Mus c ox, Self rage, and SMI
Feb. 16th, 2008 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verushka70Last night went to see Casablanca on the big screen with my bf at the Music Box Theatre. Ah. Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and a host of great supporting actors who showed up in a number of other films together, including Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Claude Rains (who was also in Hitchcock's Notorious with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant four years later -- another superb film, but Ingrid Bergman's character in Notorious is totally different than her role as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca). There really is nothing like seeing Casablanca on the big screen.
Even though I have the DVD and have probably seen Casablanca fifty times, I never miss a chance to see a screening of it in an actual theater. Despite some occasionally hokey and obvious back-lot studio sets, other than that, it really stands the test of time. It also has a number of quite hilarious ethnic stereotypes -- which, these days, might be considered slurs -- but since they're about white ethnic groups, no one cares or bats an eye. I've always loved how they made a distinction in Casablanca between German people and German Nazis, whom you can freely hate as the nasty villains they are.
While we were walking down Southport to the theater, I was rather amused to see that the "i" in "Music" and the "B" in "Box" were both out, so that the theater sign said "Mus c ox" instead of "Music Box." A little reminder of Fraser.
This also reminded me of another sign I see lit at night, which has some letters out. I see it when I'm driving south on Pulaski south of I-55 on my way to my night shifts at the hospital. It's supposed to say "Self Storage" but the "Sto" is out, so instead it says "Self rage". My bf took a pic of the movie theater sign with his cell phone camera, but I have half a mind to drive by there again at night with my real Canon Sureshot digital camera and take a good high-res pic of it. And of the Self rage sign, too.
What can I say. I am easily amused.
In other news, I was trying to line up a different psychiatrist, since the one I've been seeing -- while I like him quite a bit -- only has office hours from 3-6pm one day a week, on a night I usually work the night shift, making it nigh impossible to see him (I have missed the last two appointments & had to reschedule, both times because I slept through them despite setting TWO alarms). So I was on the phone with the local community mental health outreach center where I started going when I was in nursing school and my mom was diagnosed with cancer and I was not working, had no money, and felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown and lose my mind. I was trying to figure out what other psych MD I could see so I could continue to get the meds, which I desperately need. (If this is me on meds, imagine me off meds. The current morose 'tude would plummet still farther into relentless negativity. Although some people seem to think I'm already there...)
So the insurance clerk asks me do I want to use my insurance that I now finally have through my job for the therapist I see, too. I said, No, I didn't want to, because what's the point: they're going to limit me to 20 visits a year, but I see him once a week, so I might as well just continue seeing him out of pocket. (What I didn't say was, I know there is a score kept on you like a credit score, but it is a medical insurance history score, and all your insurers can access this score... and I'd prefer to keep that off there; the meds and the psych MD is probably bad enough to get me rejected for pre-existing conditions or raise my premiums should I ever need to self-insure myself, etc.)
Then she tells me, "Oh, wait. I can see from your diagnosis code that it's an SMI. With your insurance, that qualifies you for 60 visits a year, not 20, because of the mental health parity law that went into effect January 1, 2007 I believe." I was like, SMI? Mental health parity? 60 visits? What does all this mean, please? Because I had the same HMO at my last job, for years on end -- and it only ever paid for 20 visits with a counselor a year.
Turns out SMI stands for Serious Mental Illness and if you have one, in many states, legislation (called mental health parity laws) has been passed requiring insurers to pay for more visits with counselors/therapists than people with non-SMI diagnoses get. Because, basically, serious mental illness sufferers need more visits.
I had not known that my diagnosis -- chronic/recurrent major depression -- was a SMI. It was rather a jolt. Like someone telling you, after you thought you had hazel eyes all your life, that -- by the way -- your eyes are actually brown.
Then after it sank in, I thought, Well, this explains a lot. So many things make much more sense now. Like, why the bottom so easily falls out for me, like why my tipping point is so low. It doesn't really take much, these days, for my spirits to just circle the drain. Certainly, there are external stresses that contribute a lot to these tendencies. But even for all the years without those, I battled my depressed moods and the feeling that my true self was getting sucked into a black hole by the "reverse" me.
It's like, oh *light bulb goes on over head* --I see. Right. SMI. Like, you wouldn't expect someone with braces on their legs to become a soccer whiz, would you? 'Course not. So why would you expect someone with a SMI to be a really high functioning, successful person? Isn't that an equally unfair expectation?
