Why Christmas is such a hard time for me. FINALLY time to talk about the White Elephant in the Room !!!

First, I want to thank all my readers for visiting. If you're new, welcome ! Please feel free to poke around and check my "About Me" section and my archives. Something has happened and I'm starting to average about 20 visits a day. That's very encouraging. Its hard to stay motivated to write, if you think you are playing to an empty auditorium.

The reason Christmas is such a hard time for me. IW finally going to talk about the white elephant in the room.

I have a ton of things I’d like to talk about and have much material fast accumulating in my idea file, but just seems like I can’t get to any of it without first talking about the white elephant in the room.

I’ve been putting it off forever and because it involves family, and I could never feel my way through it, without coming across as airing private family business in public. Heaven knows things are tense enough without me dumping twenty gallons of gasoline onto the fire. Yet as much for me as anyone else, I feel that its important enough that I need to walk down that fine line. Not going to throw stones or poke the fire. Just discuss how its effected me.

That being said I’ve got some legalities to get out of the way before we get started. Remember the disclosures under the “About Me” section apply as always. I’ll also add this. Nothing discussed here represents the views of any of my family either. I only speak for me. Also, to those personally involved in this ongoing matter, know this. Just because I make an attempt to discuss things in a neutral manner, doesn’t change any of my privately expressed stances on things. I’ll dam well let you know in person if they do.

Its one of those family “secrets” that I’m sure all of our family friends know. My younger sister and I don’t get along at all. Actually that’s putting things mildly. We can’t stand to be in the same room together and really prefer to stay in different zip codes. That‘s not an exaggeration. Two weeks ago I was shaken-up pretty severely because while driving to work, someone in a vehicle that looked identical to my sister’s cut me off near the 270/Dublin exit. I’d heard that my sister was in Columbus for training and my initial reaction was “Holy Crap !! She’s chosen to play a dangerous game of ’let’s pick a fight over nothing’ with two big SUV’s at 75mph. No way this has a happy ending. If she’s bold enough to try and cause a 12 car wreck, she almost certainly has a firearm in the car and is prepared and intending to use it. It‘s the fight I always feared but hoped would never see”. Thankfully, it wasn’t her in the car, and despite this, it was easily four-six hours before my hands stopped shaking from the adrenalin rush. It was like the time (while on army training) I accidentally shot an anti-tank missile at a range marker and the yelling and screaming that came over the radio initially made me think I had shot my friend’s tank by mistake. I was really shook-up.

The day they brought my sister home as a baby, I literally asked Mom and Dad if they could take her back ! Its not just a brother/sister thing, or a simply rivalry, or whatever dismissive thing people too often want to call it. The cold ugly fact of the matter is that our intense dislike of each other has only become more intense with every passing year.

We’ve made many attempts to reconcile in the past, only to have it end in a fight far worse than the last. Usually this happens over Christmas, no it ALWAYS happens over Christmas. This would be the first Christmas Mom and Dad asked us to come home on separate weekends hoping to avoid this. Still due to some frankly individual I'm not allow to name or describe (but whom I have plenty of names and adjectives for) who quite smugly tried to herself into this feud, it nearly happened again this year. Sorry Pops, there is no other words for it. At least I was able to ignore it without responding. However, given that it upset me greatly and kept me from getting much sleep, not to mention elevated my stress levels; I really wish she would not have tried to contact me.

Anyhow, enough on that. I’ve laid down enough for readers to understand and get the point. Two years ago we were both working on Christmas Day. What started out as a simple TEXT message to wish the other a Merry Christmas somehow escalated into a marathon drop down, drag-out fight. Mind you she was in Cleveland, OH and I was in Columbus, OH so it wasn’t that we were actually trading fists. On every break, lunch, and quiet moment, we were calling and texting to scream obscenities at the other. Then we got off shift and it really got bad.

