Pill Popper

I'm pretty sure my medical doctor is younger than me and if so, she's definitely the reincarnation of John Lennon. To look at her you'd never know it. She wears monochromatic business casual outfits and has a short wash and wear hair style. She's smart, both looking and thinking. And John Lennon's inside her somewhere, guiding her. When I mentioned to her that I was concerned about the long-term effects of taking benzodiazepines, she looked me straight in the eye and said, "Let me worry about that. Let's just get you through the next four months of this intense psychotherapy and then we'll evaluate how you're doing. Four months of daily benzodiazepeine use is not going to turn you into a junkie." She smiled and that alone calmed me. "Trust me, if you think of the long term effect, these next few months of therapy are going to bring back a lot of pain and you're going to have to go through it. This will help. And you'll be better off in the long run."

I know I'm nervous about taking a benzo because that's what Mom says she mixed with beer, which is what landed her in the psychiatric ward both times. But since I know that, I just avoid alcohol. Hank teases his own mom by picking up her bag full of pills and shaking it like a maraca. I never thought I'd come to rely on some type of "mother's little helper." But as I am advancing as a woman I realize I have no right to judge what other people use to get through the night because we all need something. It could be prayer, meditation, alcohol, sleeping pills, an orgasm, warm milk and cookies, or a fan to drown out your internal noise.

I wasn't always a pill popper. I think I was twelve before I really swallowed my first pill. Before that my mom had to crush it and try to hide it in my orange juice. I believe this is the reason orange juice leaves a bitter taste in my mouth to this day.

Now I'm a fan of pills. Some pills. The Pill, for instance. Excellent. Antihistimes. Aaaaaachoooooray! Viagra. Must I say anything? But also Sertraline and Clonazepam. I wonder how people handled their anxiety before modern medication came along? Wine, mead and weed, I suspect. But then they didn't drive cars or hold 8-5 public service jobs.

I take pills and eat Lays Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips and take our dogs to the dog park and watch Stella play with kids at the playground. Hank does yoga, eats candy like a kid, cooks and jams on his instruments, Hank's mom takes pills, smokes, and plays music, Hank's dad is a poker player computer junkie and heavy smoker whose singing forces a smile on everyone's face, Hazel found religion and works every day to follow Jesus's example of love and charity, Marty and Walt are both creative adventurers and community activists. Murray had found it in alcohol and being a good friend. My mom finds it in crafting and recalling fond memories of us when we were kids. Stella twirls her hair and sucks her tongue. We all have our self-soothing tools. Lennon and my doctor are right. Whatever gets you through the night is all right.

After Keith joined AA and Hazel started attending Al-anon meetings, they met some friends they enjoyed hanging out with who had been down similar paths. They invited Keith and Hazel to their evangelical church, and suddenly Keith and Hazel found their home.

When I was thirteen during the summer before eigth grade, I stayed for a week at their house. They took me to their friends' house Wednesday night for Bible study. I was the only kid. The rest of them were at least eight years older than me. I didn't understand a lot of the rapture and revelations talk, so my mind wandered elsewhere. Some guys got up to try to play a Black Sabbath album backwards to hear the devil, but all I heard was scratching and warped voices. Everyone was nice to me. Each one of them asked me how I liked school. Fine. If I had a boyfriend. No. If I wanted a boyfriend. No. What I liked to do. Read. If I liked to read the Bible. Not really.

My mom would read the Bible to me sometimes. She read it every day and if something popped out at her, she'd put a piece of toilet paper inside to hold the place so she could read it to me later. But we didn't really go to church much. Mom claims she baptised me in the kitchen sink when I was a baby. The other kids were baptized Catholic, but since Mom had divorced I had to be a heathen I guess. The movie "Jesus of Nazareth" they played on TV when I was a kid made me cry every time though, so I think Mom was pretty confident in my spiritual journey.

We briefly went to a Presbyterian church. I thought it was cool that the organist was an openly gay old man, but no one was allowed to talk about it. But when we moved to Overland Park, we stopped going to church. I was glad. The church kids I met were often petty and mean when adults weren't around.

