Survived Christmas and Cordelia

My sister Cordelia is in very bad shape, complaining that her stomach is bothering her, constantly eating these disgusting green-brown health food bars. I tried one--yuuuch. She cuts her own hair, and this trip it looked like two wedges sticking straight out. She compulsively pats it down and pulls at it. She is extremely thin, and wears extremely baggy clothes to conceal it.

I called my other sister for some relief after a day spent with Cordelia, and she reminded me: "She's a crusty old spinster, and she's used to living alone. She doesn't know how to show she cares the way ordinary people do. Instead of saying 'I love you,' she will sweep your floor." That was very helpful to hear, because I know my sister does love me, but whatever is wrong with her prevents her from showing it. I feel such tremendous guilt for having any kind of life at all. Ironically, she has a part-time job and an investment portfolio, and I am the one who feels guilty...old habits are hard to break.

Cordelia's Back In Town...

My sister Cordelia is here from out of town, and I saw her today. The instant I opened the door, I thought, "Oh God, no..." She was clearly much worse than this past summer; clothing disheveled, hair sticking out in all directions, color bad. Our conversation was beyond difficult. She desperately needs professional help, and refuses to get it (that doesn't keep her from stealing my medication).

More to follow...

Listening to "Push," July 2005

Sitting here listening to Rob Thomas sing "Push," after I’ve packed for the show, I’m feeling stirred up and horny and ready to take on whatever audience is out there. And really, really angry.

I look across the room at Dad’s Tiffany clock and the words of the song have so much meaning: “I want to push you around, I will, I will, I want to push you down, I will, I will.” I’ve always loved this song and all of its rage. “I want to take you for granted, I will, I will.”

I hate that damn clock. Lucretia showed up at my front door when they were destroying everything of Dad's back at the apartment. She shoved it into my arms. "You take it," she said. It weighs a ton, and it doesn't work. Sometimes I think about pawning it.

Crawling Out From Under...

So, my doctor put me on a new antidepressant, and has been steadily upping the dose. The good part: I feel better. The bad part: it really gives me the woozies. When I stand up suddenly, or rise from a crouch, the world spins around for a few minutes. Luckily I know to grab onto something until it passes. So many meds have done this to me that I know the drill. Hell, I'm just fortunate that it doesn't make my legs buckle under me, like the stuff I was on this summer.

I've gone from being completely paralyzed to partially paralyzed, and the suicidal thoughts are going away. When they are there, they make such complete sense. It seems the only sensible path is to kill yourself; you'd rid the world of your worthless presence, and other people could stop worrying about you and get on with their lives. When it gets really bad, the world narrows down to that one little pinprick, and everything else is blackness. Anyone's feelings don't exist, except in the concept that you make everybody around you feel bad, because you are a worthless piece of shit that should never have been born anyway.

It is still tough to leave the house, I still have to remind myself to bathe. I hadn't updated this in a while because I've been too busy with a freelance project. Of course, the people I'm working for have no idea I'm bipolar; you can conceal it over the phone.

So that's where I am right now. There's more to write but I don't have time; my deadline is tomorrow, and after that I have to survive Thanksgiving.

Going Insane - November 1998

Written in early 1999:

The first indication I had that I was going around the bend was a profound restlessness. I tried to work, but I couldn’t concentrate. Since I am a master procrastinator, I thought this was simply a new manifestation of an old problem. But my thoughts skittered away from focus like mercury when you try to poke a pencil in it.

For two days I told myself that this was a natural reaction to the extreme emotional blow I’d endured earlier in the week. I had ended a working relationship of several years’ duration, and not so incidentally, a close friendship. Partially as a result of this, my personal finances were in disarray, but things were looking up. New jobs, new friendships beckoned. I thought I was handling everything well.

Then, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, I woke up feeling vaguely depressed. As I walked down 53rd Street with my husband, it happened.

A thick, heavy blanket of despair dropped over my head, as tangible as if it had been made of wool.