Should I let myself off the hook and stop feeling guilty and useless and like a huge disappointment for failing to live up to "my potential" (as regards my cognitive ability) when I clearly also have serious emotional/mental problems? Or is that just making excuses for myself? Why can I understand and make allowances for other people who have to use insulin, anti-hypertensive drugs, or anti-seizure meds -- but I can't make those allowances for myself and my antidepressants? Why do I still expect myself to have a "normal" life with a "normal" outcome and "normal" goals and "normal" relationships when I'm not "normal" and it takes a huge number of pills -- which I've been on since 1990, except for the years of no job and no insurance -- just to keep me slightly (and occasionally greatly) sub-normal?
Of course, the big problem is that leg braces and insulin syringes and seizures (and even schizophrenia) are very visible and obvious to others around you. Whereas chronic/recurrent major depression is not. Unless you know the person for years on end and you have watched them slip into and out of it repeatedly. As a couple of my friends and my family have.
So. SMI. Mental health parity. Not exactly the pot at the end of the rainbow. But, I could use the extra 30 sessions that gets me. It has taken all those meds, visits with the psych MD, and once-a-week visits with the therapist just to keep me functioning at the sub-par level I've been in for the last year and a half. Sigh.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just give it up and face it: that I'm not really ever going to get any better. That, as Jack Nicholson's character said, what if this is as good as it gets. I kept waiting and waiting for my life to get "back to normal" -- back to what it was before I lost my job, before my dad got hit by that car, before I went back to school on the wrong side of 35, before my mom and stepdad were diagnosed with cancer, before my stepdad died, before my bf made it clear I was good enough to kill time with but not good enough to commit to marrying.
I thought when I finished nursing school and got a job I would start to get my old life back. But, as my bf put it, everything that happened has changed me. I can never go back to being that person again. Too much has happened; I've lived through too much. And it changed me. So now what. So, now what. Now I finished school and I got my job and it's incredibly stressful... and I'm still me.
I had this conversation with the bf a couple weeks ago on the phone. We were talking about a mutual friend and how ridiculously drama queen-y she is, how high-maintenance, and how melodramatic she is. And I said, "I don't understand what men see in women like that, or why they stay." And my bf (rather bitterly) said, "Yeah, I know."
In the few seconds of dead silence that followed, I realized oh my god, I am that high maintenance girlfriend, too. And it was one of the more horrible, cringe-worthy moments of my life so far. Which is saying a lot (because it's not like there haven't been some seriously cringe-worthy moments up till now).
Not that he is, by any stretch, low maintenance himself. But after he said it, it hit me like a ton o' bricks -- like the insurance clerk's casual "SMI" bomb-drop. I've had high maintenance, mentally ill bfs before. It sucked. Big time. The thought that that is what I am now -- to him -- well, it's a pretty fuckin' tough pill to swallow. So, last night, the day after Valentine's day, after we saw Casablanca, after he gave me a dozen roses, I suggested we stop seeing each other. Because, I mean, why continue? Beating. Dead horse. Stop it.
Even though I have the DVD and have probably seen Casablanca fifty times, I never miss a chance to see a screening of it in an actual theater. Despite some occasionally hokey and obvious back-lot studio sets, other than that, it really stands the test of time. It also has a number of quite hilarious ethnic stereotypes -- which, these days, might be considered slurs -- but since they're about white ethnic groups, no one cares or bats an eye. I've always loved how they made a distinction in Casablanca between German people and German Nazis, whom you can freely hate as the nasty villains they are.
While we were walking down Southport to the theater, I was rather amused to see that the "i" in "Music" and the "B" in "Box" were both out, so that the theater sign said "Mus c ox" instead of "Music Box." A little reminder of Fraser.
This also reminded me of another sign I see lit at night, which has some letters out. I see it when I'm driving south on Pulaski south of I-55 on my way to my night shifts at the hospital. It's supposed to say "Self Storage" but the "Sto" is out, so instead it says "Self rage". My bf took a pic of the movie theater sign with his cell phone camera, but I have half a mind to drive by there again at night with my real Canon Sureshot digital camera and take a good high-res pic of it. And of the Self rage sign, too.
What can I say. I am easily amused.
