Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater (26 page)

Arriving at the nursing home, and with the staff aware of the purpose of our visit, we were escorted to an empty recreation room. A few minutes later, Jamesie was wheeled into the room. Though he wasn’t sharp mentally, he sensed something odd about this arrangement. After a few moments of trying to figure out his state of mind that day, I broke the news to him. I don’t know exactly what I said, but Tina told me later that I handled it extremely well. He cried. And between his tears, he managed to ask me some very coherent and logical questions. He wanted to know exactly how it happened, he asked if she had suffered, he asked what the funeral arrangements were, and he asked if I was okay. It was the last time that I witnessed his mind working so well. And I honestly believe that it was the last time that he experienced–or, at least, expressed–any real emotion.

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

The day of Ruthie’s service, my thoughts were scattered and everything about it was surreal. Strange and unrelated memories would appear from nowhere, totally unprovoked. Most disappeared as quickly as they came, some I remember quite clearly, while others I couldn’t recall if my life depended on it. After I had showered and was about to get dressed, as I was taking my clothes from the closet, I was hit with the realization that “I’m choosing clothes to wear to my mother’s funeral. Her FUNERAL! This is crazy!” The weird thoughts continued throughout the service. At one point, an old childhood chant popped into my head and refused to go away:

Oh Mary Mack, Mack, Mack

All dressed in black, black, black

She’s going out, out, out

When she came back, back, back

Her mother was dead, dead, dead

She broke her head, head, head

On a piece of cornbread, bread, bread.

And I remembered who it was that taught me this silly childhood chant-song. It was my niece, Tina. She’d learned it from her little girlfriends at school. She had taught it to me back when both of us were too young, too innocent, and too naïve to realize how dark and depressing it really was. We would sing it, and we would crack ourselves up laughing.

Oh Mary Mack, Mack, Mack

All dressed in black, black, black

She’s going out, out, out

I looked over at Tina, seated a few rows away, and wondered if she had thought about this song when Annette died.

When she came back, back, back

Her mother was dead, dead, dead

There had been a thirty-year gap, but now we both had mothers who were dead, dead, dead. And nothing about it was funny. We weren’t cracking ourselves up now.

AND LIFE GOES ON

When there’s a death in a family, everyone is there for you and supportive–until it’s time for them to return to their own lives. And so, less than a month after losing my mother, I found myself alone, truly alone. I remembered a certain therapy session from ten years earlier. My psychiatrist and I were talking about the romantic relationship that I was involved in at the time, one in which I had invested far too much emotionally. Comparing it to my other romantic relationships, he asked, “Do you a see a common thread here?”

“You mean, besides the fact that they all turned out to be assholes? No, I don’t.” I answered. This was followed by a non-committal silence from the psychiatrist. “Obviously, you do,” I finally said to him. He gave an affirmative nod, but still said nothing. “Well, would you mind sharing it with me?” I asked sarcastically. He always preferred that I find the answers, make the revelations, and connect the dots by myself. But sometimes I just didn’t have the patience.

“Don’t you see what role you always assume?” he hinted, re-phrasing the original question.

“No. And I’m not in the mood to try and figure it out. So would you save us both some time and just tell me?”

“You’re a caretaker.”

A caretaker? I’d never been called that before. I didn’t like the sound of it; it sounded negative. “Well, that sucks!” I said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he responded and, after another pause for dramatic effect, he slowly and deliberately added, “There’s much that’s noble and good about being a caretaker. The only drawback, as I see it, is what happens when you need to be taken care of?” And I realized, once again, why I was paying him good money for our weekly tête-à-tête.

That particular session replayed itself in my brain many times in the weeks after Ruthie died. I’d always thought of myself as too independent, too self-sufficient to imagine ever winding up in a situation where I would need help from somebody else. Well, lo and behold, I now found myself smack in the middle of just such a situation. And even though I reluctantly admitted to myself that I was in need of some caretaking, I didn’t know (a) who could do it, (b) how to let them know I needed them to do it, or (c) how to even allow myself to be taken care of. So, having no idea what my next move was, or should be, I didn’t make one.

MUSIC WITH A MESSAGE

My main escape at this time was to bury myself within the confines of the headphones to my CD Walkman. Just as Charles Manson found subliminal messages while listening to the Beatle’s White Album, I began to interpret messages meant for me in the music that I was listening to. One album, in particular, seemed to be full of messages and meaning. I would listen to it and hear messages from my mother, from my father, from the cosmic consciousness, even from myself! I would hear younger versions of myself sending thoughts and images to the adult me. This particular CD was recording artist Seal’s debut album; it soon took up permanent residence in my Walkman. I listened to it every waking hour, while eating, watching television, or doing the mundane chores that I forced myself to carry out. I would fall asleep listening to it; I’d wake up listening to it. It was always with me. Some songs gave me comfort; others broke my heart.

Realizing that my behavior was becoming abnormal, I managed to get myself to a therapist who diagnosed me with “situational depression.” Was it really just situational, I wondered? Or was it something that had been lurking inside of me all along, showing its face on random and scattered occasions throughout my life, waiting for the time when it could spring full-blown from my brain and destroy my world? I was prescribed anti-depressants, and they did their job well; I was no longer sad. I wasn’t happy either. Actually, I wasn’t anything. I was void of emotions; the drugs left me in a perpetual haze of numbness. The only thing that seemed to break through this thick shroud of non-existence was cut number 7 on Seal’s CD, “People Asking Why.” I began setting my portable CD player on repeat, listening to that one song over and over and over again.