I burst into tears. I turned to my husband and announced that I wanted to die. He tried to comfort me, standing on the rainy street, but I was inconsolable. “I think I’m losing my mind,” I sobbed. “I just want to end it all.”

He convinced me to continue to our destination a documentary screening. I cried off and on as we went to an art exhibition and then to my parents' apartment, where I determined to act like nothing was wrong, figuring it would pass. I managed to push the feelings down and no one suspected anything.

When I used the bathroom when we were watching “Winchell”, I looked at my father’s Dilantin pills, which were in a little pottery bowl on the sink. I wondered if it would kill me if I swallowed all of it. When we got home, I cried and talked to my husband about wanting to die. Then I slept for more than 14 hours. We had guests the next day, and I barely managed to get dressed and get through watching a football game with them. It helped that they were busily getting stoned, so I was in the background.

Monday I felt better, and thought the worst was over—over the past fifteen years, most of my severe depressions have lasted two or three days on average, and suicidal thoughts aren’t a usual feature. But by nightfall the feelings came back. I wanted to die again.

When I woke up on Tuesday the feeling was even stronger. I went to a writers meeting with a woman I was working on a project with, and started crying.

I knew something was really wrong, that this was worse than anything I had felt in years and years. Life seemed completely pointless, insupportable. I kept thinking about how I had not felt these feelings since I was 24, and had never expected to feel them again.

I remembered sitting in the window in my old apartment, before I met my husband, watching the snow fall, illuminated by the streetlight. My mind was falling with the snow, drifting into insanity. It was as if I was dissolving as I sat there. That had been over a decade ago.

Now I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t sit up for more than a minute, I could barely talk. I was paralyzed. Something inside of me was broken. But I didn’t know what it was. I called my therapist, to whom I owed a lot of money.

"You're malingering," she said. "You just don't want to get a real job."
"You don't understand," I croaked. "I can't sit up."

That night, while my husband was on the telephone, I was lying in bed. It seemed that suicide was the only reasonable alternative. I thought this very calmly and reasonably, and suddenly felt more motivated than I had all day. Since we didn’t have any pills, I decided to slash my wrists.

Looking in the bathroom cabinet, I discovered that all we had are these newfangled cartridge razors. So I went in the linen closet and found a plastic pink Daisy shaver. While my husband continued to talk on the phone in the living room, I got a pair of pliers. I went into another room and proceeded to break apart the shaver until I had gotten the blades out.

Then I sat there, and looked at the large blue vein in my left wrist. I felt scared of how much it would sting when I cut myself, and angry that I was such a coward. My husband got off the phone and came in the room. When he saw the razor, he took it and flushed it down the toilet.

When I attempted to explain what I was doing, I became so consumed with self-hatred and guilt that all I wanted to do was hurt myself. I grabbed the pliers, intending to beat myself on the face or head with them, but my husband wrestled them away from me.

Once I was calmer, he called his therapist on the phone. When his therapist called back, he talked to me for about half an hour, and I talked about what a shambles my life was, how I wanted to die, how guilty I was about all the fucking up I have done in my life, etc. How guilty I feel for my husband having to pull the heavier financial load in our marriage.

(to be continued)

Why Am I Doing This?

I suppose some readers wonder why I am writing this blog. At best, it's cathartic; at worst, it's mastubatory. I've wanted to write a memoir for years, but have been completely blocked.

So I decided to put everything out there, in all its messiness, changing names and identifying details. I was diagnosed bipolar about six years ago, after a long period of misdiagnosing and mismedicating. I function relatively well, but with limitations. Part of my frustration is that even though there is a family history of this illness, my family refuses to take it seriously. Or acknowledge the toll it has taken on my life. They think I am playing the victim. Perhaps I do that sometimes, but being confined to a mental hospital is hardly something I would call "playing the victim."