In other news, I was trying to line up a different psychiatrist, since the one I've been seeing -- while I like him quite a bit -- only has office hours from 3-6pm one day a week, on a night I usually work the night shift, making it nigh impossible to see him (I have missed the last two appointments & had to reschedule, both times because I slept through them despite setting TWO alarms). So I was on the phone with the local community mental health outreach center where I started going when I was in nursing school and my mom was diagnosed with cancer and I was not working, had no money, and felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown and lose my mind. I was trying to figure out what other psych MD I could see so I could continue to get the meds, which I desperately need. (If this is me on meds, imagine me off meds. The current morose 'tude would plummet still farther into relentless negativity. Although some people seem to think I'm already there...)
So the insurance clerk asks me do I want to use my insurance that I now finally have through my job for the therapist I see, too. I said, No, I didn't want to, because what's the point: they're going to limit me to 20 visits a year, but I see him once a week, so I might as well just continue seeing him out of pocket. (What I didn't say was, I know there is a score kept on you like a credit score, but it is a medical insurance history score, and all your insurers can access this score... and I'd prefer to keep that off there; the meds and the psych MD is probably bad enough to get me rejected for pre-existing conditions or raise my premiums should I ever need to self-insure myself, etc.)
Then she tells me, "Oh, wait. I can see from your diagnosis code that it's an SMI. With your insurance, that qualifies you for 60 visits a year, not 20, because of the mental health parity law that went into effect January 1, 2007 I believe." I was like, SMI? Mental health parity? 60 visits? What does all this mean, please? Because I had the same HMO at my last job, for years on end -- and it only ever paid for 20 visits with a counselor a year.
Turns out SMI stands for Serious Mental Illness and if you have one, in many states, legislation (called mental health parity laws) has been passed requiring insurers to pay for more visits with counselors/therapists than people with non-SMI diagnoses get. Because, basically, serious mental illness sufferers need more visits.
I had not known that my diagnosis -- chronic/recurrent major depression -- was a SMI. It was rather a jolt. Like someone telling you, after you thought you had hazel eyes all your life, that -- by the way -- your eyes are actually brown.
Then after it sank in, I thought, Well, this explains a lot. So many things make much more sense now. Like, why the bottom so easily falls out for me, like why my tipping point is so low. It doesn't really take much, these days, for my spirits to just circle the drain. Certainly, there are external stresses that contribute a lot to these tendencies. But even for all the years without those, I battled my depressed moods and the feeling that my true self was getting sucked into a black hole by the "reverse" me.
It's like, oh *light bulb goes on over head* --I see. Right. SMI. Like, you wouldn't expect someone with braces on their legs to become a soccer whiz, would you? 'Course not. So why would you expect someone with a SMI to be a really high functioning, successful person? Isn't that an equally unfair expectation?
Should I let myself off the hook and stop feeling guilty and useless and like a huge disappointment for failing to live up to "my potential" (as regards my cognitive ability) when I clearly also have serious emotional/mental problems? Or is that just making excuses for myself? Why can I understand and make allowances for other people who have to use insulin, anti-hypertensive drugs, or anti-seizure meds -- but I can't make those allowances for myself and my antidepressants? Why do I still expect myself to have a "normal" life with a "normal" outcome and "normal" goals and "normal" relationships when I'm not "normal" and it takes a huge number of pills -- which I've been on since 1990, except for the years of no job and no insurance -- just to keep me slightly (and occasionally greatly) sub-normal?
Of course, the big problem is that leg braces and insulin syringes and seizures (and even schizophrenia) are very visible and obvious to others around you. Whereas chronic/recurrent major depression is not. Unless you know the person for years on end and you have watched them slip into and out of it repeatedly. As a couple of my friends and my family have.
So. SMI. Mental health parity. Not exactly the pot at the end of the rainbow. But, I could use the extra 30 sessions that gets me. It has taken all those meds, visits with the psych MD, and once-a-week visits with the therapist just to keep me functioning at the sub-par level I've been in for the last year and a half. Sigh.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just give it up and face it: that I'm not really ever going to get any better. That, as Jack Nicholson's character said, what if this is as good as it gets. I kept waiting and waiting for my life to get "back to normal" -- back to what it was before I lost my job, before my dad got hit by that car, before I went back to school on the wrong side of 35, before my mom and stepdad were diagnosed with cancer, before my stepdad died, before my bf made it clear I was good enough to kill time with but not good enough to commit to marrying.
