long to work, why I didn’t want to accept being this disabled.  It’s so hard to let go of your dreams.  It’s an invisible disability.  People look at you and say you’re fine, you don’t have a problem, you should be working, and so on.  I try not to buy into that because it makes me feel guilty when I can’t live up to others’ expectations.  When I’m feeling well, I can look at myself the way other people do, and wonder why I can’t lead the types of lives they lead.  I can get impatient for my life to improve, saying: I want it to change now, I want it to be different.  I don’t even know if that’s possible, or if it’s at least partially possible, how long it will take to make the changes I want to make.  I just have to be patient and believe that it can change, one step at a time.  I keep reminding myself: One step at a time.

Stuck

I’ve been in Palma de Mallorca, at my brother Peter’s, for a little over a week now.  I love being here.  It seems like each time I come, as soon as I step out of the airport, I’ve left all of my worries and stress behind me.  Life here is simple: beach, beach, and more beach, along with my alcohol support group meetings.

Peter always buys my tickets here, and lots of clothes for me.  He works with color themes, and can remember all of the items he’s bought for me in the past, so so he can coordinate the new clothes with the old, and then he gets accessories to go with them.  This summer he said there would be no clothes since he’d just bought me a new computer.  Then he called to say that I should arrive with an empty suitcase--as I expected, since he couldn’t resist temptation.  Then we went out and did a bit more shopping together, so I’ve got some gorgeous new dresses.  Having a computer is absolutely essential to me, and having  nice clothes makes me feel great.  There isn’t any money in my budget for buying new clothes and shoes, so his generosity makes a huge difference.

I was feeling really down about being stuck in Paris, stuck in my tiny overcrowded room, without money to take advantage of all that the city has to offer.  My budget is so tight that I had to give up smoking, which is a good thing of course, in order to be sure to have enough to eat every day.  Stuck in a place where I’m so socially isolated, etc.  Still, I imagine that few people would sympathise with me for being stuck there.  And it’s true that in France my health care is covered, my mental health meds are free for life, I’ve got full disability, psychiatric care, and a housing subsidy.  No matter what, I know that my basic needs will be met.  And how can I feel bad about my situation when I get to jet set back and forth to Spain?

The first few years that Peter was encouraging me to move here, I had strong doubts about it.  I’ve been a big city rat for so many years, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be here full time.  But I’m incredibly fortunate to have a brother who cares so much about me, and who wants me to live nearby so he can take care of me when I’m not doing well.  Now I can imagine building a new life here, I can’t imagine what it will be like, but I can imagine that it will be a life I’m satisfied with.

Starting Again

The month of migraines wiped me out physically and emotionally.  I've been through long periods of pain like that for years, but I can't recollect having ever been so drained afterwards.  Once the pain was gone, I didn't bounce back up to where I'd been, and couldn't find the motivation to do anything more than small tasks such as grocery shopping and getting to meetings.  A good part of that could be attributed to the fact that my vacation was just a few weeks away--classes were over, I didn't have the energy to write, and there wasn't any point in gearing up for larger projects.  More importantly, certainly, was the time I'd spent in bed reflecting on paring down my ambitions and accepting my limitations.  I've been fighting with my limitations for years, trying to push past them.  Now I realize that accepting them isn't giving in or up, that it's actually a way of focusing on what I can do.

I know now that it's really not likely that I'll get back into galleries, even though it's not actually being represented by galleries that's so important to me.  I miss the high of shooting, I miss the fracture of a second in which I know with certainty that I've captured an image, the image, that I was seeking.  I miss the hours and days working on a print until I understood it, got it to speak.  A negative is like a musical score, which can be interpretetated in many ways: you must interpret it to resound.  I miss retouching a print until every single imperfection is gone.  Can I pare down my photographic amibitions without losing that pleasure?  Exhibiting in galleries is just the final step in that process.  Not the most important part of the process.  What always mattered to me the most was doing the work itself.  My work doesn't fit in with modern or contemporary photographic trends by a long shot, because I've always done it for myself without trying to follow my peers.  It's just my vision, that's all.  Once I had my portfolio read at Le Musée de la Photographie here in Paris, and the man who read it said that he loved my work but that it was dangerously erotic and too close to fashion, that I should shoot my models entirely nude, Basically, he was telling me that if I wanted to be exhibited in a museum, I would have to rob my work of it's meaning.  If at some point I feel that entire nudity is necessary to what I want to express, that's okay, but I'm not going to do it just in order to be exhibited in a museum.