Also, people who do not know better think it is an illness you can conquer by willpower. Right now, during this depression, I'm urged to "think differently," "stop thinking about the past," "get out and do more." It's not a choice, it's brain chemistry. And right now, the meds aren't working.

I want people to understand what those of us who have mental illness go through. There are things I have written while I was actively psychotic. I barely recognize the person who wrote them. Psychosis is rather like being burned; when it happens, it hurts like hell. Then a few months later you look down at the scar and think, "That hurt like hell." But you don't FEEL it. Sorry, that's the best analogy I can come up with.

I also don't care how many people read this, or what they think. I want them to like it, or enjoy it, or get something out of it. But I have no control over that.

Estate Battles - September, 2004

This was part of an exchange of emails between me and my sisters. My brother wanted a trust set up for his retarded daughter. In a moment of pure idiocy, my dying father asked the four of us children to work out the will. It led to the utter destruction of the family. I was taking care of our parents with the help of my nephew, who had moved in with them. My father was dying, and my mother also had cancer. My only source of steady income was Social Security Disability, so I tended to be a bit prickly:

From Lucretia:
Now that we're talking hard numbers, we should all be taking this unpleasant confrontation with financial reality as a goad to start doing whatever we can to increase our earnings and our savings, because it's very likely the estate is not going to put anyone on Easy Street, no matter how things turn out with the The Dauphin’s retarded child trust. Again, try to see this from the other side. If we are expecting the estate to bail us out, without working hard to do some bailing ourselves--well, that's a hard case to make against the needs of a disabled child.
Lucretia

My response to both my sisters:

Hi -

Lucretia, I had a long talk with The Dauphin’s mother in law this morning. Before you freak out, bear in mind that she and I have a relationship entirely separate from The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife, and have for years (i.e., recovery, etc.) and frequently IM, talk on the phone, etc. I have not said Word One to her about the wills, but she has been checking in with me a lot about Mom, and now about Dad. She's very concerned about both of them.

So today we talked about When They Are Gone. The Dauphin’s mother in law and The Dauphin’s father in law are not setting up a separate estate trust for The Dauphin’s retarded child, but rather, deeding and bequesting to both The Dauphin’s brother in law and The Dauphin’s wife evenly, as much as possible before The Dauphin’s father in law and The Dauphin’s mother in law die. The Dauphin’s mother in law is worried that our parents will both die without wills. I said no, Lucretia was working on it with a lawyer.

We got into a long, philosophical conversation (thank God I was watching my words). The Dauphin’s mother in law strongly believes that neither of her children should be favored before the other, even if one has a disabled child and the other doesn't. She thinks that's the approach Dad should take, an even four-way split, and not "penalize" or "reward," as she put it, anybody for anything. She thought the idea that he had asked his children to work it out was a disastrous decision.

The Dauphin’s father in law had the experience of his siblings swooping down on his parents' belongings and his sister taking all of the antiques, the car, etc., saying she had more of a right to it since she'd taken care of their mother while she was dying, and it was an ugly, ugly fight. The Dauphin’s father in law backed out because he had so much more money than his siblings it wasn't worth it to him.

The Dauphin’s mother in law had an appraiser come to their apartment, since she collects things, and in an hour he had appraised some of her "junky" belongings at over $85,000 in one room. She's going to have him come back to appraise the rest of the stuff, since her house is packed and she knows some things are worth thousands and some are worth pennies, and she doesn't want them all tossed out.

I asked her to give me the name of the appraiser, since Mom and Dad have lots of valuable furniture (according to both The Dauphin’s mother in law and The Dauphin’s wife) and it would be worth it for Dad to find out the value of what they have, to ease some of his financial fears, even if it might seem like smoky, out of date junk to some of us.

So, why do I tell you all this? Because this materially changes how I feel; I want a four-way split, and no estate trust for The Dauphin’s retarded child.

