Certifiable Mermaid

The most divine woman I know (other than Mariah Carey) plays keyboard on her balcony and lets the squirrels run across the keys. She’s almost 70 but her spirit is ageless; she dances with the twinkling stars and hang glides in warm places above sandy beaches, connected to the universe in a way that transcends time. She shares the words of Eckhart Toll, and always “says yes to the current moment” even when her shoulder aches and her heart breaks; she is a bionic woman because life has required her to wear a coat of armor and yet she is soft underneath it.

This woman, soft but strong, is known to lots as Dr. T, a (now retired) psychologist who works with children and young adults; to me she will always be the Bionic Woman, queen of squirrels and stardust. Dr. T came into my life when I was 13 and she very quickly sorted out the inner workings of my brain. She recognized that I was smart and creative, but that I had a lot of internal grief for someone so young. I got stuck on specific thoughts and they kept me awake at night. Death occupied my mind and I got fixated on tragedies. I associated certain numbers with different meanings and was highly superstitious. Dr. T immediately recognized that these were early traits of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and we began a long journey of healing my mind and heart, together, with laughter and love.

My journey with Dr. T began after my brother’s best friend Patrick attempted suicide. I was in 8th grade and they were in 9th. Patrick was a beautiful spirit. He played the upright base, listened to the Cure (one of my favorite bands in middle school) and he loved going to Tower Records before they went out of business. I had a huge crush on him and tried to follow him and my brother everywhere they went. I remember all three of us sneaking into Borat when it came out, and I tried to be cool and act like I wasn’t freaked out by the entire movie but it was too much for my 13 year old eyes. What I enjoyed a lot more than sneaking into rated R movies was listening to Patrick sing Hey There Delilah while he played his acoustic guitar.

My mom knew how much Patrick meant to my brother and I and didn’t know how to explain the situation. She thought a therapist might be able to help us process our pain, so she sent us to Dr. T. My brother went briefly but I connected so well with her that I ended up seeing her until I was 26. Sadly I outlived Patrick during that time. He died when I was 17, and I was struck by another suicide attempt in my family when I was 23. Dr. T was there for me through it all, teaching me the art of mindfulness, helping me learn to detach from my obsessive thoughts, and making me laugh in almost every session. Her cozy office, full of stuffed animals, books, and often her tiny buddy (the cutest dog ever) are memories I cherish. In my mind, Dr. T was like a wise aunt and therapist in one, with a fiery feminist spirit and a hippie soul.

Some of my best memories with Dr. T were the most awkward at the time. Part of my OCD involved fear and obsession with my body, and one fear in particular was getting a pap smear. It was something I had to do, but even thinking about it made my throat close. Dr. T made me watch videos about the pap smear process and I sat on the couch squealing like a child who wanted to avoid eating their veggies (I was probably 20). We laughed at my dramatics as usual. For me, talking about my body was taboo, but Dr. T helped me learn to talk about the uncomfortable things, and encouraged me to get to the root of my feelings. Underneath most of my uncomfortable emotions was fear, but there was another side of me that was ridiculously silly, full of childlike joy and wonder. Dr. T brought that out of me too.

We laughed together at my awful dating stories in my early 20’s, and she told me stories that prove men don’t mature with age. We regularly had discussions about feminism and foolishness of men, but we also spent a lot of time talking about nature and the things that made life feel special. Something we spent a lot of time talking about was squirrels, of all things. Squirrels were our representation of being present in the moment. They’re playful, cute, and they would climb on her keyboard while she played outside on her balcony. Squirrels came to be a symbol for me, of slowing down, laughing, and being one with nature in the moment. Anytime I saw a squirrel it reminded me of Dr. T. She was also a lifeline for me, and I couldn’t picture living without her.

I remember the day she told me she was retiring in 2019. She had just returned from a break after a shoulder surgery (she is a woman with many bionic body parts, and she’s tough as nails). I was 26, and we had been working together for 13 years. After a session of laughing and shit talk about men (she told me that “men’s frontal lobes were less developed than women’s”) she paused and said “well my dear, I need to tell you that in four months I will be retiring. I’ve been doing this work for a long time and I must start my next chapter, but lets make the most of the rest of our time together.” Tears immediately flooded my eyes, and they flood my eyes now as I am typing. I was angry, sad, scared, and anticipating the grief. I just nodded and held in the big tears until I got into my car.

I went home and sent Dr. T an email telling her than I wasn’t coming back for the remainder of our sessions. Knowing I would have to say goodbye would be too hard and I wanted to avoid that pain. In typical Dr. T fashion, she responded and said that she understood, but that she thought she had one last lesson to teach me: sitting with sadness and learning how to say goodbye. My heart was broken, but just like I always do even when I don’t realize it, I was strong and decided to go back the next week. I was like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum in her office. I sat with my arms crossed and told her I was mad and that she was too young to retire. She laughed and told me she was 67, but I told her she was lying. She couldn’t be a day over 50! Then we both cried together. I didn’t realize saying goodbye to me would be hard for her too. We cried together for the next four months, but we laughed too. She reminded me that even in sorrow there is joy.

