It’s Not Just Me

It’s been a really long time since I have written anything on this blog. Because a lot of days were really good and I didn’t feel the need to write. And because a lot of days were so bad that I couldn’t write. There really haven’t been very many in between days for me in a while. Two days ago, I was sitting on the couch watching Netflix and curling my body around a pillow, and before I was fully aware that I wasn’t feeling right, there were tears leaking out and spilling down my cheeks. The day before that I was fine, up and about getting useful things accomplished.

The past weeks have been a roller coaster. Maybe even the past few months. There was the high of planning a lengthy trip. The stress of getting my son through his Eagle Scout project, and passing his classes for his junior year. The disappointment of the RV breaking down an hour into a 5000 mile, four-month trip. The joy of making the trip anyway, even if it wasn’t how I planned it. The fear, and the denial, of hearing my 17-year-old son tell me last spring that he was contemplating suicide. Oh, and cutting. Yep, after all the parents I had to inform about their children who were self-injuring, here is my son, telling me that the cat has scratched him, then that, “Okay, I tried it a couple of times, but it didn’t do anything, so I don’t do it anymore.”

Surely, it was just the stress. The pressure he was under with the project, and difficult classes, and knowing I was leaving.  Surely he didn’t really mean it. I monitored him as closely as I could until the end of the school year, and he seemed better then. He left for his fourth summer as a staffer at a Scout camp, and I left on my trip. I contacted him regularly throughout the summer. I got pictures of his 18th birthday celebration put on by fellow staffers. My husband and older son visited him at the camp. I kept in touch with my son’s supervisor, who assured me that he was doing just fine. He was actually awarded the outstanding staff in his age group. Crisis averted. Life wonderful. I’m home early from my trip, and none too happy about that, although I’m glad to be with my son and husband, and both seem fine.

But after just a few weeks of being home, he sneaks out of the house, drives over an hour away to sneak into the home of the girlfriend I didn’t know he had. The 15-year-old girlfriend, that we didn’t know our 18-year-old son was involved with.

And here’s the kicker. I asked him how he felt about this girl. His response, “Before I met her, I was thinking about jumping off the cliff. After I met her, I didn’t want to die anymore.”  Later in the conversation, “You can’t stop me from seeing her, because right now she’s the only thing keeping me alive.”

So much for outward appearances. So I made him an appointment with a psychiatrist in the same office as my psychiatrist. She put him on 2 mood stabilizers and two anxiety meds. She believes he has a mood disorder, and her tentative diagnosis is bipolar 2. A form of bipolar I had never heard of in which the manic portions are apparently less manic than traditional bipolar. She thinks he was never ADHD. She refered him for a “full battery of psychiatric testing” which is scheduled for the first week of October.

And by the way, she thinks that I have been mis-diagnosed. This sent me into a tail-spin. For the first 18 years, I was getting my Prozac from my OB-GYN, so it’s entirely possible that I have something other than clinical depression. If he doesn’t really have ADHD, but took meds for it for 9 years, then that is my fault, because I’m the one who convinced our family doctor that he had it. If I’m bipolar instead of depressed, then I had a hysterectomy for no reason. I talked my OB-GYN into performing that surgery based on what I believe to have been pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder. I had journaled my mood swings, against my cycle, and believed them to be PMDD and not bipolar. Apparently, a master’s degree in guidance and counseling that is 20 years old is just enough knowledge to be incredibly dangerous.

But I managed to put all that aside, and focus on getting my son’s meds squared away. She had him gradually increasing his dosages, and I monitored that he did it correctly. I  communicated with the school nurse and school counselor.  He and I were rocking along pretty well. He gives me the car key every day after school, and I hide it in a different place each night. I frequently take a picture of the odometer.  He’s been respectful and helpful around the house. The temper flare-ups are diminished. We’ve even had some really good conversations, and even laughs.

He had no negative side-effects from his meds. He takes them willingly. Life starts to feel normal again. Then last Friday, he kissed a girl. Not his girlfriend. And because (even though he can lie to my face without me being able to tell) he feels compelled to be honest with his girlfriend, he confessed it to her. She naturally dumped him. And his arm is covered in cuts worse than I’ve ever seen them.

So I’ve been on suicide watch for nearly a week. I don’t sleep at night. I stay awake and peek into his room. I catch naps while he is at school. I drive by the school parking lot and look for the car we let him use.  I don’t go into my room, or upstairs, or outside while he is home. I want him to feel that I’m available to him always.

