Dear Doctor
I realize it has been years since we last spoke and that this will come out of the blue, but you see, I realized I need to write you a letter to tell you what you meant to me. Meeting you was life-changing. You made my life better. So, that’s what I am doing. I’m even considering printing it out to snail-mail it, but we’ll see.
I just want to make sure to write this letter now and tell you how grateful I am before I get lost in uncertainty about my health and end up writing a different kind of letter entirely.
So,
Thank you for believing me when I said how bad things were.
Thank you for accepting that I was going to take Provigil whether you wanted me to or not.
Thank you for patiently being my doctor for such a long time. And though you eventually let me go, I want you to know that I have never thought of you with resentment.
Let me meander through my mind now, please. Catch you up a tiny bit.
As you told me back then, moods — they come and go. It was good for a long time, then okay, and then the last few years, pretty bleak.
Everything became grey and numb and I was increasingly unpleasant to be around. And it just went on and on and on. After a while I couldn’t sleep.
But then, a while back, a few months, I started to taper down on some meds, I started eating proper food. Three meals a day with vegetables and protein and lots of water, and the fog lifted again. I started thinking and doing things again. And finally, I became a not-horrible person to be around. It’s been a bit like back when I started seeing you and taking better meds and life finally became enjoyable.
Music, which has always been such a big part of my life, I have barely listened to anything the last few years.
Back when I saw you I had strong, wild feelings about everything. Perhaps I fell in love in inappropriate ways, but I also laughed and, yes, it was a whirlwind, but on the heels of that I started writing. Nothing world-altering, mind you, just coming-of-age stories, retelling my teenaged years, some of my adult years too. All set in the world of Harry Potter.
It’s funny, now that I think of it. Writing fan-fiction was liberating in the same way as knitting crooked rectangles and sewing them together into blankets were. No pressure to knit neat stitches. No patterns, or counting, just endless variations of colors and materials to not be bored.
Writing fan-fiction was like that. No pressure. No world-building. Just people working through the angst and alienation. It’s funny, because until I sat down to write this I had forgotten that’s why I chose fan-fiction. Because of the lack of pressure. But the weird thing is, it came back. Fan-fiction, as it turns out, is also a world of accomplishments in its small way, and how do I measure up? I found myself wanting.
So sadly, after that initial burst of creativity born out of needing to please no one, I haven’t been able to write, because the pressure to be better makes writing a chore. I want to be better at grammar, better at telling stories. Get the clicks and likes. So I edit and edit and edit. And really, who enjoys that?
I need to get back to writing crooked squares.
You asked me once what I wanted to do with my life, and my answer might have seemed flippant at the time, but I really had thought about it a lot. I told you I wanted contentedness. A beautiful house with green walls and bookcases filled with books and two cats and sunshine through the windows bringing the beautiful grain in the wooden floors to life.
I know it was unsatisfying, my lack of vision, lack of longing for a real legacy. Perhaps it was sad how tiny my world was and you were right. But I have been small all my life. My wins, the things I achieved because I tried to, have always been small. I have never dreamt big, because when people told me I couldn’t do it or that I’m not good enough, I believed them. To be honest, they never even had to be explicit. I have always proactively looked for signs of dismissal and lack of respect, and if I once had big, sincere, unfettered dreams it wasn’t possible for them to persist in the kind of poison doubt and lack of confidence that gives off.
Everything joyous, dreams as well, die in a fearful mind. And that’s me. Too afraid to prove them all wrong, because if I fail, if I am found wanting, I’d have to feel the sting of humiliation and I’d doubt myself and wonder if it’s even worth it.
With that fear defining me, contentedness became what was left. Floating outside the world, untouchable by whatever regard or lack thereof others may have for me. That’s what contentedness is: never having to worry about failing, or trying, or feeling left out.
I have wondered if I was supposed to fight for it. If I should have called back after you said we couldn’t work together, and said I’d do better, that I understood what you were trying to do and how it was impossible when I didn’t follow through on my end of the bargain. But to me rejection has always been final, you see? There is no redemption, or shades of grey. It’s absolute. A judgment is a judgment; there is no ambiguity.
If I had tried and failed that might have knocked me out of the numbness and forced me to feel loss, and sadness, and regret.
But, let’s say, I have grown up. Let’s say I am ready for a dream — that if I were to dream, it would be to write a book, to have it published. Proper publishing, mind you. Being selected, and found special, and printed, and bound in a volume that can be found in a bookstore.