One of the other main things I was thinking about while stuck in bed was whether or not to move to Palma d Mallorca, where my brother Peter lives.  He's been urging me to move there for three or four years now, because he feels helpless when I'm not doing well and he's too far away to help take care of me.  He also knows that I do better in the sun.  That's true of many people of course, but even when I was a child my family noticed that my summers away in the desert had a huge impact on my well being.  And every summer that I've gone to visit him there him there has made me feel hugely better.  I've hesitated, however, because I couldn't imaginge what living in a small town like that like that year round would be like.  I've been a big city rat for so many years now, that the idea of moving there made me think of being a goldfish in a small bowl swimming in circles.  This last Christmas he invited me for seven weeks, so I could get a feel of what it would be like in winter.  


Stuck in bed with the migraines, I finally made the decision to move to Palma, for many reasons, being with family being one of the most important.  Making the decision to leave Paris is not one that one does lightly after having spent more than half there life here.  Then I met with my social worker and found out that I wouldn't be able to get my disability there.  Retirement yes, but disability no.  And then to add insult to injury, I realized that I'm stuck here for a minimum of four more years because I have someone else in charge of my finances.  I have a weekly grocery allowance, for any further expenses I have to make requests, which my budget will not allow for the next two years.  When the impact of this realization hit me I was angry and resentful for several days.  Trapped by poverty and administration.  Fortunately my thinking began to change.

If I spend the four years working diligently to learn Spanish, my move there will be more than considerably easier.  I have acess to an inexpensive photo studio here, so I could complete the photo series that I'm working on.  I can have my prints done by top notch photo labs here, if I can find the money.  I could possibly find a gallery here, and even in other European countries.  I've got a psychiatrist, psychologist, and full health care here.  I can write here (or anywhere).  I have a great alcoholic support group here.  I've got a great new sponsor with whom I have confidence that I can go through the twelve steps in a much more in depth way than I have in the past--which means not just staying sober, but building a happier and healthier life than I've ever had.  Also, without seeking it, I just got two sponsees who are really motivated, and to whom I'm really honored to be of service.  With my disability card I can get in to all the museums and swimpools for free, and the list goes on. Yes my room still is so tiny and filled with the last of my belongings that I can't let go of, that I have to walke sideways from my front door to the toilet, the desk and my bed, but I can live with that as long as I know it's not permanent.

Stormy Weather

About a month ago I got a severe migraine the same day a thunder and lightning storm struck--after months of an unusually beautiful spring—sudden weather changes and especially storms usually trigger my migraines.  I expected to recover after a few days, as usual, once the weather had stabilized.  But the weather remained unstable, and the migraines were unrelenting.  I spent most of the first ten days in bed, not even feeling well enough to sit up and watch TV, which gave me plenty of time for reflecting on things.  I spent the first day or two thinking about time—I have an odd relationship with time, I think largely due to bipolar disorder, which can distort your sense of time, or distance you from it.   The reason I was preoccupied with time was that I was trying to recall how long I’d been feeling up and well, able to participate in a fair number of activities—wishing that I would return to that state after the migraines cleared up.  It was a bit more complex than that though, because in the preceding weeks I’d been forced to increasingly reduce my activities, and struggled to keep going.   As I could only achieve smaller and smaller tasks, and participate less in the outside world, my sense of time deteriorated.  When I’m struggling, remembering even my previous day can be difficult.  I’m more or less suspended in time.  I spent several hours working on remembering the previous week.  Tuesdays I have my Photoshop class, so I could remember that, and Thursdays I have my home group meeting, so I could remember that, and on Fridays I have gym class, so I could remember going there, and then going from there to meet with my sponsor to go over the second step.  The rest of the week remained in a fog. 