I had a premonition the first time I held him. A voice which sounded calm and authoritative (and most definitely male) told me, “He is not long for this world.” When he was 12 months old, we discovered that he had multiple severe food allergies and extreme asthma. I used to sit by his bed at night and listen to him breath. Listen for the breathing to change to a wheeze, or to stop. I thought those nights were over. He’s grown now. He’s 18. He’s a man. The voice was wrong. I can ease up, treat him as an adult, cut him more slack, stop micro-managing his life.

But no. The suicidal mother now has a very important reason to stay alive. My son is too young to die. He has time now, while he is home with us, to get a good diagnosis. To get proper treatment. To learn healthy ways to manage whatever fate and genes have handed him. And I have to be here for that. No debate. No opting out. I have to be here for that. I can NEVER allow him to see me give in, or give up. He can see me weak. That’s okay. He can see me weak and watch me overcome that weakness. But he can NEVER see me FAIL. He can never see me STOP TRYING.

It’s not just me anymore.

Having something to look forward to

I always try to have something on the back burner that I can look forward to. Something genuinely fun / engaging / pleasant / challenging-in-a-good-way / new / different.

It doesn’t have to be big, or world changing. It just has to be a thing that I really want to experience. Knowing that such a thing is upcoming can hedge off the negativity. Right now, I’m looking forward to an evening out.

Last week I had a whole week of looking forward to visiting family. I know for some, that is a double edged sword. And I was somewhat nervous about seeing my dad for the first time since leaving school.  But to see the sister I only see twice a year, and to help a little one celebrate a birthday — those were things to very much look forward to.

So those are just a couple of recent examples of short term things.

It’s also important to have longer term things to look forward to. Right now I don’t have one of those. Except the VERY nebulous idea of writing a book. There, I said it out loud. I want to write a book. [I’ll probably spend a whole blog another day listing the reasons / excuses I have invented for not starting on it yet.]

Back to the looking forward thing:

When I was 12-13 years old and having my first brush with the idea of ending it all, I had a really important long term thing that kept me going most days. My sister had just had her first child. And I wanted to see him grow up. I would take him for walks and he would hold my hand. He trusted me so much.  I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to teach him things. I wanted to be around for stuff in his life. 

Wait a minute! Hold the phone!

I do have a lot of long term things to look forward to right now.

My younger son’s high school graduation.

My older son’s wedding.

Being a grandma (but no pressure, guys, not anytime soon). 

Yep. Life’s worth living !

New name for blog

So turns out the whole PhD thing wasn’t my thing after all.  It took a lot of thinking, a lot of sleepless nights, and heartache. But I finally had to admit to myself that I had started back to school for a lot of the wrong reasons. Such as:

1. Certain people who shall remain nameless, and whom I love and respect deeply hold this exalted title, so in order to win love and respect in turn, I must achieve this milestone as well.

2. I really REALLY wanted to quit my previous job, and I figured the only way to convince my darling husband that I needed to quit a fairly lucrative job was to put myself in training for something potentially more lucrative. 

3. The prestige of a PhD would enable me to change the world.

Trouble with these reasons? How shall I begin?

First off, these nameless people already love and respect me, so I don’t need to go chasing down a road after them in order to win this from them. It was their road, not mine, and they love me anyway. They never expected me to do this, and although I’m sure they were proud that I was attempting it, I know that these are people who love me unconditionally. They want me to be happy, and to be who I am, and not who they are.

As for the whole quitting the old job thing: all I really had to do was convince him that I was deeply unhappy, and that my job was a huge part of that, and that every day on the way to work I wanted to die. He really doesn’t want me to die, so he’s on board with me not working right now, or going to school, so long as I quit wanting to die [note the change in the title? there will be more on this later]

And as for changing the world? Once upon a time I thought I could do it in a class room and I couldn’t. Then I thought I could do it in a counselor’s office and I couldn’t, and so I thought if I just had a little more education, a little more prestige, I really could change the world. Newsflash: I CANNOT CHANGE THE WORLD!!! It’s not my responsibility. It’s not under my control. And thinking that if only I could fix myself, I could fix everyone, was part of why I felt like a huge failure and wanted to DIE. So continuing on that path was sheer madness. Madness.

I want to be really frank here. I have believed since I was about 12 years old that I would one day take my own life. I still believe this. But I’m 47 and I haven’t done it.  In most instances, people would say that thinking about a thing and not doing it for 35 years is some kind of failure. But this is success. For 35 years I have woken up each day and made the decision not to die. Not to kill myself.