I think I see now that your strength and ability to follow through, and your optimism that there always is a state of mind worth living for, is non-trivial. It’s not innate. It takes guts. It takes hard work. It takes steel-reinforced conviction to be able to withstand the darkness and sadness. Perhaps you do it armed with unrelentingly executed routines. Eat, sleep, meds — and not necessarily in that order. But every day. Get up, make the bed, sit down and have breakfast, walk… The kind of dreary, boring, mundane life movies about people who are about to take the red pill lead. The kind of life protagonists are liberated from. But also the kind of life that truly is the foundation a mind that’s constantly in flux needs. When the turmoil is in your head, guns aren’t required for drama, but should they appear, then surely eating, sleeping and taking one’s meds will make it easier to face them, to be able to make the decision whether to hide, run or fight. (Or whatever, it’s hard for me to give up on a metaphor once I get going.)
Or as the stewardess says, place the mask over your own face first.
I have thought about writing you before, but I was worried you died and I was too afraid to find out. And then, I thought about rejection, and silence, and isn’t it just easier to decide that it’s not appropriate? It’s been a long time, and letting things slip away may not have served me particularly well, but it sort of works. You don’t have to suffer great pain, instead you just have a constant low-level kind of ache.
I feel better now.
I’m recovering from COVID, finally, perhaps. My mind is clearer than it has been in a long time, and while I would love to write a book, I still don’t have such lofty ambitions. I want to live a bit more, laugh a bit more, be kinder to others, make what they say less about me and perhaps that way allow myself to stay present, find some joy and pleasure.
I don’t want to regret, and I know not saying that you meant so much to me would be a regret. Living happily ever after is never in the cards with bipolar; you made me accept that. You also gave me a name for what has been plaguing me all my life. It wasn’t just being too dramatic or self-centered, it wasn’t just a personality flaw. It’s a part of me, yes, but it’s not a failure. It just is, and yes it makes life harder both for me and those around me, but it has a name and that makes it a tiny, tiny bit easier.
Have you read The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams? I only read the scary parts. It was a long time ago. I’m sure the book is still around here on my shelves somewhere. It’s a collection of musings and essays, and among them a diagnosis of liver cancer, and what it is like living with knowing you’re dying. She wrote that it was unfair — perhaps she wrote ironic, I don’t recall exactly — but she wrote she had been feeling so much better, she had started taking care of herself and running.
I suppose it’s a little like that. I had a CT scan, and they found a neuroendocrine tumor in my ileum. The doctor said, as cancers go, that’s an OK one. I don’t really know anything yet. The doctor wasn’t particularly forthcoming about what happens now. Except I need some other kind of scan. I find the lack of information odd. Surely, even if you as a doctor have not yourself had the experience of illness and diagnosis, you must have seen enough medical dramas on TV to make it pretty obvious what hearing such a thing does to someone.
As that someone, here is what I suggest: prepare some answers for some of the questions your patient will be too shocked and scared to ask. Yes?
I get it. I need more tests and stuff. Maybe docs don’t want to commit.
I’ve had a lump in my armpit for a while. I've been talked out of worrying about it. Well, now I am working and whether they were able to feel it or not, I can. And tomorrow, when I go to the doctor’s office, I will slam my fist on the table and demand an ultrasound, or whatever it is that’s done about these things.
I want to be zen about this situation. I want to infuse my life with the knowledge that whether the prognosis is good or bad, life is more precious now, and I need to stop idling and start telling people I care for them. That I enjoy their company. I want to eat well, and not do stuff that is boring, or useless, or sucks. Who knows. It’s just a CT scan, maybe it’s something benign. Or at least something that can be removed and maybe I can have a full life. After all, my blood work is perfectly normal. Or, as the unforthcoming doctor said, “everything looks good by the numbers.”
I want to be zen, but it’s frightening and it’s hard to sleep. And I cry. I am fighting the creature that’s clawing away at the improvements I have made the last couple of months. The monster that is whispering and yelling, telling me that it’s pointless.
I don’t want to lose heart and I’m scared. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom, ffs. I’m afraid to see dark spots, and I am afraid of sleeping because I’ll think too much, and I feel the pinch and pressure in my belly that I have been ignoring for a long time. Because isn’t it also true that my stomach always has been messed up? Ever since I was a teenager, it's been bothering me, so why worry about it now? And couldn’t it be true that those dark spots are less perfectly digested vegetables, or something? I don’t know. I just want answers. This uncertainty is bearable only because I have no choice.
I am sorry about laying this on you in a letter that’s supposed to be about gratitude, but I am scared and lonely and you made it through serious illness. But ultimately, the happiness I have had and the happiness that I will have regardless of this situation, and for however long it might be, is thanks to you. I won’t give up now. I am determined to live as well as I possibly can.
I wanted you to know I carry your influence with me, and it matters now more than ever.