Living in a Broken Brain

A couple of weeks ago I taped a movie from the TV. Eventually the time came to watch it. I knew exactly where it should be, what tape it was on, what preceded and followed it, but it wasn’t there. I looked at tape after tape to no avail. My frustration was growing exponentially. Alan was trying to be patient. Eventually the inevitable; I advanced the tape I knew it was on far enough to discover scenes from the movie. Somehow I’d managed to tape over it. I was very angry with myself and Alan was disappointed too.

“Keep better track of things next time,” he said.

“I can’t,” I wailed. “I’m doing my best, but I’m living in a broken brain. I can’t do any better.”

It’s true. Whatever fancy words and diagnoses the doctors want to apply to it something in my brain is broken. They call it depression and they give me pills and platitudes but the pills only do so much and the platitudes are condescending; insulting even. Am I doing everything I could possibly do to improve my lot? Well no, not as far as they’re concerned anyway. But honestly, for me, being told to get out and get some exercise, even a short walk 2-3 times a week might as well be a command to walk to the moon. My mind is stuck in the ‘it-ain’t-gonna-happen’ groove and it’s not just a shallow scratch it’s rivaling the Grand Canyon.

I know it’s getting deeper because last week Alan set aside some time and encouraged me to take some of the money and gift certificates from Christmas and go shopping. Alan was willing to go with me for support and encouragement. I didn’t want to go. I don’t like to shop. Mostly the clothes are ill fitting; too long in the leg or sleeve or beset with horizontal stripes which are the last thing a short overweight woman wants to wrap around her chest. But Alan was persistent and soooo, patient, so I summoned up something (or maybe forced something down, in to hiding?) and made myself go.

In to my favourite store to look for the sweatpants they had on sale. The side wall was full of them; limited in colour selection but I didn’t care. I was heartened at probable success. Every single pair of pants was either a Large or something with additional X’s. The store was empty but for Alan and I and the clerk behind the counter fastidiously not looking our way. With every item I checked the anger-o-meter was rising, the success-o-meter falling. Alan was checking every single label in case I’d missed something.

I knew it was useless, and I almost lost it; hissing under my breath to Alan at the cruelty of the clerk for letting me look, all the while knowing I’d not find my proper size; in mental anguish at myself for standing in a store having a hissy-fit I seemed not able to prevent. I wanted to go home; like an elastic band pulled to its limit I wanted to spring back to my normal position. But I was in the mall and it had taken a huge effort, and damned if it was all to be for nothing. In the end I found a nice long-sleeved shirt. Alan was happy and trying to be supportive and optimistic.

On to store number two…a department store. Couldn’t even find any sweatpants. By now my leg was sore from walking on the travertine floors and my body was sweating and my hands were like ice. Don’t ask me! It’s what always happens when I go shopping. My hissy-fit was more protracted this time, likely enabled by the fact that there was not a sales clerk to be seen in the whole of the women’s wear department to hear it. I didn’t want to be there any more. I told Alan so, but he said try one more; the low end department store…which was a 10 minute walk (at my bumbling pace) to the other end of the mall.

He negotiated; said we could stop and rest along the way and he’d even go and bring the car up to the exterior exit of the store so I’d not have to walk all the way back. I did it because he was trying so hard and somewhere in me I was astonishingly grateful that he was making such an effort.

Once in the store I discovered they’d rearranged the place. When I actually found some sweats… all the wrong size.

“Keep looking,” Alan says.

“Hhhiiisssssss,” says I, and now tears are starting to want to appear. Yards away on another rack, sweats that will actually fit. No hurrah just anger that the underpants I decide to get are half way across the store beyond stuff not related to women’s clothes. My leg hurts and I just want to NOT be there.

But I am and so we make it to the underpants wall…and everything is sized by a NUMBER: there are 7’s and 12’s and 11’s and I don’t have a clue what any of it means. Underwear is Sm., Med., or Lrg. Numbers? “Fuck and shit and hell. What the hell is going on why can’t I just find a package of plain old underpants size Medium??? “Help me Alan, pleeeassse help me.”

Which he is of course; trying desperately to decode the numbers in to units meaningful to my purchasing experience.

“Look for the 6”.

Which I can’t find, in part because I don’t have my glasses on and in part because I’m at the point now where I know what blind rage means. I can’t seem to extract any meaning from what I do see. There seems no organization. Bikinis beside Boy Cuts; 7’s next to 12’s, next to Hip Huggers. I want a fuckin’ pair of panties not a MENSA test!

“Here’s a 6”

“Those are Boy Cut!!”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Just normal underpants. For fuck sakes, can’t you go into a store and find underpants without all this crap? I can’t do this. This is stupid.” Tears are close but I deny them.

“Look lower down.”

“What do you mean? They put the smaller sizes at the bottom and worked up? What shit head thought that was a good way to do things?”

“Just keep looking.”

“I AM LOOKING I can’t find them I don’t want to do this.”

“Here; what about these?”

“They’re BIKINI.” (I’m extracting this from the picture on the package. A code Alan hasn’t had the time to figure out with all the temper tantrum he’s been fighting to keep at bay.”

“OK, these then?”

He’s almost afraid to show me.

“Ya, good; get me out of here; I want to be out of here NOW.”

Somehow I negotiate the cashier and get out of the store to wait for the car to show up. I’m waiting and trying to understand the person who was in the stores. Because it wasn’t me; not any me I’ve ever met before. I don’t have hissy-fits and temper tantrums no matter how awful an experience I have looking for clothes. I don’t know that person and she scares me. I don’t like her. Not even a little bit. I don’t even feel empathy for her travails. I want to get away from her as fast as I can. I want Alan to show up with the car. The elastic came dangerously close to breaking.

And the groove in my brain just got another mile deeper…digging in; breaking more of the stuff of Me in to unrecognizable bits of a stranger I’m deathly frightened of.

And let’s not forget the condescension of the medical profession, just to make the tale complete. It happened that I had an appointment with my doctor a few days later for my prescriptions. I tried to tell him about my shopping experience.

“Oh, well but that’s not a new Pathology or anything…”

Forget the Grand Canyon. We’re talking The Valles Marineris, folks.