How do I get to where I’ve come from? Now!

How will I paint this garden I’ve destroyed…green?

Can I get back to where I’ve come from?

How do I get to where I’ve come from?

That last line reverberated in my brain; it asked the question whose answer was the key to my returning to some sense of normalcy. I wanted desperately to be back in the past, back when everything was fine…or at least, better. “How do I get to where I’ve come from?” It became my mantra. I asked myself that question ten, twenty, a hundred times a day. I felt that if I could just get back there, back to an earlier place and time, things would be okay.

How do I get to where I’ve come from? Now!

How do I paint this garden I’ve destroyed…green?

Can I get back to where I’ve come from?

REUNITED

It wasn’t only me who wanted to “get back to where I’ve come from.” Apparently, Jamesie wanted to do the same thing. The difference being, he seemed to have found a way to do it. With each visit to the nursing home, he was there less and less. Oh, he was there physically, but the rest of him was somewhere else far away. Often, in the middle of conversation, he would go silent. He’d stop hearing me, stop seeing me; he simply wasn’t there anymore. In the beginning, his trips were brief, less than a minute. But soon they became longer and longer, until he would be gone for most of my visit. When he did talk, it was to tell me of people who’d come to visit him. At first it was people who had, in fact, visited him–albeit months earlier. He’d insist that they had just been there the day before. Then he started naming people that I knew hadn’t been to see him at all; people who had been dead for years. When he’d say these things, I’d question him about it, trying to coerce and gently guide his mind back into reality. Sometimes it worked, most times it didn’t.

During his second year in the nursing home, Jamesie developed a sore on his leg that wouldn’t heal. His being diabetic further complicated the situation and, eventually, the leg had to be amputated. Being pretty much bedridden, he had even less use for the real world. When he did have the energy and desire to communicate with me, he would share details of the visits of his father and his brothers to the nursing home, visits obviously from the great beyond, as they had all died many years earlier. But of all his visitors, Ruthie seemed to be the most frequent. Apparently, she was now coming to see him on a daily basis. To be honest, I still wonder how much of this was the result of his dementia, and how much was actually true.

AN EPIPHANY

How do I get to where I’ve come from?

The day that I stopped asking myself that question, and finally answered it, was the day that things began to turn around for me. And the answer was such a simple one that I couldn’t believe that it had escaped me for so long.

How do I get to where I’ve come from?

The answer…? You don’t! Not gonna happen, dude! Impossible!

Can I get back to where I’ve come from?

Why would you even want to go back there?!

The fact was, no matter how hard I wished for it, going back was not an option; there’s no rewind on life. Only play. Or fast forward. You either move on, or you die. The next stop along the way may be better–or it may be worse–but whatever it is, you have to go there! And you know what? This simple realization flooded me with optimism! I had come too far to lose it all now. Like Gloria Gaynor, I would survive! I knew in that instant that I had the power to turn all of this around. I could be well again; I could gain the weight back. I could still write a hit play. Hell, I could still meet the love of my life. If I survived all the crap of the first forty-something years of my life, then the rest should be a walk in the park. I stopped taking the anti-depressants that day, vowing to never take them again. To feel hurt, sadness, or pain was better than not feeling at all. My only concern was what would happen if and when another traumatic incident occurred in my life? I wondered if it would send me spiraling back down into that dark hole. I knew it was only a matter of time before that, too, would be put to the test.

One year and four months after Ruthie’s death, Jamesie passed away. We had survived many rough spots in our relationship over the years and had managed to come out on top. I knew that he loved me, and always did; he just didn’t get me. There’s no sin in that. I was happy that I could say that I loved him too–and mean it. He had suffered through almost three years of nursing home hell and, although sad, the call from the hospital brought me a certain sense of relief. I was relieved that he would no longer suffer through the wanting to go home, the having to be bathed and fed, the confusion, the dementia, and the pain. He was finally at peace, and I found comfort in that, for a short time anyway. When those initial thoughts passed, I was struck with the reality that I now had another word to add to that list of things that define me: orphan. I no longer had parents. For most people, the loss of a parent means losing one of the longest relationships of your life. Regardless of the front that you put up for the outside world, somewhere deep inside, your inner child is crying out, “I want my mommy! I want my daddy!” I went through days of listening to my inner child wailing hysterically, but I refused to let it get the best of me. I managed to stay in control. Surprisingly, though I had learned over the years how to protect myself from others, the most difficult battle of my life was the fight to protect myself from me.

Throughout my life, the theater has been the outlet through which I released all of my unexpressed emotions and feelings. Performing, writing, and directing were my vehicles for expressing my pain, my hurt, and my grief. Conversely, it’s also the place I declared my love, got excited, and became fully alive. I’m grateful for the outlet, but regret that for so long, the theater got the emotional me while the real world had to, more or less, settle for the intellectual me.

A number of years ago, a good friend of mine called me up and said, “I just heard a song on the radio and it made me think of you.” Since this was someone that I had shared a lot with, and whose opinion I valued, I was curious as to what song it was. Her reply took me by surprise. “Nobody Knows the Inside,” she said.