[Deep Thoughts] Let's Get High

[Kyle]

What are the highest and lowest points of your life?

[Tahlvin]

Lowest point was when my wife had a D&C after her first miscarriage, and they told me it had been a boy. We went through three miscarriages in a row, within about a 18 month span, between our second and third successful pregnancies, so it was a fairly depressing time. But that first one, which would have (at the time) been our first boy, and was the one of the three miscarriages that occurred furthest along during the pregnancy, was particularly bad. That was the worst I've even broken down and REALLY bawled my eyes out with grief, when I had to tell my wife that it was a boy after she woke up from the anesthetic.

As for my highest point, nothing can beat the birth of a child. I can't even say the first one was better than the younger two live births, since all of them left me in such awe.


Outside of children, my highest point was probably the very first time I soloed in an airplane, and my lowest point was probably the last 6 months spent at my last job, after my boss and good friend had left the same company. Getting a different boss completely changed the work dynamic, and the company that I had enjoyed working at for the first 10 years I was there, was no longer fun to be at. Besides the period where we went through the miscarriages, those last 6 months at that job was about the only other time I've really struggled with depression.

[Iantha]

Being pregnant and homeless followed by an abusive relationship was the lowest point in my life. All said, it was a rough 3.5 years. I was a mess. My daughter was born during that time and she is my brightest star. It's funny because I don't remember feeling joy when she was born, only the strongest determination that I have ever felt that I was, somehow, going to figure out how to give her a happy, healthy life. After we left the abusive relationship I was able to feel joy again and she has given me more intense joy than I ever thought possible.

[El Jefe]

Lowest - When I wake up in the morning.

Highest - When I'm sleeping at night.

Not a joke on that one. I've got the unregulated brain chemistry of Eeyore.

[Eliahad]

Low point- January to March 2017

High points - There are four: Going to GenCon for the first time.

Playing to a sold out Castro theater in SF and having that be the audition gig that solidified one of the most fun things I do.

Helping be a part of creating a new radio show. It only ended up being 3 episodes, but it was awesome. I have a CD of it somewhere. Actually, I know where it is, I need to get it back.

Hearing that damn album on the radio for the first time.

[Phoebe]

I am lucky to have a really good life full of frequent high points; it's kind of like being on a high mountain range and then occasionally an appendix bursts or your throat tries to swell shut or you feel very guilty/bad about unfortunate events. Right now the people around me are suffering a great deal more. Not ok.

[Zen]

This is an interesting question for me. When I started thinking about it, I actually had trouble picking out distinct "highs". I've had a lot of little highs, but not a huge amount of really, really big ones. Or, perhaps I should say, not things that I consider to be significant at this point in my life. There were many "highs" I had when I was younger. Starring in The Music Man my senior year of high school. Several staring roles in college. I used to LOVE performing on stage, whether it was dance when I was younger, or choir, or plays/musicals. But, at this point in my life, I can't look at those as "highs" any more. They're fond memories, yes, but not high points in my life.

So, what were those high points?

1. My wedding day? Well, that was a great day, but, frankly, it involved dealing with far too much crap involving other people's BS for me to call it a high. I was happy to be getting married, but there was a lot of frustration involved, especially for my wife dealing with certain members of her family. That caused me more stress than happiness in many ways. I don't like to see her stressed out by things.

2. The birth of my first child? Incredible high! It was such a wonderful time. And shortly before that, we took a vacation with my parents to Stratford, Ontario to see a couple of plays for the first time in a a few years. It looked to be one of the best times of my life.... Then, just over a month after my son was born, my mother died. It became one of the absolute lowest times of my life, immensely stressful, and, most likely, the trigger event for my descent into full-blown fibromyalgia.

3. The birth of my second child? Also a very happy time, but there were complications that caused that to be a mix of highs and lows. She had a malformed kidney and we didn't know how serious it would be. (She had kidney and bladder infections for much of her pre-school years because of it, but it is better now.) My wife also had a very difficult pregnancy, including gestational diabetes, which caused a lot of stress. So no... this doesn't really count as only a high either.

4. My daughter's acceptance into one of the most competitive and highly regarded high schools in the nation, as well as my son receiving a full tuition scholarship to the college he wanted to go to? This should have been it, in my opinion, up to this point, because my wife and I have invested most of ourselves in our children over the past twenty years. In particular, when our daughter CHOSE to apply to her high school and was accepted, out of 8th grade, to start the next year as a 10th grader there... that was an amazing high! Then, shortly after the end of the school year, about a week before she had to take her placement exams to determine which classes she would take in the fall, she asked me if I could cook breakfast for her on Saturday morning because she didn't feel well. We went to the kitchen and I walked toward the stove, turned to her to ask what she wanted me to make, and she didn't respond. I tried to get her attention. She still didn't respond. I realized that she was wavering and... she fell and I caught her on my shoulder, lowering her body to the ground. She passed out. If I hadn't been there, she would have hit her head on the stove. This lead to a series of doctor's appointments, blood tests, more doctors, and, shortly before she left for boarding school, a diagnosis of Hashimoto's Thiroiditis. She had an autoimmune thyroid disease. Her body was killing her own thyroid gland... And we had to put her on artificial thyroid hormone and send her off to boarding school... It was either that or break her heart and tell her she was too sick to go. Since then, she has also been diagnosed with other chronic problems and has symptoms that no one can explain. She recently completed her essay for the "Common App" college application. In it, she talks about how chronic illness made her a stronger, more resilient person and forced her to learn new coping skills, time management strategies that she never needed before, and how to ask for help when she needs it, something she was never very good at, being a fiercely independent young woman, to a fault. (Seriously, it was practically a character flaw.) Her ACT score when she took it this September was 31 composite, and a 33 for the Reading portion. (This is still not quite the average for her school, but when you consider what she's been through, it ROCKS!)