By the time my parents called to see to wish me Merry Christmas around 7pm that night, I’d become so worked-up and stress out, I was incoherent and nearly out of touch with reality. Mom and Dad became so alarmed they begged a friend who lived in Columbus to go check on me while Dad hoped in the car and drove three hours down from Bryan, OH the whole time fearing he’d have to have me involuntarily committed to the hospital. When Dad arrived, we started arguing and screaming at each other from nearly the moment he opened the door of his truck and this went on for the next three hours. We didn’t solve anything but had to quit because both of us were physically on the verge of having a stroke. Given that Dad is a heart attack survivor, and I have blood pressure problems, it wasn’t an irrational concern.



What they probably didn’t know until just now, is that I had suffered three similar but far more intense episodes while on active duty back in 2002 that were not provoked by my sister, but by stress. The third one basically ended with me head butting a wall for two hours and having to be treated for a concussion the following day. It had been enough to make me realize I probably needed help and most likely wouldn’t re-enlist. I’d also witnessed similar episodes by several close friends. I want to talk about that more but some other time.

Its fair to say that that was the beginning of the downward spiral for me. There is a lot more to it than that, but if I had to trace things back, I would say that was when the foundation of my world started cracking. Mom and Dad often refer back to that moment and talk about how they can’t go through that again. They don’t have the emotional ability to handle another such episode and honestly, neither can I.

It was out of the fear of another experience like this that Mom and Dad BEGGED me to find a better doctor earlier this year. The slow roll towards the bottom of the hill had turned into a free-fall mainly due to stressed relationships between me, my sister, and my parents in regards to her wedding. In hindsight, I think much of it stemmed from my parent’s insistence that I attend it though Diane and I had not spoken since that prior Christmas and really neither of us had intentions to start corresponding anytime soon. If it stressed Diane out too, I never heard, but I’d be surprised if it did not. How could it not stress her out ? Now that wasn’t the sole issue. I recently went through a lot of pictures Mom took at the wedding and realized again as I did then, that there is a whole lot more to it than that. At one point I flat out told Mom and Dad that things had me so worked-up, I might have to voluntarily admit myself to a mental treatment facility, and should it come to that, I was sorry in advance for becoming the center of attention and topic of discussion at Diane’s wedding.

I was having mood swings that had even my confused. I was going from white hot anger, to near inconsolable depression, back to even keel. Sometimes all inside five minutes. When I was upset, I was having extreme muscle ticks in my face, which were physically painful and exhausting. I chipped a tooth and dislocated my jaw from clenching my teeth so hard. The doctor I was seeing at the time, visited with me for all of five minutes simply putting me on bi-polar meds and something for anxiety attacks. But those drugs so tranquilized me, I could barely stay awake for a full shift at work. This became so sever that I was seriously considering going on disability, which depressed me even more. Finally, my parents, a dear friend, and a contact at NAMI, convinced me to seek a second opinion. God was the one who put me in touch with Dr. Martin. How else do you explain how the one person I could afford to see, was probably the one doctor in Central Ohio who could help me. After making me fill out a 5-10 page questioner and a 90 minute interview, he said “Don’t worry Mike, you aren’t Bi-Polar, you’re ADD with some depression and ptsd (post traumatic stress syndrome), I’m going to completely change your meds. You can expect to start feeling much better within six weeks, and be fully stable in 6 months”. And I said “WWHHAATTT !! ADD ?”. I initially thought he was a crack-pot who was giving me false hope. But he did have a lot of certifications on the wall and he had done a very through diagnosis. So I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happened. Believe you me though, when I got home, I looked-up everything I could about adult ADD. The more I read, the more I realized that even if Dr. Martin was wrong, he was not far off. In fact he ended-up right on the money. Dr. Martin is probably one of the only physiatrists with over twenty years of experience treating adult ADD, in Ohio period. Its not far off to say, God saved my life through Dr. Martin and I’ll forever be grateful to both of them.

Well, I didn’t start off writing this intending to go into the specifics of the last six months of my recovery journey and it has me exhausted. But it was something that needed done and I’m glad it is done.

Until next time, this is The RedHeaded Rambler signing off.