The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife can set one up. I don't care if The Dauphin doesn't speak to me for a few years. I love him dearly, but the basic financial inequity cannot be explained away by past behavior, emotional fucked-upness, or your general stance (with me, anyway): "Everything you feel is wrong." The fact is, The Dauphin’s father in law and The Dauphin’s mother in law DO enter into the equation, and to ignore that is just ridiculous.

We are talking about Monopoly money in the case of our parents, and real, solid wealth in the case of The Dauphin’s retarded child's other grandparents. If they don't feel The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife deserve more, why should Dad? Yes, I know he wants to help, but maybe the best way to help is to do a four-way split and let The Dauphin and The Dauphin’s wife handle the money the way they see fit. I'm really sick of this "disabled child trumps all" stuff, and I don't give a flying fuck at this point if anyone thinks that immature. I've just had it. And Lucretia, I know you don't want to be the trustee.

This afternoon Mom and I had a lovely visit; we mended the dog's plush toys, and Mom got a real kick out of watching him play with them as we finished each one. She loves the new carpet and the kittens. Dad is getting blood work done, today he's getting a chest X-ray, and later on an endoscopy. As usual he lied his head off to the doctor, and Mom was unable to answer some of the questions, such as, "Are you depressed?" (To Dad) She admitted that she was frightened, but hopes it will turn out to be some sort of acid reflux. I put in a call to Dr. BXXX to give him some details; because of course Dad lied again.

Lucretia, thank you for getting Mom’s cousin to call her. She was going to skip the whole idea of going to Memorial Sloan Kettering before that, but now she'll go.

Having to deal concretely on a daily basis, with Mom and Dad's health problems and knowing that I will have to do so on an ongoing basis, knowing that my sanity has already been tested to the breaking point...well, too fucking bad that The Dauphin’s wife was too much of a drunk to pay attention to her infant's needs, either during pregnancy or afterwards. Or now, for that matter. They spent their kids' college money on a beach house, they live high off the proverbial hog, and they have plenty of money. Using The Dauphin’s retarded child's disability as a bargaining chip...well, it's stopped working for me. Period. It trumps NOTHING, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I blew everything. They might blow everything. But at least it would be their responsibility and have nothing to do with any of us, or take anything away from any of us.

I am fucking tired of being criticized for being either a) greedy b) being wrong c) selfish. I know I can't retire on this money. I know it's hardly riches beyond dreams of avarice, as Lucretia put it. The Dauphin can say all he wants about protecting his child, but the means are already there, no matter what you say. That was brought up by Lucretia at the very beginning, and it remains equally true three weeks later.

How About A Post In The Present, Tense?

I’ve been depressed for more than three weeks now. All I can think about is my wasted life, how my youth is gone, how my career is a total and utter failure.

Part of me is so angry at all of those people who made me promises and did not deliver. I’m even quoted in a newspaper article from six years ago, saying, “I hope it’s not just a bunch of suits making empty promises.” It was. It always is. People get excited, then they aren’t excited any more. And I move on to the next set of people who will get excited, and on, and on, and on. Until it stops.

Now life is about taking a shower, getting dressed in clean clothes, and then lying down exhausted from the effort and going to sleep. We have no money. No. Money. I can’t do anything about it. Not much, anyway, I get my little check from Social Security, which took two years to get. And I have to walk my poor dog, who isn’t getting nearly enough exercise. Neither am I.

My birthday was a few days ago. I spent it alone. My husband had to work and go to school.

Writing this has been about all I can manage, and I need to lie down.

Losing My Mind, Again, Part Two - January 2006

Picking Up From Where I Left Off in November 2005:

When I came home from the mental hospital, there was an email from Lucretia saying that this was all symbolic on my side; she was worried about me, etc. I wrote an angry reply, and she responded with an email that was so vicious I deliberately responded cc’ing both Cordelia and The Dauphin, with large excerpts. (Cordelia said it made her “sick to her stomach” to read Lucretia’s email.)