It just seems that every high is paired with something to bring it down to size... you know? So, I'm kinda waiting for one that doesn't get torpedoed... maybe?

As for standalone lows, there are two...

The first, I would have to say, started the first term of my sophomore year of college. I was taking my first upper-level psychology courses, including Personality and Statistics. I also had the lead in the musical ("Pseudolus" in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and was the head of the set crew. I was stretched thin, stressed out, and barely staying above water. At one point I broke out in hives and had to go to the emergency room. Both of my psychology professors gave me friendly advice about not putting theater ahead of academics, my advisor talking about how he totally understood where I was coming from, as he didn't decide between a theater major and a psych major until the start of his senior year. Then a couple of things happened to push me over the edge... one mean spirited, the other quite incidental and, actually, meant as a compliment.

One of my best friends from high school contacted me. She and I had... a bit of a history... The previous winter break, we were both between relationships and both interested in people at our respective universities who weren't giving us the time of day. We commiserated with each other about our problems and... took things a bit too far. (Not THAT far, but still too far. Farther that we should have.) Later that Spring, she came to visit me to see me when I had my first starring role in a play at my college. ("Tom Wingfield" in The Glass Menagerie) That weekend also happened to coincide with my first date with the woman I eventually married. I... didn't handle the fact that my old friend was in town and that I was in LOVE (with someone entirely other than the person I'd been pining over at Christmastime, mind you...) at the same time. It also seems that she had developed some feelings... it wasn't good...

So, anyway, that next fall, in the midst of all my stress, she contacted me to let me know just exactly what a jerk I was. She was ALSO a psychology student, taking pretty much the same course schedule I was. She pretty much directly accused me of having several personality disorders that we were both studying... Of course, I was stressed enough that "medical student's syndrome" had set in pretty hard and I was already diagnosing myself with: precisely the things she was saying. Perfect match.

Around that time, one of my best friends made an off-handed comment to me, meant as a compliment. He told me I was a "real social chameleon." He said he was really impressed with the way I could get along with any group of people on campus. I just blended in... accommodated... adjusted to my surroundings...

Most of the "medical student syndrome" diagnoses that I was stressing over were completely bogus... However, that offhanded compliment was the straw the broke the camel's back. Why? Because that one was the one that was really true: I had no true sense of self. My real problem was that, for my entire life, I adapted to the group in order to fit in and not feel different, because, deep inside, I always felt different from everyone. I had been doing it for so long that I had absolutely no CLUE who the hell I actually was. I couldn't say what defined ME. There was the me that was part of the drama club. There was the me that went to church when I was back home. There was the me who hung around with my girlfriend and my friends and played roleplaying games, a hobby that I was DRAWN to like a fish to water... because it allowed me to be someone else... Just like I was drawn to acting. I was ALWAYS acting. Every minute of every day of my life.

So, I basically went through a bit of a personality crisis over the next three or four months. I was not a fun person to be around, and I drank far too much. I think it is a very lucky thing that my wife stayed with me through that. In the end, I kind of CHOSE a personality to stick with: the person I was with my girlfriend and friends. I liked him the most, because I liked my friends (and girlfriend). They seemed to like that guy. So, I stuck with him...

I've talked with people about this before and had reactions of "oh, everybody does that to some extent", but it was extreme. It really was a case of not knowing who I was.

There are times when I will find myself doing it still. (I also REALLY shouldn't hang around people with accents, because I WILL start speaking with their accent if I'm not careful. I worry about that because that can seem like I'm mocking them, though it actually is nothing of the sort. It is just part of the whole package.) I had a long talk with my daughter about it a while back. She fought her way past it earlier in life than I did. She did exactly the same thing, though. I recognized it in her and was worried, but she had already figured it out. She's a lot smarter than I am...

The other time was right after I quit graduate school. I was fairly depressed. I mean... I had set a "life goal" to get a PhD and that was gone... permanently... I was pretty lost. It took quite a while to find a good job, about 6 months, but I did. My wife and I chose to stay in the town I went to grad school in and we even bought a house... I thought things were going well...

Then she told me she wasn't sure if she could stay with me... Graduate school was hard on our relationship. It drove us apart. I worked far too much, though not nearly enough to satisfy my advisor. Part of the reason I decided to quit was because I could tell that I wasn't going to be able to continue at the pace I was and get the type of results he expected, and if I did more, pushed harder, I would probably end up pushing my wife away from me for good. Not to mention that I just didn't enjoy the research anymore. Not enough to sacrifice that much for it. Then after I had a job, she told me that she felt she could probably leave me now that I was financially stable and she might... she wasn't sure if she loved me anymore. It was like a kick to the stomach. If I was going to feel this crappy, why was I not continuing to work my ass off for a degree I didn't really want anymore during the day, then coming home at night and putting 4 Dire Straits albums and Steely Dan's greatest hits into the 5-disc changer on shuffle and drinking scotch while sitting in the dark? (That was a standard night during grad school... but I wasn't depressed... NOOOO! Not at ALL!!!!! Right Stan?)

I just had to wait until she figured it out. If I tried to do anything to "win her back", it just made things worse. (See above: she knew about that aspect of my personality and probably saw any attempt at being different to her as fake as opposed to sincere. Serious double edged sword, when your wife was there for your major personality crisis!)

Eventually, she got past it and our marriage got stronger. We started trying to have a child, though her 2nd and 3rd shift schedules at her job did a lot to prevent us from being successful at that. (She switched to 1st shift and was pregnant a month later...)