Last year, I decided I was going to read 100 book and I used Goodreads.com to track this goal. While I managed to miss the goal by about 25 books, this year I decided to scale back a bit, and attempt 75 (with a stretch goal of 100.) I know, this probably sounds silly. Who cares how many books you read in a year? Why even keep track? Well, truthfully, I love reading, and have always felt the more I read, the better my writing becomes. Reading provides me with an escape, which is especially helpful when I am feeling very stressed out.
Lately, it seems I’ve been nothing but stressed out.
Funny sort of side note story, several years ago, I was briefly a part of a reality tv show designed to help people become fit. The premise of the show was taking ordinary people and asking the question “if your life depended on it, could you save yourself and someone else?” Without going into detail (trust me, that is a post for another time) I ended up dropping out of this program, but when meeting with the doctor who was leading the show/challenge, she said to me, “Catherine, it’s not the history of heart disease in your family that will kill you, it is your anxiety and your stress level.”
Flash forward to today, and I think I’m finally starting to understand what she meant. Here’s the thing, there are two kinds of stress. The crisis mode stress, when something goes terribly wrong and there are fires to be put out and screaming babies to be held, and places and people to reorganize and supplies to be distributed. I am excellent in these situations. I can remain calm and collected while my Virgo mind is solution driven in its quest to make all right with the world. It’s why I typically do well in work environments and am able to meet deadlines efficiently. It’s also why I’m one of the first people at work, when we have a Code 99 (emergency in the facility) to grab a pen, clipboard and an Incident Report.
The other kind of stress is the slow build stress. The stress that starts with one tiny thing that falls out of places, creating a downward spiral that seemingly, quietly destroys everything and takes over your entire life. The kind of stress that looks like back to back meetings, followed by last minute requests for in depth research you are not only, not actually qualified to do, but lack the proper resources to complete accurately, followed by an involved, multi-step event that needs to be organized, and reorganized, and the 10 plus participants who need unlimited hand holding to be prepared to pack a lunch for their children (seriously,) and then realizing you haven’t been home for a meal with your boyfriend in days, and you’re out of cat litter, and you need to do laundry but have no time to do so in the foreseeable future, and your boyfriend took the toothpaste with him on his business trip and so you chew a piece of gum hoping you don’t forget to pick up toothpaste on your way home from work (not that this has ever happend to me.) The stress that is every day things that build and build until you are waking up in a cold sweat with your heart racing at 1:30am. The stress that is one part job dissatisfaction, one part feeling trapped, one part depression sneaking back into your life, and another part sheer exhaustion. Turns out, I don’t do as well with that type of stress.
So, anyway, stress is going to kill me, and really does not make my depression and anxiety any better. Reading, writing, dancing, exercising, all those things do help. So, I keep reading, and writing and dancing and doing what I can to exercise when I am not so tired I want to fall down into bed immediately.
In the past few weeks I have read Silver Linings Playbook and Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Both of which deal with mental health and its impact on people and their families in two different ways.
Silver Lining Playbook is the story of Pat Peoples and his recovery at home after being released from a mental institution he calls “the bad place” where he spent almost four years. Pat believes in silver linings, and optimism, and is Bipolar. During his time at home, he meets a woman named Tiffany who struggles with depression (and probably some other social issues that aren’t exactly diagnosed in the novel,) and the two form a relationship. It’s a really interesting look at mental health because it is told from Pat’s point of view through a “memoir” he is writing to his ex-wife, Nikki in the hope that when their “apart time” ends he will be reunited with her and they will resume their life together. What Silver Linings Playbook does so well, is paint a sympathetic picture of Pat and his journey to self discovery and recovery. It’s not an easy path and he makes mistakes along the way, but it’s heartwarming to read and while definitely difficult at times, because you know, pretty early on, he is never going to get back together with Nikki, it does great work to de-stigmatize mental illness. You know Pat is “crazy,” but you root for him anyway, not because it’s a gimmick, but because he is a real human being, with real feelings and emotions, and he is working so hard to make things right.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette, on the other hand looks at how the mental health of Bernadette Fox impacts her daughter, Bee, and her husband, Elgin. It took me a moment to get used to the structure of the storytelling, but once I got invested, I was hooked. This story is told in a series of correspondence between various characters, and snippets of “real time” first person storytelling from Bee as she searches for answers about her mother’s disappearance. Bernadette is a once famous and now reclusive architect living in Seattle with her husband and Microsoft genius, Elgin, and daughter, Bee. She doesn’t get along with the other mothers at school, and her agoraphobia leads to her hiring an internet based Indian personal assistant named Manjula, who lives in Delhi. Yes, as in India. The story begins with the family deciding to take a trip to Antartica to celebrate Bee’s perfect grades, and unravels as miscommunications and stubbornness, combined with Bernadette’s eccentricity create a perfect storm that drives Bernadette to disappear. I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t say more, but this is an enjoyable look at a slightly odd family and how Bernadette’s mental health, and her family come crashing together. While some of the pieces to this puzzle are unbelievable, going on the ride is exciting and fun, so you can turn a blind eye to a number of those issues.
The correspondence between Bernadette, who keeps an airstream trailer in the backyard as office space, and Manjula, you get an interesting portrait of a woman who has become so reliant on the internet to handle her everyday life, she no longer really knows how to function without that crutch. While, throughout the story, several incidents become overblown with the help of another parent at Bee’s school, you can clearly see Bernadette is struggling to maintain normalcy. However, toward the end of the novel you begin to wonder, how much of Bernadette’s quirks are simply that, and how much are actual mental illness driven? It’s an interesting look, and was a fun read.