She accused me of going straight to Mom to ask for the money (I didn’t). When Lucretia came to New York, I asked her to visit my therapist with me because I didn’t think I could tell my side of the story without losing it. She agreed, although she's now convinced it was a “deliberate set-up.”

Lucretia said at the beginning of the session that she had to mother everybody and nobody mothers her (I remember she stuck out her lower lip like a child, sort of joking). My therapist asked, "Nobody?" Lucretia said something like, "My friends, sort of. And my husband sometimes. But mostly Grendl." And she patted my leg.

This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to Lucretia at the time:

Wednesday’s session with my therapist made a lot of things clear. I talked it over with her last night. She was struck by how, during the first part of the session, you were warm and affectionate and genuinely cared about me. Then, when we talked about the debt, it was like you became another person: the words she used were “rigid,” “detached,” “unemotional,” and “by the book.” My therapist could see that the rules that had been set up [for the estate] were clearly more important to you than my well-being. She thought perhaps this rigidity was in part how you’ve managed to survive. My therapist is baffled by why you won’t pay the debt. I also did not know that both Cordelia and The Dauphin had written to you negatively about the debt, and that Mom doesn’t want it paid back, either. (Cordelia of course said nothing when she was here, but ironically gave the surgeon a check for that exact amount.) The Dauphin, by the way, profited hugely by that old debt, selling the apartment at a vast profit. To me, this debt is completely valid. I spent hours and hours poring over old checkbook registers, investment statements and correspondence with Dad.

Do you remember how devastated you were when Mom was going to change her will, and you realized that all of your hard work planning the estate didn’t count because she loves The Dauphin best? You were barely able to function at the time. Compare those emotions to how I feel now. Imagine how it felt to hear you say, “I’m sorry Dad gave you this illness, and that he gave you the head injuries that made it worse, and yes, I’m rich and you’re poor, but that’s the way the wheel is turning right now.”

DH is utterly disgusted and angered by all of this, and used the word “niggardly.” He feels strongly that Dad would have repaid that debt if I had let him know about it. Yes, I forgot about it for a long time, but I was both unwell and using…there’s a lot of chaos in my background. Yesterday, I talked to my friend Karen, who until recently has struggled with dire poverty. I told her what you said about the ‘enormous symbolic weight’ of the debt. “That’s bullshit!” she said. “You need the money!”

That was written in December 2005. When she said that about my illness, I picked up my hat and coat and said, “I can’t see you any more, Lucretia.”

We’d had no individual contact until I had the impulse to call her one day. One of the first things she said to me was, “I would have paid you back the debt, but The Dauphin and Cordelia didn’t want me to!” When I said I knew that now, she said, “Then why does that make me the bad one?” Because you have the checkbook, I almost responded, but I didn’t. She also said, “I’m tired of being the all-giving parent substitute to all of you.” I told her I didn’t think of her that way AT ALL. We agreed that not speaking for another couple of months was probably the way to go. I did agree to stop sending snarky replies to her group emails (I never lost an opportunity to get a dig in, I admit). I haven’t seen her since last December.

Seeing her with a counselor was worth it to me, but not for the reasons I thought. One of the things that struck me later was that this was only the second time ever that Lucretia acknowledged that I was physically abused by Dad, and that she knew it’s a large part of my illness. Doctors have told me that my latent bipolar might not have manifested except for that. The rest is genetics and booze.

Lucretia does have the gift of gab, and is good at creating narratives that have a passing relationship with the truth and making herself the victim. (Cordelia and I have a long-running joke about Lucretia’s reaction to us: “Everything you feel is wrong.”)

My Dog On The Street, November 2004

Written after an encounter on the street:

Yesterday afternoon I was walking my dog down to Petland Discounts to get some toys, etc. along Broadway.

This heavyset Hispanic woman with drawn-on eyebrows suddenly gets in front of us and asks, "Can I see the front of your dog?" She lifted my dog by his front legs, and started yelling that this was her dog that she lost! She called him Tomi, although he didn't respond, and said he was a Chihuaha (does he LOOK LIKE a chihuaha to you?). She demanded, "You buy him or find him?"