While I was staying with Hazel and Keith they took me to church with them on Sunday morning. A teenager, I wasn't in the mood to wake up early any day of the week, and especially on a day when I was expected to wear hose.

As we walked through the doors of Jesus is Love Church of the Light, I could hear a band playing. They kinda sounded like Styx only they were singing about His light inside me. We sat three row from the front in the very center. My scalp and forehead broke into a sweat. Hazel was greeting everyone and trying to introduce me, but I was having trouble breathing. Hazel grabbed my arm, "Are you ok, Syd?" I said I felt dizzy. Hazel looked at Keith. He grabbed my arm and led me outside.

"You probably just need some fresh air."

I nodded and sat on a bench, focusing on my breathing.

After about five minutes, Keith asked if I was ready to go back in. I stood up and said sure. More people were seated then and you could tell the service was about to get started. Everyone stood as the pastor entered the room. Only instead of just standing, they all closed their eyes and raised their hands into the air palms up. I felt like falling down on my face. I sat down and tried not to be noticed. Some people started singing a nice melodious tune about Jesus saving us from the harshness of life. Then some people started shouting out. In words I couldn't understand. And someone across the room began quoting something. I felt like throwing up.

After the service we went into the hallway and Hazel introduced me to about five hundred of her closest friends. I smiled and tried not to say anything because I mix my words up and get embarrassed. Hazel looked radiant. She found the familial love she needed. I just wanted to crawl into bed.

We finally left and filed into their Toyota Corolla. Keith had traded his big blue boat in for a zippy blue subcompact. Then my dad started complaining that Keith hadn't bought an American car.

On the drive home, Hazel suddenly turned around and smiled wide at me. Here eyes were gigantic, like she just saw Jesus himself. "So?

"So what?" I looked out the window at the cattle grazing.

"So what did you think?" I don't think she could remove the smile from her face if she tried.

"It was nice." I said and looked down at my shoe.

"Nice? Just nice? Did you have a good time?" Her smile went down a notch.

I shrugged. I didn't want to hurt Hazel and Keith's feelings because I was happy they had finally found a place they felt like they belonged. But I totally didn't feel like I belonged. I just didn't know how to tell them that.

Hazel turned back around and looked out the windshield. After a couple minutes, still with enthusiasm in her voice she said, "If you wanna get saved just let me know. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me."

All I could think of was, "Saved from what?" But I just sat quietly in the back seat until they drove me home. I felt ashamed. I felt like I had disappointed Hazel, who had stood by me in my darkest moments. She wanted to help me but I just wanted to be left alone.

In the year or so since I was left alone in the cyclone of sadness that was my parent's marriage, I quit dwelling on my feelings of abandonment. Like Hermey the IN-DE-PEND-ENT dentist wannabe who didn't want to live the life of an elf that was expected of him said, "Hey, what do you say we both be independent together, huh?" I started hanging out with a group of kids in junior high who were very socially active, in-your-face progressives. One of their agendas was to end homophobia. That's when I remember my mom bringing out the Bible that day and showing me the passage. I kept focusing on the word abomination. I didn't even really know what it meant, but I knew it was bad. But from hanging out with my new friends, I knew first hand that they weren't bad. They were just different kids. The outcasts radical Jesus would have liked. So no, I did not want to be saved by a religion that uses words like abomination to describe my friends. My living, breathing, loving, laughing, human friends. I thought we were supposed to love each other, not judge each other?

So as splintered families often do, my siblings and I over the years continued to live separate lives, gathering only at big holidays throughout the year. I had to come to terms that older siblings leaving is a fact of life. That siblings having different beliefs is a fact of life. It's not intentional abandonment as it felt like when I was an insecure teenager. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

I realize now, in the introspective work I've been doing before deciding to adopt or not and all the DBT sessions, that it hurt worse for me to lose my siblings to adulthood since my siblings were all pseudo-parents to me when I was very young. That's understandable. That's what I love about dialectical behavior therapy: it assumes life sucks and sometimes bad things happen. But it gives you some understanding of why things evolve the way they do and what you can do, today, this moment, to tolerate the distressing thought. DBT, benzodiazepam, prayer, groups, isolation, sharing. Whatever gets you through the night is alright.