Waiting for take-out the other day, I took out my phone to text. (Side note here: what on earth did we all do while waiting before smart phones came around?)
Imagine my surprise when my hands were shaking so badly I couldn't hit the right buttons. Puzzled, I stared down at my right hand, a sudden and dubious traitor. All my life, it had done whatever my brain asked of it. Why not now?
I wasn't particularly cold. I wasn't the slightest bit nervous. What was going on?
It slowly dawned on me that this slight tremor could be a side effect of the meds I was taking...meds that didn't take the pain away but only blunted it to a state that could be survived with the grimest of determination.
Then I thought, what if the tremor doesn't go away? Would I stop taking my meds? Could I? Could I stop taking the meds knowing I felt like dying more days than I felt like living? If it was this bad with meds, what on earth would I feel like without?
Two seconds later, I was thinking this is what Cory must have been thinking everyday- only her side effects were so much worse than an irritating and minute tremor.
She tried so many different meds and combinations of meds to find something that would give her some relief. It took about a year to find the combination and dosage that slowed her racing thoughts, held back the hallucinations, and kept the depression at bay to any noticeable degree. Even then, they didn't always work. In return, she was nauseous. Sometime she threw up. Her eyesight suffered. Her legs would move at night involuntarily, not allowing her to rest. We referred to it as the "kickie-jumpies". The kickie-jumpies, in my humble opinion, having never experienced them firsthand, were a tour of hell.
Then there were the tremors. She took another med to counteract the way her hands shook. Sometimes it wasn't so bad. But the other times...
So waiting for the take-out, I gave it some good, hard thought.
What if my hands shook all the time?
What if my signature, my personal stamp on the world, disintegrated right before to my eyes to an unrecognizable scrawl?
What if writing legibly became so frustrating that I felt like screaming and throwing my beloved journal against the wall?
What if sketching, even badly and just for fun, was no longer a possibility?
What I were embarrassed to let people watch me eat because my silverware inadvertently chattered a staccato beat with my dinnerplate?
As I pondered each possibility, all of which Cory had experienced, I marvelled once again at my daughter's strength...her strength and her sheer determination. She wanted to be well. She would do whatever it took to get there. She knew it wouldn't be easy; she knew it wouldn't come at an easy price. But she was not giving up. This mental illness would not control her. It would not run her life as she had seen it run her biological father's.
It was humbling, this realization of what Cory sacrificed every day just to try to live a normal life. I felt horribly selfish, and ashamed, for every time I've wished myself dead since July 5th. What would Cory think of me wanting to give up and take the easy way out just to get rid of the pain? I may not see myself as strong. But she sure did.
I remember like it was yesterday, sitting eighth row at the My Chemical Romance concert in Detroit, going crazy over our favorite songs. I think Cory was fifteen. I remember on the drive home, we relived the entire concert, song by song, play by play. She told me that "Famous Last Words" had always reminded her of me. This was, actually, my favorite performance by them that night, but I had never connected the song to myself in any personal way. I asked her, "Why?" She told me it was the line that said, "I am not afraid to keep on living. I am not afraid to walk this world alone." She said that was me in a nutshell, that her madre was strong. The fact that she was telling me this months after Jake's dad and I had separated did not escape my attention. She knew that whatever came, I would be okay. And if I was okay, she and Jake would be too. And we were. It was the three of us against the world...just like the title of the painting she made me.
So from here on out, on the weak days, I will remember Cory's strength while I listen to the words of that song. Man up, Nick...Cory's madre is not a quitter.
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