I was so unnerved that I blurted that I'd found him, but didn't say where, but it had been two years ago and he was MY dog. My dog wasn't responding to her at all, although she was bent over and getting in his face and insisting he was! "He knows his name! He knows his name! Tomi!"

Running through my head is this awful scenario, can she actually take my dog, is he her dog somehow, oh my God, how could I have walked him three times a day along Broadway and this never happened??? She said he was her littlest one, that she'd left the door open and he'd run away. I'd heard something to that effect around the time I got him. But we tried speaking Spanish to him and he never reacted to it.

Finally I think she took a look at the expression on my face, patted him and said, "You take good care of my Tomi," and I dragged him away.

I went into the Petland Discounts, shaking all over. I NEVER tie him up outside because people have offered me money for him, or just grabbed at him, or whatever. There are a lot of kooks around here who get very weird around my dog, since he's so little and cute. Part of me was wondering: did she had any right to take my dog?

Now I'm afraid I'll run into her again. I hope for at least not another two years. Also, considering the shape he was in when I got him, she should help pay for the trainer bills! Just kidding--sort of.

To The Dauphin in 2005

Written to the Dauphin about his mid-life crisis:

I was thinking about this recently, and it occurred to me: you should be very proud of yourself, Dauphin. You've managed to do well, even though life has thrown you some very tough curves, the stress of which I can't begin to imagine. You've run your own business for years, you have a wife and children, two homes, and work that sounds like it is quite creative and challenging. You've managed to stay independent, which is a real tightrope, given our economy. Maybe none of us has had the success Dad enjoyed during his life, but then again, we were raised very differently...I think a lot of boomer children suffer from this inability to measure up to their parents' accomplishments. And Dad was brilliant, no doubt about it.

Not to mention how much you helped him in his later years, even though I know they were filled with conflict for both of you at times. The difference in your personalities, goals and management styles were bound to create friction.

One thing I have really admired about you is your capacity to love your children...I never wanted to have children, as you know.

When you first had your older daughter, I used to watch you and think, 'Where did he learn to do that?'. I see photos of myself with Dad from when I was a baby and I can see that same unqualified adoration. I don't know why it stopped for so long a time.

I've always been unable to relate to children until they're at least in their mid-teens. I was actually afraid of Lucretia's children for many years because I knew she and her husband were spewing poison about me to them. That shouldn't have mattered so much to me. That's one reason I've always been drawn strongly to animals. The absolutely unconditional affection they offer.

I remember how hurt you were that Dad didn't take an interest in your work. That was his loss, and I don't really understand it, but he was less than encouraging to all of us (although later he was more encouraging to me, ironically, after I got sick). You probably know better than I. I was very, very pleased when he came to some of my plays later in life, although usually Mom came by herself.

I just wanted to say, that whatever the components of your mid-life crisis, you have made something wonderful and significant of your life for your family and for yourself and I'm sure for many others. And you've often been there for me when I least expected it.

Watching my father die...November 17 2004

In the surgeon's outer office:

It hurts so much. Dad is like a large animal, panting and bent over. A dying lion. Annette, the assistant, told me about her mother, who died of gastric cancer at 58.

At their apartment:

Mom and Dad had a screaming fight. I stayed in the kitchen and ate reheated Chinese food. Dr. BXXX broke our phone appoinment--DAMN! Will call Dr. SXXX when I get home.
Gave Dad some Listerine Pocket Packs because he loved them so much in the hosptial. Not drinking, but smoking and sleeping.

I asked him if it was like being in someone else's body, and he said, "More and more."

The Dauphin fled to Fire Island.

Losing My Mind, Again - Part One, October 2005

This is a long story, so sit back.