Please believe me that for many of those days this was an easy decision. Many days and even years have been mostly happy, and the thought of suicide has been only an undercurrent. But a lot of those days have been tough.  And of course I’ve been at every point on the spectrum of wanting and not wanting to continue this thing called life.

I’m just going to go about my business, and blog about it sometimes. And maybe tell about some of the tougher times in my life, and how I got past them. And tell about the good stuff too. This blog isn’t going to be miserable. It will be like me, and run the spectrum.

Right now, I’m in a good place.

Countdown has Begun

There are only a few days left in this, my first, semester of PhD work. In a way I’m grateful that the end of the semester is in sight. But mostly I just wish I had a few more days here to work on the last papers due.

There are only four days left to complete and turn in one paper, and 7 days left for the other. And in that time I also have life that doesn’t stop going on. I have a dentist appointment, one more class, a department lecture, a holiday luncheon, and my son’s college graduation between now and those two deadlines. By the way, those weren’t listed in order of importance, but chronologically.  🙂  Love you, son!  Plus the usual sleeping, eating, and pooing that needs to happen.

I truly miss the days (years, really) when I could go for 48 hours without sleep. But at this age, that just ain’t happening.

“So what are you doing online writing on a blog?” you ask.

Well it’s like this. Brain works…………………… and works……………………………………………………. and works……………………………………………………………………… on one thing for only so long.

Then it gets tired……..  and sleepy……………………….. and bleary……………………………………………………….

and starts making boo-boos………. then brain-farts……………………….. then MISTAKES…………………………………………. ………………………………………………………………………………..that it DOESN’T catch…………………………………

and I just have to stop doing that thing for a while.

I’m going to go home now, as it is getting late in the evening, and try to get a good night’s sleep so I can hit it hard in the morning.

Plus, I’m tired of reading about what OTHER PEOPLE have written about my area of interest. I just want to say what I think. But somehow my professors don’t support that methodology. They want real live literature reviews. They want my hypothesis firmly grounded in THE LITERATURE, for heaven’s sake.

Really, it’s time to stop. Like now, before I get cynical.

Smooching ;)

My darling and I have never had a lot of time to spend with each other. We have been on opposite work shifts from the beginning of our relationship. So we’ve learned to make our time together count, whenever and wherever we can find it. Since I’ve started back to school, we see each other even less than usual. But this morning we got a rare treat.

I stopped at HEB after dropping son off at school to buy something to clip up my unruly hair. As soon as I returned to my car, my phone rang.  It was hubby. “Is that you I see in the HEB parking lot?” he asks me. “Why yes it is.”

So he moseys his way over, and hops in with me. And there we sat, us old married folk in the HEB parking lot, making out like two teenagers at the drive-in.  And he whispers in my ear, “Hey, don’t tell my wife I’ve been sleeping with a college girl!”

Life is pretty good today.

Step Away From the LEDGE!

After the let down of my statistical results, I was ready to quit this program altogether.  I decided that if that was the way that I would feel when my research didn’t get the “right” results, that this was not where I belonged. Told my husband I was quitting. Told my best friend that I was quitting.  Didn’t write the results up into the paper that was due yesterday. Why? BECAUSE I WAS QUITTING!!!

So I came into the department office, and knocked on the statistics professor’s door. I told him that I needed to quit. He talked me out of it. Even gave me an extra day to do the write up. He said his job was the department hatchet. He has to convince the students who need to quit, but don’t want to, that they ought to.

These are some of the things he said that helped me change my mind: 1) There are more graduates from this program who go into jobs where they don’t have to publish than who go into jobs where they do. 2) I’m near the top of my cohort. 3) He could tell the first time I talked to him about my research question that I was too close to it, and there are lots of things I can work ON without getting worked UP. 4) His dissertation failed to reject his null hypothesis, meaning his data didn’t support his hypothesis either. On his dissertation, not just a class paper.  5) He gets to be 3rd author on lots of papers just because he’s the guy who crunches the numbers. Which I’m getting pretty good at, so maybe that’s a track for me. 6) I’ve made tons of progress in his class, which was frankly the one I was most afraid of.

So I have been working on statistics all day today, and I have until midnight tonight to send him a rough draft of the research paper. And he’ll critique it, like he’s doing for the whole class, before we have to write up the final product. We have a chance to fix any mistakes and make improvements before it is actually due. I’ve got lots of the parts of it done. They just need to be pulled together, and I can do that in the next few hours.