When you’re working, or going to school, taking vacations, filing income tax returns and so forth, there are markers for the progression of time.  Naturally, when you spend years on disability able to work little if at all, spending months or years in bed, time takes on a very different quality.  This is easy to understand since there are few if any external events to mark time.  Little if any interaction with the daily activities that structure time, give it a sense of progression.  Generally that doesn’t bother me, I’m used to it.  If I really need to know how long I’ve been living in this room, I can look for my lease, if I need to know when I last worked, I can look for my old pay slips, and so forth.  But there is something about time that is important to me.  When I’m in an up state, feeling well and vibrant, able to do things, I have a sense of time, there are good times and events to remember.  About six years ago or so, for about a year, I was feeling well enough to both teach part-time and do my photography regularly.  It was an exhilarating time; I wanted dearly to believe that it could last.   My psychiatrist at the time told me that it could last, as long as I stayed on my meds and stayed in therapy.  As much as I wanted to believe him, I knew from past experience that that would not be the case—I was living on borrowed time, so to speak.

Stuck in bed, one of the foremost things on my mind was how isolated I am here, that I don’t want to grow old in a city where I’m alone and isolated, and that I want to move as soon as I can to a place where I can build some friendships and have a small community around me.  Sure, Paris is filled with amazing opportunities and possibilities, but when you’re living in poverty so many of them are closed off to you.  I have just one friend here that I’ve had for years, Manu, who has a heart of gold, and is great fun to go out for a meal with, take a walk, or go to the movies, but he’s very quiet, certainly not the type of person I could talk to the way I’d like to be able to talk to with a girlfriend.  We see each other ever couple of months or so.  This last year I’ve become friends with Hélène, who’s painfully shy, so it’s been taking time, but we’ve been out to coffee a few times, and now have gotten into the habit of phoning each other regularly.  They are my only two friends here, other than my friends from the alcohol support program—I see them at the meetings and at coffee afterwards, and they’re there for you when you need support, but what I dearly want is a best friend here.

I still have good friends in the US even though I haven’t lived there for years, so I know it’s not just me.  There are a number of reasons it’s been so difficult for me to find friends here.  I went to the American University of Paris, which has a very international body of students, so after graduation my friends from school all moved to different countries.  As a photographer, I was working with different models daily, and they were much younger and had different interests, as well as being constantly on the road, so there weren’t any opportunities to make friends there.  My ex-husband was an extreme loner, so I couldn’t become friends with his friends.  And he went out of his way to keep me from seeing anyone that I knew.  As an English teacher, I had little or no contact with my colleagues, and of course even if you get on well with your students, there is a professional boundary that can’t be crossed.  And of course the years in bed with depression cut me off entirely from outside contact.  Friends that I did have would grow impatient and drop me.  Perhaps the greatest problem of all though is the French, they’re cold and distant, especially in Paris, and it can take years to become friends even if you have the opportunities to meet people.  I’ve heard that people form circles of friends at school, keep those friends over the years, and rarely admit new people into the circle.  Whatever the secret to making friends here is, I really don’t care any more.  I’ve certainly tried.  After two years of going to Kung Fu classes four to five times a week, I barely got a “good evening” out of the other women, and we shared a small locker room!  I didn’t have any more success meeting women in my dance class or book club, or any of the other activities I’ve tried. As much as I love Paris, and as hard as it will be to leave Paris, I am ready to go.  I’ve been thinking this through carefully for several years now; it’s time to move on.