Right after Dr. T retired the pandemic started. It was the first time I was without a therapist, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to speak to her again for two years (a policy to help both the therapist and patient move on). I quickly suppressed my grief and focused on finishing grad school. My mental health did surprisingly well for almost a year and a half… and then I decided to go off of my Zoloft (an SSRI that treats depression, OCD, and other anxiety disorders). I was on the medication for seven years and it had helped tremendously but I had gained weight on it and I was starting to fixate on my body. Immediately after going off of it I relapsed into severe depression due to my intrusive thoughts. All I wanted was to talk to Dr. T but I tried my best to put our years of work to practice.

I didn’t realize that my mental health could get lower than it was when I first went off of Zoloft, but it did. In an effort to feel better, I started trying different SSRI’s and they all made me feel worse so I ultimately had to wean off of them. Each time I stopped taking a medication my body went into withdrawal and I got mentally sicker. Right around this time, I was also incorrectly diagnosed with a thyroid disorder by an overeager endocrinologist and she prescribed levothyroxine to speed up my metabolism. The results were tragic.

After a couple weeks on levothyroxine my blood pressure went through the roof, I started having heart palpations and more than five panic attacks a day, I couldn’t stop pacing, and my OCD got so bad that I wanted to kill myself. I had no idea what was going on until I went to my primary care doctor and he told me I was having hyperthyroid shock. My thyroid was too stimulated because I didn’t actually need the medication, and as a result my body and mind were panicking; there were hormones that didn’t belong, and our hormones play a huge role in our mental and physical wellbeing. I was so angry at the doctor who had pushed the medication on me (more on that in a later blog), and lost most of my faith in doctors. Knowing what was going on didn’t help; the pain didn’t stop and my doctor told me it could be months before the medicine made its way out of my body.

While dealing with weeks of induced hyperthyroid on top of mental illness and SSRI withdrawal, I felt defeated. At some point it during it all, I realized that it had been two years since Dr. T retired and I was now allowed to contact her. I was scared to message her because I thought maybe she wouldn’t respond, but I felt I had nothing to lose. I texted her, told her what was going on and that I missed her. She responded within an hour and I immediately started sobbing. My parents got scared and asked what was wrong. It was hard for me to talk but I told them Dr. T responded to me and told me I was strong enough to get through this. In that moment, all of the grief I had been holding in about losing her was released from my body. I didn’t realize there was so much pain inside of me for two years. I never really processed that I was doing life without her, and in that moment I needed her more than ever.

Dr. T said we could meet up in May (2022) and I was really excited. I was struggling so much and the anticipation of seeing her gave me reason to stay alive. But May couldn’t come soon enough, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk to her as a therapist; we would just be two people getting lunch. My current therapist urged me to go to the hospital in late April because my suicidal ideation was getting scary and I ended up being there for eleven days (Blog One through Five detail this experience). I was put on a cocktail of SSRI’s, benzos (more on this later), and an anti-psychotic that is used as a mood stabilizer. I had never been so medicated in my life when I left the hospital, but it was the only way I felt I could survive on the outside again.

When I got home from the hospital I texted Dr. T to tell her I had been in a psychiatric hospital and to ask if she still felt comfortable to meet on our set date. She left it up to me, and I decided it was a joy that I needed. When the day came I felt nervous and excited, but I was still worn down and depressed. I needed my Bionic Woman to remind me what strength looks like. My dad drove me to the restaurant we were meeting at because I had taken a medication that made it hard for me to drive initially. As soon as we pulled up I saw her coming around the corner and I teared up. I got out of the car and walked up to her and she immediately started crying, ready to give me a big bear hug. We had a wonderful lunch catching up and sharing what had been going on in both of our lives for the past two years.

There aren’t words full enough to describe the abundance of joy and love Dr. T brought into my life. She’s one of the few people on earth who knows my heart and mind, and has since I was just a child. She got me through the pains of adolescence, severe trauma in my early 20’s, and provided me with tools to get through the rest of my life, no matter how broken or sad I might feel. I see a therapist right now who is wonderful, but I know I will never have a therapeutic relationship like the one I had with Dr. T because its simply not possible to recreate 13 of the most influential years of my life or the laughs we had in her office. I don’t know who I would be without her, but I do know that because of her I will continue to stop and smile at the squirrels. She taught me that I’m strong enough to handle the nights that feel empty and worthy of the days when I realize that I too am a Bionic Woman in the making.