I just got out of my Tuesday night class, where there was an assignment due at midnight tonight as well, which of course I hadn’t done either. That professor announced to the class that he’s giving everyone an extra two days for it, because so many people didn’t do it over the holiday. Which gives me the time now to get on that rough draft.

I took a Xanax and an Adderall after class, so that I’d be able to focus and not stress while I write. I’ve been doing this blog while I wait for them to kick in.  Feeling pretty good now, and more awake and alert than I was. So it’s time to shut this down and get after it.

Right now, I’m really grateful that he talked me down from the ledge. Let’s hope I stay happy about it.

Reading the signs!

I was so excited to have gotten significant results from my data the other day! I felt justified in taking Friday off, and sure that I would have plenty of time to write up my findings into a decent rough draft by Monday evening.

So today I got started again, and looked at my results with fresh eyes. Yes, several of my results were significant. But 7 out of 8 of them were significant in the WRONG F-ING DIRECTION!!!! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s important to note the signs of the association, I needed negative regression lines, and I had positive ones. But it was so late at night, that I was only looking at what I wanted to see.

I really needed this hypothesis to be right. That the number of people working in a particular department [my department] at a job actually had an impact on how well the “company” succeeded. The fact that my department was understaffed was how I made myself feel halfway okay about the fact that I wasn’t contributing sufficiently to the overall mission of the company.

My hypothesis is blown out of the water. Non-significant results would have been better than this. This… This means that I wasn’t just spurious, I was completely mistaken. And it means that for the six years I did the job that my research question is based on, I was just a failure at my job. Because apparently lots of “companies” were able to complete their mission with this particular department understaffed. Just not ME. Just not for MY “customers”.

I’ve lived under the assumption that I could have done so much better, had such an impact, if only I hadn’t been laboring alone. If I’d had fewer customers to see to. But no. Others found a way. My excuse is invalid. Six years of my life were wasted, and over 3,000 customers likely suffered for it.

And now, because I was so sure I was right, I waited too late in the semester to actually run the numbers on my hypothesis. So now it’s too late to change my research question in time to turn in anything decent for this project. And remember, this paper is for TWO classes. The lit review part for Dr. J and the stats part for stats. So that’s two grades down the drain here, now at the two minute warning. I’m so totally lost. I really don’t know if this whole thing is going to work out.

Oh, and did I mention, that the whole reason I thought this program was right for someone with my background got shot down. The course catalog listed several courses on this topic from the perspective of my background. But it turns out they have NEVER ACTUALLY OFFERED THOSE CLASSES.

I think I’m in the wrong place. It’s 2 AM. I’m going home now.

Thanksgiving as a grown up grad student

It was nice. It really was.

My husband and son and I went to see my dad, who lives about 3 hours away. Older son had to work, so he didn’t get to come. Younger son [who has a learner’s permit] drove there, while my husband supervised. I sat in the very back of the van, with my headphones on, listening to jazz and reading journal articles.  When we got to Dad’s house, I spent some time showing him the stats for my project. He was duly impressed. Remember, I’m a Daddy’s Girl and need that approval. Then we talked about the classes he’s teaching and the general horrific state of education in the nation for the past several decades. This is one of our favorite topics. Dad beat me at a game of cards. Husband got to watch some football. Son got to chill with games on the iPad. Then my nephew and his family came over for the big meal. They are truly fun to be around. We laughed. I played with their little ones. When they left, I played with Dad’s cats while we visited some more. Then we went home. Husband drove with the earphones on listening to his favorite podcast. Son slept in the back, and me? I read some more journal articles.

Best news: The profs have been saying to find an article that we really like and use that as a pattern for our papers. I FOUND THE ONE !!!! Yeah ME!

Next day, older son and his fiance came over. We had a great time. The boys did boy stuff. Us girls visited about our classes and lives and such. We ate. We watched a very bizarre movie. We played hide and seek with son’s glasses. I won! After they left, young son, husband and I binge watched Netflix until nearly 2 a.m. I did nothing academic.

But today I am up at school. Ready to hit it hard again. I feel rested. I feel smart, and dog-gone-it, I like myself today!

Null: sometimes it really is nothing

So the great big project I’ve been working up to all semester, the one that is a major hunk of my grade in two separate classes. I finally got the data sets together to attempt an answer to my research question. And none of my variables had significant associations. NONE OF THEM!!!!!!!!

