Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Tuesday, February 20, 2001

6 PM. Last night I fell asleep around 8:30 PM. As usual, I kept waking up every hour to 90 minutes. Using my tapes to try to fall back asleep, I eventually would return to dreaming.

Because my sciatica has still been a nuisance, I didn’t want to try yoga or any other strenuous activity, so at 6 AM I exercised to Body Electric.

Because of my optional conferences, I didn’t expect many students at MCC today. I got about half a dozen, though I stayed late to chat with Clay, the Mormon kid who is more complex and less rigid than I might have expected. Talking to bright students is always fun.

I tried to go to the Social Security office before it opened at 9 AM, but when I got there, all the parking spaces were filled and a line of maybe 70 people snaked around the building. I remember that in Gainesville it took only about five minutes to pick up my replacement Social Security card, so I don’t know what’s going on in Mesa.

After getting home, I walked over to Starbucks, where, for a change, I had hot Passion tea (which doesn’t have caffeine) tea as I read the news section of the Times.

Usually I feel jittery after or between classes in mid-morning, and need to do something to calm myself. Then, around this time of day – late afternoon and early evening – I again start to get a little shaky.

Right now my palms are sweating, the way they do when I wake up, but I’ve been trying hard to ignore it because it does go away.

Last evening, I watched Boston Public, a show I like because it presents teaching as an occupation few sane people would take up because the stress is so great and the rewards all but nonexistent.

I also read more of Hallowell’s Worry. He’s not a fan of Klonopin. Nor is Andrew Weil, but I found an article in a recent American Family Physician about generalized anxiety disorder that reassured me that drugs like Klonopin do help a lot of people.

The meds I take can make me drowsy during the day, but sometimes I perk up, as I did today in mid-afternoon.

Bree called to ask if I could come in for my appointment with Susan at 2 PM instead of at 1 PM, and that was no problem. In the meantime, I read, did laundry, and made a dental appointment for tomorrow to see if Dr. Nin can stop my crown from hitting the tooth above it.

Before I left for Susan’s office, I got the mail: lots of bills and a rejection from the creative writing job at the University of Central Florida.

Surprisingly, Susan (who wasn’t feeling well) and I devoted most of our session to my search for a career or job that I really could enjoy. Possibly that’s a sign that I’m beginning to see beyond this illness.

I talked about things I enjoy doing, like helping people one on one. I liked teaching people how to use computer hardware or software or Lexis, and I also feel passionate about helping people who are getting the shaft. But I don’t think I could ever handle pressure very well, and I’m sure I won’t be able to right now.

On the other hand, working at the computer from home would be too comfortable and would just feed my agoraphobic tendencies. I need a job where I can get out of the house.

I guess I’m going to struggle with this for a while. It’s hard to make a career change, and during the times when I’ve felt in doubt what to do next, I’ve always gravitated back to college teaching – which hasn’t then a good thing.

Susan said she was reading The Silicon Valley Diet when she couldn’t sleep because of her neck pain, and she says that as a creative person, I see things more deeply – like her writer son and his artist fiancée – and that’s probably the flip side of my anxiety disorder. Yeah, I have a great imagination.

I have appointments penciled in with Susan for four Thursdays in March, so that relieves me a bit.

After therapy, I went to the Wildflower Bread Company by Changing Hands and had a plain bagel and a small Diet Sprite as I finished reading the paper.

At home, I paid eight more credit card bills and talked to Sat Darshan. She spoke to someone at the VA about that position she heard about. Right now the job is open only to vets, but they expect to open it up to everyone next week. She wouldn’t be eligible for the higher-up job, but they might bring her in as a GS-7 rather than a GS-5.

Sat Darshan realizes that because of her boss’s ovarian cancer, it’s a bad time for her to leave the real estate company. But she hasn’t gotten a raise in a couple of years, so why should she care about that?

As she talked, I realized that she was obsessing the way I do. Sat Darshan told me that both her mother and sister have taken SSRIs and that her paternal aunt was bipolar.

Last night I put a new ad on PlanetOut, asking for a friend only (“No sex”). Basically, I don’t want the complications of a romantic relationship. Besides, even though now that I’m off Paxil and can ejaculate again, I think the Serzone affects my ability to stay hard for prolonged periods.

Anyway, my ad already got two replies: one from a 39-year-old artist (whose drawings on his website proved that he’s got talent) and another from a 50-year-old who said he lived in “Snobsdale.” I doubt anything will come of this, but I’m tired of being alone so much.