Unfortunately I’m not in a position to just make up my mind and move.  Even though I’m a French citizen, I can’t collect French disability while living in Spain.  I could get my retirement there, but that’s not exactly around the corner.  The other obstacle is that I have a guarantor who’s in charge of my finances and administrative steps.  I had to accept having a guarantor after a combination of bad luck and poor judgment during a manic episode ran me badly into debt and nearly got me kicked out of the public housing where I live.  The guarantor pays all of my bills; I just have a withdrawal card so I can access a small weekly sum to cover groceries.  If I need anything else, I have to ask my guarantor, but at this point my budget is so tight, that there isn’t room for any purchases no matter how urgent.  I can’t use the withdrawal card outside of France, which makes travelling difficult.  I have the guarantor for a five year renewable period.  Which means I’m trapped here for four more years, and right now I feel that’s more than I feel can take.  I feel infuriated, trapped, depressed.  Four more years in this tiny room, where I can hardly get at my books where’s no room for crafts projects, no room for setting up easels to paint, where most of my stuff is in boxes because there’s no space to organize it in.  It’s literally like living in a storage unit.  I have to walk sideways to get past the boxes.  When I moved here I had to sell off or give away three quarters of my belongings, I’ve pared down to want I absolutely want to keep. 

Another subject I thought about while lying in bed, was the years I spent denying my disability or the extent of it.  I kept going back to work every time I was feeling better, although I was never well enough to work more than part-time, and gradually the number of hours I could work decreased till an eight hour workweek was a full load for me and even that ran me down.  I was on the waiting list for job retraining for six years, and was absolutely thrilled when I finally got called up for it.  Unrealistic projects danced in my mind.  A new start!  Before I could actually go through job retraining I had to go through an eight month period of evaluations and tests and meetings with psychiatrists.  At the end they concluded that I was too fragile to start job retraining.  I was both devastated and relieved, because during the evaluation period it had gradually dawned even on me that I wasn’t well enough to do what I wanted to do, that I never would be.

Lying in my one person bed, in this little tiny room, I can’t help but be reminded how small my life has become.  How many dreams, hopes and plans I’ve had to give up on.  My photography is the hardest part, I’ve always felt it is who I am, not just what I do.  Do I have to let go of that?  It’s inconceivable.  Spain is my one chance; there I could be near my brother Peter.  Apartments are cheaper or more spacious, there’s a beach, and people are more open and warmer.  Even if I could do little or no photography, I could write.  Writing doesn’t require money, just time, skill, and imagination.  I will be happy as long as I have at least one creative activity to occupy me.  I’d like to write fiction, but I have no idea if I could, much less what I’d write about.  I’m so depressed right now.  I’ve been staying in bed, most of the time for the past few days.

After two weeks, the migraines had subsided enough that I could sit up and watch TV.  The third week, the symptoms were weak enough that I could get out of my room a bit.  But I felt completely drained, I had no more motivation, I didn’t want to do anything.  “I feel like a sailor who’s been buffeted about in a long violent storm, then shipwrecked, trying to assess the extent of the injuries I’ve sustained.  Looking through the wreckage to see what I can fashion some sort of shelter from.  This time my world felt much smaller.  What is there left to reconstruct?  What is there left that I can build?

Somehow I’m going to have to find a way to make staying here longer work for me.  More years of being single, assuming my track record since leaving my ex husband over eleven years ago holds steady, more years of being isolated….  It’ll be okay as long as I can keep myself occupied, as long as I’m well enough to keep myself occupied.  I’ll begin studying Spanish when I return from vacation.  I’ll go back over my list of ideas for getting my photography going again, and see if any of them are viable.

The bleak reality is that I’ll be trapped in poverty for the rest of my life, and it will create great obstacles for my creative projects, and extremely limit what I can do with my photography.  Yes, I got into top international galleries, and my work was recognized by art critics, but even at the time I didn’t have enough money to complete the series I was showing, I couldn’t buy enough film, make prints, and get them matted and shipped.  Galleries don’t keep you if you’re not productive; they have to have artists that they can market.  Then there was the theft of all of the equipment I’d finally managed to buy after years of struggling, and no money to replace it with, and then periods of years where I was stuck in bed to depressed to get up and do much of anything.  And yet I’ve held onto my photography as if my life depended on it.  Somehow or another I need to complete the series, even if it never gets exhibited, I just need it to be complete.  And there are other series that I can see in my mind, that I’d start shooting right away, if I had the means to.  I can’t really think about this.  It’s not just that I don’t want to; I just don’t even know how to right now.