I was so sure of the right-ness of my hypothesis. So sure, based on having lived in the skin of this hypothesis for the past six years. SO DAMN SURE!!!  But the numbers said no. No. NO. NOOOO!!!!

So I ran them again. In reverse. NO! Then I looked again at the scatter-plots of my variables and there they were. Nine observations which were outside of all realistic experience.  Nine out of over 1100. So I took them out. And guess what. “What?” My predictor variable had a statistically significant association with 5 out of 8 of my outcome variables.

So I can climb down from the top of the building, drive away from the edge of the cliff, cancel that imaginary appointment with the registrar to drop the program NOW! I can breath. And I can finish my paper. Both papers. And probably even keep my grades high enough to keep my funding.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog.

Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Hyde

My Thursday night class is by far the most challenging, time consuming class. And I’ve got this Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Hyde thing going with this professor. Perfectly nice one-on-one. But my fellow students have been asking me since about the 3rd class if I know why she is so harsh to me. Shooting down my ideas in class, criticizing things I do that they say they were complemented on. And I don’t know the answer.

I left this class last Thursday in quite a state. I was angry. I was hurt. And I wanted to lash out. The semester has been building up to a couple of major projects, and Thursday was the night to present our project to the class. It was really not much more than a literature review, plus explaining how we would go about answering our research question. So explain the methodology and what in the literature makes you select this methodology.  She has harped all semester on “finding the gap in the literature” that our research will fill. And she’s harped on “why should the reader care” about our article? I know for a fact that my presentation answered both of those questions.  But her critique was that I shouldn’t just explain why “the world” should care about my research, but I must explain “why academia should care” about my research. OK. I thought that was “the gap” in the literature. This is the first time she has ever used that phrase in class. And no one, NO ONE else got that feedback.  WTF!!!

Moving on. I have had multiple conversations with her about my research idea. At least 4 in person conversations, where she told me that it was a great research question, and gave me tips [which by the way I followed] on how to proceed. Nothing but positive feedback in person, in one-on-one situations. But in class? After my presentation? Different story altogether.  She waited until then, in front of my peers, to say that she was afraid that my research question might have spurious results. SPURIOUS!!! That there were too many other factors contributing to my dependent variable, such that my independent variable would probably not really matter, even if I found a statistical association.  WTF!!!! Spurious: I knew it meant “bad” but honestly when I sat down, the first thing I did was pull out my phone and look it up. I wanted to know EXACTLY how badly I had just been insulted in front of my peers. Here it is: SPURIOUS: based on false ideas or bad reasoning. “BAD REASONING” ???? REALLY ???? If she thought it was bad reasoning why didn’t she say that the first time I spoke to her? Or the second? Or when I submitted the proposal in writing? Or the third? Fourth?  Oh, and when I spoke to the statistics teacher, for whom I’m doing the same topic [at both professors’ recommendation] did he mention that it might be based on bad reasoning? NO HE DID NOT!  He said it was a great topic, told me which statistical models to use and encouraged me to continue!

At this point, I almost walked out of class. I was damn near in tears.  But thanks to modern pharmaceuticals and forethought, I did not. The Xanax I took before class allowed me to sit through the remaining 5 presentations dry-eyed.

But the next to the last one nearly drove me to violence. I was literally trembling in my seat. You see, this professor is also the one I work for as a GRA (graduate research assistant). She is working on an article which we shall call FGH.  And the main thing I have been doing for her on this project is, you guessed it, a literature review. So I have found over 60 articles on FGH for her, which is great. That’s what they pay me for. About 5 weeks ago, she asked me to share that list with another student, who is also a GRA. Okay, fine. I’m assuming that the other student is also working for her on the same topic, and will be adding some other aspect to the PROFESSOR’s paper. Thursday night, next to the last presentation, this student stands up and begins her power point. Title slide FGH. Yep FGH.  Mother-f-er!  So the hours I spent on that lit review [yes I know I got paid] were just handed over, not for the purpose of collaboration, but to give this student a head start on her project.  I just stared down and drew ugly pictures on my notes.  Oh, and this is the student who calls the professor by her first name. Hmmm??

Everyone in class got constructive feedback. Some of the projects actually sucked, and they got politely phrased tips on how to improve.  Mine was really good. And I got insulted and ripped off all in one night. I’m starting to get over it. Sort of. But I’m still not sure how to handle the situation. How to please this professor who changes her feedback, has moving targets for class objectives, and who seems to hate me in public and like me just fine sitting across from her desk in her office. ARRRGGGGG !!