Of course, because I fall asleep so early I don’t know when I’d have time for a social life. Since this semester began, I haven’t even seen Sat Darshan or Jen.

But I definitely need to make time to get out and see people.

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Saturday, February 24, 2001

3:30 PM. I walked into the house a little while ago, and since I’ve been here, I’ve just been sitting on the toilet, crying with my hands over my eyes. It feels so good to cry.

I went to the 1:15 PM show at the little Harkins Poca Fiesta, on Southern and Alma School, a fourplex I’m sure is doomed, but where, throughout the course of my stay here, I’ve gotten out of myself and managed to get absorbed in movies.

The film I saw today, Chocolat, was so sentimental, life-affirming and affectionate toward rebels that it really got to me.

The acting and direction and story were good, but just seeing the film left me with the feeling that everything in my life is going to be all right – even though my back pain is no better and I was unaccountably nervous this morning.

I just have the sense that nothing – not a stupid midterm in my online course or grading my own students’ essays (I have only two MCC papers left) or any other triviality, like credit card and student loan debt – is worth worrying about.

Maybe after all these months, I’m just losing patience with my anxiety. I know that I will get over it and feel better someday and that I’ll be a stronger person for having gotten through this.

I know this is just a momentary feeling, and there’s got lots of stuff ahead of me before I can really feel happy again, but maybe this is like a knothole in time where I can forget about my failures and feel calm and relaxed.

Anyway, coming home from the theater, after turning onto Dobson just after the freeway, I saw the block closed off due to a horrific incident. Some car basically totaled another that was turning out of Quail Creek’s Dobson Road exit (which I never use). The people in the car must be dead or nearly so.

For a minute I thought, Life sucks, the world is so dangerous, but my second thought was that nothing remotely as terrible as that has befallen me here.

Car trouble is one thing, but dying in an accident is quite another. My depression and anxiety aren’t fatal. Nor did I get badly injured physically when I was mugged. I really have a lot to be grateful for. I’ve learned I can deal with all this stuff and survive.

Of course, my chatterbox says menacingly, “Well, till now you have.” But I think I can handle whatever God throws at me next. At least I hope so.

Maybe therapy and self-help tapes are beginning to take hold, and so is my medication.

Marc phoned to ask me for advice about Mary Beth, his just-departed boss, who last night took 25 mg. of Zoloft that a Denver physician prescribed for her and has felt very groggy since then.

I can’t play doctor, of course, but I told Marc to tell Mary Beth to try breaking the caplet into two parts and taking only 12.5 milligrams after breakfast to see how she reacts to the drug.

Apparently not doing that was the mistake I made with Zoloft the first day I took it. At least that’s what other people familiar with the drug have told me.

Last night I fell asleep at 8:30 PM and woke up at 4:30 AM. Although I slept well, my body still would have liked to get another couple of hours’ sleep.

I had chills this morning. Granted, it was 45°, ten degrees cooler than yesterday morning, but I also felt antsy. So I tried a light Body Electric workout. avoiding anything near my lower back.

At first, I felt better, but once I sat down for a while, it really hurt to get up, bend down, and generally move around.

However, once I started walking, I felt better as my back and buttocks seemed less stiff. I drove to Borders and got there just as the store opened at 9 AM. Sitting in the café, I finished today’s paper, graded some student essays, and read Poets & Writers.

Reading articles about Ragdale and Villa Montalvo made me feel very nostalgic for my time there. I hadn’t known that Kathryn Funk was no longer at Villa Montalvo anymore.

When the new Orchard of Artists opens there in the fall of 2002, they will give the artists selected stipends of $1,000 a month, a car and residencies up to six months. So I think the competition will be much harder than when I got in.

Of course, I could try applying to Villa Montalvo for the winter, just as I’ve applied for this fall at Ucross.

I sometimes think that maybe I would have been a lot better off if I had gone to Ragdale last September instead of moving to Phoenix.

And maybe I should forget about my financial and mental health worries and consider applying to other colonies, like VCCA, for this fall.

Rochelle sent me a note about an author’s bio service she must be running. I mostly have filled out an application with my bio and photo and partial bibliography.

I’ve also been downloading more Driveway.com files and emailing them to myself for storage on Yahoo mail.

At the moment I feel like lying down, but I’m going to get the mail and see if I want to go to Wendy’s or something. It’s better for my back that I keep moving around. I will get to grading the papers for later.

While it does bother me that I have trouble relaxing on a Saturday, I guess I feel better about things if I learn to take life more lightly.