I thought when I finished nursing school and got a job I would start to get my old life back. But, as my bf put it, everything that happened has changed me. I can never go back to being that person again. Too much has happened; I've lived through too much. And it changed me. So now what. So, now what. Now I finished school and I got my job and it's incredibly stressful... and I'm still me.
I had this conversation with the bf a couple weeks ago on the phone. We were talking about a mutual friend and how ridiculously drama queen-y she is, how high-maintenance, and how melodramatic she is. And I said, "I don't understand what men see in women like that, or why they stay." And my bf (rather bitterly) said, "Yeah, I know."
In the few seconds of dead silence that followed, I realized oh my god, I am that high maintenance girlfriend, too. And it was one of the more horrible, cringe-worthy moments of my life so far. Which is saying a lot (because it's not like there haven't been some seriously cringe-worthy moments up till now).
Not that he is, by any stretch, low maintenance himself. But after he said it, it hit me like a ton o' bricks -- like the insurance clerk's casual "SMI" bomb-drop. I've had high maintenance, mentally ill bfs before. It sucked. Big time. The thought that that is what I am now -- to him -- well, it's a pretty fuckin' tough pill to swallow. So, last night, the day after Valentine's day, after we saw Casablanca, after he gave me a dozen roses, I suggested we stop seeing each other. Because, I mean, why continue? Beating. Dead horse. Stop it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-16 08:37 pm (UTC)I identify so very strongly with so much of what you say here.
I never expected that this would be my life.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-16 09:36 pm (UTC)Right...? Like, fuck:
*stares at ceiling*
Q: Is this really my life? A: Yeah. It really is.
*pulls covers over head* *rolls over* *goes back to sleep*
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 02:41 am (UTC)As Oskar Werner says in "Ship of Fools" - "Happy, who's happy?"
Love you, max
no subject
Date: 2008-02-25 08:27 pm (UTC)Yes, I often wonder -- who is happy? And also -- isn't it "normal" people who co-signed so much of the bullshit political and economic crap of the last 7 years... leading us up to this current political and economic nadir? ...
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 04:36 am (UTC)Not that that label applies to anyone I have ever met, or anyone in my family or circle of friends, or my teachers or coworkers or people I know online. It's a bullshit arbitrary standard, and the fact that you feel like you aren't measuring up to this impossible imaginary standard for so many years is an incredible wrong. You're a wonderful person and you've done an amazing job dealing with crippling with psychological issues and real-life tragedies that would send most of us screaming in the other direction.
I know it's painful to end a relationship, but I think you made the right decision. The way he spoke to you and the way he's made you feel about yourself is not the way you deserve to be treated. You're not a burden, and you're not "high maintenance," and you deserve a partner who treats you like a human being dealing with a serious disability that impairs their ability to function. If you were paralysed and your boyfriend made huffy noises about having been inconvenienced by your condition, he'd be a clear-cut jerk. I know it puts a strain on the people who love you to see you unhappy (as it should, if they love you) but man, I can't get over his passive-aggressive comments and the way he deliberately set out to make you feel like shit. I think you're much better off without someone that negative in your life.
Anyway, I send you *hugs* and best wishes and my support in what you're going through. You're a lovely person and you deserve much better, and you will get there someday. Your life may not look the way you expect, but there are going to be changes and surprises and improvements along the way. I promise. *hugs and hugs*
no subject
Date: 2008-02-25 08:36 pm (UTC)You're right of course. But it's not so much that I want to measure up. I would just like some of those things that so-called normal people seem to have. A working SO relationship that leads to... a real commitment and settling down. Have a rugrat or two maybe. Or at least my cats and a dog or two. But these seem as far away as ever. Except maybe the dogs. Which will just turn me into scary single animal lover woman. (I am already poised to be, or am, scary single cat lover woman). Sigh.
Ironically, he talked me out of it. What a mistake that was... to be continued in a short, bitchy blog entry.
I did have an epiphany, though. All this time I'd been thinking, "Oh, but he's been there for me through all these personal/family tragedies... he must be a good guy." Then it suddenly occurred to me the other day: that's not some amazing quality in a man. That is a BARE MINIMUM of human decency. sure, some guys wouldn't have been up to it, but I'd have kicked them to the curb long ago. But somehow I deluded myself into thinking my bf was a lot more supportive than he really has been. oh well. that's over, now.