Dear Aunt Doria
I know I haven’t written in a while. I got your message about the rain in LA. Thank you for your concern. It rained directly into my apartment for a few days. I ended up putting a couple of plants in the rainy corner and decided it was a free irrigation system. Thanks to you I always try to see the positive side of things.
How are you? I would say that I’m fine like usual, but today, I’m really not.
I went to see a psychiatrist for the first time earlier this month. Are you still reading this? I can hear you go into your office and shut the door so no one in the house guesses what you’re reading. Don’t worry, this letter will self-destruct once you’re done. I know the subject of mental health is taboo in our family, and probably for most people of your generation in France. But as you are the most open minded person in the family, I have to try and explain how I got there. To the psychiatrist. And why I've now gone and stuck the prescribed medication in my sock drawer.
I have been raised thinking that needing to see a psychiatrist means that something’s really wrong with you, and that it is likely your fault. You’ve never said such a thing to me of course, but your brother, my father, has always associated therapy with weakness. His answer or my mother’s answer to any pesky emotion that would arise in the house would be to “get over it”. Or they’d simply ground me and my brother Tom to our rooms until we were back to our emotionally disciplined selves.
But I’m learning that at some point, that strategy stops working. It’s like putting a lid on a simmering pot of water. Eventually, it’ll boil over. Some emotions I simply can’t deal with on my own. They get out, in the form of panic attacks or self harming behaviors. I won’t go into details about why I have these episodes. I believe that you suspect some of it, and perhaps we can discuss it at some point in the future, over tea and croissants. But let me tell you, Doria, they’re not pleasant. The panic runs through me like an electric shock, leaving me shivering on the ground, stunned and sad and angry, but mostly, helpless. You know the exorcism scenes in the horror movies you love so much? That’s how my panic attacks feel. Like I’m possessed.
I mentioned to you a few times already that I have seen a therapist before. Over the course of my ten years of living in L.A, I’ve seen four different therapists. This current therapist I’ve been seeing once a week - religiously - for the past three years. We’re really starting to know each other. Or her me. We dig and we excavate. It’s not pretty. She’s the one who suggested that in order for me to continue to do the work I do with her, getting on medication would help. It would level my anxiety and prevent the attacks from coming.
Getting an appointment with a psychiatrist took me weeks. I had to have a whole therapy session about my psychiatry session, believe it or not. Then, finally, I scheduled a first zoom call with a psychiatrist. It was a very clinical, twenty minutes meeting in which I gave her a laundry list of my issues. I cried once. She waited for it to pass.Then she gave me a diagnosis. PTSD, panic disorder, anxiety disorder. I cried again. This time she continued talking over the sobs. I suppose time is money. She gave me a prescription.
You and my mother are the same, Doria. Someone has a cough and you’d rather make them a thyme and honey concoction before reaching for the Tylenol. I learned that from you. So imagine taking medicine for my emotions? It’s a hard pill to swallow. Pun intended.
Picking up the prescription was an emotional day in itself. I only realized how angry it made me when, while driving home one day, I started shouting at a CVS Caremark agent over the phone, because I couldn’t remember the names of the three drugs I had been prescribed, and she needed those to pull up my account and tell me when the medicine was ready to be picked up.
When I finally trudged to the CVS around the corner, the one you went to every day when you visited, I suddenly felt like I was one of “these people”. One of the people my parents warned me about, the ones who can’t cope on their own, who aren’t well, who need help. I was ashamed. I felt broken. The CVS attendant whispered the name of my prescription, like saying it out loud would be too embarrassing for me.
But then I saw a girl at the counter next to mine. The first thought that went through my mind when I laid eyes on her was “we could be friends”. Then the name of her prescription was whispered to her, just like it was to me. And just like me, she made a discreet little nod and forced a polite smile at the attendant.
Doria, that’s all I needed. To know that I wasn’t alone.
So I went back home and I put the medication away in a drawer for a bit. You know, the same way you get a cat accustomed to a new place: you only show them the bathroom for a while. That’s how I thought about it at least.
Then I made your famous rum cake recipe. It always reminds me of evenings by the fireplace, and gathering acorns in the fall. I needed a little sugary courage to start taking the meds. So I did. It apparently takes about four to six weeks for the full effects to kick in, so I’ll have to report back in my next letter.
Thank you, Doria, for always being a sympathetic ear.
All my love,
Your favorite niece
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