It’s a hard lesson to learn, and it takes constant practice to out-talk my negativity. But at this moment, I think I will get there in the end.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2001

4 PM. I’m so sleep-deprived and messed-up that I’ve already called in sick and canceled my ASU classes for tomorrow. (I emailed everyone I could find in the 7:40 AM class so they won’t be getting up early for nothing.)

I figure that I’ll feel less pressured tonight, knowing I don’t have to be awake early and can stay in bed longer.

And if I again barely sleep tonight, at least I won’t have to teach – the way I did at MCC this morning – through the brain fog of extreme sleep deprivation.

I woke up at midnight after four decent hours of sleep. But as sure as I was that I would manage to fall back asleep, I could not. Perhaps my back pain had something to do with it.

I did everything I could think of, from trying the relaxation and breathing tapes to watching a dull PBS documentary to walking around the apartment.

Finally, because I’d gotten only a total of only eight hours of sleep the previous two nights, I took my .5 mg. morning Klonopin at 2 AM.

That relaxed me, but only enough to get an hour’s sleep between 3 AM and 4 AM, and I think I could do that only because I used paradoxical intention, deliberately trying to keep my eyes open and stay awake every time I began to drift off.

I didn’t read today’s paper and haven’t the desire to do so. My back isn’t much better – perhaps a touch, and it may only be the Vioxx relieving a little pain.

I did feel a bit nauseated during the night, but I don’t know if I can blame that on Vioxx.

Anyway, the queasiness soon disappeared, though I felt sickish while teaching my class. But the last thing I did before I started to feel sick was read aloud Updike’s “A&P” before we discussed the story. Reading aloud seemed to take a lot out of me.

Moreover, I had terrible brain fog, so I was stumbling over words and forgetting students’ names and doing other stupid things. Later, at home, I left the freezer door open for maybe twenty minutes.

Needing to get some groceries after class, I went to Bashas’. At home, I lay down but I couldn’t really get any kind of rest.

Actually, the lack of my morning Klonopin problem – see, there’s brain fog again. (In the way I phrased that, I guess you can figure that out I have brain fog.)

When I started to tremble in late morning, I took half of a .5 milligram tablet.

Luckily, I had a 1 PM appointment with Susan. Now it’s true that my back pain may be contributing to how bad I’ve been feeling today, but basically I wanted some suggestions on how to deal with these feeling.

Susan – no stranger to back pain – said I should try getting out of bed more rather than lying there obsessing, but I think I’m doing everything else write right. (More brain fog.)

Later, Susan left me a voice mail message after talking with her husband (with whom I have an appointment on Monday, March 12 ). Dr. Brubaker  said to stay at 350 milligram a day of Serzone, but try taking 300 mg. at night and 50 mg. in the morning. I think I’ve done that on my own sometimes.

Anyway, Dr. Brubaker said if that doesn’t work, I should take nothing in the morning and the whole 350 mg. at night. So we’ll see what happens.

Eventually I will sleep decently for one night because the exhaustion just builds up. That would happen even when I was at my worst last fall.

I can’t deny that Serzone worked for me before, and it still puts me to sleep – just not for a whole night.

Last evening I spoke to Libby, and it felt good to talk to her. Having gone through this, I can say that the most important thing in my life has been my friends – and also as my family. Everything else is bullshit.

I spoke to Sat Darshan after her job interview at the Department of Economic Security. She feels she might have a good chance at getting a second interview with them.

The job pays well, has good benefits, and she could get what is to her an incredible four weeks of vacation a year. But it would also be a return to a dreary civil service environment in an office without windows, just like at the VA, and located in a neighborhood where there are no nice restaurants or stores.

I probably should have applied a heating pad or an ice pack to my back for the pain, but I couldn’t manage to do that – nor did I do much exercise.

It’s the second day in a row that I haven’t done my regular half-hour exercise session. I know I would feel better if I put on Body Electric or did yoga or aerobics or Tae Bo, bet I just feel too tired and apathetic.

However, I did buy a heavily-discounted cheerful yellow plaid sport shirt at the Ward’s going-out-of-business sale after I felt better after my appointment with Susan.

Tomorrow is the end of what’s been for me a chilly, rainy February. It’s also Ash Wednesday, so I guess today was Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It’s twenty years since my first trip there to visit Tom and teach at NOCCA.

My mind is so numb and brain-fogged that it’s a wonder I’ve been able to write this. Does any of it makes sense?