It was in the later summer of 2005 that I found the promissory note for the money I had loaned to Dad back in 1985 purely by accident while going through some files. That September, Lucretia emailed me that I had to write a "demand letter.” We would go through the records, and if I hadn't been paid back, I would be paid back and sign a release against any future claims. It all seemed straightforward at the time. I did as I was asked. I knew the circumstances of the loan (Dad took over The Dauphin's paying me for his apartment), and the note promised that I would be paid $11K with 10% interest as of July 1, 1985. My lawyer (yes, I have an estate lawyer) said a reasonable amount of time to wait would be two weeks to be paid back. Lucretia wrote that was impossible, since she'd have to come to the city to go through Dad's records.

Things got very weird, very fast. Lucretia asked to see my financial records. I said no. They were a shambles and I didn’t want anyone else to see how much I’d fucked up over the years. This was at the same time the Dauphin was freaking over Lucretia’s executor's fee, so there was a fair amount of email fighting going on. Lucretia and I met in a coffee shop, and I showed her the last payment Dad had made (prior to that note) from The Dauphin's trust. I had gotten my trust fund about a year later, in 1986, when I turned 30, and at that time Dad's company was going down the tubes. It was around that time he told me he'd lost millions of dollars and I shouldn't expect an inheritance.

At the coffee shop, Lucretia thrust some forms from the investment firm at me, and said she wanted them faxed to her, even though it concerned my account (there were a few months unaccounted for, although I had over twenty years of reports). When I said no, I would have them sent to me, she was unpleasantly surprised. By now, if the loan were paid with interest, it would be in the neighborhood of $33K.

She mentioned compound interest, and said that if I tried to get that, she would "haul my ass through court.” (She strenuously denies having said anything to that effect, but it was a real shocker to hear that coming from her.) I said I didn't even know what that WAS, and after she explained it, I said I didn't want it anyway. Later, the investment firm couldn't find the account records because they're so old.

The situation dragged on, and frankly, I was coming apart at the seams. My inbox was filled with angry emails from everybody about the executor stuff, etc.. With the other monetary arguments about the estate, the amount of money I was requesting seemed like chump change. Then in late October, I spoke to Lucretia's estate lawyer. He almost accused me of blackmail, and what a strange coincidence it was that I had found the promissory note right before the twenty year statue of limitations expired. Then he said that confidentially, Lucretia was interested in a settlement for the principle of the loan.

The next day, I was leaving for an audition for “All My Children,” as a trucker’s girlfriend, and I was asked to come in costume. So I dressed in a denim mini, low-cut blouse, and black leather jacket (I got the part).

As I was getting ready to leave, the phone rang, and the estate lawyer gleefully informed me that the statute of limitations had run out on the promissory note, so I wouldn’t get a penny. It’s six years, not twenty. He said that paying me back was “at Lucretia’s discretion.”

When I went to Mom’s after the audition for dinner, which we had arranged prior, the first thing she said was, “It’s so depressing how easy it is for you to look slutty.”

Lucretia had talked to her about the loan. Mom threw a shit-fit, screaming things like, “Why do you care about the fucking money? It’s been twenty years! Are you going to be poor for the rest of your life?” When I was leaving, I mentioned I’d be leaving town for Thanksgiving, because it was the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death and I didn’t feel I could cope. “You just decide to get sick,” Mom snapped.

By the time I got home (DH was traveling somewhere), I remembered I’d picked up a bottle of Xanax the day before. I sat on the edge of my bed, crying, thinking about how in the past, Lucretia would have been the first person I called, but I couldn’t call her, I couldn’t call my other siblings, Dad was gone, and Mom…well, that night it felt like I lost my entire family, and suicide seemed like a reasonable option. I had the good sense to call my psychiatrist and my clinic. The next day my therapist helped me check into the Mt. Sinai loony bin, where I spent my birthday. (Sound of violins.) I was strongly urged by the doctors there to “divorce my family,” or at least severely limit my contact.

And that's how I got to spend my birthday in green hospital pajamas and foam slippers.