synergy

I am so safe. . .

There's a saying that one in four people have mental illness. Look around at your three closest friends and if none of them are ill, look at yourself. Just living with K, I ought to be perfectly safe, but after Friday there's no question about it.

I went to coffee on Friday morning with a close friend, R. He's K's symbiotic twin and R's partner is my symbiotic twin. R has battled with depression on and off for years, but refuses to take any medication for fears of what the impact to his sex drive would be. These days, he is in school in a different city and only comes home during vacations. For the record, he and I are the same age, although he would make a point of mentioning that he's six weeks younger than me. Though he has more gray hair. I'm digressing.

During coffee, we talked about the depression he's been in all summer and he comes out with the statement that part of the time he just wants to die. More information than I was planning on digesting with my morning caffeine intake. We talked about medication and he's more open to the idea than he has been. He realizes that he's ill and needs some help. On Sunday, K encouraged him again to find a psychiatrist and get some help. I'm hoping he'll make the calls, but he's been talking about it for a month or more.

That afternoon, I had an outing with my professional development group. We went inner tubing on a river, though there could have been more water. Everyone's' butt was scraped a few times. The drought has taken it's toll on water sports this season. I was tired and not in the best mood for an afternoon networking event, but I did fine and enjoyed the outing.

Heading home, I called K to check-in. She told me that one of our close friends, S, had had a breakdown and was in a psychiatric facility. Her mom had left a message on our machine with the name of the hospital, but it had cut out prior to her leaving the phone number. K spent over an hour trying to track the number of the hospital only to be told that they "could neither confirm nor deny" if S was a patient. K left a message, hoping for the best.

It turns out that S had some sort of psychic break. The doctors don't seem to be certain of the diagnoses, though they are playing with bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and something else. She's already been hospitalized for almost a week. K's been predicting for some time that S was flying too fast and too high and that the crash was imminent. Cassandra strikes again. [I've taken to calling K Cassandra after the Trojan princess, who was cursed to tell the truth and never be believed.]

We've talked to S a couple times, turns out K did find the right hospital. This weekend, we may head up there to see her, it's a couple hours by plane. S is dong well and feeling better. She moved away in March and I haven't kept in as close a touch, so I didn't see that things were heading for a collision. She does give me credit for pushing her, about 10 days ago, to talk to a doctor about her bouts with depression to try and get some help. But still, I feel somewhat as if I failed her. Though, I'm not sure what I might have done.

It appears that S will probably be released sometime this week. K's out of town till Thursday, but I'm looking at getting us tickets for Friday and heading up for a night to visit and offer support. S has been trying for years to get us to visit her home state.

The result of Friday is that I'm feeling battered and bruised. Friday night, I slept about 12 hours and remained groggy much of Saturday. K's doing fine, but what's going on with everyone else? Is this what growing up is like? My friends are reaching their early 30's and starting to fall apart.

I'm not in such bad straits as the paragraph above sounds nor am I actually that whiney. Reality and adulthood do feel as if they have struck hard recently.

posted by synergy @ 9:19 AM